“Looking at Don José Antonio Kast during his campaign, seeing how he treats his wife, how he treats his children, how they treat each other as a family, identifies me (…) I would like all Chilean families to be the same.” “The guys in this game don’t have filters, they don’t have parameters, they throw, they attack. Like Pinochet.” They are two sides of the same coin: completely opposite visions of how the former presidential candidate of the Republican Party, José Antonio Kast, and his community, which last weekend became the main Chilean political force, are perceived. Both statements were collected as part of the qualitative study Support and Rejection of the Extreme Right in Chile, Published in January by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation, of the German Social Democratic Party, by political scientist Cristóbal Rovira.
The study seeks to explore the positions of love and hate generated by the leader of the Republican Party, the winning force of the Chilean electoral day last Sunday, where he obtained more than 35% of the validly cast votes and obtained 23 of the 51 councilors who will write the proposal for the new Constitution of Chile.
The results show how the followers of Kast are a homogeneous group where the concepts of “family, homeland and security” prevail, while the anti-Kast are a diverse group, who see the Republican leader and his entourage as “extreme, authoritarian, conservative and privileged.
The research takes surveys carried out by the applied research firm Datavoz at three moments between 2021 and 2022, before and after the plebiscite that ended up rejecting the first Constitution proposal by 62%, in September. The polls sought to determine the profile of those who support or reject the extreme right in Chile, which for Rovira embodies the Republican Party. “I always say that José Antonio Kast is different in style from other far-right leaders in the world, but in terms of party organization, the Republican Party has characteristics similar to what the National Front is in France and Vox in Spain,” Rovira explains.
Based on the results of these surveys, Rovira maintains that it is not correct to speak of bipolarity or a pendulum in electoral preferences in Chile. He explains that there is no disproportionate increase in adherents towards the Republican leader, when looking at the results of the field work in the three moments: between October and September 2021, it shows a citizen support of 18.42% and a disapproval of 50, 63%; in July-August 2021, 18.1% support and 59.49% rejection; and then, between October-November 2022, 19.86% opinions in favor and 55.45% against.
Rovira states that, when looking at the percentage of the Republican vote in the last election based on the total number of voters, including null and blank votes (18.2%), Kast’s party represented 23%. It is an increase of five points, compared to the surveys carried out “This shows the rejection rates for the Kast project are high and are maintained over time. Although it is true that the last election went up, what is interesting is that the approval level is around 20% and that has not changed, it had been coming for a while”, says the researcher.
Likewise, the polls also show how the support and rejection of President Gabriel Boric evolves. If in 2021 they stood at 24.62% and 40.96% respectively, in the first poll of 2022, before the exit plebiscite, the president had 27.86% support and 43.63% rejection, while that after the referendum his sympathizers fell to 24.14% and his disapproval increased to 48.15%. “This shows that the anti-Boric growth would explain the broad support for the conventional right (which obtained 21.7% of the preferences in the last election) and ultra in last Sunday’s election,” says Rovira.
The Republican “tribe” and anti-Kast fears
The surveys carried out to the pro and anti kast They led Rovira, who has spent years investigating extreme right-wing in the world, to want to investigate the motivations of these groups and their common characteristics, through a series of discussion groups.
The work began at the end of September 2022, after the plebiscite in Chile, and lasted for five weeks, until October of last year. Based on a sample that seeks to achieve age, gender, socioeconomic and geographic representativeness, 14 focus groups were held, with between seven and nine participants each, and filtered among people who had a high approval for the figure of José Antonio. Kast and those who, on the contrary, completely disagreed with his ideas. The groups were divided into seven groups under the nomenclature love to kast and seven others of I hate Kast.
None of the participants in these groups knew what they were up to or what their counterparts were thinking. That was, says Rovira, one of the most interesting observations of the study. To the extent that Kast’s sympathizers recognized themselves as part of the same political thought, they reaffirmed their positions and a kind of “tribe” was generated. “It was difficult for the moderator to get them out, they wanted to continue talking, they left their phones behind, they said ‘we’ll meet.’ There you realize that there is a very strong ideological cement that unites them. That is an interesting component that shows you the fervor it generates”, explains the researcher.
In the other groups, the relationship was different. “Once everyone relaxes, because they realize they are anti kastThe group quickly begins to get tense because they have very different ways of observing reality”, says Rovira. Within this group, three currents were identified: the “progressives”, the “I’m from the right… but” and the “I don’t want to go back to the past”.
Between the love to kast, the family, order, the Homeland and security were the predominant concepts. Regarding the figure of Pinochet, the responses were ambivalent. There is a kind of caution in mentioning him, due to the violations of human rights, but they acknowledge a desire for the order that his regime generated. “I was not a Pinochetista, but I am grateful to the military government, because we raised the country. It was a lot of poor people. We were poor, as children, we were poor, large and poor families”, is one of the comments.
Regarding Kast’s qualities, two of them are the most valued: his consistency and sincerity, two of the traits that generate the most criticism regarding the traditional right.
Among the heterogeneity of the i hate kast Two common ideas were observed. The importance of defending the democratic system from the risk implied by the most radical groups and the “minimum achievements of civilization”, understood as gender equality policies and respect for sexual diversities.
Among the progressive current, located towards the center left and made up mainly of young people or young adults, the violence that a republican government could generate appears as one of the fears. Regarding the Mapuche conflict, which has become more complex over the years in the south of the country, one of the participants points out: “What I understood was that it pointed towards the path of violence to solve the problem. In other words, the idea of resolving the Mapuche conflict with violence, like: ‘Oh, not anymore, let’s fill the military there, let’s resolve everything by force of arms’”.
For those who identified themselves as “I’m from the right…but”, made up of people from all socioeconomic strata, over 45 years of age, their argument is that they feel belittled by the Republican leader, as women or the LGBTQI population . “With what right does he get into the love life or interpersonal relationships of each one… It is my decision! He does not have to interfere in my decision, ”said one of these participants.
While among the “I don’t want to go back to the past”, made up mainly of people over 45, the prevailing discourse is the fear of re-experiencing what they experienced under the dictatorship: “He is not even capable of condemning the people who committed those things! violations! Based on that, there is not much to build.”
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