Argentina’s Javier Milei courts a frustrated nation with a cry of anger

Natalie Alcoba is a journalist based in Buenos Aires.

Before an outsider libertarian candidate shifted the axis of Argentina’s presidential elections, tattoo artist Jonathan Aguirre held his little girl Olivia in his arms.

With his partner Guiliana Gomez by his side, the young family huddled up against guardrails encircling the Hotel Libertador in Buenos Aires one windy Sunday night. They weren’t alone. A clutch of Argentines that cut across age and demographic categories had made the pilgrimage to the city centre.

There was an administrative assistant, a waiter, a theology student and a teenager who had convinced his family to fly in from another province. All were there to try to catch a glimpse of one man: Javier Milei.

If that name doesn’t mean anything to you yet, it soon may, as it could become emblematic of what happens when forces converge to deliver an electric shock to a weary and disillusioned society. Brash, unorthodox, antagonistic and even playful at times, Mr. Milei, a 52-year-old economist, embodies many of the qualities that history has shown help an “outsider” soar.

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On this windy night in August, he was on the cusp of a stunning presidential primary victory that revealed just how hungry Argentines are for a change: By winning almost 30 per cent of the vote, he edged out the other two traditional coalitions of left and right.

“People treat him like he’s crazy, because he is telling the truth,” said Ms. Gomez, 22. “He shows himself like he is,” said Mr. Aguirre, 30. “He’s a different kind of politician.”

Once viewed as a ragtag group of far-right libertarians, the party he formed just two years ago, La Libertad Avanza, has, remarkably, now set the pace in the third most populous country in South America as it heads to the polls again on Oct. 22. He will have to secure at least 45 per cent of the vote, or 40 per cent and a 10 point differential with the next closest candidate, in order to clinch victory. Otherwise, it’s on to a runoff between the top two contenders in late November.

His main rivals are Sergio Massa, the Economy Minister and member of the governing Peronist Union por la Patria party, and Patricia Bullrich, a centre-right candidate and former security minister. Right now, polls place Mr. Milei ahead, with the conversation barely ever veering away from him.

Mr. Milei fits into the narrative of right-wing populists gaining ground around the globe. Comparisons abound with Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s now-ousted far-right president, although of course there are specific differences between the three. Mr. Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist,” touts and relishes the similarities, in particular around a shared desire to quash socialism in their respective societies. His ascent has buoyed other similar figures further afield, like Spain’s far right Vox party, which celebrated the libertarian’s primary victory as evidence that the pursuit of “freedom” is gaining ground.

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But what perhaps sets Mr. Milei apart, at least in Argentina, is his broad ideological appeal. While he expresses far-right politics, his support comes from across the political spectrum: young disaffected men who are looking for their “revolution,” hardened right-wingers waiting for their turn again, and a disillusioned working class whose vote had often been cast for left-wing coalitions. Everyone exhausted by the downward trajectory of their quality of life, marked by 138-per-cent annual inflation, a floundering currency, and poverty levels at 40 per cent. Mr. Milei has seized on a refrain that was popularized during Argentina’s political and economic collapse of 2001 – “que se vayan todos” (everyone out) – which was previously directed at the political and economic interests that drove the country to default, and its banking system to collapse.

In 2001, “que se vayan todos” was meant largely for the neoliberal lawmakers who had deregulated, privatized and pegged the U.S. dollar to the peso – policies that Mr. Milei now emulates. His leading promise is for Argentina to ditch its peso, a currency he says is demonstrably worthless, in favour of the U.S. dollar. He plans to eliminate the central bank, vows to slash public spending and taxes, change public education to a system based on vouchers, privatize aspects of the public health care system, close government ministries, and hold a referendum on whether Argentina should have legalized abortion in 2020. He calls it the “chainsaw plan,” designed to root out the socialism that has “infected” society.

“The Milei voter is looking for a rupture,” says political scientist and veteran pollster Paola Zuban, just as voters were 20 years ago. “Only this time, they have a flesh-and-blood candidate who represents that sentiment.”

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A flesh-and-blood candidate we can’t take our eyes off. Mr. Milei crept onto the scene around 2017 as a television pundit who railed against the policies of the then right-wing government of Mauricio Macri. With a mop of hair that earned him the nickname “The Wig,” and a propensity for unvarnished attacks on the “political caste” he routinely deems “parasites” and “criminals,” Mr. Milei was made for Argentina’s insatiable appetite for drama.

The media has pumped out stories on his five English mastiffs, four named for conservative economists, and clones of a first and beloved dog called Conan. He’s lambasted the Pope, a fellow Argentine, supports legalizing the sale of human organs, and is stoking denialist rhetoric around the atrocities committed by the last military dictatorship. When a female rival called him a “pussy cat” rather than the “lion” he purports to be, the fan fiction rolled in. Taxes are theft, he says. The state is a criminal organization, he contends. An interview he did with Tucker Carlson has more than 400 million views on Twitter.

“If we win, one of the things that is going to happen is that the political system as we know it today will cease to exist,” he said solemnly in a televised interview this month.

Days after the shock primary victory of Mr. Milei, Buenos Aires progressives crowded into a cultural centre in a middle-class neighbourhood to drown their sorrows, so to speak.

