In the midst of the ethical crisis that we are experiencing in our region and the entire world, exposed as witnesses to the strengthening of brutalization and cruelty as elements that sustain fascist democracies, the curator and artist Duen Neka'hen Sacchi shares with us his urgent reflection on the Argentine context.

A few months ago, in Argentina, in the midst of defining candidates for all political spaces for the 2023 general elections, in Jujuy, a province located in the north of the country, a large protest was brutally repressed. As the hours passed, it would become evident that people were not being detained at random: artists, human rights defenders, teachers, disabled people, adolescents, trade unionists and, particularly, women and LGBTQIQ+ people would be the ones marked, searched and locked up. The multi-sectoral and massive protest was in reaction to a constitutional modification that criminalized social protest and violated the rights of indigenous peoples to their land. This happened in a context of protests over low teacher salaries and inflation that, in our land, is not only an economic index, a political modulation of colonial capitalism, but also a weapon of war.

While all this was happening, in Salta, the neighboring province, I was cooking some pieces in the clay oven of my family home and letting my partner know that I would not be able to travel because the outgoing governor of the province of Jujuy was preventively cutting off as many or more routes than the protests. To leave the yunga of Salta towards the south of Argentina, you have to cross the yunga of Jujuy. This is how enervated our roads are. We were also distressed along with my parents because of the intensification of State terrorism, seeing on television the images of the persecution of people using unidentified white vans, while the phone chats began to ring updating the number of detainees, and a long night of calls and requests for solidary help at different levels was looming. The image of relatives in front of a detention center filled our retinas the next morning. Days later, we would learn that Camila Müller, a teacher, women's rights defender and dancer, had been brutally tortured in her own home.

That brutality was a campaign advertisement. A promise, a sample of what can be done “now” to impose anti-rights, anti-democratic and extractionist agendas. In those days, I thought a lot about colleagues from the continent who had been denouncing the specific persecution of artists and writers, the field of culture and the independent press, in general, as well as indigenous communities, in particular. It happened in Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama; it happened a long time ago in Colombia, Chile, Paraguay, Guatemala, Mexico... In Jujuy, as well as in Santiago de Chile, it was aimed at the eyes. The image of a teenager with his eye patched went around social media; not everyone saw it, because the algorithms are private and respond to billionaires, and they are not democratic, because they do not respond to any type of regulation where people can complain, for example , due to the effects on their mental health. In that province, Milei also won with a large majority (as in almost the entire country, mainly because he said he would go against “the caste”). People filled that signifier with different meanings: from plain envy against the neighbor who built a house faster than another; the girlfriend who became a feminist and was no longer eroticized by the abuse of the boyfriend du jour; even the anger towards the provincial or national governments, legitimate anger for their actions as fictional due to planned misinformation as a means of social control.

That time, I also thought it was pretty obvious why this was aiming for the eyes: Where else would the image dictatorships point to? To the subjective heart, of course, to the emotions and to the eyes: “You will only see when and how I tell you. And you will suffer.” It is no coincidence that the motto of the Argentine far-right conservative movement led by the current president is “They don't see it”. The western colonialist right is not very original; they promote a dogmatic oculocentrism and then shoot at the eyes that don’t see as they want them to. In that sense, there is nothing new; the same response over and over again is to destroy the crooked gazes, the non-seers. Following the news in Argentina at this moment exceeds any prediction of the theories of disaster capitalism, but there is no doubt that it is against the minoritized majorities that organized and systematic dispossession devastates. Especially against disabled people, children with cancer and rare diseases, women, LGBTIQ+, workers in the popular economy, human rights defenders, indigenous peoples, the elderly, and against any human vulnerability; it is a racist, misogynistic, cruel program without a human horizon.

One of the last actions of the Government was to prohibit within the State administration the “excessive” use of the feminine gender, of inclusive language, and of the “gender perspective” (this distinction is not made by me, but by the Government).

The social, political and cultural organization against the onslaught of the far-right in Argentina began around 2015. Many of us realized that some symptoms of the political violence of far-right agendas would end up solidifying through means of terror — that fear that acts without a name is not very identifiable either inside or outside oneself; through means of misinformation, of “post-truth”, of inflation, of individualism, of the greed of large and rich political operators, and of the construction of the other as an enemy. The latter was starkly accentuated during the COVID-19 pandemic. An explosive cocktail that in these parts of the world would explode from streaming, in prime time, before our astonished gaze, when a young man pointed a gun at the face of former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, on September 1, 2022. Yes, there was an appalling silence.

