In just two years, the National Libertarian Party has become the right-wing party with the most members in Chile, slightly exceeding 50,000. Its leader, Johannes Kaiser, found a niche on the extreme flank of President José Antonio Kast’s Republican Party. He broke away from the party during the 2023 constitutional referendum, opposing his faction’s negotiation with the left-wing administration of then-President Gabriel Boric (2022-2026).

Using rhetoric that’s nostalgic for the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), and with the anti-progressive culture war as its central tenet, it secured fourth place in the first round of the 2025 presidential elections and nine seats in the National Congress (Senator Vanessa Kaiser, Johannes Kaiser’s sister, was also elected).

The rapid emergence of this far-right party on the Chilean political scene prompted journalists Benjamín Bravo and Francisco Lucero to investigate the phenomenon. The investigation uncovered the family’s historical trajectory. It also looked at internal tensions within the party, its ties to the military, as well as its links to Javier Milei’s Argentina, among other findings. These have all been published in a book – translated from the Spanish as Johannes Kaiser and the National-Libertarians – which was presented in late August in Santiago, the Chilean capital.

The Kaiser family’s public account of their paternal grandfather’s arrival in Chile is that he escaped Nazi Germany and settled in the southern city of Villarrica. However, according to Bravo and Lucero’s research, this isn’t the case at all.

Federico Kaiser Richter was born on April 18, 1912, in Stuttgart, Germany. In 1933 – according to a membership record found in the United States National Archives – a Friedrich Kaiser, born in that same city, joined the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (SDAP)…in other words, the Nazi Party. Friedrich Kaiser was born just eight days after the birthdate that Johannes Kaiser gave to the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI) as being his grandfather’s birth date.

A year later, Friedrich Kaiser sailed to Chile, where he pursued a career in graphic arts and founded the Cervantes printing press. In 1942, he applied for Chilean citizenship, but Department 50 — a secret police unit tasked with investigating Nazi activities in Chile — informed the General Secretariat (the communications department for the government’s executive branch) that Kaiser was “a fervent supporter of the Nazi cause and a major propagandist of totalitarian ideas,” linking him to the dissemination of German propaganda via the Cervantes printing press. Furthermore, he appeared on two banking blacklists compiled by the United States against Nazi collaborators in Latin America.

In 1943 the government invoked Law 7401, which focused on national security, and decreed his forced relocation to the province of Curicó. Kaiser, who appealed the decision, unsuccessfully, would settle there. After lodging a defense in which he denied any Nazi affiliation and argued that he had moved to Chile for family and economic reasons, he obtained a transfer to Villarica, where his wife had relatives, but his relocation was mandatory, not voluntary.

Johannes Kaiser is often presented as a political outsider. But “there’s a historical trajectory of the Kaiser family’s pursuit of power,” Bravo points out. Johannes’ grandfather became mayor of Villarrica (supported, among others, by a nationalist group). His father Juan Cristián, a businessman, ran for Congress with the Party of the South, a right-wing regionalist party. He was unsuccessful at the polls, but he did serve as the party’s vice president in the early 1990s.

Juan Cristián Kaiser and Rosemarie Barends had six children: Johannes, Vanessa, Axel, Leif, Max and Etzel. The couple instilled in them their animosity toward Salvador Allende’s left-wing Popular Unity government (1970-1973), primarily because their family lands had been expropriated, according to the journalists’ book. At the beginning of the dictatorship, the expropriation was reversed and the properties were returned to them.

The Kaiser siblings’ childhood was also marked by their mother’s mental illness and their parents’ divorce. “They had a very bad relationship, full of conflict; [it was] a very hostile atmosphere. I remember that, at the time, all I wanted was to grow up. I didn’t want to keep being a child,” Axel once said, as the investigation points out.

Their mother’s health problems led Vanessa — the only girl among the six siblings — to assume a maternal role. The three eldest siblings eventually followed the path of radical right-wing ideas: Johannes, who didn’t complete university; Vanessa, a philosopher; and Axel, a lawyer. It was Axel who, in 2010, began to introduce libertarian ideology to the public. At that time, the authors recount, he was “a voice crying out in the wilderness.” However, his prominence in academia and the media through provocatively-titled columns, such as Education Is Not a Right, established him as an important libertarian figure. And not only in Chile, but also abroad.

“Axel is the purist libertarian leader, who has also positioned his siblings and the party internationally. He’s been key in establishing relations with Argentina, with Javier Milei’s government. The [Kaisers] told us that, for the [2025 Chilean presidential] campaign, they received advice from people in Milei’s government on how to prep and how to reach La Moneda (Chile’s presidential palace).”

