“If You Go to the Right, You Will Come to the Left”: The Paradoxes of Chilean Fascism, 1930s–1940s

Abstract

The period between the two world wars was a time of the emergence and rise of fascism all over the world, including Latin America, where one of the few countries where a mass fascist movement emerged was Chile. In this article the author analyses the ideology and political praxis of Chilean National Socialism in the 1930s. The analysis is based on the Chilean National Socialist political and ideological journalism, the press, and the memoirs of the activists and their opponents. The National Socialist Party (“Creole Nazism”) was formed in Chile, proclaiming nationalism, anti-democracy, anti-liberalism, and anti-communism. It was an anti-systemic movement which rejected the values of liberal democracy, which was associated with the domination of plutocracy and imperialism. They adopted corporatism, anti-Semitism, and racism from European fascists and saw themselves as the only alternative to Marxism, which threatened the Western world. The Chilean Nazis envisioned an anti-liberal revolution, the construction of a totalitarian state. Taken to its logical conclusion, these principles made the movement a dangerous force for the ruling circles, which differed little from the left, Marxist parties, which explains the harsh repression against the “Creole Nazis”, which in turn brought them closer to the left. Chilean Nazism was characterized by its constant evolution towards the left and opposition to traditional right-wing parties, which led this movement to an alliance with the anti-fascist Popular Front, which was created precisely to counter the fascist threat in the face of National Socialism. Thus, the Nazis found themselves in the same political bloc with the communists and the socialists. This unnatural alliance with the left, the preaching of the need for a “right-wing revolution”, as well as the hostility of the traditional right, led to the collapse of the movement and its disappearance from the political arena. Despite the elimination of the movement, the ideas of a right-wing revolution, a totalitarian state, corporatism were firmly established on Chilean soil, and their most striking manifestation was the regime of A. Pinochet in the 70s of the twentieth century.