They look like a wave, a tidal wave. United States, Italy, Argentina, France, Spain, Colombia, El Salvador and more signatures: each of these countries—and others—try to convince us that they form a kind of international fascist party and that, therefore, the power of each one is multiplied by the power of the others, of all of them together.
Not true, of course: this either. The clash between Trump's entrenched protectionism and Milei's or Bukele's tariff-free trade liberalization, for example, would be enough for several wars. But today I wanted to look, above all, at the difference in personal models. Because I believe that each of them is a worthy unworthy representative of the culture that sadly gave birth to them: a synthesis of their society.
So here they come, already on the catwalk where they parade one after another, their right arm extended or just their little hand:
The Italian woman is like another little girl, the curl of a Bernini statue, a short-term surprise: where fascist history and logic would propose a stern man, with thin hair and warlike manners, the Italians offer us a blonde. Something like the complete opposite: an attempt to show that you can be far-right and be, at the same time, a modern, friendly, smiling person. That the extreme right is for all audiences, that it is no longer those bears; It could be anyone, you and me, that girl. It is a worthy but Italian attempt: it breaks down quickly. One day he pretends to face Trump; Two days later he answers “yes bwana”.
The North American comes to be the slightest thing, the bubbles: against those gentlemen who took everything so seriously, who made life a set of inviolable rules - a pain in the ass -, now we have a viva la Pepa, an old man with very dyed hair and skin who takes little dance steps imitating my grandmother so that you don't forget that he is also that, a convicted rapist who never went to prison, one who does what he wants when he wants because he wants to. The slightest thing is: it is not necessary to pout to kill hundreds of girls in distant schools. That we can do it as if we didn't care, just because we can: because we are—they try to say—the owners still. The problem is their overacting: we end up believing the opposite.
The Argentine is a mirror: it occurred to him that if Argentine society was an inextricable quilombo, he would be the same—or worse—, but it was missing. Because the characteristic of caricature is to extreme what is caricature. It worked for him, at first, and millions identified themselves: “This guy knows that this is not how it works, he knows it firsthand.” But it is difficult to maintain the pace: the quilombo, if it continues, becomes normal and more and more doses are needed to continue producing the same Chaos Effect. And there comes a point when the mechanism goes out of control and the poor clown who worked to pamper and undermine his country becomes a broken doll. It's sad to see him in that state. (Seeing ourselves in that state is more than sad: it is humiliating).
The French is another form of caricature: the one that does not say it is, the little doll. Dolls are scary because they are too much what they should be: they are so in an immovable way, always the same, always the same. Mrs. Le Pen is presented as a doll—an unintentional caricature—of a good French bourgeoisie, an energetic but reasonable woman, one of those who have to live to contain the violence of her husband—who in this case is her father. It is his strongest weapon: he takes advantage of comparison. She will always be a little less brutal than her father and as French-French and as guarantor of old traditions as him. Although it has a problem: those ladies, in those rooms, did not usually wear the prisoners' anklet.
The Salvadoran is a cunning construction of opposites: a dapper boy, his two-day beard, his smile, his Miami hats, all that heirloom neatness planted on the base of hundreds of piled up, ruined bodies, remains stripped of themselves. In a culture of confrontation, a country that has killed for decades and decades, Mr. Bukele stages the result of that war: the bad guys finally lose because he is willing to gut them, to turn them into carrion. The president alone is little; The president standing on those burst remains is a terrifying image. Bukele uses the cunning of being triumph all the time: he will fall when, Goya or Faro willing, we all see the Caprices of his war, his butchery claw.
The Colombian could not be more appropriate: the man seems to be the quintessence - counterfeit in China - of a society that became aspirational when a few middle-class merchants were so successful that they found themselves with a stinking amount of money and had to invent new and exotic ways to use it and they dedicated a lot of effort and hippos to it. In doing so, they also flooded their internal market with money and more money and the local culture with this idea that success is only useful if you can rub it in your neighbor's face. And that there is only success in individual triumph. Here's the joke: if someone shouts that his success consists of shitting on everyone else, how do everyone else choose him assuming he's not going to shit on them? In any case, the trap is set: sometime it will be understood that this man embodies - unintentionally - the most extreme criticism of a culture that assumes that, when you can choose what you really want, you choose to be trash.
And we are left, for today, with the Spaniard, a very minor case, an official who has been employed by some right-wing party for 25 years. It would be said that the man did not want or know how to think anything: that he surrendered himself without resistance to the supposed Iberian literality. In Spain, they say, things should look like what they are. Mr. Abascal is a fascist as the fascists should be in the dreams of their fascist mothers, a holy virgin: a big man, a little fat, who always wears small clothes so that he can be noticed and a face like a bad guy from a worse movie and a cheap barbershop beard and the always stern gesture of someone who carries many destinies and a toy shotgun on his shoulders. Mr. Abascal is, in all, a bad toy. All toys: your fate depends on how children your compatriots are.
Some are there, others are missing. They all want to take advantage of some feature of their countries and cultures. They search, they search: everyone talks a lot about their god but no one believes that their god has made him the way he is. They know – they all know – that their god writes straight lines with crooked lines.
