Argentine president Javier Milei depicts himself as a crusader against ‘the caste’, the State, the traditional political parties, and Peronism. His anti-inflationary policies appear to have worked in the short-term but may stoke further destabilizing currency speculation. Internationally he risks aligning Argentina with a motley group of extremely illiberal nations.
Main image: President Milei and his cabinet on the first anniversary of his government.
‘I am the mole that destroys the state from within.’ The phrase, uttered by Argentinian President Javier Milei, reveals the sui generis character of a government born a year ago and the product of a brutal crisis of representation. He is the first outsider to come to power in Argentina, just as democracy turned 40, and he made his way to the Casa Rosada with an unusually radical rhetoric.
Milei proposed the re-foundation of the country in a liberal-libertarian way linked, in a not always linear way, to the more global climate of the times, which had given rise to a new type of right-wing ideology that presents itself as anti-elite and anti-system. Reactivating the slogan ‘Que se vayan todos’ (Away with them all!) chanted in the streets during the 2001 crisis, Milei posed as the gravedigger of a century of ‘socialism’. He introduced differences with classic anti-Peronism, which maintains that Argentina got ‘fucked up’ [se jodió] by the government of Juan Domingo Perón (1946-1955). For him, the country had been screwed for a long time.
Mixing an out-dated discourse on national history and a not always very well digested reading of American libertarianism, especially that of Murray Rothbard 1)American economist and political theorist and follower of Ludwig Von Mises, who advocated an extreme form of ‘anarcho-capitalism’, the then presidential candidate put together a wide-ranging ideological mishmash with a fiery anti-caste (anti-Establishment) rhetoric in tune with the general unrest resulting from the domestic economic crisis and the growing rejection of political – and also cultural and social – elites. Between Milei and the ultra-pragmatic Peronist Sergio Massa, many opted for ‘crazy’ over ‘corrupt’, a widespread way of justifying their vote in the face of those who argued that electing Milei was leaping into the unknown.
A year into his administration, it’s clear that Milei is more than just an anti-state mole. It’s true that he hates the state in an almost pathological way, but it’s no less true that he doesn’t hesitate to use it to strengthen his power: in order to realize what is now being projected as Mileism, we must take into account the complementarity of a utopian/radical rhetoric, sometimes projected in a clownish way, with the skilful use of the mechanisms of a ‘political thread’ that has allowed him to maintain his popularity in the polls, above 40 per cent at the moment, and to achieve political stability, despite having little representation in Congress. Milei’s rhetoric projects him as a ‘leader of freedom’ and his opponents as coming from the cessspit of politics.
If everything goes well?
Milei has reason to celebrate in style his first year as president: he has managed to bring down inflation and implement what he calls ‘the most radical shock programme in human history’ (sic) without provoking significant social protests. He has also contrived to keep the opposition divided, with Peronism in crisis and lacking a convincing discourse, and to dominate the conventional right-wing rhetoric of previous President Mauricio Macri. Milei’s popularity has been the organizing axis of his administration and is linked to the fulfilment of economic promises. Therein lies his strength and potential weakness.
The fall in inflation has increased the percentage of those who declare themselves optimistic in surveys about the near future, while the almost fixed exchange rate – and the reduction in the gap between the official dollar and the blue or parallel dollar – gives an image of stability in a country. But this has fuelled a dynamic that many associate with the traditional ‘financial bicycles’ 2)The ‘financial bicycle’ offers investors a highly lucrative financial manoeuvre. The government says that it will depreciate the peso by 2 per cent per month. But if you buy bonds in pesos, it will pay you between 4 and 5 per cent interest on them monthly. So you exchange your dollars for pesos, buy bonds with those pesos or put them in a fixed term interest account, and buy dollars again once the difference has been harvested at the month end. Argentines who have ‘ridden the bicycle’ have gained up to 50% profit in dollars over the space of 10 months. of the past, which make it possible to take advantage of a future devaluation rate fixed by the government to transform the profits derived from high interest rates in pesos into profits in dollars, switching from one currency to another without the risk of abrupt devaluation.
