Three important notes about this file

2NC O/V

Claiming the debate space is political extends political significance to all personal actions

This leads to encroachment in the private sphere which is the foundation of fascism

Allows religion, culture, personal decisions to be publicly condemned

This empirically leads to theocracy, genocide, witch hunts which turn their exclusion claims and independently create mass suffering

The alternative is to vote negative to resist their overextension of the ballot and affirm debate as an arena free from fascist inspection

Fascism Link

Personal politics allows masses to be led into fascism and dictatorship- caudillos prove

Fitzgibbon 57- former prof of political science at UCLA (Russell, “The Party Potpourri in Latin America,” The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Mar., 1957), pp. 3-22//MGD)

In almost all other countries - though it is always dangerous to gen- eralize too dogmatically - the "parties" (and probably we are justified in putting the word in quotation marks) were so much the adjunct of per- sonalism in politics, were individually so dependent on the career of the single person whose property they constituted, that to think of them as operating on the same basis as our Federalists and Republicans, our Whigs and Democrats and again Republicans, is entirely misleading. In our own party history we have little to compare to this very prevalent picture of nineteenth-century Latin-American parties unless it be the brief "period of personal politics" which followed the War of 1812. Those few years repre- sented an anomaly in United States party development; the same phenome- non was far from atypical in Latin America. If most Latin-American parties very largely lacked the organizational characteristics of those in the United States or Britain, they certainly far surpassed them in the role played by the individual leader. This was the omnipresent and often glamorous caudillo. The word cannot well be translated into English-it loses so much of overtone and color in the process. It is true that the caudillo had some elements of the party boss in Jersey City or Chicago or Kansas City or Memphis, but he was and is significantly different from a Hague or a Kelly or a Pendergast or a Crump. The latter breed usually avoided the limelight and frequently operated deviously; the caudillo as often gloried in every lumen of calcium glare he could command. He was a man on horseback, a man whose gaudy uniform had to be ample to accommodate all the medals, ribbons, and braid which he either devised for himself or exchanged prodigally with his fellow caudillos. The caudillo's European cousin, the dictator, says Neumann, "is responsible to no man but to God and the nation (who are conveniently removed from any direct interference), and in his very irresponsibility he is revered by the emotional, rootless, and amorphous masses seeking mystery, devotion, and the miraculous." 10 The party was largely incidental in the power structure erected by the caudillo. So completely did he dominate it that it often took its popular designation from his name, family or Christian: thus we have the Peronistas (in this case a legal as well as a popular name), the Monttvaristas, Arnulf- istas, and many others.l1 Even in a country where party stability probably exceeds that of any other in Latin America - Uruguay - the major parties, or at least the leading wings of them, are known as Batllistas and Herreristas as commonly as they are called Colorados and Blancos. We have very little in United States experience which can provide a counterpart for the Latin- American caudillo. Possibly the closest example would be Huey Long, who for a number of years operated as the erratic, publicity-seeking, strong- willed, egocentric owner of the Democratic party in Louisiana. But the Democratic party in Louisiana did not disintegrate with Long's removal from the scene and in that way it differed from many caudillo-dominated parties in Latin America. In this latter aspect our best example, and indeed one of only a few illustrations, would be found in the relationship of Theo- dore Roosevelt to the short-lived Progressive party which followed him on his brief crusade to Armageddon with something of the fanatic fervor of a caudillo's party in Latin America. If we search for the nature of the bond which links the member of this kind of party to its leader, i.e., the caudillo, we must look beyond the sorts of linkages which would be familiar in this or various other countries in determining party membership, e.g., the promise of political patronage or electoral support or business concessions, the fact that it is socially or region- ally comme il faut to belong to one party or another, even the irrational reason that one's father belonged to the same party. It is in the subtle area of the charismatic appeal of the caudillo to his followers that much of the Latin-American political affinity is to be explained. The bemedaled uniform and the constant and effective use of political symbols doubtless exercise at least a mild mesmerism over those who fall especially within the visual range of the party leader. If to such attractions the jefe can add the oratori- cal arts of the demagogue he often becomes irresistible. An Ecuadorian opponent of Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra once testified: I was violently opposed to his policies and uniformly voted against them. One day, how- ever, President Velasco Ibarra came to congress to deliver personally a message urging passage of one of his projects.... Never before had I heard such a speech! When it was finished the president and congress were unashamedly in tears, and we stood up and voted unanimously for his bill. . . . On my way home, I scolded myself many times, for I had been a fool, such a fool, to vote for his insane measure! 12 Max Weber perhaps best analyzes the nature of the relationship when he writes that the leader's charismatic claim breaks down if his mission is not recognized by those to whom he feels he has been sent.... He does not derive his "right" from their will, in the manner of an election. Rather, the reverse holds: it is the duty of those to whom he addresses his mission to recognize him as their charismatically qualified leader . . . Pure charisma does not know any "legitimacy" other than that flowing from personal strength, that is, one which is constantly being proved. The charismatic hero does not deduce his authority from codes and statutes . . . nor does he deduce his authority from traditional custom or feudal vows of faith. . .. The charismatic leader gains and maintains authority solely by proving his strength in life.... If [his followers] do not fare well, he is obviously not the master sent by the gods.1" Weber doubtless wrote those phrases without the Latin-American political landscape in mind but they admirably describe the relationship which even yet exists between the caudillo and his "party" or following. Michels also well described, more than forty years ago, the phenomenon of charismatic party leadership.14 By long psychologic conditioning the man in the ranks, despite his own individualism, is attuned to accept uncritically the personal leadership of a magnetic caudillo. To borrow the title of a popular television program, it is a "person to person" relationship. "In this respect," a Latin-American writer well puts it, "the masses possess a rare feminine sense. From initial admiration they pass easily to adherence and obedience, and from there to unconditional submission. The chief or leader or caudillo then becomes an oracle, and on occasion is invested with almost divine attributes." 15 After death he is occasionally politically canonized, as witness Rosas and Evita Per6n in Argentina, Saravia in Uruguay, and various others.16
Individual politics comes at a direct tradeoff with rational government

Fitzgibbon 57- former prof of political science at UCLA (Russell, “The Party Potpourri in Latin America,” The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Mar., 1957), pp. 3-22//MGD)

Why did a reasonable facsimile of a biparty system persist through much of the nineteenth century in Colombia, Uruguay, and Chile? The question is much easier to ask than to answer. In all three countries political issues early arose which cut much more deeply than in most of the Latin-Ameri- can states. In Colombia and Chile at an early date and in Uruguay after the advent of Batlle at the end of the century these issues were intensified by valid and significant socioeconomic differences between parties. The three countries went further than most in perfecting and extending down- ward a systematic development of party machinery. Personalism, though not obliterated, gave way in degree to the discipline of ideology and organiza- tion. And, as Weber puts it, "It is the fate of charisma, whenever it comes into the permanent institutions of a community, to give way to powers of tradition or of rational socialization. This waning of charisma generally indicates the diminishing importance of individual action. And of all those powers that lessen the importance of individual action, the most irresistible is rational discipline." 18