The repercussion of such an act of political violence was greater abroad than within the country. There have been years of misinformation by communication conglomerates. The stigmatization of social movements, political organizations and leaders has been devastating; we are heading towards being the example in future investigations of how a white supremacist and masculinist totalitarianism could be installed in a country where women and LGBTIQ+ people are not only the majority, but also imagined and implemented anti-patriarchal public and social policies that radically changed the life and life expectancy of their own communities. A country that is also brutally racist, whose percentage of light-skinned people is a minority and concentrated only in large capitals, which unmasks the power of internal coloniality over the years. The image of dark-skinned young people, of indigenous and Afro descendants in Salta, who shout slogans that go against their own lives and long for the blue eyes of the candidate-elect for president to look at their faces is eloquent in this sense.

The neoconservative far-right did not begin in Argentina. In 2012, in Greece, Golden Dawn, a far-right party that entered parliament by democratic vote with 21 representatives, made its public appearance. Comparisons between Greece and Argentina would make the headlines due to the imposition of a banking “corralito” in both countries, that is, the seizure of all of the citizens' bank deposits, which would leave both countries twinned in misfortune in the inflationary processes created by uncontrolled debts, propelled by entities such as the IMF or vulture funds. Argentina had been the test. The International Monetary Fund is a post-war institution that responds to the colonial distribution of territories in Africa and America that took place after World War II; the indebtedness of “underdeveloped” countries has always financed the growth of “developed countries”

Taking into account the enormous differences, there are some coincidences between both “corralling” attempts, such as the relationship between the radical enrichment agendas of the global north with the financing of parties such as Golden Dawn or Liberty Advances; the unique anti-system rhetoric of these parties and the coordinated attack of their members on public cultures, materialized in violence against political leaders, female leaders in the case of Argentina, artists, attacks on those who claim cultural rights, rights of LGBTIQ+ people, of women, of migrants, anti-racists, indigenous people, feminists, writers, journalists and a long list of finger-pointing. From a more classic perspective, these parties agree on socially centralizing demands due to the absence or inadequacy of State institutions in guaranteeing basic rights such as dignified access to land, water, consumption, promoting social and economic shock situations with promises. of outbursts, threats, persecution and violence against “the caste”, “the migrants”, “the lazy”, “the forces of evil”, etc., based on the use of State institutions and embodying themselves as “those who will return the country to what it used to be”, “the forces of heaven”, “the good people”, “the taxpayers”, “the real men”, etc. The ABCs of disaster capitalism: “Destroy from within”, a counterpart to the proposals of the 90s of the last century to “transform institutions from within.” And in this 2.0 mode, the use of their data accumulation structures to suspend the Rule of Law. Something that is difficult to explain, because many times people do not discern the State Government, and even less do they understand their extremely vulnerable position in the case of a Government that decides to turn the State into a war apparatus against its own population. In both Argentina and Greece, the experience of terrorist States is part of the recent memory and has similar complexities in relation to the effects of trauma, political conflicts and the relationship with debt. In the Argentine case, the civil-military dictatorship of 1976-1983 (although we could speak of almost a century of dictatorships with democratic intermediates, currently the longest with 40 years), and in the Greek case, the triple occupation and the government collaboration with the fascist Axis powers of 1940 -1945. We also share the problems of denialism in relation to the crimes against humanity perpetrated by these regimes.

In a slightly more skewed view, these parties and movements recognize and take upon themselves emotional demands as muddled as: Why does he/she/the other do and I don't? They propose political subjects such as “the taxpayer”, “the investor”, “the influencer”, and monsters such as “the leftie”, “la campora”, “the lazy”, “la planera”, “communism”. And pragmatic answers: “jail or bullet”; “he/she/they or you deserve it” (not both). Meanwhile, the finger-pointing policies typical of totalitarian regimes have become molar, embodied in identities that are neither strategic nor critical, but sensibly reactive, where even disidentification often implies exclusion, abuse and death. These movements demand productivity that no body can withstand; they propose obedience as an ethical end in itself; they reinforce envy as a useful competitive feeling and, of course, the idea of money as the only end and means, as well as punishment and suffering, often proposed as the only erotic means of personal development.

