But it cooked them together in its own horrible blend I had thought before reading this book that Argentina just made bad decisions that often landed it on the wrong side of history Most people know that Argentina welcome many of the worst Nazi leaders including Adolf Eichmann and Joseph Mengele But this was no mistake Argentina believed that it was going to be the leader of the New Order of Fascism once Germany and Italy succeeded in taking over all of Europe Peron actually visited Mussolini in Italy and had his portrait in his office Finchelstein says Many Italian fascists also visited Argentina during those years and Nazis and fascists contributed money to Argentine fascism.
From remaining silent at the time of the abuses to never trying to fully acknowledge the significant responsibility of the Argentine Church that he led for many years The Church s reluctance to open its archives of the repression might be rooted in the specifics of mass atrocities and how and why the military repression in Argentina was ideologically legitimized by the hierarchy of the Church 9780199930241 Exceptional well written comprehensive and fair 9780199930241
| The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War: Fascism, Populism, and Dictatorship in Twentieth Century Argentina By Federico Finchelstein |
| 0199930244 |
| 9780199930241 |
| English |
| 232 |
| Hardcover |
3. 5 9780199930241 A detailed and often very disturbing look at the ideolgical roots of early Argentine christo fascism at Peronism and at the apocalyptic Dirty War of Videla and the Junta of 1976 1983 The writing which itself is sometimes stuff sometimes gives way to speculative generalities But on the whole it is persuasive. 5 stars 9780199930241 An absolute must read for anyone interested in Argentina or Latin American history There is so much insight and information in this book that I want to reread it and take careful notes so that I can really understand everything. Finchelstein is a historian at NYU and he writes extensively about fascism and populism In this book he seeks to understand the roots of the Dirty War in Argentina that took place from 1975 1983 One of the reasons I became a historian was because I wanted to understand how the so called Dirty War could have become a reality in a modern nation with a strong progressive civil society This task meant understanding the ideological links between politics and death Quite simply I wanted to search the ideological factors that motivated killers to kill This is why I wrote this book. Some of the main points that I took away from this book are the following First that Argentine fascism was not an import from Italy or Germany it was homegrown with its own particular flavor Second that particular flavor has to do with the holy trinity of nationalism Catholicism and militarism I find it challenging reading about Argentina s politics and history because things do not mean the same there as they do in other countries For example the Catholic church in some places such as El Salvador with priests like Oscar Romero was a defender of the people against the militaristic government But in Argentina the leaders of the military dictatorship sought advice from the Catholic church leaders The Catholic church notoriously took the side of the dictatorship against the people Another example is unions In the US we tend to think of unions as emblematic of democratic workers values However in Argentina the unions were a major tool of Juan Peron in establishing his authoritarian populist rule There are accounts of the steelworkers factories using their incinerators to burn the bodies of the disappeared during the military dictatorship Unions have incredible political power in Argentina but not necessarily in defense of the workers or democracy For this reason I find it challenging to find good news coverage about Argentina s politics Argentina has a complicated political history and one must be extremely careful not to project one s understanding of concepts in one context onto the Argentinean context because they are different For example after Milei s election some news outlets showed the street protests of the Kirchneristas and portrayed those protests as the workers protesting for their rights However it is important to understand that the Kirchneristas are incredibly corrupt and are Peronistas who trace their lineage to one of the most corrupt of all Juan Peron himself I do not support Milei or Kirchner I think that Argentina must seek better options But I don t know that this is possible until people understand its history Which is hard to do because the military dictatorship wiped out an entire generation of intellectuals. Which brings me to point 3 that I learned from this book that I didn t fully understand before The nacionalismo movement was incredibly anti semitic and the military dictatorship killed a disproportionate number of Argentine Jews Argentina s political movements of nacionalismo from the 1930s onward were based on Christian nationalism which included a virulent strain of anti semitism Talking about nacionalismo and how Argentina crafted its own brand of fascism Finchelstein says In sum nacionalismo combined the anti Semitism of the Nazis the corporatist imperialist proletarian and aestheticized violence of Italian fascism and the ultra Catholic militarism of Spanish fascism Yes Argentina borrowed ingredients