Clarity part 1: Argentina, Poland, and the space for hope
In the spirit of Solnit’s call for clarity, to “see the troubles in this world” and face the reality of what we are dealing with (as referenced in the Introduction), I think we can understand a lot about what’s coming our way in 2024 by looking at what happened in Argentina and Poland in the last major elections of last year.
In Argentina, following a binary choice between what were widely regarded as two awful options, a far right extremist is now President; in Poland, the balance of rejection fell against the far right, not for it. In Argentina, we see the darkest scenario, one which could all too easily manifest elsewhere; in what happened in Poland, there is not yet a clear template for how we build the future, but there is at least space for uncertainty, and therefore possibility.
Argentina’s awful choice
On Sunday 19th November 2023, climate-denying ultra-libertarian Javier Milei was elected President with 56% of votes cast, after a final run-off against Sergio Massa. Milei is openly and confidently extreme: this is a man who happily goes by the nickname “el loco” (“the madman”) and paraded a chainsaw at election rallies to indicate his intentions towards the institutions of state. His supporters at home and abroad — including Donald Trump, Javier Bolsonaro and Elon Musk — see him as an economic visionary, brave enough to break down the ossified order and unleash the animal spirits of a constrained market to make Argentina and humanity great again.
Milei officially took power on 10th December, and is already delivering exactly what he promised. At 9pm on Wednesday 20th December, via direct national broadcast, he announced the nullifying of around 300 laws by presidential edict. This included the total deregulation of the housing market, including rental restrictions; the same for the labour market, across a swathe of employee protections; the end of subsidies for public transport; the removal of all protections on land sale to foreign capital; the sale of all national companies (including, bizarrely, an explicit mention of Musk as the likely future owner of the national satellite system); and much more besides. All this was accompanied by the announcement that anyone involved in protests would be identified, and would as a result lose access to all remaining social welfare. As one young Argentinian put it in on X, “Please, do spare a thought for what’s happening. Shit’s going to get uglier, fast.”
It is essential to understand, though, that Milei’s election was not the result of a widespread embrace of his approach. Rather, it represents a total and entirely understandable rejection of an obviously failing status quo. Argentina is deep in the mire of what the Guardian describes as “financial calamity,” with almost 20 million of its 45 million citizens living in poverty, and inflation running at 140%. Yet the alternative to Milei in that final run off was Sergio Massa, the finance minister in the party that had governed for 16 of the previous 20 years. Stick or twist, when you’re desperate and feel you have pretty much nothing left to lose… As one commentator put it when interviewed for the same Guardian piece, the dynamic of the election could be summed up in a single word: “desperation.”
Poland’s last-ditch defiance
A few short weeks before polling day on 15th October 2023, and indeed right up until the votes were counted, the outlook in Poland was bleak. The ruling Law and Justice Party, widely affiliated with Orban in Hungary and Putin in Russia, were set to maintain power they had used over the last 8 years to build ties with their neighbouring authoritarians, entrench fossil fuel dependence, and undermine women’s rights; worse, they looked likely this time to share that power with an outright neo-Nazi group called the Confederation, pulling them even further to the right. Yet on the day they lost, with a coalition formed of parties from across the centre and left of the political spectrum taking 54% of the vote.
The situations in the two countries were somewhat different. In Poland, the far right was incumbent, so the idea that shifting further in that direction might solve the nation’s problems was less credible; the exact flavour of far right was pro-Putin rather than Musk-groupie; and Donald Tusk, the new prime minister, was arguably less personally unpopular than Massa. But these differences should not be overstated: until the last minute, the Confederation looked likely to be the beneficiaries of votes for change over continuity; the far right may not be monolithic, but the agenda of system destruction is clearly shared; and Tusk, while he does have a better personal reputation than Massa, is by no means widely popular. These were not the differences that made the difference.
Instead, it was civil society organisations in Poland who played the crucial role, mobilising in recognition of the danger — on climate action, labour rights, and especially women’s rights — in a way that did not happen in Argentina. As the BBC reported, “The idea that this election was a last chance to stop a populist government… was a major motivator.” Civil society organisations used their communications efforts to raise the stakes in the campaign, and in doing so drove a huge increase both in overall turnout, and especially in turnout among women and young people.
The result was that nearly 70% of under 29s voted in Poland in October 2023, compared to less than 50% in the previous election in 2019. By contrast, in Argentina, turnout was lower than in any election since the country’s return to democracy in 1983.
The space for hope
You might say that Argentina is an extreme case, deeper in economic pain than most, with a starker choice than elsewhere in the world. I see it as default, not exception; different in degree, not in kind, from the basic situation all over the world, and the direction of travel for all of us unless we act.
In reality, we are already several steps down this path, several trips around the vicious cycle. To a Brit like myself, the contours of Brexit are entirely recognisable; Liz Truss was Milei without a mandate. And of course, in the United States, Milei vs Massa echoed Trump vs Clinton, and looks set to resonate again with Trump vs Biden in 2024. As Robert Kagan put it in the Washington Post, “Trump is running against the system. Biden is the living embodiment of the system.” All that changes each time is that the divisions deepen, the dynamics embed, and the autocrats become more prepared for power.
The lesson we must learn from Argentina is this: it is well beyond time to acknowledge that our political systems are failing. Elections are becoming choices between those who will acknowledge this and those who will not. In that context, people may well choose the former, even if they only acknowledge the failure in order to position themselves as the falsest of solutions. And each time those candidates win, the demolition jobs get under way harder and faster.
The lesson of Poland, though, is that time can still be bought, even on these terms, because the Mileis of this world are not what people want either. Tusk is as much if not more of a “living embodiment of the system” as Biden or Massa could ever be: not only has he already held the post of Polish prime minister, from 2007 to 2014, but he went on to be president of the European Council from 2014 to 2019. In choosing him, Poland has kept alive the chance to find another way, over another cycle. But the clock is ticking. The cycle has only been paused, not reversed.
The space for hope is this: what is going on around the world is not an active embrace of the far right, a wilful desire on the part of the majority to tear it all down. It is better understood as increasing desperation, a willingness to try anything to make a change. With Citizen energy and effort, that space can still be kept open.
But the space for hope should not be mistaken for hope itself…
Head on to Clarity Part 2: Authentic Hope is not Restaurant Hope
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