(This interview is published 11 years after its first publication. If today, 2025, I had to answer these same questions, I would make some minor corrections. JM)

What Democracies Does the New Cold War Promise?

Suddenly, the world changed, not once, but several times. Dissident spies, countries annexing pieces of others, unstoppable internal conflicts. A dialogue with Jorge Majfud.

https://www.mdzol.com/mundo/2014/3/29/que-democracias-nos-promete-la-nueva-guerra-fria-917537.html

“The worst thing that can happen to a democracy is to leave politics in the hands of politicians.” This phrase is provocatively uttered from his office at Jacksonville University in the United States by Jorge Majfud, the Uruguayan and one of the most prominent writers of Latin American origin in that country. So much so that he is among the finalists for this year’s most important award: the International Latino Book Awards.

Majfud is an architect, but he also holds a master’s degree in literature and a doctorate in Philosophy and Letters. And it is the latter, along with literature, that has left its mark on him. Translator and prologue writer for academics such as Noam Chomsky have left him reserved for a niche of the reading public, although he has been able to reach larger audiences with his columns in Milenio (Mexico), La República (Uruguay), Cambio 16 and La Vanguardia (Spain), Courier International de Paris (France), Political Affairs and The Huffington Post in New York, Jornada in Bolivia, El Nuevo Herald in Miami, Página/12 in Buenos Aires, and—why not say it—MDZ, where his writing and his words have not gone unnoticed.

But in recent months, there has been a lull in his media presence. Precisely when—in any case—it was most “needed,” so to speak, to decode a reality that the media often strives not to analyze, but instead acts as (often distorted) mirrors of other media.

Launched at a time when governments are so prevalent that they are overthrown in the same way, before their time; when some countries openly decide what will happen tomorrow inside another, and when the world order is disrupted by off-the-schedule geopolitical moves, we embraced it to tempt you to delve deeper into the present, knowing that the result of the discussion will never be the hypnotization of the reader, but rather a kick toward critical thinking.

Gabriel Conte: It’s been a while since we last read your columns in the newspapers…

Jorge Majfud: When I learned that 85 people in the world owned the same wealth as half the world’s population, I realized that everything had been said. Since I never wanted to be rich, I would be indifferent to this fact if those who are dying to be rich stopped governing us.

GC: Is it ironic?

JM: A little. But it’s also true.

GC: How do “the rich” govern us?

JM: More than the rich, who are now almost the new proletarians, the mega-rich, the corporations, which is a new paradox, since if in the Renaissance money meant the end of the aristocracy and its class and blood privileges, today that same money has created a neo-feudalism where corporations are closed duchies and principalities, with some highly publicized exceptions, obviously. Now, if you look at the disproportionate ownership of money, you’ll realize who has the power to dictate narratives and who just wastes their time replicating them. It’s a dialectical exercise, similar to the tournaments held in ancient Greece. Pure dialectical sport. Lately, I’ve become disenchanted with the possibilities of this kind of struggle. I’ll probably return, because it’s not easy to kick a bad habit, but I don’t think I’m the same optimistic young man I was a few decades ago. On the other hand, I’m also a little disenchanted with how the “football mentality” dominates dialectical disputes. Some take one side and others the other, and everything they read or say serves to defend their ideas and not to question their own.

Although I admire José Martí, I don’t agree with his optimism that “trenches of ideas are worth more than trenches of stone.” Yes, they are worth more, but how much harm they also cause.

GC: Can one still believe in politics?

JM: That question contains an epistemological assumption older than Amenophis IV: truth exists and is unique. In politics, there are no truths, there are interests. Of course, we can also measure it from a moral point of view. Therefore, that question must be answered yes and no. While politics is a fundamental area of ​​human existence, few things are more superficial than political opinions.

Worse: we can see that there is still a strong intoxication of politics in many countries, such as Venezuela or the United States, which is as deadly as radical indifference.

Now, beyond all relativism, we can think that there must be a few fixed points, such as tolerance, something that is so lacking today in so many parts of the world. If it’s not political hatred, then it’s religious hatred, sports hatred, or national hatred, which lately has been reduced to measuring the size of the GDP. While a few benefit from so much hatred, the rest practice it: some ideas and passions serve private corporations, others serve the current leaders. Everyone, always, has understandable excuses to stay in power.

