By Carlos Prigollini on January 26, 2022
Neoliberalism kills
The lack of self-criticism usually translates into a lack of political cadres and therefore of candidates. If we add to this the absence of a project due to lack of communication or intellectual laziness, the situation becomes a wide and nourished floating strip of politicians, while the people and the most vulnerable sectors suffer the consequences that the right wing takes advantage of to sow chaos, hatred and other typical characteristics of the colonizers, who have caused so much damage to Our America.
The almost two years of the pandemic bring us back to a Byzantine discussion like vaccines vs. anti-vaccines. However, the two great currents of world capitalism, both the globalists represented by Biden, European Union, WHO, UN, World Bank, etc., which would be the hegemonic current, of apparent “progressive” ideology, supported by multilateral organizations, who are totally opposed to those who would be the anti-vaccine crowd like the right-wingers Trump, Bolsonaro, Le Pen, among others.
Unfortunately, we Latin Americans have not issued any opinion in this bewilderment, since the silence of the left and progressive movements who do not cease to attract the attention of many citizens who currently doubt their representatives.
In this context, it is a trap to force us to choose between vaccines and anti-vaccines sides.
“Much more so in a world that no longer accepts fascist ideology, but whose politicians continue to carry its DNA, which does not detach itself from that ideology. Their demagogic, xenophobic and nationalist verbiage often picks up on the malaise and growing suffering of broad layers of the population. They present themselves as saviors of the Nation or men of providence.” (Enzo Traverso, The New Faces of the Right, Siglo XXI).
The pandemic in Latin America has its own characteristics, very different from those in Europe or China.
Our countries are poor, there are vast territories where water and gas do not reach, where living conditions are unhealthy and extreme poverty spreads with an environment infected by overcrowding and lack of hygiene.
It is evident that neoliberalism has brought dire consequences for our peoples, in the information jumble of social networks, trolls and hired journalists, in a few minutes they reached millions of people. In this way they pave the way to plunder and stain our soils with the purpose of annihilating us through fear and destroying our lives. It is the policy of a small, very powerful group that has no moral prurience to destroy our economies.
In Argentina, for example, the disciplined student of the neoliberal school, Mauricio Macri, indebted the country for 100 years, left the worst debt in history and left land mines in his tracks, full of obstacles for the current administration. The contracted IMF debt was never reflected in public works, hospitals, schools, on the other hand, an obscene and gigantic flight of capital to tax havens by the former president himself and his closest circle was verified during the same period. This is the reason why the phrase of former President Cristina Kirchner when she says that “Macri’s pandemic was more costly than the Covid-19 pandemic” becomes absolutely valid.
Therefore, the true face of the pandemic is savage capitalism in its cruelest expression, neoliberalism, which came not only to finish colonizing our countries, but to take away the souls of the people, as Margaret Thatcher stated in the 90’s. It is precisely the poverty and overcrowding in which the great majority of our Latin American brothers and sisters live, who far from being able to make demands for social and health improvements, struggle day by day for survival and the necessary conditions for the well being of their families.
This epidemic cannot be prevented with vaccines alone, but with purely political and social measures. For example, we need to put an end to the infectious outbreaks in large cities, whose overcrowding and overpopulation are focal points of poverty, in addition to deficient hygiene and sanitation conditions. In addition to this, the brutal and irrational cutting of trees, the constant deforestation and hunting and fishing of animals typical of our regions. It is time to realize that the imperial and capitalist proposals of the servants of the empire (WHO; PAHO; WB; IMF) have failed miserably. Who benefits from this coercive policy, full of restrictions and totalitarian measures?
Far from a binary logic of left or right, of vaccines or anti-vaccines, we must keep our thinking as free as possible from fake news or from bad and harmful media influences. It is necessary to move away from these inconvenient practices, especially when we observe that many progressive or leftist movements are more focused on the search for great communicators, instead of training and raising awareness of future political cadres. As a consequence, we are more focused on a personal election than on a true national and popular political project.
We must mobilize the youth, the students, all those who make up the informal economy, and yet they demand “Stay at home” as a solution. Let us try to get the working class and the people as a whole to return to being the true historical subject, for this it is necessary to unmask this media operation that aims at inducing fear, at the terrorism of every man for himself, in short, to banish the lie and the media terror imposed by the right wing and its media.
We can and must assume such a position, mobilize ourselves and become aware at all levels from the left and from the bottom up. Otherwise the evils and dictates of the great digital financial complexes (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft) who make up the center of global power together with the great billionaires like Bill Gates, Soros, Bezos and other obscure factual powers, will be ready to subdue and bring to their knees all the governments of the world.
Source: Telesur, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English