Eduardo Verástegui and the digitization of signatures

 Eduardo Verástegui and the digitization of signatures

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero 

The presidential candidate of the extreme right in Mexico has indicated that technology dislocates his proposal to participate in the 2024 elections. Although there are a couple of months left for Verástegui to gather the number of electronic signatures necessary to fulfill the requirements that the National Electoral Institute demands, the task seems titanic without the support of the powers that be; particularly the religious and economic ones.

What is happening with the electoral strongholds of the extreme right? Well nothing. That it is truly difficult to use digital applications, the INE platform and the available time of supporters in any organization, to individually incorporate support for candidates or parties. Once again, although the defenders of the INE and its cyber elements believe otherwise, it is more than true that the door has been closed to form new political parties, formalize independent candidacies and support social causes against the Mexican government.

Even though the PRIANRD believes that the INE represents the liberal democratic channel through which everyone can participate in favor of the Mexican interest; it isn't true. INE technology serves to maintain the status quo of the contemporary partyocracy that denies political participation, individual and organized, in a more than totalitarian way. Technology cannot be an instrument to exclude people; However, in the case of political participation it can be attested that it harms the legitimate right to vote and be voted for.

Citizen candidates cannot participate in the face of the technological judgment represented by the digitalization of individual support. Organizations that intend to become political parties at the regional or national level find it more than impossible to hold assemblies or gather the necessary militancy to meet the requirements that the electoral laws request. It is time to think about opening the doors of the electoral system in our country in the face of a reality of partyocracy and transfuguism.

Digital mafias and lobbyists at the service of internal groups of the INE manage to charge several million pesos so that they can compete with traditional political parties. The same thing happens in the party system as in the fields where some members have structured the monopoly: soccer, transportation, television, radio or newspapers. It is necessary to pay expensive floor fees over a long period of time to remain in the circuit, as is still done in the case of many notaries.

A democracy that closes its doors cannot be considered such. Hence, it is essential to modify the electoral system in Mexico and, within it, the rules for integrating and financing parties, as well as the difficult area of citizen candidacies.

Terrorism and Wild Liberalism

 Terrorism and Wild Liberalism

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Hamas's attack on Israel is deployed from a terrorist strategy that cannot be seen other than as unjust and unworthy. Terrorism uses fundamentalist ideology to appropriate the identity of a people, but its only path is violence and abuse. At the dawn of the 21st century, terrorism was associated with Muslim fundamentalism; Samuel Huntington and John Gray warned that it constituted a unique element of the clash of civilizations and the failure of modernity. As we approach the first quarter of this century, it is bitter that these academics were right, because the crisis of Western values is more serious than previously thought. The problem of assimilation is real, but the greatest threat lies in the impact and justification that modernity has not been able to achieve.

During the last century, the terrible scope of war was related to international law so that radical differences between nations or states did not affect third parties and, mainly, the civilian population was not harmed. The barbarity of the Second World War constitutes the main reference of human evil that must be averted and international organizations sought to affirm the right so that the conflagrations were kept in due proportion. Terrorism nullifies all of this.

Hamas terrorism generated perplexity in most of the world, but also approval by groups that identify with its actions and causes. Among these, those that promote narcoculture in Mexico can be highlighted. Indeed, terrorism and drug trafficking can coincide, narcoterrorism in our country has reached disproportionate levels and the comparison with Arab fundamentalism is not extravagant. Homologation implies an explanation, an assumption of values. Terrorism is abusive, whether committed by Hamas or Mexican drug crime groups.

Actions similar to those carried out by Hamas are common in several spaces where Mexican narcoterrorists operate. The strength of the armed groups, the momentary and insurmountable impunity, the abuse that only represses and attacks, the overwhelming irrational justification. Those who identify Hamas with the Culiacanazo event simply recognize each other.

These types of events are representative of a current of thought that has come to be called “Wild Liberalism.” In Mexico, some groups of anarchist libertarians propose and admire this type of acracy. The closest case may be the Argentine presidential candidate Javier Milei and his anarcho-capitalism – with many sympathizers in the right-wing Mexican middle class. A pro-Nazi extreme right feasts on Hamas, but they forget that the philosophy of Ariosophy took the statist perspective to totalitarianism.

The Israeli State has the justified responsibility to protect its population and use the necessary means to achieve this. Despite everything, Israel has been responsible towards the Arab world and no one can say that there has been a lack of will to seek peace. The problem becomes the justification of a senseless freedom, without any responsibility to confront public order, to destroy the lives of ordinary and simple people. The situation in Israel shows the importance and necessity of the construction of political society, of the role of the State, which regulates uncertainty and contributes to the well-being of people. Societies need to structure their States and international relations increasingly imply the need for international organizations and rights that are respected.

These last years have witnessed a series of conflicts against which the immediate action of the State has saved human groups in different countries. The State as guarantor of public order and primary actor in international relations, recovers its role and importance. It is the monster to scare other monsters.

Various anarchist groups and imperialist actors may have influenced, as they did in the past, to generate the conflict between Hamas and Israel within a geographical area that also constitutes the scene of imperialist disputes and civilizational wars. Unlike states held hostage by Muslim terrorism and invisible power, the force of the State of Israel will effectively try to demolish the conspiracy to which it was subjected.

In any case, it is essential to rethink the debates on political liberalism to stop dogmatizing it and using it to justify almost anything or type of action. No form of savage liberalism finds justification, there are terrorists and criminals who put others at risk and the State has to confront them. If the State does not fulfill its functions, or is distracted and the groups of the civil population remain at the disposal of the state of nature, humanity would truly face extinction.

It seems like a trite and anachronistic idea for current times, but how valid it is and how urgent it is to implement it to avert global cataclysm.

Strengthening the State, promoting law, civic and fiscal responsibility do not seem to be characteristics of liberal culture; However, true liberalism begins by focusing on these types of elements to develop a minimal, although sufficient, State.

The student massacre in Mexico

 The student massacre in Mexico

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Mexican anti-communism is particularly reflected in the student repressions and the extermination of revolutionary guerrilla groups in the sixties and seventies of the last century, although it prevails against some symbolic rural guerrillas such as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. The student massacres were oriented by the fight against communism, the fight against the Soviets was financed by the United States in satellite governments such as the PRI regime. However, it is necessary not to lose sight of the climate of opinion and culture determined by actors such as the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) where the membership of various actors in the Mexican political system is recognized. The WACL now persists in organizations such as the World League for Freedom and Democracy or the Conservative Political Action Conference, and maintains Nazi rhetoric coming from Eastern Europe. The religious and neoliberal right flows as if the Soviet Union were everywhere.

Within the multiple hypotheses that articulate what happened in the Tlatelolco Massacre, some configure the intervention against the presidential succession, or the insertion of a ruler more than linked to the geopolitics of the United States. The truth is that, despite the radical distinction between the six-year terms of Díaz Ordaz and Echeverría, both characters were affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and were unceremoniously subject to what the White House imposed in Mexico. From a distance, both actors supported Washington.

How much does US-led anti-communism persist in our country? What are the true possibilities of geopolitical sovereignty of the Mexican Republic?

Antonio Velasco Piña interpreted the tragedy as a sacrifice that motivated the spiritual awakening of Mexicans; Probably the students of '68 constitute another grain of sand in the search for national freedom. The student massacre can also be seen as an indispensable sacrifice to stop the arbitrariness of the Aztec chief called the United States who, like his Nazi friends, never tires of asking for blood.