from other fascist movements secretly subsidizing the fascist press and other activities Apparently during Eichmann s trial after being extradited to Israel Eichmann proclaimed Long live Austria Love live Germany Long live Argentina Talk about bad company Another point that I took away from this book was the idea of clerico fascism Sacred violence was the premier Argentine way to synthesize fascism and religion and The recurrent insistence on the primary role of Catholic religion as the vector of the fascist future was a defining feature of nacionalismo It is easy to forget that Argentina is adamantly a Catholic nation It seems like such an antiquated concept or certainly something that supposed democracies don t do But they do indeed. In fact in the US we are seeing a terrifying rise in Christian nationalism and I couldn t help but note all of the similarities between the rise of Argentine fascism and the beliefs that many right wing politicians have here The history of Argentina s military dictatorship is horrifying enough in and of itself but if it is read as a warning for where American democracy could be headed if left unimpeded then it terrifies me to my core. There are so many passages that I highlighted and I will included some of the most significant below However I do want to say that this is a difficult book to read for two reasons First the writing style is dense and often relies too heavily on political science terminology without fully explaining those terms Second Finchelstein often references events without explaining them such as the AMIA bombing I happen to know about that because my husband was working two blocks away from it when the bombing happened and also because we followed the news about Alberto Nisman who was murdered probably for having evidence pointing the blame to Kirchner But if I didn t have that background information I would have missed a major point that Finchelstein was making I am sure that I missed many many points throughout the book because I have a limited understanding of Argentine history While the writing could be much clearer and better organized the insights are outstanding and the way that Finchelstein makes connections across many years and many politicians gave me a much better understanding not only of Argentina s history but also its cultural attitudes and beliefs as well as my husband s childhood growing up during the dictatorship. Some passages to share on the roots of fascism The fear of communism a disdain of political and social difference and an emphasis on excessive national legitimacy found their justification in this precocious right wing nacionalismo In the early 1920s Argentine nacionalismo was not yet fascism but it had already begun to conceive of Argentines as Catholic anticommunist and increasingly antiliberal and anti Jewish In fact the very existence of genocide and discrimination are symptoms of the lack of solid democratic structures and or their instability before the coming of fascism To be sure it would be impossible to find a liberal polity devoid of illiberal trends in the fin de si cle world But unlike other countries Argentina had a particular path from liberalism to illiberalism that was eventually affected by the peculiar combination of fascism and religion Indigenismo is for mestizo imbeciles argued the nacionalista intellectual C sar Pico for we Argentines are Europeans in the Americas By the 1940s the AJN had slowly mutated into the Alianza Libertadora Nacionalista giving its support to the candidacy of Juan Per n The ALN stood as a working class nacionalista force fighting the battle of the Homeland against the anti patria embodied by foreign imperialism international capitalism and Judaic Communism According to the Argentine nacionalista Father Meinvielle violence was justified when it had a sacred sanction He proposed the use of sacred violence to change the country If fascist violence is not implemented the people begin to fall rapidly into communist chaos The example of fascist violence is inevitable In sum the nacionalista concept of a war between believers and infidels represented a metaphor for future state sanctioned terrorism Nacionalistas justified this terrorism theoretically before it actually became a reality some decades later on Peron The structural reforms of the social base accomplished by Per n and the dictatorship of 1943 1946 were not accompanied by democratic advances This couldn t have been done without delegitimizing an authoritarian coup that sought popularity Per n resolved this contradiction by calling for elections to legitimize his leadership up until then based on dictatorship The result was a democracy that combined the expansion of social rights with the limitation of political rights This novel form of politics later became the classic form of Latin American populism It does so in order to assert a direct link between the people and the leader It relies on a form of vertical leadership that might be best described as religious and it conflates the mandates of electoral majorities with the will of the people of the nation as a whole Populism buttresses social and political polarization in the name of the people Fewer spaces are left for the expression of political minorities who are presented as traitors to the real will of the nation or worse as mere puppets of foreign powers plotting against the country on Eva Peron