Jorge Fernández Díaz at the Book Fair: "Kirchnerism has allowed me to fight against my own imbecility"

As part of
the activities presented by LA NACION in the

Book Fair

, Jorge Fernandez Díaz was interviewed yesterday in a Victoria Ocampo play that was waiting for him early and he applauded, laughed and was excited by his definitions. The journalist and writer expressed himself without restriction as to the relationship between office and power; He recounted the struggle with his father at first, differentiated the government's communication of Cambiemos from politics, explained that his role as a writer had to do with a personal and cultural battle against Kirchnerism that he had decided to lead.

To think, think, badyze, are actions to which Fernández Díaz is always ready. One of the most telling moments of the conference was when he spoke of his personal and cultural battle to represent Argentine thought, to exercise from his space, from his writer's office, a kind of resistance. But before that, he remembered his early writing and his two worlds: literature and journalism.

– How was it possible to take these two pbadions, that of writer and journalist, of parallel form and succeed in succeeding in both?

– At age 12, my mother offered me the Robin Hood collection; He had this intuition, this lucidity, he knew that it was important that I be a reader. In addition to m 'accompany me in a ritual that consisted of seeing the movies of Super Action and Hollywood in Spanish. I was able to watch five movies, some bad and others, masterpieces. At one point, I realized, thanks to a friend, that I could write movies, novels.

-And journalism, how does it happen?

-At the age of 18, I realized that it was the closest thing to literature, that you were paid to write. Although it was a big disappointment for my father, who dreamed of being a lawyer or a doctor and who said that journalism was a vague profession. It has left us behind for seven years. I could not talk to him about anything other than football.

-When did you reconcile?

-I went to work in La Razón and became a police reporter; the greatest journalists did not want to go see the corpses and for me it was the happiest moment. I read a detective story and worked in these cases. Until I realized that in journalism we could not tell the truth, we could not prove certain things. For example: the operation of the football mafia, the industry of extortion kidnappings. As I could not rely on the weapons of journalism, I proposed to do it with the weapons of literature and I started writing serialized series that were published daily in the newspaper next to l & # 39; news. There begins the embryo, the link between journalism and literature. One afternoon, my dad – who was barman at ABC Bar in Canning and Córdobam – called and said, "I'm going to ask you a question, do you want to get the money back ? " I had just finished a story with a reporter who had money for an abduction and who left the bag on the floor, it was stolen and it was the end of the chapter. "Why are you asking daddy?" I said. "Because everyone is reading here and that they are very nervous about what will happen tomorrow." Tears came to me at that moment. The literature that separated us united us.

-Name of the reissue of
The man who invented it (planet),
Why was it necessary to reread the history of journalism through the history of Bernardo Neustadt? What values ​​need to be redesigned?

-Neustadt was a great journalist beyond his terrible sins. The cynicism of Neustadt was also badociated with his pbadion for Argentina. He had 30 rating points and we saw him hate, but we saw him. It was a time when journalism had to offer pluralism because people could not access different voices. Today, pluralism is armed by oneself, with networks, different voices.

– How do you see today this type of mechanism enshrined between journalism and politics?

-This occurs when a journalist is very much heard by the power. Some intellectuals and journalists are tempted to tell the president what to do. When you cross this line, you become an operator.

– A media lobby that is not easy to demonstrate, like corruption, when we talk so much about poor government communication, are we talking about breaking up a certain journalism lobby with power or is it real that the government communicates badly?

– I believe that the government does not believe in the intervention in the public debate, that it should not refute the outstanding stories, the lies that are erected in truth. Believe that common sense is built on social networks, on Facebook. For example, Sergio Mbada said: "It is a rich government for rich," repeat reporters and the government believes that it is not necessary to go out to discuss this sentence. This is not a communication problem, it is a policy problem. Politics is made with arguments that have always been more dangerous than bullets. Thanks to the arguments, there was nationalism, fascism, democracy, liberalism. By giving up the arguments, the government is giving up a fundamental element of the policy. Now the irreducible failure is installed and, in fact, economically it has failed: the Kirchner, Duhalde, Menem, De La Rua, until Alfonsin. It is settled that we are in 2001 and the government does not come out to refute.

-There is a cultural battle that you release permanently and that concerns your past as part of the left and your permanent work to unmask Peronism.

-I started writing columns in LA NACION seven years ago. It is a column of ideas, argumentation. I do it from the library of my house. I think that thinking is harder than informing. It started when I heard that Néstor Kirchner had told Máximo, while drinking a whiskey: "We won the cultural battle". They were the homeland after the bicentennial. When I heard that, I thought, "I'm not going to make it easy, I'm going to give my cultural battle as well."

– Your cultural battle seeks to thwart the Kirchner's ideas or to put forward other values ​​that seem more noble?

-When I was 20, I not only broke my father's heart by going to literature and journalism, but I also joined the national left of Jorge Abelardo Ramos, who was supporting leftist peronism. I read Sebreli and Abelardo Ramos. It was the antithesis, two great writers. Kirchnerism has allowed me to fight against my own imbecility. I admit that I was a fool. I think it's a personal affair rather than a professional one. Argentina far exceeds my profession.

And Peronism?

–
It's a personal battle against Perón who seems to me a malicious genius of politics. This is not a normal country. In a normal country, if one government succeeds badly, another arrives and normal alternation occurs. In Portugal, for example, of which the Kirchnerists and Mbada speak, the Socialists have made a considerable adjustment. They voted this punishment and they left. Another government came and continued to make the adjustment. Then comes a third and only then can you see prosperity. Argentina wants to go to paradise without paying the costs. If Perón had not been sent to Italy in 38 and in England, instead of Mussolini, he would have known Churchil and we would be today Australia. When someone says you need to change the word fit for the word development, I think they take us for fools.

-How can you change this matrix?

-I think we are still playing this championship in Argentina with the rules written by Perón. He put the bows, the rules, he tipped the court, he's a great political writer that's worth discussing.

– Do we all have a Peronist way of thinking?

– I would say to Macri today that he is a little Peronist with the essential prices, he would not believe in the gentlemen's agreement. I'm sending the AFIP to those who avoid the essential prices. It's a peronist boot. If he did, Macri would criticize him. Non-Peronism comes with the idea of ​​being Republican, respectful, in a country infected with corruption.

– Is it possible to come back on the road?

-It seemed that Macri could, I'm not so sure now.

– What was the importance of the cause of the revealed notebooks? Is there a fear of seeing them disappear? Is there an operation to reverse the cause?

This is very important, but for some it seems catastrophic. For those of us who believe in public transparency, it is a necessary suffering.

-He would have turned around if the cause of the notebooks fell?

– If the Kirchnerism comes back, the notebooks are going to be in no matter what, the prisoners will leave as in the 73 and they will receive them like heroes.

– Does Argentina have a way out if it denies corruption?

-If the Kirchnerismo comes back, we have no exit for a long time.