GC: Where are we headed in politics, then?

JM: In the 1990s, against the neoliberal wave that celebrated the defeat of the weak, I believed that history was moving from representative democracy to direct democracy. In 2003, the option still seemed to me to be ongoing, although I continued to publish that, after a major economic and systemic crisis resulting from the war in Iraq and social movements of disobedience, humanity would debate between more democracy or more state control. For some obscure reason, I still believe we are heading toward greater direct democracy, but the present seems to contradict my prediction and, on the contrary, shows us a strong advance of non-traditional totalitarianisms.

GC: Democracy isn’t just about voting. From time to time, dictator Stroessner used plebiscites to legitimize himself. In North Korea and China, as in Cuba, there are “elections,” although not multiparty. What quality would this “direct democracy” you speak of be? At the very local level? Would it return to an opportunistic dialogue with the masses to endorse decisions? What will become of the political party system?

JM: Cuba had a revolution in the 1960s, one of the most important of the 20th century. Today it’s merely a conservative regime, clinging to a religion. By direct democracy, I meant the possibility of immediate decision-making by the people, or at least not conditioned by electoral cycles. Representatives no longer represent anything more than a tradition, like kings in old Europe. They are remnants of historical inertia.

However, the maturity of the Disobedient Society is much further away than I thought twenty years ago. Its main instruments, the communication networks, are still not truly democratic tools; they are still toys.

I say “still,” as a glimmer of optimism…

GC: For example?

JM: …Like the financial totalitarianism of Western democracies (or whatever they’re called, although I prefer a democracy in quotation marks to a dictatorship with a capital D), such as the astronomical control of the hypergovernment of the United States due to new technologies, completely at odds with its founding values. Like the less abstract authoritarianism of partisan or personalist governments like those of China and Russia, or the personalist clumsiness of Maduro in Venezuela, etc.

GC: Is the United States heading toward a form of totalitarianism?

JM: In many ways it already is, although in others we still have something called laws that, fortunately, are the last resort of those without power.

Like the ancient Athens of Pericles, it is a democracy within its borders and an arrogant power beyond its borders. Of course, just as the Athenians themselves used to justify the complaints of Sparta and other nations by saying, “You complain because you can’t do it like we can,” any other option would be the same. Or worse, if we consider a China or a Russia with the same capacity to create and destroy as the United States. But the latter is pure speculation.

GC: Has American society become more radical?

JM: No. At least from a humanistic point of view, society is less fundamentalist than it was in the 1950s and even in the 1980s. The true nature of this country, which consists of an immense diversity, is now much more accepted. Personally, this is the characteristic I find most fascinating about this country: its infinite diversity, that fertile obviousness that is so difficult to see from the outside. But if we are to judge the popular sentiments that emerge from its social narratives, perhaps we can abuse an aphorism and say that there are two types of people who hate the enormous diversity of the United States: one is anti-American; The others are the Americans… those nationalists who, in every country, pretend to pass themselves off as true citizens. Now, when I talk about totalitarianism in the United States, I’m not referring to society, perhaps not even to the government in power, but to the mega-corporations and the systems of control exercised by the government apparatus: control of individuals, violation of their privacy, control of social narratives, etc. Like all totalitarianism, it’s not total. Except for this paradoxical product of such a diverse and complex country. The mere fact that we can criticize it is a sign that proves it, I think.

GC: In other words, it’s still a country of laws.

JM: Yes. However, corporations and lobbies manage very well to ensure that laws are not an obstacle, that is, to extend their powers without having to violate written laws. For example, while the almost infinite capacity of the NSA, a government agency superior to any imaginary Big Brother, may be considered illegal from some perspectives, or at least questionable from a constitutional or moral standpoint, the overwhelming power of corporations over public opinion is perfectly legal. The problem is that the solutions to limit this private power have consisted, at least in the experience of other countries like Venezuela, in the abuse of state power, which has not solved the problem but has created others. In Venezuela, radicalized to its detriment, one party or another can challenge traditional families, the owners of the major media, for the power to create “public opinion” through the ill-advised methods of conflict and proscription. On the contrary, governments should foster dissent and individual freedom (the only real freedom) in all their possible forms.

