Chilean Author Ariel Dorfman on Far-Right President-Elect Jos Antonio Kast's Rise to Power

José Antonio Kast has won Chile's presidential election, with the far-right leader getting about 58% of the vote in Sunday's runoff against Jeannette Jara, a member of the Communist Party who served as labor minister under outgoing President Gabriel Boric. Kast has openly praised former U.S.-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet and is the son of a Nazi who fled Germany after World War II. Kast campaigned on fighting crime and carrying out mass deportations of immigrants.

"It is a political and ethical earthquake," says acclaimed Chilean American writer Ariel Dorfman, who served as a cultural adviser to socialist President Salvador Allende from 1970 to 1973. He pins much of the blame for Kast's rise on an "uninspired left" that has lost its way since the end of dictatorship and "turned its back on the troubles of the people."