Of course, a “corralito” in Greece, in the historical-philosophical, political, and cultural center of Western civilization, is not the same as in Argentina. But its people would take to the streets like any other, resist and suffer like anyone else. Perhaps for this reason, because it is not just any place in the Western history of art, reason and democracy, in 2017, Documenta 14 unfolds and de-territorializes itself in Athens. In Learning from Greece, the philosopher Paul B. Preciado proposes the assembly as a curatorial device; he calls it Assembly of the bodies, echoing the forms of organization and participation of unions, social movements, feminists, migrants, indigenous people, disabled people, trans people, forcibly displaced people, people affected by the corralito and debt in resistance (on both sides of the Atlantic), direct and skewed democratization actions in the midst of the advance of disaster capitalism. A necessary assembly that had been proposed, but had not always come together. And, on the other hand, imbued with a series of conceptual tools around the ideas of assembly and prosthesis that the philosopher has been developing for years. In Argentina, during the 2001 revolt, and now too, the assemblies are the political-social tool of some social and political extracts. In 2001, they were generalized to the entire social spectrum and the images of the pickets, the cutting off of the public roads, the puebladas and cacerolazos went around the world, and currently they continue to be part of the forms of organization of the resistance; but the pandemic and the political violence installed since the attempted assassination of the former president and promoted by public spokespersons, from the president and journalists to tweeters, still does not allow us to think of ourselves taking to the streets as before; the feeling of orphanhood crosses the entire social arc.

In 2015, facing the first Government of terror capitalism, it was different: the movements of women, trans people, transvestites, LGBTIQ+, migrants, disabled people, whores, abolitionists, popular movements, political parties, journalists, artists, mothers, daughters, nuns, health workers, scientists, feminist students would achieve a historical transversality, in a series of massive demonstrations sustained in a long history of meetings, in assembly policies and multiple articulations, with viscous organicities, lubricated by the desire and pleasure of the community, the communal, the collective, the solidarity; with verticalisms, more or less solid structures, complicities, contradictions, robotic hands, political and religious apparatuses, algorithms, chats, gossip, loudspeakers, radio communication, individualities. A fighting prosthesis? An assembly? The great assembly of the deviants? Maybe. Something came together and the dreamed articulation of the people that is needed came to life on the street. Our country experienced a profound and unique process of democratization in the midst of the onslaught of the ultra-conservative agendas of the global market and the application of neoliberal debt colonization policies. In the midst of the disaster and dispossession, the best-known milestone was the approval of the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy (IVE, for its initials in Spanish) law; but it was not only that, the mobilization of these resistances would imply a radical transformation (still in progress and with a broad horizon of demands for social and cultural rights of the ways of understanding the body, identities, memory, territories and thought). Although now, in the post-pandemic, in the midst of the famine dictated by President Milei, we ask ourselves: "Are we going to make it?" How do we communicate with that trans kid from the central part of the country who, thanks to the fight for the recognition of the right to identity, health and education, was able to access public psychological support, free hormones, surgeries in public institutions and social works?; who voted with anger and shouting “Long live fucking freedom!” to a Government that closes universities, suspends public health care, will not produce hormones and who regulates the prohibition of inclusive language? And who also believed that they deserved recognition of their rights, but for some deeply individualistic and phobic reason, the rest did not.

Communication and economic warfare is the current privileged mode of submission. In Argentina, all the media and public spokespersons have been talking about inflation every day for approximately half a century (and perhaps earlier; it does not matter if it is low or high, we could say that inflation, in the sense of a generalized and sustained increase in prices of goods and services in a country during a sustained period of time, normally a year, does not exist in Argentina, because there was not a year in which this relationship was not considered inflationary even though it was not). In this sense, it is no longer an economic index, and even less so since the coalition of the right and far-right in Argentina: it is a weapon of social control, and like any weapon of social control it has material and symbolic effects, famines and fascinations. But at the same time, it is a technology that has been changing, and at this moment, it acquires the algorithmic modulations, and specifically the forms of the State of exception that current capitalism proposes, that which we call neocolonial, neoliberal, neofascist, of shock, but which, for some time now, due to its unique characteristics, different researchers have defined it as terror capitalism.

