[News] Chile: Kast’s Victory and the Collapse of Progressive Expectations

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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Chile: Kast’s Victory and the Collapse of Progressive Expectations
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By Alejandra Garcia and Bill Hackwell on December 16, 2025

Kast and Pinochet

Chile woke up this December  to a major political fact: José Antonio
Kast—son of a Nazi officer and a defender of Pinochet—won the presidential
runoff with 58.16% of the vote against Jeannette Jara’s 41.84%. His victory
became the emblem of a conservative return that is not only Chilean, but
part of a broader regional cycle of “punishment voting” and demands for
“order.”

Kast had foreshadowed it on the campaign trail: “The third time is the
charm.” And it was. After two failed attempts, the far-right leader managed
to capitalize on the weakening of the progressive cycle and present himself
as the “simple” answer for a country marked by social anxiety, insecurity,
and frustration with institutional politics.

His victory has not come as a surprise. For months, all the polls had been
predicting this outcome. The candidate built his victory on a discourse of
a punitive, neoliberal package: building walls and fences at the borders,
mass expulsions of migrants in an irregular situation. “103 days remain for
them to leave Chile voluntarily,” Kast warned during a presidential debate,
referring to the deadline irregular migrants would have to leave the
country before he takes office as president.

Kast also promulgated a tough-on-crime rhetoric and the use of violence
against drug trafficking, alongside massive cuts to public spending. In
foreign policy, he also argued he would support a potential U.S.
intervention in Venezuela, aligning himself with Washington’s hardest-line
script in the region.

Another aspect of the Kast victoy according to  Chilean political analyst
Jaime Lorca, was compulsory voting was instituted for the first time in
Chile and it acted as a channel to express social discontent with the
government of Gabriel Boric
<http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2022/09/11/boric-anuncia-plan-de-busqueda-de-mas-de-1-000-desaparecidos-durante-la-dictadura-de-pinochet/>,
whose approval ratings in the second half of his term hovered around a
meager 30 percent, toward Pinochetism and its allies. Issues such as
insecurity, hatred of immigrants (especially Venezuelans), and
inflation—close to 4 percent annually—were demagogically stirred up by the
Pinochetist candidate, a man as careless with figures and exaggeration as
Javier Milei.

The regional dimension of the phenomenon was immediately underscored. Less
than 48 hours after his victory, Kast crossed the Andes to meet Javier
Milei in Buenos Aires, in a photo-op aimed at projecting a strategic pro
imperialist unity across South America’s far right: coordinated messaging,
a shared “security” agenda, and the same horizon of austerity, social
discipline, and a cultural offensive meaning taking a page out of Trump’s
brutal anti immigrant policies.

Kast has prevailed over a left that recorded its worst electoral result
since 1990, paying the price for the Gabriel Boric administration’s dull
record. Boric came to power in the wake of the 2019 social uprising, but he
failed to deliver the promised constitutional transformation or fully meet
the public’s expectations for change. This is a major step backwards when
hopes were high to get rid of Pinochet’s constitution and Kast’s victory
means it continues.

This mix of social frustration, a perception of governmental
ineffectiveness, and mounting economic and security pressures steadily
eroded support for the left—clearing the way for Kast and his narrative of
order, public safety, and the defense of traditional values as an
alternative to widespread disillusionment.

This is also a war over memory. Kast’s family background matters less as
“inherited guilt” than as a marker of political genealogy and the ongoing
dispute over Chile’s historical common sense. For years he has carried the
controversy surrounding his father’s past: journalistic investigations and
documents cited by the Associated Press point to Michael Kast’s affiliation
with the NSDAP (Nazi Party) in 1942—an issue that periodically reappears in
public debate.

That fact does not mechanically “explain” a political program, but it
clarifies why Kast is situated in a symbolic field where Pinochetism is not
a closed chapter but a usable repertoire—an available language of
discipline, hierarchy, and anti-left crusade. Reuters has noted “personal
and family support” for the dictatorship in his background, while AP
highlights nostalgia for that period as part of his ideological profile. In
a moment of insecurity, that repertoire can be reactivated as a promise:
order without redistribution, stability without justice.

The victory of the extreme-right-wing  in Chile appears to consolidate a
global strain of far-right ascendancy. It Also coincides with growing U.S.
geopolitical interference in the region. Beyond  Donald Trump’s call to
vote for conservative candidates, the U.S. president is maintaining an
unprecedented menacing naval deployment in Caribbean waters.

According to Argentine  sociologist, Atilio Boron, what we we can expect
from the Kast government is brutal cuts in social spending, a redefinition
of the advances made in relation to women’s rights, and a redefinition of
Chile’s international alliances. He will surely attempt to deepen the
economic model developed during the Pinochet dictatorship, the foundations
of which remained untouched by Chile’s long and unfinished democratic
transition. Kast will also be pressured by Washington to undertake the
arduous task of cooling his country’s relations with China, Chile’s largest
trading partner and the country with which it signed a core Free Trade
Agreement with in 2005.

Kast’s landslide should be read less as a sudden ideological “conversion”
of Chile and more as the political crystallization of accumulated
frustration after the 2019 social uprising, the failure to deliver the
promised constitutional transformation, and the primacy of insecurity in
everyday life. The key risk is not only what Kast can pass institutionally,
but the symbolic shift he accelerates: the normalization of an
authoritarian repertoire—discipline, hierarchy, anti-left crusade, and
exceptionalism against migrants and protest—packaged as public safety.

This rightward turn is reinforced trans nationally through a toxic
far-right coordination (Kast–Milei) and a regional environment shaped by
U.S. political signaling and hard-power advancement in Latin America. For
the left there is no time for demoralization and just denunciation is
insufficient. What is needed is a left movement with  a plan of
reconstruction, plus a rights-based security agenda and a material program
that restores expectations (wages, services, housing) to win back the
dispute over common sense and memory.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English
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