Santiago Gerchunoff: Provincianismo histórico, el insulto fascista, la hiperpoliticidad y otras cosa

Santiago Gerchunoff writes short books that spark considerable debate. “Ironía On” (2019) explored the phenomenon of mass public discourse and introduced original and powerful concepts such as historical provincialism, which is the belief that one lives in a particularly tragic era. His most recent work, “Un detalle siniestro en el uso de la palabra fascismo” (A Sinister Detail in the Use of the Word Fascism), analyzes the current tendency to emotionally employ the adjective “fascist” against political adversaries and unravels the underlying philosophy of history. Santiago was born in Buenos Aires in 1977. He has lived in Madrid since 1997. He currently teaches Political Theory at Carlos III University. He has also worked as a bookseller and editor. We spoke with him about the pronunciation of the surname Gerchunoff; historical provincialism; classification as the origin of philosophy; comparing Spain and Argentina; ethnocentrism and the concept of original provincialism; pessimism and technological change; and the emotional impact of the fascist insult. On the antifascist lineage; on the seriousness of the historical discipline; on the poem of the false Bertolt Brecht; on the purpose of history; on Milei's journey and Trump's rally; on the nature of mass public discourse; on what it means to live with irony; on depressive sociology; on excessive politicization; on the problem of the liberal apparatus, and other related topics. The following are mentioned in the chapter: Philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Giambattista Vico, G.W.F. Hegel, Søren Kierkegaard, Wilhelm Dilthey, Carl Schmitt, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Mancur Olson, Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, Richard Rorty. Books: “What is Enlightenment?” by Immanuel Kant “The Far Right in Europe” by Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg “The Lonely Crowd” by David Riesman “The Fall of Public Man” by Richard Sennett “Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity” by Richard Rorty Bertolt Brecht—the poem about “first they came for the Jews…”—clarifies that it is not actually by Brecht (a dubious attribution he uses as the central theme of the first book) Films: “The New Yorker Turns 100” (2025, Marshall Curry) “Tintin and the Temple of the Sun” (1969, Eddie Lateste) Three books recommended by Santiago to understand our times: 1- “The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow 2- “The Gutenberg Galaxy” by Marshall McLuhan 3- “Is There Anything That Is Not "in crisis?", edited by Carlos Huffmann and Tomás Borovinsky