The failed assassination attempt against Vice President Cristina Fernandez shocked the country. It is no coincidence that the perpetrator is an individual with an extreme right-wing political profile. This is confirmed by his tattoos of Nazi symbology and the street interviews he gave on television where he expressed his discrimination towards the unemployed and immigrants, who survive on state social assistance. According to the testimonies of his friends, he is “a marginal person with nothing to lose”, a lumpen.
This attack is not a simple act of violence as far-right leaders claim. It is a serious fascist political attack and totally reprehensible. That is why an investigation and rapid clarification is necessary to determine whether this individual acted on his own motivation or as a member of some far-right group and in the latter case, the intellectual authors of this attack and those who helped him must also be condemned.
Nor is it a coincidence that this attack takes place when the country is in a situation of deep political division and polarization among the parties of the bourgeoisie. They cannot agree on how to make the workers pay for the capitalist crisis, without provoking a popular rebellion that threatens to overthrow the system. In this way, the right-wing opposition demands Peronism (the political movement which President Alberto Fernandez, and Cristina herself belong to) do the “dirty work” and apply strong austerity.
On the other hand, the government party (Frente de Todos) is increasingly turning to the right and recently installed a Minister of Economy from the Peronist right, Sergio Massa, who as soon as he took office announced a cut of $210 billion pesos to the budget for health, education and housing, in addition to a huge increase in electricity and gas rates. In this way, inflation eats away at workers’ salaries, generating more poverty and marginality. All this in order to meet the objective agreed with the IMF of reducing the fiscal deficit and pay the foreign debt.
This division over how to apply austerity is expressed in a brutal war of words. The right wing through the mass media and social networks have managed to install, not without the help of Peronism, the idea of a supposedly unbridgeable “rift” between Peronism, representing the lazy people who do not work and live at the expense of the state on the one hand, and on the other, the good citizens, burdened with taxes, who they represent.
This hate speech transcends Peronism and extends to everything that is working class, poor or popular. Thus, social networks and mass media systematically demonize popular protests, mainly those of the unemployed. The Frente de Todos also has its share of responsibility for this situation. Not long ago Cristina Fernandez attacked the social organizations of the unemployed and encouraged cuts to social projects and their removal from the administration of social assistance.
Hate speech finds fertile ground amid growing social unrest as the masses struggle to survive. In a country where millions live in poverty and a large part of the working middle class sees its standard of living fall abruptly, there is a growing repudiation of the traditional political elite, but there is also a growing sympathy for the most reactionary right-wing figureheads, such as Patricia Bullrich, president of PRO, the party of former President Macri, and the far-right Javier Milei, who are the only two leaders who did not repudiate the attack on Cristina.
A massive popular mobilization throughout the country.
After the attack, President Alberto Fernandez, in a press conference, decreed a national holiday for the following day and a mobilization for “social peace, harmony and national unity”. Peronism, which had been battered and divided, saw in this event the opportunity to breathe a little and regain the political initiative in the midst of the austerity and the struggles that are beginning to appear, such as those of the unemployed, teachers and the tire factory workers. That is why they wanted the mobilization to be purely in support of the government and to criticize the opposition, as was expressed in the document read at the central protest in Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires.
Thousands mobilized all over the country and not only from organizations supporting the government. Many attendees participated on their own initiative, in defense of democracy. The Peronist trade union bureaucracy, which leads the CGT, deserves a special mention, as they first threatened a national strike for the following Monday but quickly backed down. Moreover, they did not even call on workers to mobilize for the protests as a trade union federation.
Unfortunately, the Frente de Izquierda (FIT-U, the radical Left Front) did not call for any action to repudiate the attack, they only limited themselves to statements of repudiation on social networks and in the press. They focused on criticizing Kirchnerism for using the march to strengthen the government.
While these criticisms are correct and one cannot support the government that applies brutal austerity against the working class, the seriousness of the attack marked a change in the situation. The FIT-U has the political authority and the capacity for mobilization to have called its own big march independently of Peronism, to repudiate the attack and, without giving any support to the government, assert its political independence. A united call by the left would have helped thousands of workers who are dissatisfied with Peronism but who repudiate the attack to find a way to express themselves. Unfortunately the FIT-U failed and, so far, there is no sign of any action to repudiate the attack, “life goes on”, as if nothing had happened. In the face of fascist attacks, staying at home should never be an option for revolutionaries. Today it is an attack against the main leader of Peronism, but tomorrow it will be against the working class, its organizations and leaders.
In a world in crisis, political and social polarization will not only continue, but will deepen. Faced with this, we revolutionaries must prepare ourselves to face more and more fascist actions. Although in our country, the far-right is not in the majority and does not have the power to mobilize massively, it will continue to grow, relying on social unrest. That is why we on the left must have the capacity to channel this unrest towards a revolutionary project.
We have in our favor the fact that the workers movement is not defeated, on the contrary, in the last weeks we saw massive mobilizations of the teachers. Even if they did not achieve resounding victories, it was not because of a lack of willingness to struggle from workers, but because the Peronist union leadership is cowardly and betrays struggles. The industrial workers movement has also begun to move with the great struggle of the tire workers confronting the multinational bosses.
For its part, the feminist movement is fresh from having achieved an historic conquest in the right to abortion and is now preparing for the 35th Plurinational Gathering of Women, Lesbians, Transvestites, Trans, Bisexual, Intersexual and Non Binary people in October, which will undoubtedly be massive. These are some examples of how we have the strength to fight and defeat the far-right in our terrain, which is that of workers’ and poor people’s mobilization. However, we also need to build a revolutionary political alternative so that the energy of struggle is not dispersed but is channeled towards a bigger objective, which is to put an end to this rotten capitalist system.
