Enemies | Luis Rubio

Luis Rubio

When everyone is an enemy, no one is a friend. Thus began the end of terror in the French Revolution. Will the current Mexican government end the same? In 1793 the National Convention passed the Suspects Law that began the reign of terror. Ten months later, on the 8th of Thermidor, Robespierre denounced the existence of “enemies, conspirators and calumniators” and announced that a new purge of suspects would begin. Twenty-four hours later, all those suspects revolted against him and guillotined him in the Revolution Square, where more than two thousand people, including Louis XVI, had been executed. The systematic denunciation of enemies creates dynamics that later nobody can stop.

It is often difficult to determine when a chain process begins. Scholars of war, beginning with Clausewitz, try to find specific moments in which a decision unleashes a succession of circumstances, many of them stochastic, that end in war. Few examples are as clear as the First World War, an event that nobody wanted but that nobody did anything to stop. The conduct of a president in his day-to-day activity certainly does not qualify as something of the magnitude of a world war, but the mechanics of the process are similar. In colloquial terms, the question is Which is the straw that breaks the camel’s back?

Peña Nieto was already going badly when the corruption related to the so-called white house appeared and his government collapsed a few months later with the events in Ayotzinapa. No one at the beginning of 2014, the fateful year of that government, predicted such an outcome. López Portillo lost control of his government early in his sixth year, when he promised to “defend the peso like a dog.” Fox, who never controlled much, disappeared from the map when he asked “Why me?” regarding the unlawful actions by a supporter. Nobody knows when or how a process of deterioration begins and President López Obrador is extraordinarily astute to allow himself to be surprised, but in that chair, perspective and the floor are quickly lost.

In his daily monologue, the president uses the resource of confrontation and disqualification as a strategy to strengthen his political base. The assumption behind this process is that the president represents the population and, by confronting the “bad guys,” he magnifies the feelings (and resentments) of his political base to the level that it desires, thus reinforcing his sources of support and creating a virtuous circle. The discourse consists of “evidencing” various groups, people and organizations as traitors and enemies of the progress and development of the country, especially of the members of his own social base and the Fourth Transformation.

Attacking whom the president calls “fifi,” conservatives and neoliberals, to name some of his favorite categories, constitutes a platform to send messages, strengthen the base and maintain the climate of tension that, he assumes, will preserve the popularity and viability of his rule. In recent months he has been adding new lists to the catalog of enemies: he started with the “mafia of power” and then expanded it to include businessmen, former presidents, single mothers, parents and teachers. More recently he added the middle classes, the “aspirationists,” the civil organizations and now, the jewel of the crown, the UNAM, the National University. In his rhetoric there is no difference between one and the other: they are all enemies of his project because they are, in the end and in short, neoliberals.

In his invective, the president systematically expands the group of enemies, sweeping away growing portions of society and, what matters most to him, the electorate. Much of this is undoubtedly calculated, but it may also be the case that, given his success in maintaining a relatively high level of popularity, he finds it natural to move towards an ever-larger number of social groups that he despises, regardless of the way they voted in the recent midterms. Success breeds boldness and then hubris, the feeling that there is no limit, that everything is possible and nothing has a cost or consequence.

However, as with Robespierre, the question is what happens when members of his hard-core base begin to feel alluded to, leading them to join the ranks of the enemy? The attack on the middle classes after the midterm election was pure viscera: the president felt personally betrayed because that segment of the citizenry dared to join the ranks of his enemies. Instead of trying to understand the reason why that group, which voted overwhelmingly for Morena in 2018, changed its mind in 2021, the president set about attacking it. He has now potentially stepped into the void with his widespread and indiscriminate attack on the entire community of the national university. If there is a sector of society that voted en masse for him back in 2018, that was certainly his most recent victim.

His opponents will say that he should not be interrupted when he is making mistakes, but three years of lack of control would lead the country to total collapse. This is even more so when, in contrast with practically any of his recent predecessors, for whom the second half of their term was good or very good in economic terms, López Obrador has nothing to offer. Nobody knows when or how it begins, but no one should doubt it is coming.