Mass Culture and Consensus towards the 1943 Military Coup. Cascabel Magazine and its “Antipolitica” Page During the Second World War

Abstract

The military coup of 1943 installed in a few months a repressive atmosphere. This article proposes to approach the problem of consensus with this military coup through expressions of mass culture that helped to erode republican institutions. The role of mass culture in its relationship with military coups in Argentine history has antecedents: the newspaper Crítica, due to its involvement in the military coup of 1930, and the magazine Primera Plana in 1966. The study of the magazine Cascabel is an excellent prism to think about the problem of consensus with dictature. Cascabel regularly published, between 1941 and 1943, a regular column under the title "Página de la Antipolítica" (Page of Antipolitics), which was devoted to delegitimize the party system, the republican institutions, as well as the electoral system, issues that occupied a central place in its humorous discourse.