They have built up an image of authority and moral inflexibility, and have helped themselves by picking enemies who are damned by all and lacking any kind of power to move against them (the weakened military, for example, or civilian members of the 1976-1983 dictatorship). This has been accompanied by cascades of populist rhetoric: loud voices and defiant words, and promises to fight to the death against ill-defined but malignant economic special interests.