On 19 November 2023, Argentina elected a president, Javier Milei, who openly declares himself an anticommunist who views Marxism as the root of many of the country’s and the contemporary world’s problems. Milei defines his political activism as part of the struggle against ‘cultural Marxism’, a term that encompasses everything from feminism to the defence of human rights and environmentalism. Along with him, his intellectual supporters argue with great virulence that socialism is a scourge of humanity and must be eradicated.
In Latin America, the conspiratorial invocation of cultural Marxism has a regional antecedent in former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro (Robinson, 2019). Indeed, on a global scale, the revival of paranoia against ‘communist danger’ accompanied the restrictions imposed by many states in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These public health measures were denounced in various parts of the world as the disciplinary actions of a totalitarian regime; such a position went hand in hand with denying the seriousness of the disease and, at times, even the roundness of the Earth. Thus, globally, the denunciation of communism as the universal culprit reappeared with fierce intensity in 2020, in a context of great fear and uncertainty, when the entire social order seemed in peril.
Why does an ultraliberal, free-market fanatic like Milei need to invoke Marxism to question gender policies? Why does accusing a political authority of being communist effectively challenge its attempts to regulate foreign trade? In short, why have Red Scares been, for more than a century, at the centre of political and social discourse in Argentina? Why do they seem so socially effective and potent? What has Argentine anticommunism represented in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries?
This book explores these questions based on a conviction it hopes to convey to its readers: that anticommunism has had – and still appears to have – a far more significant place in Argentine political life than is generally assumed. Throughout the twentieth century, anticommunism permeated the country’s practices, discourses and ways of understanding social conflict; it shaped the design and implementation of public policies; it significantly influenced different social and political actors; it defined and persecuted enemies, and led to extreme forms of political conflict. As a political phenomenon, it underpins much of the violence experienced during the most critical periods of Argentina’s history, such as the last military dictatorship (1976–83).
Anticommunism has been studied in several countries but has received little attention in the social sciences in Argentina.1 To a large extent, this neglect is due to the scant weight of the Communist Party in Argentina, which has had very little influence and almost no electoral support, except at certain times and in certain places. This contrasts with the significant role that communism has played in Uruguay and Chile, for instance. For this reason, Argentine anticommunism has remained largely invisible as a political phenomenon and has only attracted the interest of those researching specific periods, such as the 1930s, or particular issues, such as the military doctrines of the 1970s. In addition, its impact has been relatively obscured by the weight of other political and party tensions in Argentina, such as the conflict between conservatives and the Radical Civic Union (Unión Cívica Radical) (UCR) in the first third of the century, or that between Peronists and anti-Peronists in the following decades. For this reason, this volume seeks to highlight the historical significance of the phenomenon and its various dimensions.
Our first aim is to demonstrate the continuity of anticommunism as a long-term phenomenon with far-reaching effects on Argentine history. Such an understanding of its omnipresence and importance allows us to view various political developments of the century in a different light. The severity of many of these – such as the antiworker and antisemitic massacre during the Tragic Week of 1919, or the dictatorship of the Argentine Revolution (1966–73) – can only be explained by a visceral fear of social disorder that had been built up over time. Moreover, the persistence of anticommunist practices and representations clearly reveals certain continuities between the first and second halves of the twentieth century. This perspective enables us to move beyond the common idea that the fall of the Peronist government in 1955 constituted a real watershed, and that the century can be separated into two very different halves in terms of conflict and political violence.
Our second aim is to show that Argentine anticommunism is both a local and a global phenomenon. Many of the country’s bitter conflicts were not only the result of internal tensions but were also perceived and reframed in the light of post-1946 global dynamics, such as the Cold War. Argentine anticommunists were able to articulate and resignify local tensions within an international context, as well as to identify domestic actors with global concerns, identities and problems. This obliges us to adopt a periodisation attentive to these two main scenarios: on the one hand, the international order – the impact of the Russian Revolution, the rise of fascism, the two world wars, the Cold War, the Cuban Revolution, the end of the Soviet experiment, the rise to power of the extreme right at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and so on; and, on the other, the analysis of specific processes and conjunctures in Argentina that highlight different phases, practices and perspectives within the state, politics and civil society.