The so-called ‘cast-iron dollar’ also facilitates the massive import of goods at prices lower than local prices, which introduces doubts about the future of national production, although in the short term it is a popular policy. All this is reminiscent of Minister José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz’s programme during the military dictatorship, but the government guarantees that, unlike that period, Milei’s ‘chainsaw’ against the fiscal deficit will make a difference and the outcome will be a happy one this time.
Milei has also benefited from previous administrations’ investments in the Vaca Muerta mega-gas deposits, which has reduced the bill for energy imports and even allowed some exports. In addition, the generous laundering of dollars, organised by his administration so that Argentinians could introduce their undeclared savings into the system, has increased the supply of foreign currency. But a key moment will come when he has to find a way out of the currency ‘trap’.
Milei’s anti-inflationary policy uses exchange controls inherited from the previous government, an interventionist policy that contradicts his ultraliberal discourse. The liberalisation of the currency market, promised for 2025, will be a decisive moment to assess the consistency of his policy. This explains the government’s caution, as it seeks to increase the Central Bank’s reserves (which Milei did not ‘dynamite’ as he had announced in his campaign) before getting rid of this remnant of statism that currently works in the government’s favour.
Taming the rats’ nest
On the political front, Milei obtained a parliamentary majority – with the support of Macri, the Peronist dissidents and the radicals (members of a Radical Civic Union that had seen better days) – to pass his ambitious Basic Law, or at least a good number of articles of this ‘megalaw’, and to prevent Congress rejecting his decrees. With only small representation in both chambers, Milei has engaged in give-and-take negotiations with parliamentarians and governors, despite a right-wing populism that has led him, on several occasions, to describe Congress as a ‘rats’ nest’. As far as his followers’ memes are concerned, the Lion – as they call him – has managed to ‘tame’ his critics, who seem divided and often disorientated.
On the opposition front, Milei’s emergence has had various impacts. Mauricio Macri’s Republican Proposal (Pro) party agrees with much of Milei’s programme – and increasingly with his rough tactics. But at the same time, its leaders fear that Milei will devour their electorate in the 2025 mid-term elections. In fact, a section of this party, led by former presidential candidate and current security minister Patricia Bullrich, has become ‘mileista’, and many right-wing voters believe that Milei is daring to do what Macri never managed.
Peronism is different: if its defeat by Macri in 2015 was harsh but more or less understandable – it was a victory for anti-Peronism based in the most anti-Peronist regions of the country – the defection to Milei is still a disturbing enigma. Libertarianism won not only in the agro-industrial centre of the country, traditionally more hostile to Peronism, but in almost all the provinces, even in the Justicialist (Peronist) strongholds. For this reason, many governors suddenly found themselves splitting the electorate with the Libertarians. The defeat of 2023 is more like that of 1983, in the first post-dictatorship democratic elections, which forced Peronism to renew itself. The question is with what identity, discourse and, above all, leadership would enable this today.
Milei himself not only justifies the Peronist Carlos Menem, who promoted a neoliberal programme and ‘carnal relations’ (sic) with the United States in the 1990s, but has incorporated several Peronists into his government, including the Minister of the Interior, Guillermo Francos, a former Alberto Fernández official, and Daniel Scioli – presidential candidate in 2015 – as well as the President of the Chamber of Deputies, who despite not having been a prominent Peronist is called Martín Menem. Many Peronists also remain in the second or third line, because Milei didn’t have his own people to fill these jobs: he won without a party, without a mayor or governor…
Many Peronists would have favoured a renewal that would have left Cristina Kirchner, who is now being sued in several court cases, in the background. But the two-time champion was elected president of the Justicialist Party and is believed to be running for a seat in parliament in 2025. In the Casa Rosada, they conclude that it’s good business to antagonise her to try to keep the Kirchnerism-anti-Kirchnerism divisions alive, although some warn that a Kirchnerist victory in Buenos Aires Province, where Milei’s impact is lower, could make life complicated for the government.
