Daniel Kressel is a Lady Davis fellow at the Department of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His upcoming book, Hispanic Technocracy: Turning Fascism into Catholic Authoritarianism in Spain, Argentina, and Chile, explores the early phases of Latin America’s neoliberal turn.
From Israel to Brazil, violent far-right forces have taken up the language of “landlords” defending their threatened property. Their war on the dispossessed is built on a simple claim: we own this country, you only live here.
Chileans have long known about Colonia Dignidad, a German colony in Chile depicted in the Netflix series A Sinister Sect whose settlers committed countless acts of pedophilia, murder, and torture. Less discussed: the Chilean right’s complicity in those crimes.
Far-right candidate José Antonio Kast casts today’s Chilean election as a battle to save “sacred property rights.” His campaign’s insistence that neoliberal dogmas belong to an unshakeable national essence highlights the antidemocratic impulses at the heart of the Chilean right.