It is worth remembering that in Argentina, as in other parts of the world, there was also a left-wing anticommunism that was first nurtured by anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism, and later by reformist socialism, Trotskyism, Maoism and a segment of the Catholic world convinced that Stalinism was an enemy equal to or worse than capitalism. In this book, however, we will not deal with that anticommunist tradition, which focused heavily on criticism of the Communist Party, the Third International and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). This variant had some influence in the world of culture and was crucial to the formation of the so-called New Left of the 1960s, but its impact on the main directions and conflicts of national history has been very limited. The anticommunism at the heart of contemporary Argentine history does not originate from there, but from the right.
What do we mean by anticommunism? It is a varied but relatively stable set of social representations and political practices centred on the idea that the nation, its elites and the population as a whole are under threat. This threat is thought to come from an ideological ‘other’, loosely defined as Red, communist, Marxist, subversive, Bolshevik or left-wing. The subjects, groups or ideas thus defined are regarded as a danger to the continuity of the social and national order because they are believed to seek the imposition of a collectivist, authoritarian and/or totalitarian society associated with the ideological values of Marxism as represented by the USSR and comparable revolutionary experiences. In fact, anarchism – which preceded communism as a political force – was also considered a threatening ideology, and any perceived adherents were subjected to persistent persecution in what may be regarded as part of the wider phenomenon of anticommunism. From 1959 onwards, the Cuban Revolution also became part of that model in representing values so feared in the specific context of Latin America. Today, anticommunism is more complex and has varied focuses, although the rise of China as a global power provides a central point of attraction for the anticommunist imagination.
Anticommunist groups and ideologies have always established an unbridgeable moral distance between the existing order and the ‘Reds’. The latter were not merely considered illegitimate political actors or adversaries but outright enemies who endangered the survival of the social order. As Mercedes López Cantera points out, anticommunism expresses a set of Manichaean diagnoses of social conflict in each period, and these interpretations confront, in a direct and absolute manner, revolutionary attempts – real or potential – as well as the possibilities for change or questioning of the political, social or moral order (López Cantera, 2023: xxiii–xxxi).
Anticommunism is therefore a negative ideology, constituted through antagonism towards everything deemed communist. This is a key aspect in understanding the phenomenon, since in no country did anticommunism ever form a coherent corpus of specific positive ideas. Indeed, anticommunism is a movement characterised by heterogeneity (Berstein and Becker, 1987; Dard, 2025: 8). Anticommunists have no shared agreement on the society they would like to create or restore beyond a few very general commonalities, nor on the methodologies to confront communism (Patto Sá Motta, 2019). They have drawn upon diverse and even contradictory ideological sources, such as political or economic liberalism, fascism, ultramontane Catholicism, or corporatist trade unionism. Anticommunism has encompassed very different groups: businesspeople, priests, peasants, housewives, professionals and working-class men and women alike.
Does this general description apply to Argentina? In principle, yes – though with certain distinctive features. Anticommunist ideology has been a recurring presence in Argentina throughout its twentieth-century history and has persisted well into the twenty-first century. It has manifested in a variety of settings, sometimes diffusely and at other times quite explicitly, through public campaigns as well as through clandestine or covert activities. It has operated within both elected and dictatorial governments; across sectors of civil society and the state; within the police and security forces; among opposing political blocs; and within the judiciary and parliament, at both national and provincial levels. It has also found adherents among business leaders and intellectuals, in the press, within the Catholic Church, in numerous Catholic and Peronist trade unions, and across a wide range of social and professional organisations. Because of this heterogeneity and diversity of origins, anticommunist ideas and activities in Argentina were never fully coordinated. At best, anticommunists tended to compete with one another to demonstrate greater zeal, to display ideological purity and to attract the support and resources of those who stood to benefit from the persecution of communists.
