La Jornada: “Whether a poor right-winger votes for Trump or Milei is the result of cognitive warfare”

The “poor right-wing” citizen who voted for Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump in the United States or Milei in Argentina is not an accident or a class error, maintains the Cuban intellectual Omar González Jiménez: “It is the result of the ideological war, of everything that the system creates to segregate the individual and impoverish him.”

The former Vice Minister of Culture of the island nation will teach the seminar at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), from May 5 to 12 If everything (nothing) is worth, what is culture for? organized by the Graduate Program in Latin American Studies.

It will be a critical immersion in “the battles of our present”: from cognitive warfare to internal colonialism, through cultural standardization, the rise of the extreme right and the role of organic intellectuals, explains the writer, journalist and teacher.

“The first thing is to start from what is understood by the notion of culture,” he says and recalls that in the middle of the last century a study by two American anthropologists showed that there were more than 150 valid and socially established concepts of what culture is. “This allows us to realize that there are as many visions, notions and approaches as there are in few issues.”

In contrast to the nineteenth-century vision that limited culture to circles of experts or enlightened elites, he maintains that today it has diversified and extended to such an extent that even lack of culture is now part of it.

For Omar González – who on May 8, at 11 a.m., will give a keynote lecture at the Ibero-American University on “being Cuban in difficult times” –, culture is not an ornament or a luxury: it is a tool for identity defense.

In an interview, he remembers José Martí, who shortly before dying wrote in a letter that “the great war waged against us is one of thought,” and that it had to be won with the same thing: intellectual activity, “that is, the very value of culture.” Such a note by the poet, he specifies, was derived from the hegemonic pretensions of the United States to annex Cuba, as is currently the case.

That war, he adds, today is called cultural, cognitive or hybrid, but the essence is the same. “Culture serves to defend the law, to define, consolidate and establish identity. It serves to defend ourselves, reaffirm ourselves, to know who we are, where we come from.”

When reflecting on the relationship between culture, economy and power, the Cuban intellectual highlights the colossal weight of cultural industries, with Hollywood as a paradigm not only geographical, but also aesthetic.

“Hollywood is no longer a physical space: it is an aesthetic model, a way of making films,” he states and denounces how this model standardizes, simplifies and turns history into a product.

One of the most poignant passages of the interview is the reflection on the “poor right-wing.” Omar González alludes to studies by a Brazilian anthropologist to explain the Bolsonaro phenomenon, but extends it to Trump and Milei.

“Bolsonaro’s determining vote was not the bourgeoisie: it was the poor on the right,” he says. “That poor right-wing person, or the down-to-earth middle-class citizen, especially the white citizen, is what makes up the MAGA (Make America Great Again) in the United States.”

These social and historical subjects, he adds, are “the result of ideological war, of spiritual balkanization, of everything that the system creates to segregate the individual, to impoverish him and turn him into a tribal zombie.”

In his opinion, there are political categories that can no longer be used because the siege and denial have erased them, especially left-wing categories, or have distorted them and the right has appropriated them.

“Many things that were flags of the left are today being hoisted by abominable beings, like Trump, or clowns, like Milei. They are using our categories. There is an etymological battle. And the left has no strength, it cannot fully articulate itself to defend itself from these attacks.”

Based on the notion that culture reaches where politics cannot, the former director of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry highlights the role of diplomatic intellectuals, whether in official or informal missions, taking as examples the Mexicans Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz and Alfonso Reyes, and from Cuba, Alejo Carpentier.

The Dayfundamental medium

The reference to Mexico leads him to introduce the concept of “internal colonialism”, developed by sociologist Pablo González Casanova: “Colonialism did not end with independence. It continues to subject indigenous minorities and entire cultures.”

And also to recognize the role of The Day: “It is a fundamental alternative medium, the most important of what would really be called left in the world today.”

Among other topics, the seminar will provide a historical review of the mechanisms of cultural exclusion, taking as a reference the Hays Code, strict regulations of moral self-censorship applied to Hollywood film production between 1934 and 1968.

Omar González remembers that hundreds of filmmakers were persecuted with the purpose of sending a signal that communist ideas would not be allowed. One of the characters who appeared, he recalled, was Bertolt Brecht.

“That process is very instructive of how far the exclusion system goes.” That history is updated today in executive orders against science and culture. In the United States, he points out, there are more than 8 thousand censored titles in public schools.

Other areas to be discussed will be social networks and “the original sin” of lack of culture. According to Omar González, such networks were not created for cultural purposes, but rather under the logic of the market. The result is “the planetary zombie”: an individual without a fixed identity, manipulated by algorithms.

More information about the seminar and registration in the email: [email protected].