Neoliberal globalization has a surname. It is disseminated via a body of doctrine elaborated coherently and comprehensively by capitalist think tanks. To sustain the predominance of the market over the regulatory principles of the state, they associate with modernity a series of concepts that invade all areas of society. This includes academic reforms; they foment absolute truths in academia, erase and fragment knowledge of history and undermine the role of politics, partially defined by the rapid passage of bourgeois democracy.
The mass media’s power to spread lies assumes the role formerly played by the programs of traditional political parties. The apparently eccentric behavior of the President of the United States follows this model. The public is kept entertained with a constant shoot-out, the multiplication of tense situations and areas of conflict that threaten an imminent war like the sword of Damocles.
The interests of transnational capital are hidden behind a spectacle in which today’s events erase yesterday’s. The manipulation of public opinion is focused on discrediting politics under circumstances in which in the drama of “the wretched of the earth” is extended and new neocolonial formulas are adopted. For the consumption of countries bearing the load of inherited underdevelopment, the idea is established that globalization makes us all citizens of a world in which the assertion of identity has no place.
Meanwhile, the slogan of “America first” mobilizes the most backward sectors of U.S. society with a heavy dose of xenophobia, racism, misogyny, and homophobia. In the background of this thinking lies a growing rebirth of a fascism we thought had been eliminated with the end of WWII.
Unfortunately, Europe, that suffered in flesh and blood the horrors of that conflict, lived holocausts of a diverse nature, and saw the gas chambers in concentration camps, is facing a similar ideological crisis. On both sides of the Atlantic, walls are raised to stop immigration. The Mediterranean has become a watery graveyard. Likewise, the ties that could have reaffirmed the European Union as an alternative voice in multilateral dialogue are broken.
A caricature of this doctrine is echoed in Brazil, where the President defends the military dictatorship, exalts the example of Pinochet, all of which was absolutely unacceptable just a few years ago. The most recent antecedents are legislative coups and politicization of the justice system, as well as the use of fundamentalist religion as a basic tool of manipulating minds.
Public statements are made and actions taken against education and culture, while the nation’s resources are handed over to the highest bidder, and the expansion of industrial agriculture is authorized in the Amazon. The dangers implicit in this offensive include the restoration and naturalization of fascist ideas, the suppression of gains won by the people over years of struggle, threats to the survival of the species on the planet given the acceleration of climate change despite internationally approved regulatory environmental commitments.
Required to counter this offensive is a re-articulation of thought on the left, with a re-reading of its foundations, a critical analysis of socialist and reformist experiences, and the recovery of the Latin American tradition of thinking.
“Peace is respect for the rights of others,” said Benito Juárez, Benemeritus of the Americas, that Indian from Oaxaca who learned Spanish on his own, grew in action and knowledge in a country that suffered the appropriation of a great part of its territory by the expanding empire, and the imposition of Maximilian of Austria as emperor.
Mexico is caught between coercive tariffs that threaten its exports and the commitment to confront, on both borders - north and south - the unstoppable invasion of emigrants. The solutions proposed by President López Obrador, aimed at alleviating migration pressure through policies to stimulate development, have fallen into a vacuum. Fundamental problems threaten the destiny of all, masked by politics as a spectacle, with its consequent discredit. Under the influence of these vicissitudes, the people vote against their own essential interests, although they become aware of the mistake made belatedly.
Our America possesses an emancipatory thought, rooted in awareness of the earth’s evils and an evaluation of the dramatic legacy of colonialism. The ideas that motivated the Cuban Revolution, in the light of our present reality, are inscribed in this tradition, with their center of gravity in the search for human dignity. I insist that the productive re-reading of this accumulated knowledge must translate into a coherent re-articulation of a left platform.
From this perspective, the re-founding of pedagogical thought is imperative, with the goal of educating generations now being born to decode the reality surrounding them and discover the truth behind the fireworks of illusion. Leaving the beaten track, and the routine formulas tried, constitutes an enormous challenge. But great challenges have conditioned the growth of our species and, on the individual level, have given meaning to daily life. (From Juventud Rebelde)