Against ‘the angry’
Milei doesn’t just seek to be the architect of an economic reconstruction, but also a political and cultural one. During the years in which he has lived with far-right extremists from different parts of the world, he has reinforced his discourse of the ‘cultural battle against leftists’, against whom he deploys every insult in the book.
Internationally, Milei has bought into the Spanish Vox party’s discourse against the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a sensible enough set of proposals that conspiracy theories depict as a terrible threat to the West. Within this framework, the supposedly liberal Argentinian government has voted in a rather strange way, often aligning itself with the same bloc as the world’s most illiberal countries. In fact, Argentina was the only country to vote against a recent initiative to prevent violence against women – Afghanistan, for example, simply abstained.
Last October, Foreign Minister Diana Mondino, a liberal economist with a ‘spicy’ profile on social media, was removed from office after voting against the embargo on Cuba – a state policy that Argentina has maintained regardless of the ideological stance of successive governments. It was also a routine UN vote in which everyone – including Meloni’s Italy and Orbán’s Hungary – voted against and the vote in favour was reduced to the United States and Israel.
Milei, the first president to visit Trump in the United States, is a star of national-conservative conferences and has defended an automatic and exaggerated alignment with Israel: as well as proclaiming that he is an exponent of ‘Western values’ in the Middle East, a widespread cliché, he adds that Moses was ‘the first libertarian’, which led him to link up with the Chabad-Lubavitch Chassidic organisation and to send his ‘personal rabbi’ as ambassador to Israel, with whom he even spoke of his possible conversion to Judaism.
Milei doesn’t hesitate to compare himself to Moses and publishes biblical quotes in Hebrew – a language he doesn’t speak – on social media. But this apparently religious discourse is only superficial. His abusive use of artificial intelligence (AI) to build memes makes him more of a superhero than a messiah. Milei’s aesthetic is that of gamers and cosplayers [people who dress up as heroes in films]. Cosplayer and current MP Lilia Lemoine once dressed Milei up as a superhero: he was General AnCap (anarcho-capitalist). In the memes constructed with AI, the Argentinian president is a roaring lion to whom masses of subjects eager to be freed from the tyranny of the state surrender.
Among those managing the digital militias – closely linked to state power – is Daniel Parisini, alias Gordo Dan, a former paediatrician at a public hospital who has found a new vocation in this role and has direct access to the president. He says he’s building Milei’s ‘armed group’… but that his weapon is his mobile phone. It’s no longer a case of épater les bourgeois, but of scaring away progressives by making them talk, without pause, about the political and aesthetic excesses of libertarians. Less cheesy, but no less radical, the influencer, writer and polemicist Agustín Laje – author of several books and constantly invited by the regional right to present his ideas – is one of the pillars of Milei’s cultural revolution and recently created the Faro Foundation to confront ‘globalism’.
Elon Musk also appears in the cultural battle: the post-democratic and anti-egalitarian futurism he projects, together with his high doses of ‘political incorrectness’, has turned the now Trumpist tycoon into a cult figure for part of the current radical right, such as the supporters of Milei and Bolsonaro, and a hero of ‘freedom of expression’.
The ‘leftists’ are also embedded in public universities. So it’s not just a question of depriving these of their funding, but of declaring them enemies of freedom, dens of Marxist brainwashing. But Milei’s insults also include journalists or economists – especially liberals who don’t agree with his government – whom the president calls Lilliputians, cockroaches, baboon bums, ‘stooges’ (those who take bribes), failures, etc. Even diplomats have been labelled ‘parasites’ because they are not sufficiently committed to the ‘ideas of freedom’ (i.e. because they feel uncomfortable having to vote alongside Belarus, Iran or North Korea at the UN, in the name of liberalism).
‘Iron triangle’
As Milei himself has said, the power of the liberal-libertarian government is concentrated in the ‘iron triangle’, which is made up of his omnipresent sister Karina and the mysterious consultant Santiago Caputo. Karina, who ran the family business, sold cakes online and took part in a TV quiz with her dog, is a kind of shadow of the president. He calls her ‘The Boss’. As well as overseeing large areas of the administration from her position as secretary-general of the presidency and significantly influencing her brother’s private life, she is today responsible for building the party, called La Libertad Avanza, on a national scale, for which she liberally uses the resources of public institutions. Rumours about her esoteric practices, coupled with the fact that she doesn’t give interviews, have shrouded her in a halo of mystery and given her an image of ruthlessness.
