'The Fascist Playbook'

One of my best listens this past summer has been Bukele: the lord of dreams, a podcast originally broadcast in January 2024 and produced by Radio Ambulante Studios, responsible for two other essential podcasts, such as Radio Ambulante and The Thread. In fact, they are the presenters ofThe Thread, Eliezer Budasoff and Silvia Viñas who narrate the rise of Nayib Bukele, how he became president of El Salvador and how, slowly and systematically, he knocked down every obstacle and institutional counterweight so as not to have to answer to anyone and become a textbook example of how the loss of faith in democratic institutions. like him.

In the podcast description they sum it up very well: "An emblematic figure of our era: that of a publicist who became president and managed to convince a society that the only way to solve its problems was to give him unlimited power. How do you get to the point where the promises of"?. It's an important question, a crucial question, it's the question that needs to be asked now.

Because Nayib Bukele is the stereotype of the new bro A totalitarian, one who thinks that the democratic state and all its institutions are not very "efficient" and that the times demand expeditious and daring solutions, theoretically unpopular solutions, but which in reality are perfectly in tune with the base instincts of the common citizen, a copy of the disruptive spirit so characteristic of our great gurus, the name of innovation (and of increasing their personal wealth). And the podcast producers are absolutely right when it comes to treating Bukele, not as a local exoticism, but as the paradigm of a new wave of leaders, increasingly unashamed when it comes to showing their dictatorial nature, who are imposing themselves in the West and whom a segment of the population seems completely determined to surrender.

We all know where all this is leading, and also that this will mean unnecessary and absurd suffering, especially for the most vulnerable; and yet, it seems inevitable. Perhaps the only thing we can do is call a spade a spade and begin to observe and point out where experiments like Bukele's end. For now, he has amended the constitution to allow for the indefinite reelection of his president. In the United States, the question is how Trump will perpetuate himself in power. No one doubts that he will try. The sad thing, in any case, is that if he succeeds, it will be with the complicity of a (significant) portion of the population, which perhaps should be reminded of an important fact: most totalitarian regimes come to power thanks to a combination of electoral mechanisms and coercive methods. It is the former that makes them feel legitimized to deploy the latter and put the fascist playbook into practice. It would be nice, for once, not to take the bait.