Johannes Kaiser (Chilean politician)

Johannes Maximilian Kaiser Barents-von Hohenhagen (born 5 January 1976) is a Chilean politician, serving as a national deputy since March 2022, representing the 10th district of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago. Previously a member of the Republican Party, he founded the far-right National Libertarian Party in 2024. He is a potential candidate in the 2025 Chilean presidential election.
Kaiser calls himself and his movement reactionary. He praised the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, staunchly opposes illegal immigration to Chile, and supports the right to own firearms in Chile.
He was born on January 5, 1976 in Santiago de Chile, as the eldest son of Hans Christian (also known as Juan Cristián) Kaiser Wagner and Rosmarie Barents-von Hohenhagen Haensgen, from a family of German Chileans.
His paternal grandparents were Rosemarie Wagner Schilling, a fourth-generation German-Chilean, and her husband, the German immigrant Friedrich Ernst Kaiser Richter, who defined politically as a Social Democrat, arrived in Chile as a refugee from Wurtemberg in 1936, escaping National Socialist Germanyafter Adolf Hitler's rise to power and before World War II, having foreseen its outbreak.
He married his wife in April 1939 and settled in Villarrica in Southern Chile, where he was eventually elected as the 9th mayor of the city, serving between May 1956 and October 1957. His father was active in the National Party, serving as a youth leader.
He is the brother of Axel Kaiser, a Chilean libertarian ideologue, Vanessa Kaiser, a former councilor of Las Condes, and of Leif Kaiser, leader of the Chilean Rifle Association, along with three other less prominent siblings.
He attended several schools during his early years, including Sankt Thomas Morus German School, the German School of Santiago, as well as schools in Villarrica and Temuco, as his family moved among these cities. He completed his final two years of high school at the Bernardo O'Higgins Military Academy.
In 1995, he enrolled in a law degree at the Finis Terrae University in Santiago, which he did not complete, and later traveled to Germany to study at the Heidelberg University, studies he also did not finish.
He later moved to Innsbruck in Austria, where he worked in various temporary jobs such as waiter, hotel receptionist, construction worker, car salesman (both new and used), restaurant manager, and as a freelance sports journalist for the football club FC Wacker Innsbruck, among other roles.
According to his biography, he attended courses in various disciplines – including political science, philosophy, sociology, economics, history, and law – at the Innsbruck University, without completing any degree. In September 2013, he created El Nacional-Libertario (originally with other name), his YouTube channel with over 100,000 subscribers, through which he has broadcast a political program since November 2016, and he also released a documentary he produced about the family history of former Army Brigadier Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, titled "Los cosacos y Miguel Krassnoff: la historia no contada".
In 2017, he approached politician José Antonio Kast for whom he campaigned on social media, and in 2019 he began his political militancy in the party founded by Kast, the Republican Party.
In 2022 he married Ivette Avaria Vera and in 2023 their daughter (Helena Josefina) was born. Ivette is 11 years younger than Johannes and was an advisor to the UDI party previously. They are Orthodox Christians, being converted during different periods of their lives. He has other two children as well born before marriage.
In 2021, he returned to Chile to run as a candidate for deputy in the parliamentary elections for the Republican Party in district no. 10 of the Santiago Metropolitan Region. He obtained 26,709 votes, resulting in his election.
On November 24, three days after the elections and in the context of the campaign for the second round of the presidential election, José Antonio Kast announced that Johannes Kaiser would be referred to the Republican Party's supreme tribunal to evaluate his membership, due to the controversy that arose after a 2018 video excerpt went viral in which Kaiser sarcastically criticized women's suffrage for those who vote for pro-immigration parties, in the context of the sexual assaults perpetrated in Germany in 2015 and 2016, being labeled as "misogynistic" for this. In response, the elected deputy announced his resignation from the party. Years later, he would explain that he did not ridicule women's voting but was criticizing people who vote "against their own interests."
On March 11, 2022, he assumed office as a deputy, joining the permanent commissions on Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples; National Defense; Interior Government and Regionalization; and Ethics and Transparency. He remained in the Republican Party caucus as an independent, despite having resigned from the party.
On September 9, 2022, his return to the Republican Party was announced.
In the 2023 constitutional plebiscite, Deputy Kaiser announced his vote for the "Against" option, but emphasized that he would not campaign out of respect for the party (whose leadership opted for the "In Favor" option), which he honored.
Later, the party sanctioned the deputy, removing him from legislative committees for having explicitly voted against the option adopted by the party leadership, which led to his second resignation from the party on January 9, 2024, previously communicated to the party president on January 2.
On February 19, 2024, he announced on Radio Agricultura his intention to run as a presidential precandidate and participate in the possible opposition primaries of 2025.
On June 7 of the same year, he gathered the signatures to register the National Libertarian Party with the Electoral Service of Chile, an act that was made official on the 12th of the same month. Deputies Gonzalo de la Carrera and Gloria Naveillán became founding members of the party, joined by Cristóbal Urruticoechea Ríos and Leonidas Romero Sáez, totaling five deputies.
Although Johannes Kaiser was expected to run in the primaries alongside the candidate from Chile Vamos for the 2025 Chilean presidential election, this option was discarded after the approval of the pension reform project by that coalition. However, Kaiser has expressed his openness to a primary with candidates from the Christian Social Party and the Republican Party.