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The Book review and Analysis of: The Lie of Populism / El Engaño Populista review and Analysis (work in progress)

Here my video on the subject: Check it out

 
So taking a quick break from my Migratory Policy stuff   I wanted to start working on my book review and analysis of  El Engaño Populista which translates, sort of, The Sham of Populism by Axel Kaiser and Gloria Alvarez. It's about the rise of Populism in Latin America  and how it has ruined each local political system where it takes power. Now I'm not normally drawn to this subject, Populism or Latin America in general, they are just not my thing, even though I live in Argentina, I'm more into power politics, war, migrants, refugees, religion... things of that nature, but just out of chance I met the one of the authors, Gloria Alvarez who is a political youtuber and has degree in International Relation just like me.  I met her at  my job and she  invited to the presentation of this book here at the local State  University. So I went, it seemed interesting and I bought the book, now when the presentation started I was floored by how by how much bush shit came out of these people mouths, there where presenting this book as a academic study and it was Ideological as hell, there were moments that they straight up lied, at one moment I actually interupted the presentation, couldn't take it anymore. I was starting to get pist  hearing how these guys where telling half truths and purposefully misrepresenting political concepts and people were eating it up, because there is a strong backlash against Populism here in Argentina so people consume basically anything that is against it, but this was going too far because in the way the information was presented some scary hard hard right ultra liberal stuff was being spoon fed. It was funny to see them use the same indoctrination tools that populist  use in their political message.

Axel Kaiser

Now it going to take me awhile  to finish this review I actually find mistakes, misrepresentations and omissions on every other page, so it makes reading this book painstakingly slow. And I must say I lived through 12 years of Kirchnerism and I'm no fan of them what so ever, especial the cult of personality around Nestor and Cristina just drove me crazy, so I'm no expert on the subject but I understand it, but they did some positive things, like some really counterproductive things, but I'm not going to allow these authors get away presenting a book as academic when its irresponsible ideological propaganda, with total disregard for historical facts.

Central thymes:

·         Populism and socialism are bad, very bad, they are evil, the book hammers in this idea the whole book.

·         Latin America lived through a political Apocalypse during the wave of Populist governments that characterized the region during the 2000's. 

·         The rule of law, individual liberties, property and freedom cannot be reduced or limited by circumstantial majorities.

·         People that live in Latin America and especially Populist countries have  a victim complex, sadly I'm on the same page with this book on this subject, all the problems of the country is some ones else's fault, for example the imperialist United States. From my point of view not taking responsibility for the problem leads that you cannot fix them adequately, because in the case of populist governments they have a tendencies in believing their own bullshit overtime. 

·         These government cannot create the proper institution to prevail.

·         Populist leaders are charismatic politicians that  present themselves as saviors.

·         They create a binary  political discourse of the people/pueblo and anti-people / anti-pueblo, use and project that mentality, the dangerous other within and outside of the society is fundamental in populism. Now I concur with the book on this point to, I've noticed that populist as of late, from left and right have a particular love for going after journalist, reporters and new agencies they don't like, elevating them to a public enemy status.

Gloria Alvarez

What I liked and what fascinated me:

·         Its captivating trip into the minds people that view the world from a  hard economically liberal right.

·         The book condones populism but sure loves to use passionate language like they do, this fascinating to see how hypocritical the authors are.

·         The book has the balls to put Chavez, Castro, the Kirchners, Lula Da Silva, Evo  Morales, Correa, Bachelet, Rouseff...in the same bag. But  even though each of these governments leaned to the left having varying degrees of socialisms in the way they governed, they were very different one from another. And it's interesting to see that the book over looked Mujica from Uruguay, one of the most interesting politicians that comes from the left.

·         The book establishes that these countries have pretentions of being democratic, but are not, even in all cases they came to power democraticaly and in most cases are no in government democratically, like in Argentina and in Chile, so this is just a pile of malarkey.

·         "They hate freedom and want idolatry towards the State" p22, this affirmation just blew me away, look from my point of view many of these politicians just love the cult of personality and they use this as an affective political tool, but idolatry towards the State is a thing of fascism.

·         When describing populism the book, explains that populism is a deep decomposition on a mental level that projects its self on culture, institutions, economics  and politics, yup that sounds super academic.

·         Populism uses democracy dishonestly, it uses it to extend it powers not limit it. This is sort of correct, what they use is political clientelism and assistentialism as political tools to gain political capital, but this does not limit its self to populism, alone.

·         Book promotes the idea of totalitarian democracy, book has issues with people voting.

·         Book establishes the United States of America is perfect model  to follow. Yup they have no social or economic problems the resolve, and they recently voted into office a populist from the right.  

What I didn't like:

·         Book complains that people in Latin America do not understand the concept of  Republic, but the book make no effort in defining the concept for the readers.

·         Book has issues differentiating between politics, public policy and public administration.

·         The book almost deliberately leave out the concept of the cult of personality in politics, to drive home the idea of the idolatry towards the State, which is something more pertinent to fascism.

·         Book does not define Populism.

