Difference of the polarization in Latin America and in other parts of the developing world

[buritobr]

Polarization in Latin America is not the same as the polarization in eastern Europe, Middle East and Asia.

In Latin America, except Nicaragua, the political groups who support the feminist and LGBT+ policies are in the same side of the political spectrum of the anti-imperialist political groups. There is a classic left, who supports progressive agenda and south-south cooperation, and a classic right, who supports free-market economics, social conservatism and pro-USA foreign policy.

In other parts of the developing world, the polarization is different. There are nationalists who have social conservative views, and pro-west people who have more progressive views on social issues. In Russia, the LGBT+ people had better time during Yeltsin era than during the communist and the Putin era. In Turkey, the conservative nationalist Erdogan ran against a pro-west progressive. In Iran, Khatami was more social liberal, more friendly to the western world, while Ahmadinejad was anti-West and closer to the muslim fundamentalism. In China, the Shangai wing of the Communist Party is more pro-free market, social liberal and closer to the West, while the countryside wing of the Communist Party, to which Xi Jinping belongs, is more nationalist and more social conservative.

[buritobr]

I mean, this is not surprising. Latin America is more culturally tied to Europe and North America, where the political systems of the kind you describe are more common, than it is to anywhere else in the world.

Why would we expect politics in Chile or Mexico to be more similar to Iran or Turkey just because they look more alike on superficial economic indicators?

Yes, this explanation plays a role. Unlike Africa, Middle East and Asia, most of the Latin American population has European ancestry. The half white half black in Brazil, the half white half indigenous in Bolivia and Peru have half European ancestry.
Although the creators of the definition "western world" don't include Latin America in the western world, many conservative Latin Americans considerer their countries as part of the western world. There are very few anti-west conservatives in Latin America. Most of the conservative Latin Americans support the west in a conservative way. They don't relate the western world to modern values in social issues. They relate the western world to the christian roots.

[buritobr]

I will just make an observation that not all the Latin American right is pro-West hegemony nowadays, especially in Brazil at least.

The “classic right” that got swallowed by the “new right” is still very much so, but you increasingly have more and more Bolsonarist loyalists who are part of the ”anti-woke new right” and are STRONGLY anti-Europe (especially against France) and somewhat against US under Biden too.

Bolsonarists were pro-US when Trump was president there, but they basically have the same mentality that US Trumpists have and are more friendly to say, Russian president for defending traditional family values than they are to US president lmao

Meanwhile, the left also has its divisions between “classic left” and the “new woke left” but the balance of power still largely favors the “classic left” by huge margins. With Lula also being a classic leftist at his age, it makes them still ~the face~ of the mainstream left that is defended or accepted by everyone.

While the “Woke Left” is forced into irrelevance by a few twitter weirdos who still support Lula anyways lmaaaao. They also have no strong political reference to justify themselves, with the closest to represent that camp - Gabriel Boric in Chile - being ridiculed by the mainstream left anyways and unpopular at home.

It’s beautiful in the sense that we never had a close of a consensus in international policy as we have nowadays thanks to this “revolution” in the right where they aren’t able to conciliate the contradictions between their old support of the West and Big Corporations with the reality those institutions now push everything they despise the most: LGBT agenda; Gender agenda; Racial agenda; Environmental agenda; Pro-Democracy agenda etc.

While this contradiction doesn’t really exist for the left because those same institutions are the same that always pushed AGAINST all of those things here even if they defended it inside the 1st world. It wasn’t Russia or China that promoted more than 20 years of dictatorship in our country, but the ones now posing as its “defenders” and “gatekeepers”. Latin America is not freaking Eastern Europe, we’re much closer to Africa on that sense politically.

I always dreamed of this moment where the neoliberal right would become irrelevant and it’s finally real hehehe. I think this is more in Brazil though, neolibs in both right and left are still very much present throughout all of LatAm.

Who knew Bolsonaro, despite all his destructive power, would work so well on imploding the neoliberal right thanks to his copycat nature in regards Trump narratives and tactics?

Bolsonaro may be over but hopefully “Bolsonarism” will keep being the face of the right for the next years so we can have:

A) A “Silent Consensus” on foreign policy issues, where you only have the mainstream media going nuts about but both right and left majority camps silently agreeing with it, at most only pretending to disagree in order to “oppose” the camp in power.

