Son of a former Nazi officer, confessed Pinochet, anti-abortion and ultra-liberal, the far-right leader of Chile José Antonio Kast represented the hope of a beaten and defensive ideological sector, but it grew steadily driven by a strong anti-communist sentiment glimpsed throughout the electoral process. Although he likes to sell himself as an “outsider”, Kast is an old acquaintance in politics as he was a deputy for 16 years and tried to be president four years ago.
The arrival in Chile of his father, Michael Kast, at the end of World War II marked the beginning of a powerful political and business dynasty that produced several ministers during the dictatorship and democracy, and others dark characters accused of participating in interrogations and consultancies for the CNI, the secret police of the dictatorship.
Born in Santiago on January 18, 1966, lawyer and politician of the Republican Party of Chile and previously of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), he was a deputy for the Metropolitan Region between 2002 and 2018 and for the also metropolitan commune of Buin in the period 1996-2000. He is the uncle of Senator Felipe Kast, Deputy Pablo Kast and Councilor Bárbara Kast Sommerhoff, all representatives of the wide and heterogeneous arc of the Chilean right.
He completed his primary and secondary education at the German School and, later, he entered the Law School of the Pontificia Universidad Católica, where he graduated and was sworn in as a lawyer before the Supreme Court on August 19, 1991. During his career, he participated in the Student Center of the Law School, where He met the murdered ideologue of the dictatorship, Senator Jaime Guzmán, who motivated him to become a member of the UDI.
Presidential candidate in the elections of 2017 and now in those of 2021, Kast is a conspicuous representative of the new global, transgressive and reactionary far right. At 55 years old, constantly resorted during his campaign to the word “freedom”, circumscribed to the economic plane, while in the social plane proposes repealing the law that makes abortion possible and was one of the nine deputies who voted against the Civil Union Agreement for same-sex couples.
Furthermore, it promises that if he becomes president, he will eliminate gender language and close the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso), which he accuses of engaging in “political activism.” Proposes create a ditch in northern Chile to prevent the passage of immigrants and remove Chile from the UN Human Rights Council.
What’s more proposes an “international coordination against radical leftists” to “identify, arrest and judge radicalized agitators”, a kind of “renewed state of emergency” that would allow the interception, opening or recording of documents and all kinds of communications and arresting people in their own homes or in places other than prisons.
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