·         The book treats the people as mindless idiots, that blind follow any charismatic leader.

·         Every type of social program in this book is just hand out for lazy people that are dependent on the government, that the oldest mantra from the liberal right if I ever heard one.

·         What left me speechless about this book is how easily it slabs fascism, with Nazis, socialism and communism, into one thing and establish they are basically all the same, which academicly is totally wrong. The book affirm that Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Chavez, Peron, Castro, Allende, Bachelet, the Kirchners... they are all the same, jajajaja. The author has some balls to put Bachelet and Hitler in the same category

·         They do establish the main diferance with the Nazis and populism in latin America, is that they did have a social and economic agenda, ¿What the Hell? The Nazi's social agenda was to create the racially perfect society for the arian race.

·         The Book uses the term Neoliberal a lot, but never defines the term.

·         The authors list countries that should be considered models to follow like Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Norway..., all countries that have a healthy and robust Welfare State, something that comes from the socialist side of the political spectrum, something this book just loves to hate. I guess the book thinks its readers are really stupid. Later it affirms that all countries that are socialist or have socialist inclination will end up as dictatorships and in misery, so people in Scandinavia, get ready you are totally screwed.

·         The Book has the balls to affirm that Peron was a straight up fascist, which is greatly over simplifying such a complex political figure such as Juan Domingo Peron.

·         The Book establishes that Pope Francis and the Catholic church have always been inclined to socialism and favor populist governments. ehhhhhhhh whaaa'???  Pope Francis may have some progressive left views of the world but, the Church as a whole has members that have a very diverse political views from across the political spectrum, from a hard right  to a progressive left, but never full on communist because of its atheist  nature. The book completely omits how John Paul the II fought communism  and the leftwing of his own church, or how the Church backed or  stood silent  when many rightwing economically liberal military governments toppled democratic governments across Latin America during the 60's, 70's and 80's (note many priest fell victim to these governments, there was a intense battle within the Church during this time).    

·         Book treats Pope Francis like any idiot, you can like him or not, you got to respect him because he had to deal with serous shit during his time as a priest during Argentina's military government, and never has backed down from his conviction. So taking cheap shots at him because you don't see eye to eye in politics or economic, just makes you look bad.      

 

To finish the book establishes that democracy in Latin America is broken in Latin America, and populism has taken it hostage, but here in Argentina after 12 years of populism, a center right party won the election, free and fair. And these populist have not questioned if this new administration is legitimate, so even though populism can be counterproductive and even terrible in some cases, sometimes it's just a normal part of the political ecosystem, sometimes systemically it pushed to power and others time it pushed out because it not needed anymore.   

Overall: This book got me thinking and that is good, reached to a couple of conclusions myself on the subject, try to debunk the pile of lies in its pages. But I did realized on my own that populist leaders across the board left and right, never stop the elections campaigns literally, they are fixated on political rallies and on their hardcore base, they are fixated  partisan issues and messaging, they explicitly never pivot to the center moderating their message being more inclusive, they purposefully dived.    

Overall Rating: 1 out of 10

Migratory Policy: Regulation Policy Recovery and Incorporation policies; fighting the Brain Drain and the end of illegal immgrants

Now todsy we are going to start off talking about Regulation policies "they are aimed to influence the flow of migrants, whether by restricting their movement, channeling it or facilitating it" (Marmora, 2004; p 100). Here I

would locate partially Argentina’s current policy, since the country tries to foster regional migrants, helping integration with the other States of MERCOSUR and it makes frontier transit easier, especially for people that live in towns and cities next or near the border, facilitating trade among the member and associate Nations, channeling migrants to cross legally to the country. On the other hand the Argentine State tries to take control on what is happening with regional migrants its territory, there is more regulation on these people bringing more order to the migratory flow and transit, migrants most enter legally if they want a residency (Argentina has a issues with porous borders, we’ll see this in latter posts).

 Recovery policies have a specific objective "to promote the repatriation of citizens that live abroad, or activate his or hers involvement with the country of origin"(Marmora, 2004; p 100), planting the seed of a possible return one day.  In the case of Argentina has the 26.421 law, which is independent of the law that establishes its main migratory police. This particular law creates a program called

Raices or Roots one of its main goals is to repatriate Argentine scientists who have gone abroad for work or study; it’s a way to mitigate the effects of the brain drain that the country has been suffering because of its cyclical economic problems, it’s one of the very few actions that government has taken relative to argentine emigrants, a void in the country’s main law. It is an explicit attempt at retrieving highly trained human capital that has left the country for various reasons. Seven hundred scientists had recovered since 2003 up to mid-2010 and it is estimated that they there are between 6,000 to 7,000 more abroad (IECO, 2010), the last time I checked march 2016 there were 1269 repatriated citizens (http://www.raices.mincyt.gov.ar/), its seems a meager number but one must take into account that these have a great values as human capital and bring know how that they have obtained from aboard.

