Foreword

Argentina offers a unique vantage point on the geography of the contemporary far right, which seems to be creeping its way across the planet in an expansive and unpredictable wave, announcing a change of era.The articles in this Currents shed light on some of the conditions that made the Argentine libertarian experiment possible and some of its consequences.This process of accelerating shifts in the social, political, economic, and cultural spaces mirrors global transformations underway, allowing broad analysis of contemporary political trends.A culture war synergistically fueled by a spiral of polarization that creates political sensibilities in new actors and activates previously unseen forms of rebellion, nurtured by anti-wokeness, denialism, anti-scientificism, and anti-intellectualism.A disruption of systems of checks and balances that puts into question the continuity of a form of collective life that could still be called democratic.Digitalization and the consequent fragmentation of public space.A furious affirmation of a white patriarchal order, along with the rejection of identity, gender, and human rights.The legitimization of state violence, particularly directed at "internal enemies," political opponents, or immigrants.New ways of organizing labor markets combined with an unprecedented concentration of wealth, the intensification of extractivism, the massification of precarity, and a social organization that simultaneously dissolves egalitarian aspirations and generates expectations of horizontality by challenging traditional political elites.Paradoxically, there is also the spread of hopes for prosperity, feelings wrapped in an atmosphere of exception, as well as looming catastrophes or diffuse redemptions tinged with a millenarian undertone.