This cohesion makes getting things done on a geopolitical scale much much easier, with zero or weak opposition.

Bolsonarists counter to Brazil under Lula buying cheap Russian oil to sell it more expensive to the West was that Bolsonaro did MORE to safeguard business with Russia, visiting Putin just before the war to ensure fertilizers trade would be safe.

Their complain about Lula is that he’s the TRUE globalist pro-western bootlicker for working with Europe on environmental agenda to “sell out” the Amazon lmaaaao. Meanwhile westerners are going kinda mad with Lula positions in the realm of the BRICS.

We’re now all under a geopolitically realist “self-benefit” nationalist agreement on the matter, while the ultra-ideologues and globalists sound like a joke. It’s a really wonderful development.

B) The Right being so ridiculously incompetent, evil and a caricature of everything the left always said they were that the fence-sitters in the center who prefer “moderates” finally lean more to the left.

The female vote (traditionally more centrist) now suddenly favoring PT after years of it favoring PSDB is only one example. But the mainstream media of Rede Globo now being more friendly to PT because of Bolsonarism is something I never thought I would see.

It opens a lot of door for the left to slowly radicalize internally too while still looking the “pragmatic” option in comparison to the primitive buffoons now in the right.

C) It ensures the PSDB never gets back on its feet. There is a valid argument that the center-right is preferable to the extreme-right for not being a threat to democracy but that’s the only thing going for them.

Also, since Bolsonaro is out of the game, whoever replaces him (ex:Tarcisio) in the hard-right camp will likely follow similar awful policies but not be as stupid to actually try to perform a coup, especially after seeing how it ended for Bolsonaro.

If Trump gets back in 2024, that will be a giant energy fuel for the Bolsonarist right to keep its protagonism since a lot of Brazil’s right looks up to USA right as a reference point (the same isn’t necessarily true for the left though).

And the existence of this “populist right” in the world is exactly what strengths the goals the Latin American left always dreamed of in terms of asserting our freedom and independence. Because it’s the Western world itself that gets continuously weaker with the rise of this new brand of right-wing politics.

They’re the ones who started with it though by opening Pandora’s Box and they’re the ones who need to end the cycle before their own self-destruction because of it. And if they do it, it’s still a win to put this radical brand of conservative politics back in its place. To my individual perspective, it’s a win-win regardless.

Sure, the right is not an homogeneous group, but both the traditional right and the new far-right are pro-USA. Bolsonaro dislikes the American democrats, but not their country. He traveled to Florida when he left his office. Milei, Kast, Keiko Fujimori, Rodolfo Hernandez, Jeanine Añes are not anti-American too. Example of an anti-American far-right politician was Enéas Carneiro, but he has already passed away and when he ran for president of Brazil, he always had single digits. It's hard to find a conservative like Orban, Putin, Erdogan, Khamenei, Duterte in Latin America nowadays.
The left is not an homogenous group. There are leftists more focused on feminist, LGBT+, black people, indigenous people, environment, weed agenda. There are leftists more focused on south-south cooperation. But both are living under the same umbrella: they belong to the same parties, they write in the same newspapers. The left more focused on geopolitics is not against the progressive agenda on social issues: they just don't consider this agenda the most important issue. The left focused on the progressive agenda criticize some domestic issues of some countries in Middle East and Asia, but they still don't have the same approach to these countries the US has.

[buritobr]

The reason is the Cold War. The Latin American right lives as if we're still in the Cold War and, in all fairness, has had no real reason to change when this Cold War ended. After all, their opponents have been (and still are) Communists and anti-American Third Worldists and therefore the right feels more of a natural alliance with the U.S. (which used to support them in all sorts of ways). This actually works when Republicans are in power, but it leaves them out in the cold with Democrats in power.

On the other hand, in other places, this Cold War alignment between the local "right" and America does not exist. America turns more and more woke and has always sought to export that: after all, the "shining city on the hill" has always sought to export its revolution to the world, we're currently just experiencing its late stage iteration. And without this Cold War context, conservatives in other places are understandably less enamored with receiving America's blessings while the left embrace them.

I agree with almost everything, but there is an observation: the Latin American right usually had good relations with American democrats. Only the far-right which emerged in the mid-2010s has a larger distance to the democrats.