This modulation of capitalism is defined based on the relationship with the use of broadband fiber and satellite communication technologies, biometrics and surveillance, for the disciplining of the population. In Argentina (but not only there, since it is a global phenomenon that begins in the USA ), it is evident in the widely publicized relationship between the owner of “X” and President Milei, beyond evidencing their interests in “white gold”, lithium (a fundamental resource for these communication technologies). For said relationship, the use of the social communication network was essential for their political rise and thus justification of the discrimination, singling out, demonization (and, therefore, subjugation) of specific and discriminated sectors of the population, defining them as possible economic "risks" , “threats” to private property, to security, as “enemies” of order, “corrupt criminals” who steal from the State, or as possible “terrorists”, in the case of indigenous communities, feminists or trans and transvestite people.

Researchers agree on at least three characteristics of terror capitalism: the concession of State communication structures to private companies to control and monitor target groups, or the transfer of data collected by the same State structures to the private sphere; in turn, the use of biometric data and social networks that are extracted from these groups allow private companies to improve their technologies and devices to sell their products to other States and institutions (public or private); and finally, these operations turn the target groups into a source of cheap labor, either through direct coercion or indirectly through stigmatization: “lazy” “planeros”, referring to those who receive any subsidy from the State, especially due to economic access, disability, racial discrimination or gender perspective; “kirchos”, “kukas”, referring to political opponents associated with spaces that are linked to Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Fernandez; “viejos meados” referring to retirees; “traitors”, when referring to public media workers or those who do not belong to media monopolies, and a long etcetera.

It was also in Jujuy, our laboratory of vernacular terror capitalism, where Nahuel Morandini and Roque Villegas, two university professors, were imprisoned for 60 days for writing ironic messages on the social network “X” about the possible infidelity of the wife of Gerardo Morales, former governor of the province. An arrest warrant also weighs on architect Lucia Gonzalez for the same rumors in a WhatsApp group. It is evident that there is coordinated and organized surveillance through these social networks. On the other hand, it is President Milei himself and his presidential spokesperson who publicly intimidate, especially on the “X” network (but not only there), female artists, politicians, journalists, union members, governors and the people in general. Lately, they mock disabled people, celebrate the closure of institutions where they work and mock people who are left unemployed. Among the hundreds of violent daily interactions, the last one was the celebration for the closure of the national news agency Telam. The presidential spokesperson wrote: “That's Telam leaving.” The day before, the president had announced this closure on national television, applauded by a box full of his main "tweeters", who are now employees and public officials of the State. We already know that nowadays you don't need to buy troll farms to get interactions; we have done enough work for social media owners to allow them to enable individual earnings through baits. We already know that the crueler the post, the more interactions and the more profit. Argentine social network users collaborate to create the cheapest labor on the planet.

On March 19, 2015, one of the most serious cases of censorship in contemporary art in the Spanish State occurred, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (Macba) suspended the exhibition The Beast and the Sovereign, co-produced by the Württembergischer Kunstverein (WKV) from Stuttgart. This suspension highlights the centrality given to art, political criticism and the public cultures generated by queer, trans, migrant, Afro, indigenous, popular, intellectual, writers, favelades, and displaced communities in the agenda for the globalized conservative and far-right revolt. The museum director, Bartomeu Mari, asks that the work Haute Couture 04 Transport, by Ines Doujak, be removed, considering it “inappropriate.” The curators, Hans D. Christ, Iris Dressler, Paul B. Preciado and Valentin Roma refuse, and the inauguration is suspended a few hours before, the doors are closed, the public is left outside. The conflict and censorship revolves around the paper mache sculpture in which the social leader Domitila Barrios is sodomized by a German Shepherd dog, and in turn she “penetrates” the King of Spain, who is on all fours (which is the only living contemporary character in the sculpture). I refer to this fact not only because of the singularity of the effects of censorship: the closure of the Independent Studies Program and the suspension of teachers, directors and workers, but because it is in the midst of this whole situation that I have, for the first time, the feeling that this is no longer or it is not just neoliberalism. The art world had coexisted with neoliberalism without too many fissures; even queer and diasporic identities were functional to its capital: “new market niches.” What was so special as to justify censorship? A king on all fours? A bunch of deviant students? A trans director and curator? Maybe, and surely all of this was unsustainable for the new regime, although not so much for the old neoliberal regime. Three effects were crucial: stigmatization and threat as a way to resolve the conflict, job insecurity and the deterioration of the mental health of those who were there. This new regime went straight for the eyes and stirred up a feeling that was no longer neoliberal anxiety. The Beast and the Sovereign proposed, among other things, a critique of the sacralization of neoliberal economy and debt, and with its censorship and reopening it somehow exposed a regime that was falling apart. I remember that the seminars that were canceled due to the closure of the PEI were precisely related to debt. Years later, it doesn't seem like a coincidence to me. There we are, immortalized in a photo with a flag that says: “Everything is in order”, the phrase that the authorities would use after closing the study program and reopening the exhibition.