Vanessa is like the [family’s] ear to the ground and the most philosophical one of them all. As she herself has said, being a woman allows her to say things that her brothers can’t… which makes her the most extreme. And Johannes is the [sibling] who ties the group together and takes on an important leadership role,” Lucero explains.

The emergence of Milei in Argentina was key to the Kaiser siblings’ libertarian impulses. In Chile, there was already an obscure Libertarian Party (PLIB), but what was happening on the other side of the Andes allowed them to dream big. The book recounts how they tried “every which way” to get Axel chosen as a presidential candidate, since he clearly represented the movement’s DNA, with very libertarian ideas in economics, but also when it came to social values. That didn’t work out, so their attention turned to his YouTuber brother, Johannes. From Europe, during the 2019-2020 student protests in Chile, he made a lot of noise online with his criticisms of the left’s agenda.

The authors of the recently-released book explain that they spoke with many young national libertarians “and it was very clear, in all of them, how deeply the social uprising had affected them.”

“Many of them told us that they felt deeply rejected and criticized by the average person hailing from their generation. And, out of this accumulated frustration, they finally found a political outlet in Johannes Kaiser and the National Libertarian Party (PNL). It was like putting a face to [their long-standing concerns],” the journalists explain. “Without the National Libertarian YouTube channel, the party wouldn’t exist,” they add, explaining that there’s a whole digital ecosystem that’s related to the political movement.

“Now, even though there’s this phenomenon of the National Libertarian [YouTube] channel, social media hasn’t just been important for that reason. There’s a whole ecosystem of outlets aligned with libertarians that have gradually been establishing themselves since 2017. The libertarians understood that the digital landscape – until then – hadn’t been explored. And so, they began to spread their ideas.”

Johannes Kaiser added the word “National” to his party’s name, along with an agenda based on very conservative values. This caused a stir among traditional libertarians, who support the right to make decisions about your own body. “What fundamentally unites them,” Lucero points out, “is anti-communism. And, failing that, the defense of the former dictator, Pinochet. It’s absolutely present in everything the party does. The [members we interviewed] told us: ‘In this party, there’s no one who’s against Pinochet.’”

The party is overwhelmingly male, with only 26% of its members being women, the lowest percentage of all political parties in Chile. “The values-based component of the National Libertarian Party’s rhetoric stems from their conviction that society, even Western society, has been experiencing a regression for a long time, because of what they describe as a ‘culture of death,’ feminism, the pro-abortion agenda… for [the leadership], it’s essential to embrace these elements, because without them, the National Libertarian Party wouldn’t exist,” Bravo notes. “In the National Libertarian world, the culture war is paramount. And they won’t compromise: they’ve demonstrated this throughout their time in Congress. They’ve been the main drivers of that agenda,” Lucero adds.

While Kast has built his inner circle around former members of the right-wing Independent Democratic Union (UDI), a 43-year-old party that believes in the ideology of guildism, inspired by conservative Catholic social teachings, Kaiser’s inner circle is primarily composed of former members of the Armed Forces and law enforcement, or those from military families linked to the Pinochet dictatorship.

Regarding the contrast between the National Libertarian Party (PNL) and Kast’s Republican Party, Lucero argues that one of the main differences lies in their conceptions of power. “The Republicans understand that, to govern, they must do so with Chile Vamos (the traditional right-wing coalition). For the PNL, that’s almost [unacceptable]. In fact, many people left the Republicans and went to the Libertarians because of Kast’s closeness to Chile Vamos in the 2021 election, which he lost to Boric. They felt very disappointed,” Lucero states.

One of the key (and less visible) figures in the National Libertarian movement is Ítalo Omegna, a former legislative advisor and PNL member. According to the authors, he spent time studying in Argentina, where he became politically active. There, he forged connections with the libertarian movement.

Omegna was the last president of the now-defunct Chilean PLIB. From that position, he built bridges with those who would later form the core of the far-right movement. His affinity for libertarian ideology, Bravo points out, stems from a strong admiration for Axel Kaiser. When Milei was sworn in as president of Argentina just a week before the 2023 constitutional referendum in Chile, Omegna traveled to the neighboring country “with the express objective of preventing Milei from being photographed with José Antonio Kast,” because a photo with Milei would be seen as a political endorsement. That scene “perfectly summarizes” Omegna’s role as a solid link to the international libertarian world, given his ties to networks in Argentina, Brazil and Guatemala, among other countries.

Omegna gained greater notoriety recently, when a video went viral in which he mocked children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and made direct allusions to pedophilia. This was during a birthday celebration for a member of La Cofradía, a YouTube streaming show, which Omegna has appeared on. After the video surfaced, Omegna apologized, arguing that he failed to distinguish between his comedic role on the show and the public responsibility that came with his position. He resigned from his post as legislative advisor to Congressman Hans Marowski, vice president of the PNL, and was dismissed from the Mises Institute of the Southern Cone, the libertarian think tank where he had served as director of community outreach since June of 2025. However, he hasn’t been expelled from the party.