Eva Per n s speech was symptomatic of the populist disrespect of democratic norms and institutions Evita maintained that before the election the leader had been elected by her personal acclamation This was possible because the organized community was a reflection of the thought and practice of the leader not the reverse The leader was owner of the truth the paradox of fascism and democracy Paradoxically fascism triumphed in democratic contexts Weimar Germany and democratic Italy that fascism was able to use against democracy itself Once in power it eliminated these freedoms The kernel of the murderous itinerary of the fascist idea in Argentine history is the continual right wing reformulation of the long standing alliance between nacionalismo the army and the Church These alliances eventually led to the formation of the Triple A and the state sanctioned terrorism of the most recent military dictatorship 1976 1983 on the Triple A and Tacuara Unlike Tacuara the Triple A had the implicit blessing of Juan Per n and Isabel Per n and was directed by Per n s personal secretary Jos L pez Rega In this way the Triple A was like Uriburu s Legi n C vica Argentina of the 1930s and the ALN during Per n s first administration in the 1940s and 1950s After Per n s return to power in 1973 the Triple A would become a para state organization on Isabel Peron When she became president of Argentina Isabel Per n was the formal leader of the Triple A and in that sense became the world s first female leader of a fascist organization and In February of 1975 Isabel Per n brought in the army to repress the ERP guerilla movement in the province of Tucum n As historian Luis Alberto Romero has stated by then the genocide was in the works After the military coup in 1976 there was no longer a use for the Triple A Many of its members who were expert killers joined paramilitary task forces or were given honorary positions in the military The idea of the internal enemy is a key legacy of nacionalismo Many would have to die Videla prophesied in 1975 for the nation to be at peace. 34 The notion that the criminal acts of repression and murder were in fact a holy war was tightly bound to the idea of purifying sacrifice Priests like the Archbishop of Paran Victorio Bonam n justified the repression calling it a blood bath and maintaining that the function of the Army was to atone for our country s impurity What would become of Argentina without the Sword and the Cross Who would want to go down in history as the one who deprived Argentina of either one of these two Argentina is Catholic and military For the ideology of the dictatorship this spirit was not dead but just inactive and manipulated by the enemy plan of Freud Marx and Einstein A majority of military ideologues believed that psychoanalysis as Cabildo claimed intended to destroy the Christian concept of the family The attack was part of a larger conspiratorial projection against Argentine Jews on the Catholic church s role in the military dictatorship Unlike other Latin American countries the Church hierarchy in Argentina actively worked to silence dissident voices within and often even disappeared them In times of democracy the Sword seems to have been replaced by a new union between politics and the Cross The Argentine state would continue to pay the salaries of Catholic priests a glaring symptom of the continued resistance to the separation of Church and state Pope Francis I has participated in this tradition of silence it was the home of Peronism It was also the birthplace of the Dirty War and one of Latin America s most criminal dictatorships in the 1970s and early 1980s How and why did all of these regimes emerge in a country that was born liberal Why did these authoritarian traits first emerge in Argentina under the shadow of fascism In this book Federico Finchelstein tells the history of modern Argentina as seen from the perspective of political violence and ideology He focuses on the theory and practice of the fascist idea in Argentine political culture throughout the twentieth century analyzing the connections between fascist theory and the Holocaust antisemitism and the military junta s practices of torture and state violence with its networks of concentration camps and extermination The book demonstrates how the state s war against its citizens was rooted in fascist ideology explaining the Argentine variant of fascism formed by nacionalistas and its links with European fascism and Catholicism It particularly emphasizes the genocidal dimensions of the persecution of Argentine Jewish victims The destruction of the rule of law and military state terror during the Dirty War Finchelstein shows was the product of many political and ideological reformulations and personifications of fascism The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War provides a genealogy of state sanctioned terror revealing fascism as central to Argentina s political culture and its violent twentieth century The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War Fascism Populism and Dictatorship in Twentieth Century ArgentinaFederico Finchelstein is Professor of History at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College He has taught at the History Department of Brown University and he received his PhD at Cornell University Finchelstein is Director of the Janey Program in Latin American Studies at NSSR.3.
.