Now I’m going to explain two examples of a recovery where the respective States try to keep their citizens abroad involved in civil, political or cultural issues with their origin country, trying to maintain a link with them, keeping the door open for a possible return one day. In the first case we have a special program that Argentina has called Province 25 which allows   argentines to vote outside of the country, it publishes has special newsletters and promotes special events and activities of relevance for their citizen that live in the diaspora abroad. The second example to illustrate my point belongs to Uruguay that has a similar program called Department 20 which does pretty much the same thing as the argentine program but in this case Uruguay has a special office within its Foreign Ministry Affairs called Direccion de Vinculación it translates as the Office of Involvement or Linkage, where it tries to elevate its level of involmente to its citizens, personalizing it.

Finally on the list of Marmora’s migratory policies we can find all actions relative to the  incorporation of migrants, which basically pursued the objective of regularizing the situation of migrants and achieve its proper insertion into society, and to achieve optimal integration with the host country, especially entering the economic system, these migrants are able to work legally and pay tax and compete fairly in the job market. They are no longer forced to be part of the informal economies which implies a great disservice for the migrant, that is exposed to questionable job conditions  and the host country has to spend large amounts of money on finding them and expelling them because of their illegal status ( the right term is irregular, a person cannot be illegal).

In the case of Argentina it has achieved regularization of thousands of foreigners without resorting to an amnesty (this presupposes that migrants are criminals), and the initial society inclusion has been remarkable migrants from MERCOSUR countries have been flowing constantly to get there residencies, and thanks to this being able to work legally and establish themselves in the country without the fear of deportation.

The different types of migration policies; Retention Policies, Example North Korea, Boliva, USSR and Cuba

Today and in  the next series of post, on migratory policy I’m going to work on issues related to the different types of migratory policies that Lelio Marmora describes in his book Las Politicas de Migraciones Internacionales. This author establishes five types of migration policies: for retention, promotion, regulation, recovery and incorporation, and will then be showcased (Marmora; 2004, p. 99). We’ll see each one of these migratory policies, but I’ll use my personal point of view for the analysis.

We’ll start off with Retention policies that are intended to prevent the emigration of  citizens of a particular State, that nation tries to stop the transit of people leaving. So a State can prevent the loss of human capital, the depopulation of a geographical location in particular or in general. This circumstance could be fueled by political/ideological reasons why a regime that does not let its citizens leave its national territory. People leaving a country is a fact that has strong symbolic and political charged message of failure for the regime. An example that we can use to illustrate this kind political defeat, happened to the Soviet regime when Mikhail Baryshnikov ran away from the Bolshoi Ballet tour and settled in the United States. Such a high profile figure defecting to the US at that time must have been a very hard pill to swallow for the soviets. Cuba is another classic example of a country with a retention policies but over the years it getting little more flexible for their people to travel abroad.

North Korea is one of the most well know contemporary cases of a retention policy that I can think of. This country has a very strict control of who can leave its territory, in a intriguing article called North Korea: Understanding Migration to and from a Closed Door Country (2008) written by Hiroyuki Tanaka for the Migration Policy Institute. The author explains that this nation produces two types of emigrants, refugees and temporary contract workers sent by the government.

North Korea implements a very strict migratory control on all entries and exits (in this case we will concentrate on the exits). Individuals caught try to leave the country illegally can be tried for treason and sent to penal-labor colonies. To add to this situation, to be able   transit around the country you need special permits, so getting to the frontier in the first place, is an issue unto itself. In my years reading about migratory issue, this is the first time I have come across this type of severe control in modern State.

This doesn’t mean it’s impossible for North Koreans to get out, they get help from illegal networks  that give them a hand in the logistics to escape, and some level of structural corruption make things a little bit easier, but a lot is on the line if they fail. Now it’s impossible to cross the south boarder, with South Korea because it’s highly militarized. One must not forget that North Korea never singed armistice treaty after the Korean War, so technically they in still in conflict. And in the case of the northern border, North Koreans that illigally cross into China, are not given the possibility to get residency or petition for refugee status. So basically in China theyhave no right to stay there, so they have to find a way to transit to a third country to see if they can considered them as refugees. In China the government tends to look the other way, when it comes to these people and periodically deports them when needed.                         

Another les extreme example of a retention policy can be observed, in the case of Bolivia that historically has tried to curb and control the migration of its natives through different actions. During the 1930s were approved two Supreme Decrees, one in 1937 and another in 1938, which sought to control the phenomenon of emigration. In the first decree citizens needed a passport to be able to leave the country; it was issued by the National Immigration Office. In the second set that everyone who was caught illegally leaving the country, it would be forced, forced works forced public service. (Domenech and Magliano; 2009)

In the case of Argentina, the current policy the law 25,871 almost does not address the question of emigration of Argentine citizens, it only establishes functional measures on how to control their transit, and it mentions how can nationals intending to return can bring back their thing without paying customs. There is no direct retention policy in operation in Argentine. Even though indirectly the ways that one exchanges peso to any other currency has it issues in this country indirectly hampering the intention of its nationals that want to travel aboard.   

You as a reader do you have any examples of retention policies? It would be great to hear from you.

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