The disillusionment generated by the concentration of power within the party has triggered at least two crises, one of which resulted in the departure of 6,000 members in six months, according to the book. There are former members who call it the “Totalitarian National Party” or the “Family-Run Business,” because, they claim, if you don’t have access to the Kaisers, it’s very difficult to be heard. The family has also been criticized for not consulting the rank-and-file members on important matters, such as whether or not to be part of Kast’s government.

“There’s this very big wave of discontent. We were told that not only was the leadership inaccessible, but so were spaces like the party’s top committee. They chalk it up to the fact that many of these spaces are filled with agents from Kaiser’s inner circle. After the book came out, we learned that many of our sources had left the party precisely because of this,” Bravo warns.

The authors mention that there are former members of the PNL trying to revive the old Libertarian Party. And at least one left to build a project that “truly embodies the legacy of the dictatorship.”

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The Argentine collective joy after winning the Qatar World Cup in 2022 was played out to a soundtrack that began like this: “In Argentina I was born, land of Diego and Lionel, of the lads from the Falklands I will never forget.” Four years later — in the attempt to win a fourth star in the tournament held in the U.S., Mexico and Canada — Messi, Maradona and the islands shared verses again in a new Argentine soccer anthem: “For the Falklands, for Diego, for Leo’s last one, Argentina, I want to see you two-time champion.”

In Argentina, soccer and nationhood go hand-in-hand. There is no greater or more popular nationalist cause here than regaining the islands that have been a British Overseas Territory since 1833. The Falklands, which are known in Argentina as Las Malvinas, awaken a mix of pride, pain, and belonging, but they also create a consensus that turns them into a readily available political resource to shift attention when reality becomes uncomfortable, as Javier Milei has just done.

Why do the Falklands occupy a central place in the Argentine imagination? Some researchers say you must go back to Argentina’s founding narrative and its thwarted destiny — the story that nostalgically recalls that the country was once powerful and prosperous and then ceased to be.

“When Argentina emancipated itself from Spain, the Falklands were part of it and then they were stolen from us, and that ties into Argentina’s trauma — to what it could be and is not,” says political scientist Mariana Altieri, author of the book Malvinas y Gibraltar, conflictos atrincherados (The Falklands and Gibraltar: Long-Standing Conflicts). She recalls that from the start of the British occupation successive governments and major literary figures such as José Hernández, author of Martín Fierro, demanded Argentine sovereignty over the islands. “Those rights never expire,” Hernández wrote in 1869.

“The farther the idea of recovering them recedes, the more the logic of revenge grows,” Altieri continues, noting that soccer has been one of the arenas where that revenge has been possible symbolically. The most remembered instance came in 1986, only four years after the Falklands War, when Diego Armando Maradona scored one goal with his hand and another after dribbling past five English players and the goalkeeper in what was dubbed “the goal of the century.” The latest meeting, in 2026, in the World Cup semifinal, featured his heir, Lionel Messi, as captain of the Albiceleste in a comeback 2-1 victory. The euphoria that greeted the second goal in front of every television in Argentina increased at the end of the match, when some players unfurled a homemade flag on the pitch that read “Las Malvinas son argentinas” (The Falklands are Argentine). No one cared about the expected FIFA sanction.

Anthropologist Rosana Guber, one of the country’s leading specialists on the Falklands War, says it was “obvious” there would be some political claim during the match. “The players were a channel. The protagonist was a guy at the hotel who grabbed a sheet and painted the slogan on it. He was nobody. Or he was everyone. Because what he did was shout that we beat the British, that we have rights over the islands and that we must be recognized,” Guber says.

A professor and senior researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Guber believes that the feeling the Falklands provoke in Argentines can be understood if they are seen as a symbol. “A symbol like the flag, the national anthem, or the cross. And symbols have different meanings, not just one. They speak to people who can hold very different positions on everything. That was the point Milei appealed to the other day, saying: ‘On this we are all together.’ Just like in 1982,” she notes.

Of all its multiple meanings, Guber highlights three: the outstanding sovereignty issue that Great Britain refuses to negotiate with any Argentine government; the popular cause that claims the Falklands from soccer stands, parades, demonstrations and any other setting; and the 1982 war, to which the dictatorship sent thousands of conscripts aged 19 and 20 and which caused the deaths of 649 Argentine combatants and 255 British servicemen.

