Why Has Chile Embraced the Extremes?
Many Chileans are frightened, and others are angry – not least because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing economic squeeze. But the political failures of the center-left also help to explain why the far right and the far left will contest the second round of the country’s presidential election.
LONDON – When candidates from the far right and the far left advance to the second round of a presidential election, one is tempted to quote William Butler Yeats’s famous line, “things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” But to understand Chile’s current presidential contest, Vladimir Lenin, who called left-wing communism “an infantile disorder,” is a better guide.