It’s mystifying to read The New York Times’ coverage of my other polity, Argentina, where the editorial positions seem to be the exact opposite to those of their coverage in the US. On the one hand, in American politics, the attacks on Obama and the Democrats as “totalitarian,” for having attempted and achieved a modest reform of the healthcare system are presented as borderline madness by the Times. But on the other, the progressive, democratic, and successful reformist governments of Nestor Kirchner—from 2003 to 2007—and Cristina Fernandez—since 2007—are accused of “authoritarianism.”
Moreover, the sources quoted when making such accusation are often mediocre conservative political commentators and journalists that would hardly be taken seriously in the US—at least, I think, in The New York Times. In no way less problematic, but perhaps more understandable, due to their sharing social circles with members of financial global institutions, the journalists’ assertions often come straight from “risk consultants” in financial firms. It is never made clear, however, that these are political adversaries of the democratically elected administration and significantly less appreciative of the working of democratic politics, to say the least, than the Argentine government.
While this strange phenomenon at first may seem difficult to understand without resorting to conspiracy theory, a closer examination of Argentine and American politics explains the apparent reporting anomaly. In Argentina the working of democratic politics involved during the period serious conflicts about major issues—such as repealing amnesty laws giving impunity to the 1976-83 human right violations, appointing the most prestigious and independent Supreme Court in the country’s history, astonishingly reducing the national foreign debt in tough negotiations with international financial groups and the IMF, building a strong and democratic Union of South American Nations, and passing transformational laws de-monopolizing media markets, universalizing marriage (gay marriage,) extending social security benefits to millions of uncovered senior citizens, streamlining the path toward citizenship for hundred of thousands of Latin American immigrants, and creating a universal subsidy for children. In contrast, in the United States, we have come to expect very little change coming from administrations from the left of center of the political spectrum. In Argentina, the victory of the democratic left led to real changes, in the U.S., less so, revealing a fundamental problem.
Would it thus be too strong a claim to say that The New York Times’ coverage of Latin American politics is over-determined by an expectation that power is no longer an empty place, in the sense of Lefort, as I explored in my previous post? Would it be too strong a claim to say that democratic politics seem authoritarian from a perspective no longer expecting, or even accepting, successful political agency from our elected leaders?
A friend has asked me if the central issue at stake in The New York Times’ coverage of Argentina is that those reporting are assuming a “populist turn” in the country. That’s a good point, since the correspondents, out of intellectual laziness, are indeed probably assuming a populist turn in Argentina along the lines of Venezuela or Ecuador. But that doesn’t resist the most basic analysis. So I just attempted to introduce a couple of more dimensions to the question: the sociological type of milieu reporters inhabit while abroad, plus the lack of understanding of the workings of democratic politics. It is the latter that makes them conflate (unexpectedly, as Laclau does) politics as such with populism. Here is were the empty place reference makes its appearance: in the US, power is so colonized by money – that is, “power as an empty place” is so threatened by plutocratic tendencies – that any political agency that goes against that mutation is seen as an authoritarian excess. In particular, that happens from a perspective so influenced by financial analysts that, naturally, ends up seen actual democratic politics as a threat.
The third paragraph is full of empty slogans. A critical intervention would analyze slogans, not reproduce them verbatim.