The most striking feature of Argentine anticommunism is that which gives this book its title: Red ghosts. We suggest that communism – the enemy that anticommunists fear, exaggerate and persecute – represents a far greater threat in the realm of imagination than in political reality. The perceived communist menace has taken on different meanings and forms in each historical conjuncture. These are phantoms and fantasies, often little more than caricatures, constructed by anticommunists who identify in certain individuals, groups or activities the danger of the destruction of the capitalist order. This dynamic persists regardless of the fact that, at certain moments, revolutionary movements have held genuine political influence (as with the guerrilla organisations of the 1970s), or that the Communist Party once had a significant presence in the trade union movement, most notably in the 1930s. In every case, whatever its form or extent, anticommunism must be understood as a political phenomenon (López Cantera, 2023: xxxi), since its central purpose is to prevent what it perceives as the dissolution of the social order under threat.
It is essential to grasp the political and symbolic dimensions of anticommunism. The label communist evokes an immediate sense of danger – a persistent and pervasive threat – even when applied pejoratively to an extraordinarily wide range of people, groups or ideas. In some cases, these confrontations did involve explicitly communist groups, such as during the 1930s and 1940s, or the revolutionary left of the early 1970s. At other times, however, the targets – anarchists, Peronists, hippies, liberation priests, Keynesian economists, among others – neither were nor wished to be identified as communists. In other words, a conspiratorial reading of politics served to unify diverse and shifting social conflicts under a single imagined enemy.
The communism perceived by anticommunists thus appears as an ‘empty signifier’ (Laclau, 2005): fluid, adaptable and available for projection. It becomes a symbolic container for the changing fears of each era, an outline that can be filled with whatever social anxieties dominate the moment. Over time, it has been used against the threatening and the unfamiliar: workers and immigrants demanding fairer conditions, women seeking new political and social spaces, Peronists claiming the right to vote for their party, young people calling for greater freedoms, nuns choosing to live among the poor, left-wing movements, trade unions, environmentalists warning of climate change, and many more. In this sense, the label of communism serves as the automatic designation of evil upon what is seen as a foreign threat that infiltrates the nation and undermines its political, social or moral order.
We therefore use the term anticommunism in an analytical sense, to refer to a set of practices, identities and representations. As a category, it has rarely been used for self-identification. Nevertheless, at different times many groups did adopt the label – such as the Argentine Federation of Democratic Anticommunist Organisation (Federación Argentina de Entidades Democráticas Anticomunistas) (FAEDA) and the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Alianza Anticomunista Argentina) (Triple A). Yet many other organisations that we would unhesitatingly describe as anticommunist did not take on that name, identifying instead as nationalists, liberals, libertarians, defenders of order, Catholics or Peronists, to mention only a few. This suggests that anticommunism often functioned as a defining feature of an ideology or a movement, without necessarily forming the core of its identity. One could be a nationalist, Peronist or conservative and still harbour anticommunist convictions and anxieties without making them central to one’s political identification. In the 2020s, this dynamic has shifted: many figures on the far right now openly define themselves as anticommunist – ironically, at a time when communism itself has all but disappeared as a tangible political force.
At the same time, anticommunism was – and remains – a transnational ideology with multiple origins. The United States became a major source of anticommunist influence in Latin America from the 1940s onwards, but it was by no means the only one. The Vatican and the Catholic Church, both historically powerful in the region, also advanced their own interpretations of the dangers of Marxism and how it should be resisted. In addition, foreign and clandestine actors financed local anticommunist networks, from Allied embassies in 1919 to international coalitions such as the World Anticommunist League. Each of these contributed ideological material and organisational resources to Argentine anticommunists.
Although these international connections are undeniable, our concern lies in examining how such imported ideas were locally adapted and reinterpreted – whether through American or French military doctrines, or other transnational currents – since anticommunists, like communists, perceived national realities through their own ideological lenses. Ultimately, this book invites readers to reflect on anticommunism as a global phenomenon while remaining attentive to its particular inflections in Argentina.