In Argentina, the response of artists and cultural leaders to the onslaught of terror capitalism, the Milei chapter, has been sustained throughout the country, even when he was just another candidate. On the streets and on social networks, at popular festivals, in the neighborhoods, everything was duly censored and without repercussion, in mass media such as television, local radio and networks, which were in turn biased, not only because of the algorithmic function, but by, once again, plain and simple censorship. The truth is that multi-sector platforms such as Unidxs por la Cultura, Comunidad de Artistas Visuales, La Carpa Rosa, and hundreds of arts, student and public assemblies, neighborhood assemblies, assemblies of researchers, teachers, friends, dissident collectives, worker collectives, community kitchens and endless meetings are still being held throughout the country. This is happening and, at the same time, it is being hidden from view. The Milei government surrounded Congress, its square, the surrounding area, and installed a drone and cell signal jammer at the opening speech of the regular sessions. In the official broadcast, the pot-banging and insults could be heard anyway, and no matter how orchestrated the fake news campaign was, the magnitude of the demonstrations throughout the country during the last general strike was overwhelming. But we don't see each other; the specularity of individualism is now a State policy. A feeling similar to the anguish of grief takes us by storm.

It was news in Argentina that representatives of the Federal Revolution, an organization that participates in the political party Liberty Advances, of Javier Miliei and Victoria Villaruel, and that was part of the attempted assassination of former President Fernandez de Kirchner, entered Congress while a vote was being taken on the controversial “Bases or omnibus” law, invited by a deputy from the ruling party. The acting president and vice president denied the crimes against humanity of the Argentine civil-military dictatorship during the campaign and did so again in the last speech, mocking the people missing due to State terrorism and the dead in the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent weeks, honors for genocidaires have gone viral, at the same time that the repressor Alberto Rey Pardellas, accused of crimes against humanity, said that the disappearances of children during the dictatorship had a "humanitarian significance", because "many of them, like their parents, have cursed blood.” Every day, the Government of terror capitalism surpasses itself in some affront to human rights such as canceling medication for people with cancer, especially children; the food abandonment of millions throughout the territory, and the stigmatization, persecution and criminalization of anyone, especially women who publicly dissent from their policies or ideology. And the law accompanies this: Pierina Nocchetti is on trial for writing Where is Tehuel?, a graffiti about the forced disappearance of the young trans man Tehuel de la Torre.

In the case of Golden Dawn, after an exponential growth in the Greek political and cultural scene, its path as a criminal organization ended, after a judicial process for attacks by groups linked to the party against migrants, the LGBTIQ+ community, women and artists, ranging from threats to murder. The followers of “Liberty Advances” follow the same pattern: intimidation, threats and random attacks. For a long time, consultants, lawyers and psychologists affirmed that threats in virtual networks rarely crossed over into “real life”; the truth is that this is no longer the case: exiled journalists, displaced feminists, artists threatened and attacked, workers insulted, bomb threats at art exhibitions, a lesbian teacher beaten on public transportation, and a president who exercises institutional violence from social media, make us realize that the regime of hate has begun in Argentina.

And some final questions: Perhaps in that passion to single out those who were not sufficiently queer, native, original, female, ancestral or too white, not brown or black enough, was the serpent’s egg? Or was it the desire to be recognized and valued, but fighting hard to not be one of the crowd but deluxe? How many more songs repeating Bitch better have my money will be produced? Since when is money a sign of rebellion? Will we not dispute the sense of humanity installed by the regimes of terror? Will we give in to creating new common ethical horizons?

While this article was in its final editing process, the national network H.I.J.O.S, a historic organization for the defense of human rights in Argentina, published an official statement denouncing the abuse and death threat to a member of that group; the perpetrators, after the attack, wrote on the wall of their house "VLLC" ("Long live fucking freedom!", for its initials in Spanish).