Today, everyone knows that in order to survive in the Milei universe, they must not earn his sister’s enmity. Milei, every time he refers to her in public, ends up on the verge of tears. The Boss isn’t just a nickname… lately, despite a complete lack of charisma, she’s started speaking at La Libertad Avanza events. They say that Mauricio Macri, who distrusts her and believes she seeks to sabotage a future alliance between macristas and libertarians, calls her in private – and with class contempt – ‘the cake seller’.
Santiago Caputo is apparently just a consultant, but he controls strategic areas of the government. The influence of this 40-year-old ‘advisor’, who holds no executive position – which prevents him from later being held accountable as part of the state apparatus – ranges from ministries such as Justice and Health to strategic organisations such as the State Intelligence Secretariat, the YPF oil company and the Internal Revenue Service. He also has influence over Customs, Arsat (a satellite company), PAMI (a social organisation for pensioners) and the National Communications Agency (Enacom).
He intends to get involved in the announced privatisations, has intervened in the choice of judges to occupy two positions on the Supreme Court and is no stranger to negotiations with the General Confederation of Labour (CGT). ‘The kid speaks our language,’ said one of the union leaders without irony. Caputo also has a bizarre side: he has tattoos in Cyrillic, like the ones on prisoners in the Soviet Union, one of an image of the Grey Man by Benjamín Solari Parravicini, the Argentinian Nostradamus. The libertarians believe that this Grey Man, who was supposed to save the country, is Milei himself… they even called his great-niece to try and confirm it.
Me or the caste
The idea that in response to the first anti-popular measure there would be a kind of social uprising turned out to be a fantasy that misunderstood why people voted for Milei a year ago. Among these causes is the widespread discredit, not only of traditional politics but also of the leaders of piqueteros and union movements, and of cultural references, many of them associated with Kirchnerism. Milei generally maintained social programmes (his famous ‘chainsaw’ for once stayed silent) to achieve social peace, but sought to weaken territorial organizations that functioned as intermediaries.
Furthermore, through the ‘iron fist’ policy of the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, the government has prevented the streets being blocked by social protestors, which has created strong social support. She is one of the most popular figures in the Executive and is full of praise for the authoritarian Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele.
Milei wants to transform the October 2025 elections into a plebiscite between him and the ‘caste’ [Establishment]. To do so, he will have to turn the promise of economic improvement into reality and, in parallel, build a national political force and transfer political legitimacy to local candidates. In other words, to build a new political identity. The depth of the opposition’s political crisis could help him. But the growing political volatility in Latin America could wreck his plans. His authoritarian actions could also work against him. But the game will be played out, to a large extent, on the performance of the economy.
*Pablo Stafanoni is a historian and journalist. He is editor-in-chief of Nueva Sociedad, a Latin American social science magazine open to streams of progressive thought, which advocates for the development of political, economic and social democracy in the region. It has been published bimonthly since 1972 and is currently based in Buenos Aires (Argentina).
The original version of this article was published in Portuguese here. It was translated, shortened and edited for LAB by Sue Branford.
References
| ↑1 | American economist and political theorist and follower of Ludwig Von Mises, who advocated an extreme form of ‘anarcho-capitalism’ |
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| ↑2 | The ‘financial bicycle’ offers investors a highly lucrative financial manoeuvre. The government says that it will depreciate the peso by 2 per cent per month. But if you buy bonds in pesos, it will pay you between 4 and 5 per cent interest on them monthly. So you exchange your dollars for pesos, buy bonds with those pesos or put them in a fixed term interest account, and buy dollars again once the difference has been harvested at the month end. Argentines who have ‘ridden the bicycle’ have gained up to 50% profit in dollars over the space of 10 months. |