The death of Chile's free-market model: An interview with Axel Kaiser

It is no secret that Latin America’s free-market ‘city upon a hill’ has come under attack from an increasingly powerful left-wing political movement.

In an exclusive interview, famed Chilean writer, lawyer and political scientist Axel Kaiser spoke with ADN America’s “Voices of Dissent” podcast and warned how Chile was on the path to becoming “just another mediocre Latin American country.”

Chile has long been considered the home of free-market economic policies and the bulwark of a long-standing respect for the rule of law, but the recent election of 36-year-old former student leader Gabriel Boric has caused many experts – including Kaiser -- to fear that the world’s biggest copper producing nation has fallen to the new “pink tide” that has once again flooded the region.

Since the leftist leader first took to the campaign trail, he promised to move forward with the country’s thirst for reform and has said he will support systemic changes to Chile’s prolific private pension fund administrators (AFPs) and the constitution, which is currently being re-written by a constitutional convention. 

Although millions of Chileans consider Chile’s constitution and the AFPs to be vestiges of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s military government, Kaiser qualified such claims as a “total, absolute lie” pushed forward by “a radicalized left.”

"What's left of the constitution was signed by former President Ricardo Lagos and is one of the most revised texts in the history of the Chilean constitutions. Only a third of the text comes from (Pinochet's) 1980 constitution and 54 reforms were approved in plebiscites in 1989 and later under the government of Ricardo Lagos,” Kaiser noted.

Furthermore, Kaiser warned that the radical left has militarized its intellectuals and the press in order to “make their ideas go viral” and a achieve their “dream of a far-left dictatorship.”

Speaking about Boric’s unexpected victory against conservative Jose Antonio Kast, Kaiser said, “I came to the conclusion that we were about to welcome in a government that wanted to absolutely destroy Chile’s economic system.”

While Kaiser stated that many of Chile’s leftist reforms began under the government of Michelle Bachelet, he warned that Boric's Constitutional Convention is poised to destroy what's left of the country's free-market model and destroy Chile’s 200 year-old rule-of-law.

Furthermore, Kaiser warned that unusual changes to the convention process have allowed for radical representatives to propose amendments that would, in essence, “create a parallel legal system” and “destroy judicial independence” – a move Kaiser says is “typical of all totalitarian movements” and could help terrorist indigenous groups in the south "create a parallel state where criminal and drug related activities can occur without the Chilean state's intervention."

Later, when asked about the growing influence of identity politics in Chile, Kaiser explained that the left is actively creating a victims’ narrative in order to “gain public recognition” and capitalize on attention from the press within the public sphere.

"Becoming a victim gives you status. You immediately become a moral authority and people applaud you and listen to you. Today we live in a culture of victimhood where the new heroism is based on being a victim. If you declare yourself offended by something, everybody has to be quiet and you gain a feeling of power that intoxicates you,” he said.

Watch the full interview (in Spanish) on Rumble and follow ADN America on social media for more exclusive content.