To this end, I would insist on something I have repeated for years: the worst thing that can happen to a democracy is to leave politics in the hands of politicians. A government must welcome criticism and protest, if necessary, and try to integrate dissidents, who are always and should always be part of society.

Perhaps Uruguay is one of those concrete examples of political tolerance on our continent. We can discuss everything, we can question everything, but in a democracy, tolerance is the only possible political truth.

GC: American intellectuals always talk about “corporations,” but could you be more precise, for example, about how these groups supposedly operate?

JM: It’s very simple: they don’t need to own any media outlets. They just need to be the main advertisers. For example, if I own the largest soap factory in my town and the newspaper and all its workers, journalists, and other employees depend on my ads, surely none of them would investigate my business, nor would their columnists insist every week on attacking my political ideas. That, more or less, is what happens on a large scale in the developed world today. Newspapers used to be more independent because they lived off their copy sales, but today that income is minimal, if not symbolic.

GC: Where is politics headed in the United States?

JM: I fear the United States is heading toward ethnic politics, at least at the partisan level. From a humanistic and democratic perspective, it makes no sense to predict political preferences simply by looking at a person’s skin color or place of residence, but the concrete fact is that this is currently the case. Previously, this predictability stemmed primarily from social class. To a certain extent, hatred in Latin America remains class-based, but above all, it is ideological hatred, a substitute for the past religious hatreds of Europe, which, for its part, has turned to nationalist disputes.

In other words, Latin America has stagnated in the 20th century, Europe has regressed to the Modern Era of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the United States is heading, as always, toward breaking down all barriers and practicing a Dark Ages politics and, in a few years, a caveman politics, where ethnicity is more important than religious and ideological superstitions. Be that as it may, the antidote to avoid catastrophe is based on the innovation introduced by the humanists of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment of the Modern Age: tolerance of diversity, if not recognition of its constitutional nature.

GC: What is the model to follow in the world?

JM: Perhaps there shouldn’t be a model. Perhaps a historical tendency, perhaps a natural condition of human beings, which would be summed up in anarchy. However, although humanity has made great strides toward this utopia over the last nine hundred years, it remains a utopia and will probably remain so forever. The balance, then, lies in the greatest possible individual freedom and the minimum authority and control by a minority group, be it the State or private corporations, which so closely resemble the principalities of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

GC: From your point of view, are we heading toward a new bipolarity with a “cold war” between the US and Europe against Russia, Chavista America, Iran, and China?

JM: A neo-Cold War has already existed for some time.

To some extent, Russia resembles the humiliated Germany of the interwar period: a former empire in the most ancient style of annexing territories experiencing a nationalist revival. On the other hand, the Western powers are doing their usual business, albeit with some risks, as is the case in Europe. For the United States, despite the criticisms that conservatives level at Obama, the situation is much more favorable than it seems. It represents the perfect excuse to take part in another of the Eastern European countries, torn apart by the interests of opposing powers. As I wrote more than a decade ago, the Arab countries and the Persian Gulf are nothing more than a distraction in a broader conflict: the United States and Europe on one side, and China and Russia on the other. But I wouldn’t say bipolarity, although the human mind always tends toward confrontations between bipolar parties. I would say multipolarity with dominant powers.

GC: A few days ago, I reviewed the think tank forecasts for 2014. The one that received the most press at the end of 2013 didn’t say a word about Ukraine, except for what it saw at the time: “an internal crisis.” Could it be that the world is more unpredictable due to the speed with which strategies collapse and secret data is disseminated thanks to people like Assange or Snowden? Or that “everything is out of control”?

JM: The world isn’t unpredictable, but its complexity is so vast that no one can foresee everything. It’s always been that way. However, the situation in Ukraine isn’t so serious. Everyone is doing big business, except the Ukrainians, which is part of a historical pattern, especially in the region.

When have world powers not taken advantage of interventions in Eastern European countries? It has been happening for centuries and will continue to happen.

https://www.mdzol.com/mundo/2014/3/29/que-democracias-nos-promete-la-nueva-guerra-fria-917537.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20241227131331/https://www.mdzol.com/mundo/2014/3/29/que-democracias-nos-promete-la-nueva-guerra-fria-917537.html

Ideology and Intervention: A Critical Review of Jorge Majfud’s The Wild Frontier