Eight years ago, the UDI was the most extreme edge of the Chilean institutional right. Not only was it Jaime Guzmán’s party, but it was the only one that – at that time – publicly claimed the figure of Pinochet. To the right of the UDI there was only a void and, if politics were a circle, the closest thing geographically – following the curvature and the theory that extremes always touch – was the Communist Party.
However, José Antonio Kast was in disarray for the UDI. Always with his brave prince hairstyle, the same one he wore in 1977, when he lit candles (torches, actually) for Pinochet during the ascent of Chacarillas Hill, he decided to leave the party with a letter written in a very good tone and alleging problems. internal affairs, among them, his distance from Jovino Novoa, due to the Penta case.
Despite this, everyone knew that, beyond formal reasons, Kast was thinking big, as if he were a disinherited prince who wanted to recover what was his, a future kaiser, and to do so he needed to put himself to the right of the right. In Chile Vamos, it hurts many to this day when he described the parties of that conglomerate as “right-wing.” light” and not a few remember his once fierce defense of the dictatorship, his fierce opposition to anything that sounded like abortion and his ambiguous phrases about migration, which earned him several accusations of xenophobia.
In reality, changing the contexts and some names, his speech had nothing to envy of the rhetoric of other rebels who emerged around the same time, among them, Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro, whom the academy has classified in recent years as “ national populists.” However, unlike the first two and many more who walk the path of national populism, Kast was not elected and, today, his level of voting intention is around 10%, very far from that resounding 44% that achieved in the last presidential election.
For many, the reason for the decline is their update, that is, in the softening of the candidate and his speech. In 2021, seeking the centrist vote, Kast decided to accept that climate change does exist and even incorporated it into his government program. He also decided that he no longer wanted to eliminate – among others – the Ministry of Women and, on the contrary, incorporated the development of measures pro-woman as one of its axes.
He was always very harsh with the Cuban and Venezuelan dictatorships, but when Tomás Mosciatti asked him if he would also break relations with China, due to human rights violations, his response was frank but disconcerting: “The economic issue is complex there.” Without a doubt, he responded as if he were already President, not as a candidate. He should have learned from the then candidate Gabriel Boric, who did not hesitate to ask for the punishments of hell for former president Sebastián Piñera at that time, only to end up two years later speaking glowingly of him at the time of his death – with a guitar it is something else, as he confessed. the same-.
All the update of Kast in these and other subjects was a uppercut to the chin of the brave group of Punta Peuco, that hard-hard right of the upper neighborhood and also of popular sectors, which reads the same fake news on Facebook and who tells whoever will listen that the only good communist is the dead communist, that the country was better off with The dadthat Sebastián Piñera was a communist, that Michelle Bachelet was never a doctor – and that the UN paid her three thousand dollars for each Haitian who arrived in Chile – that climate change does not exist, that chemtrails They are a UN plan to exterminate us, etc.
That is the world that Kast represented: that of the ex-CNI who drives a taxi while listening Radio Agriculture and that of the people who fear that hordes of hooded men will take over their chalets, in a kind of lollapalooza of the class struggle. Realistically, Kast realized that this brave group does not reach 50 plus 1 and, given this, he decided to move towards the center, also discussing with everyone the nickname of extreme right and showing himself as a thoughtful and dialogue man, precisely what he does not He wants that brave bar, nostalgic for curfew, for Álvaro Corbalán-style mustaches and for military marches.
If we put it in Machiavelli’s words, what these people expect is an authoritarian leader, someone whose “hand does not shake” – as the taxi driver on duty often says – and who “runs bullets” to whoever needs to be chased, a Bukele to chilensis Let him give free time to the police to shoot and ask questions later.
In this sense, perhaps his worst mistake was having fallen into the temptation of designing a Constitution tailored to his needs, but under the limit of the 12 edges of the Expert Commission, ignoring De la Carrera or Rojo Edwards, who joyfully and excitedly celebrated the day when the second constitutional project was rejected, making it evident that Kast was moved to the left, now taking his place, a space where someone who seemed an unlikely candidate until recently also began to settle: Johannes Kaiser.
The electoral defeat not only revealed Kast’s inability to convince even his own sector, but also allowed Chile Vamos to change the music. Until before the plebiscite, the former far-right leader played the music and the UDI danced, RN tapped and Evópoli was in charge of putting together the choreographies. After the plebiscite, the parties of the so-called traditional right stopped dancing José Antonio’s Bavarian marches and desperately began to look for their own conductor, who would allow them to win in the second round without risking losing the baton, in the last minute, as happened to Kast.
In this regard, it is worth remembering the old and never well understood Machiavelli, who reflected deeply on one of the capital problems of the ontology of any ruler: whether it is better to be feared than loved. As he himself said, “all princes must desire to be feared for being merciful and not for being cruel,” but he also argued that this is not possible, which is why, faced with the dilemma, “it is safer to be feared than loved, because of the generality of men this can be said: that they are ungrateful, fickle, malingerers, cowardly in the face of danger and eager for profit.
The reason for the above came not only from the dozens of palace intrigues that Machiavelli witnessed in life, but also from the great understanding of human nature that he achieved, based on which, regarding the same problem, he wrote that “love is a bond of gratitude that men, perverse by nature, break whenever they can benefit; but fear is fear of punishment that is never lost.”
Yes, José Antonio Kast chose to be a beloved prince and, without a doubt, this brought him some votes from the center –increased, by the way, by the rejection of the figure of Gabriel Boric–, but things are changing and today who Occupying that space where he appeared is someone who naturally moves there, the still mayor Evelyn Matthei.
The Kaiser of Cecinas Bavaria has a lot of footwork and, without a doubt, is going to enter again to compete for votes from the center-right and the traditional right, but he lost his space towards the extreme, the same one that gave him a respectable 7.93% in the first presidential election he ran for.
What’s more, although he always denied being on the extreme right, he was for a long time, just as he took that dubious honor away from the UDI, now he is the one who is called “lukewarm” and “yellow” by the toughest right, the one that the former brave group of Kast pays attention to today.