An omnipresent emblem

Historian Esteban Rodríguez lives in Río Grande, the city closest to the Falklands. It is less than 600 kilometers (370 miles) away, compared with the nearly 12,800 kilometers (7,950 miles) separating the islands from the British coast. The province that includes Río Grande, Argentina’s southernmost, is called Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica, and the South Atlantic Islands, and the outline of the islands appears on every Fuegian student uniform, on all of the local soccer clubs’ kits and on numerous murals and plaques. The provincial anthem is the March of the Malvinas. Children learn it from the moment they enter school: “Behind their misty quilt / We shall not forget them / The Argentine Falklands / Claims the wind and roars the sea.”

It is easy to understand why, Rodríguez says, because the Falklands are an inseparable part of Argentine identity, especially in the south. “We feel the Falklands as a loss and it is a loss that has been seared into us because we are reminded of it all the time,” the historian says. That feeling deepened after defeat in the war declared by the dictator Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri.

Río Grande was the main city in the conflict. Super Étendard jets took off from there to bomb British ships. After the defeat, every April 1, on the eve of the day the war began, a vigil is held to pay tribute to the fallen and keep the memory alive. The tribute continued despite the de-Falklandization policies imposed in the 1980s and 1990s, when veterans maintained the cause against the tide. Today, despite low temperatures and the nearly constant icy wind, “the vigil can bring together up to 20,000 people,” Rodríguez says.

Unknown islands

Journalist Nicolás Cassese has just published the novel Puerto Stanley, 1982 and has traveled to the Falklands three times as a reporter for the newspaper La Nación. He believes many Argentines know little about the islands beyond the dispossession in 1833 and the war a century and a half later: “The latest resurgence of Argentine nationalism rests on the triple M — Messi, Maradona and the Malvinas — but we have an enormous amount of information on the first two and almost nothing about the Falklands,” Cassese says.

As an example, he recalls that when he published the novel some friends asked about the title because they did not know what Puerto Stanley referred to and some even associated it with a well-known brand of thermoses. They were unaware that it is the name the British use for the largest town in the archipelago, Port Stanley, known on Argentine maps as Puerto Argentino. Although he was accused on social media of being a traitor, he explains that the town was founded in 1845, when the British already controlled the islands, and that Argentines themselves used that name for decades. Also little known are the strong cultural and commercial ties that once existed between the Falklands, Tierra del Fuego, and the far south of Chile. “The first sheep brought to Santa Cruz at the end of the 19th century came from the Falklands,” he says by way of example.

Knowledge about the islands is rarely firsthand. Fewer than 1% of Argentines have visited the Falklands. The journey is very expensive, requires staying at least a week and accepting that your passport will be stamped. Yet they are an indispensable part of the historical construction of national identity. “In the 19th century, Argentina was a new country with many immigrants who spoke different languages, and education was crucial to creating a common identity. The Falklands were part of that narrative,” Cassese says. Others, like Guber, believe the school’s role was lesser than often claimed, even minimal.

Experts speak of the Falklands as a symbol, a place of mourning and an open wound. But the islands are also one of the few points of unity in a society split in two. That unity has made them politically useful on numerous occasions. Milei took advantage of a remark by Donald Trump that hinted the United States might revisit its historic neutrality in the sovereignty dispute over the islands to defend, on national television, the statement “the Falklands are Argentine.” In his speech, which ended with “viva la patria” (long live the homeland), he announced sanctions against companies operating in the area without Argentine authorization and promised to build a military base in the south.

Given that a 2011 law already imposes those sanctions and that construction of the announced base had already begun before he halted it, the opposition accused him of opportunism and of “galtierizing” the cause, in reference to the former dictator. The La Plata Veterans’ Center (CECIM) branded Milei a hypocrite and criticized his use of the Falklands as a “life preserver to hide his miseries.”

Cassese, by contrast, argues that “for Milei embracing the Falklands cause is all gain” and notes that with it he shields “one of his weak flanks; the accusation of being a sellout,” since he has tried to reform the law that caps foreign ownership of land.

Argentina’s foreign policy on the Falklands has swung for decades between confrontation and attempts at rapprochement. Altieri believes Milei has so far chosen the cooperative line, like Mauricio Macri before him. In 2025, Milei expressed support for self-determination for the Falkland Islanders: “We hope that the Malvinas people will one day decide to vote with their feet for us. That is why we seek to make Argentina such a power that they will prefer to be Argentines.” By contrast, his televised speech on Thursday “was a 180-degree turn,” says Altieri.

While Milei’s economic course divides society, “the announcement of sanctions, of imposing costs on the British, generates a lot of support; the majority agree that that is what must be done,” Altieri adds. In his third year in office, Milei has just discovered the power of a flag that transcends the divide.

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