Chile: Bachelet’s Crusade against Populism & the Far-Right
The authoritarian drift of elected rulers, the populist platforms at election time, and the failure of progressivism to update its message…
By Francisca Castillo (El Mostrador)
HAVANA TIMES – The risks facing the democratic systems within the current global order constitute one of the principal worries of former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. “Nearly an obsession,” she confessed on Monday, July 21, in the context of her participation in the Festival of Democracy 2025, where she led a panel that included recognized intellectuals like Daniel Innerarity.
The international gathering was organized by the Chilean government centers of study, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, and IDEA International (the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance). The event will also include the presence of thinkers such as Joseph Stiglitz and Susan Neiman.
Bachelet has earmarked an important part of her agenda for the next two years to participating in national and international forums, with the aim of sounding an alert about the risks the advance of populist and authoritarian regimes pose for democracy.
Her message takes on especial relevance in the context of Chile’s electoral polarization and the realization of the “Democracy Always” summit, in which current Chilean President Gabriel Boric has brought together presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil; Pedro Sanchez of Spain; Yamandu Orsi of Uruguay; and Gustavo Petro if Colombia, for a meeting held at Chile’s presidential palace, La Moneda.
During the meeting, these Heads of State aimed their criticisms at the far-right and the extremisms, as well as discussing the importance of addressing disinformation and digital technology, and of pushing forward important reforms to the system of international governance, especially the United Nations.
Similarly, one of the specific keys that Michelle Bachelet emphasized in her speech was the relationship between democracy and multilateralism. The latter, in her opinion, faces growing skepticism in the face of its inability to offer a response to the global crises and armed conflicts.
“These perceptions have contributed to the rise of positions that are more withdrawn and skeptical about collective action, with repercussions on international cooperation’s capacity to produce effective responses. People don’t believe in a multilateral system that has no power and is irrelevant at the hour of confronting the great dramas we’ve seen in the world,” she emphasized.
Barbs hurled at Kaiser
The authoritarian drift of leaders elected by democratic means was another of the concerns raised by the former president: “We’ve seen this very clearly in this region of the Americas,” she noted.
For this same reason, she warned of the “growing sensation of abandonment on the part of broad social sectors, who don’t encounter a satisfactory response in politics nor in the traditional parties.”
Bachelet pointed directly to the recent declarations of Johannes Kaiser, the Chilean presidential candidate from the National Libertarian Party, who stated that he would repeat the 1973 coup d’etat with all its consequences.
“The curious thing is that he wants to save democracy with a coup d’etat, Bachelet alerted, adding that it’s not possible “to allow the normalization of what’s not normal,” and the urgency of working so that “all the people feel that democracy makes sense, that the risks to democracy are enormous if we let ourselves be drawn in by easy, populist solutions.”
She added that Chile has “people who claim that they’re very quickly going to resolve the problems of organized crime in the country, that they have the answers to everything. That’s not true. No one has all the answers. No complex problem can be resolved in a very short time,” she asserted.
The parties must stop functioning as machines for power
The challenges of electoral integrity, in a context where a third of the elections in Latin America between 2020 and 2024 confronted political or legal controversies, along with the challenges of the digital revolution and the rapid spread of disinformation also formed part of the difficult scenario Michelle Bachelet spoke of, given the weakened confidence in government institutions.
Bachelet, who also served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2018 – 2022, proposed some strategies for “countering the authoritarian onslaught,” such as the development of effective public policies, under the premise that “democracy must come through.”
“Secondly, we need to reconstruct political parties withmpathetic leaders that connect with the citizens. The disconnect between the traditional parties and individuals has generated enormous disillusionment. The parties must stop functioning as machines for power (…) They must go back to being living spaces of civic participation, where the social demands are heard and transformed into concrete proposals,” she affirmed.
She called on the progressive parties to assume the consequences of the immediacy of these times. While it’s true that the left has gained an advanced tool with the effective use of social media, the extreme right are years ahead with this.
“The progressive parties need to understand this new language and this new narrative,” she warned.
Michelle Bachelet added that one of the problems is that the progressive world “tends to speak from the head, using rationality. And the more authoritarian world, starting with these simplistic and easy solutions speaks from the gut to the heart.” Due to this she counselled: “perception is ever more important for what people will consider, who they choose to believe.”
First published in Spanish by El Mostrador and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.