To carry out this analysis, we focus on two interrelated dimensions. The first is the repressive dimension of anticommunism. Here we examine its most visible expressions: persecution; incitement to violence; repression in its many forms and intensities. Such repression was exercised by state agents, by paramilitary groups and by actors within civil society. The antisubversive doctrine and practice of the Armed Forces in the 1970s, or the paramilitary brigades of the Patriotic League – such as the one formed in the Province of Santa Cruz in 1922 – are among the clearest examples. In general, these actors justified their violence by invoking the notion of a foreign, communist or Marxist aggression that had to be repelled by exceptional means, since the nation’s very survival and social order were believed to be at risk. Yet anticommunism also expanded in a second direction – its integrative and productive dimension. This took shape through social, cultural and political initiatives designed to prevent the ‘contagion’ of communism, to reassure the hesitant and to persuade them of the virtues of capitalism and social harmony. In short, anticommunist forces developed public policies and disseminated propaganda that promoted common-sense ideas, sensibilities and worldviews rejecting the notion of class conflict. This did not always involve proposing an alternative ideology or political project, but rather to neutralise the appeal of the left among the wider population.
Repressive action sought to exclude and punish; preventive integration aimed to incorporate those deemed potentially susceptible to communist influence into the national community. These two dimensions coexisted and overlapped at different times and within different spheres of social life, varying in intensity according to circumstance. Both were driven by the state and by civil society. The state relied on legal – and often illegal – mechanisms whose coercive and punitive effects were central to its strategy. Such institutional and normative tools also contributed to the construction of negative alterities, defining the communist – or even the suspected communist – as a criminal and an enemy of the nation. In other less frequent instances, state actors leaned towards policies of social integration, motivated largely by a desire to wean the masses away from communist ideas. Within civil society, anticommunism circulated in more complex and nuanced ways, through preventive and integrative efforts aimed at shaping sociocultural life. Trade unions, businesses and religious, intellectual and student groups promoted anticommunist lifestyles, moral codes, discourse and forms of organisation. Yet there were also times when coercive and violent responses emerged from civil society itself – either through direct action or through calls for harsher state repression.
This volume aims to reach a broader audience interested in the history and contemporary political life of Argentina and Latin America – its tensions, ideologies and transformations. It is a work of synthesis, drawing on extensive research – both our own and that of colleagues – across the history of right-wing forces, the army, the Catholic Church, business groups, social and trade union movements, some governments, and ideological and intellectual currents.
The book comprises five chronological chapters that trace the shifting features of anticommunist representations and actors in Argentine history. The first chapter examines the opening decades of the twentieth century, particularly the period following the 1917 revolution in Tsarist Russia. It explores the emergence and spread of what was known as the Red Scare, and the rise of severe and disproportionate repressive responses to social conflicts between employers and workers – such as the Tragic Week of 1919 in Buenos Aires and the massacres in Patagonia during the summer of 1921–22.
The second chapter begins with the creation of the Special Section for the Repression of Communism within the Federal Capital Police in 1932, and it concludes with the formulation of the Plan of Internal Commotion of the State under President Arturo Frondizi in 1958. This period marks a turning point for the strong and lasting presence of anticommunism within the state apparatus across various governments – from that of Agustín Justo (1932–38), through the Peronist administration with its emphasis on social integration (1946–55), to Frondizi’s anti-Peronist radicalism.
The third chapter covers the years between 1958 and 1973, when local anti-Peronism and the Cold War’s obsessive anticommunism converged. These were the years when the impact of the Cuban Revolution stoked fear of a potential Marxist infiltration among political, social and military sectors.
The fourth chapter turns to the period that saw the greatest expansion of repressive practices, as dominated by the fear of Marxist subversion and an obsession with its eradication. This period began with the third Peronist government (1973–76) and culminated in the military dictatorship that unleashed an atrocious form of state terrorism (1976–83).
The fifth chapter addresses more recent manifestations of Argentine anticommunism, beginning with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the global rise of far-right movements and governments. Although this chapter deals with an ongoing phenomenon whose political and ideological trajectories remain uncertain, we identify notable continuities with earlier anticommunist waves.
In the concluding chapter, we draw together the distinctive characteristics of each of these periods, highlighting the persistence of anticommunism across time. We seek to demonstrate its central role in Argentine political conflict – how and why anticommunism has repeatedly surfaced in diverse conflicts, how it has constructed enemies deemed eliminable and, in many cases, how it has succeeded in eliminating them.