We live in convulsive and contradictory times. On the one hand, we are living in an era that recommends being politically correct, careful in the language of words and gestures because there are groups that are hurt or fear being hurt by a phrase, no matter whether long thought out or said in passing. As Darío Villanueva points out, ours is the time of “biting one’s tongue” so as not to utter expressions that harm groups, including women, indigenous people, the handicapped or animal lovers. 

According to Susan Neiman, in her book Izquierda no es woke, a German publisher promoting a book with the phrase “This book will open your eyes” was attacked because it could cause suffering to the blind; the same censorship was suffered by a poem by a black writer only because it was translated by a white man. Today, politicians, writers, intellectuals, and even comedians have to modulate their words so as not to hurt those who believe they have the right to point an accusing finger at anyone who dares to question their real or supposed “being”.

Contrary to the above, in the world of politics, barbaric and thoughtless leaders with a loose and malicious tongue, such as Donald Trump, Javier Milei and Jair Bolsonaro, are gaining more and more followers. The president-elect of the United States maintained throughout his last electoral campaign that Latinos were trash; for his part, the current Argentine president maintained that all leftists were shit and that they should be killed. For his part, Bolsonaro used to refer to a female legislator saying that “she had not been raped because she was very ugly”.  

In their first steps in political activity, nobody took Trump, Milei or Bolsonaro seriously. They were a sort of passing curiosities, grotesque and circus-like characters that time and good judgment would take care of placing in the dustbin of history. None of that happened: the three of them reached the head of their states, blessed by the vote, the applause, and the approval of thousands of followers. Today we have reached the incredible paradox that misjudgment, ignorance, and intolerance generate popularity and support at the ballot box. 

How can we explain this contradiction between the alleged new cultural stage where we must be careful what we say and the verbal incontinence of populist leaders? At first glance, those who occupy each plot would seem to be different. Among the defenders of political correctness we can see leftist leaders, defenders of the role of the state in the economy and empathetic with the poor and disinherited. On the other side of the aisle we see right-wing, pro-market characters, who call for a return to the real or past greatness of the nation. 

However, there are also similarities: both are offshoots of identity politics, which seeks not only redistribution but also recognition of groups that, just for being or claiming to be different, should have exclusive rights, different and special from the common mortals; they are also political currents that appeal to emotions instead of reason and refuse to establish minimum channels of communication with other groups that, by definition, are their enemies. Finally, both are aggregates of fanatics who do not stop destroying anyone who is at the antipodes of their ideology or simple criteria. 

While it is already scandalous that these policies have taken hold, it is even more scandalous how long it has taken them to do so. As John Keane reminds us, “building a democracy is an arduous task that can take at least a lifetime, while its destruction or democide is much easier and can happen more quickly.” Latin America’s democracy before the first decade of the 21st century was neither the best nor the expected, it was a sick body with many ailments that demanded attention, but its supposed saviors were like a cancer that ended up killing the few healthy cells that existed in its political and cultural bodies. 

Now it is time to rebuild and recover. But it will be a long and tortuous process that could easily take us the next two decades. This time span can be shorter if we give ourselves to the unpracticed task of reasoning instead of repeating and thinking instead of believing. As Hannah Arendt said, in times of darkness we have the right to expect some enlightenment. 

_{*Machine translation proofread by Janaína da Silva.}