It was the launch of the latest edition of Revista Crisis, a publication that was born during the tumultuous years prior to the last military dictatorship. The event turned into a sort of town hall on the primary results. There was shock and calls to action. They looked at a PowerPoint presentation from allies in Brazil about how to speak to political adversaries. Criticize the ideas, not the person, it recommended. Use humour to sow common ground. Amid the fear was a palpable disgust with the status quo. The current system, many agreed, was failing.

There was also some measure of admiration – that the people who were supporting Mr. Milei appeared to be on track to do something they had not been able to make happen out of the ashes of 2001, when people occupied banks, factories, and established alternative economies that enabled them to survive. It was a moment of collective awakening, which fuelled a new brand of left-wing politics called Kirchnerismo, named for the former presidential power couple Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, that raised many people out of poverty. But the economic rebound of the commodities boom of the 2000s did not last, and more populist and interventionist policies widened the wedge between Argentines.

A chunk of that same society was now turning to a libertarian, who espoused the ideals of individual liberty and property rights, as the architect of a system reset.

Over medialunas (a type of Argentinian croissant) and yerba mate, officials at the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), a progressive think tank, sought to break with what appeared to be a feeling of inevitability. “He hasn’t won yet,” Paula Litvachky, the executive director of CELS, told a group of international correspondents gathered in their office.

And yet they were very worried. “It’s very important to put on the table what’s at stake for Argentina,” she said. “There is a sort of intensity over the structural changes that are required in the country that is at odds with the perspective of human rights. A total change of the concept of what is public, proposals that are illiberal, and authoritarian, associated with a very harsh state and how it responds to social conflict. It’s a change, and redefinition, of what we consider to be the democratic life of this country.”

Mr. Milei is very popular with young people. He polls especially high among young men, frustrated with their lack of prospects and looking for someone to believe in. His team says his message spread organically through social media, especially during the pandemic, as fans created content from his interviews that tapped into growing resentment. He emerged victorious in provinces that he had not even personally campaigned in.

“Remember that young people are reactionary against the status quo. And in Argentina, the status quo is left wing,” Mr. Milei said in a television interview. “They did an excellent job of evangelizing their parents and grandparents.”

Andres Ferreira is one of Mr. Milei’s evangelists. The 36-year-old was living in Santiago, Chile, earlier this year, but he was back on home soil in order to help campaign for the man he would make president. In between dropping off packages that will earn him the equivalent of less than one U.S. dollar from the delivery app Rappi, he marched into a Buenos Aires park preaching the gospel of Mr. Milei’s La Libertad Avanza.

“They need to know the ideas of freedom,” Mr. Ferreira said, with his bicycle and big delivery bag in tow. “They don’t need to be slaves.”

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The “they” Mr. Ferreira is referring to are his neighbours in Villa Fiorito, a working-class municipality on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Before he started his delivery shift, he was handing out flyers in a plaza in Fiorito, trying to woo people to the messages of libertarianism. Mr. Ferreira’s own trajectory offers a window into some of the conditions that created a climate for Mr. Milei. Raised in Villa Fiorito, best known for being the birthplace of footballer Diego Maradona, but also for the grinding poverty that still defines it, he has held jobs in airport security and as a waiter until the pandemic hit, causing him to burn through his savings. He recalled, with humiliation, living out of his car for a few days, having to defecate on the side of the road as he waited to be let into another province that had strict quarantine restrictions – all while seething with anger as President Alberto Fernandez celebrated his wife’s birthday with a party that flouted the social gathering rules at the time. He sees in Mr. Milei someone he can trust to finally set things straight.

“We don’t deserve this,” he said. “The politicians ruined the Argentine economy and now we have to pay the price? What I’m asking of the politicians, from the bottom of my heart: step aside, and let the new generations run things.”

Sergio Morresi, author of the book The New Right in Argentina, has been following the evolution of people like Mr. Ferreira closely since 2016. He and a team of political researchers have been holding focus groups and monitoring the online activity of small groups of libertarians which have since folded themselves under the umbrella of La Libertad Avanza. They have watched as influencers and authors sharing far-right rhetoric have attracted youth.

“We’ve been telling people for a while that this is a real thing,” Mr. Morresi said. He believes something changed with the 2015 election of the centre-right coalition of former president Mauricio Macri. “It stopped being taboo to be to the right of someone. Not necessarily to be right wing, but to be to the right of this other group,” Mr. Morresi said. Now, the arrival of Mr. Milei has further emboldened those young people, who are defiantly claiming their territory.

“There is a lot of hope, you see them very happy,” Mr. Morresi said. “I understand that people see them as people who want to kick everything down, but they’re also very hopeful. It’s not just a vote about rejection, but a hopeful vote.”

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This discourse has also, increasingly, tread onto territory that has long been considered hallowed ground in Argentina, a country stained by an era of brutal violence inflicted by the last military dictatorship of 1976 to 1983. Under the guise of crushing an urban guerrilla insurgency, the military cracked down on left-wing political dissidents, activists, union organizers, journalists, clergy and a large swath of other people. About 30,000 people are estimated to have been murdered and disappeared by the dictatorship during that period.

At a televised debate earlier this month, Mr. Milei doubled down on the denialist rhetoric that ebbs and flows in Argentina, refuting the 30,000 figure. He also maintained that the conflict was a “war” and that if the military was guilty of anything it was “excesses” – a justification that mimics the one used by the dictators who were tried and convicted of crimes against humanity. In the days that followed, journalists from across the political spectrum expressed outrage at Mr. Milei’s minimizing, as human-rights groups and the UN voiced concern that sowing division does not heal wounds.

And yet here we are. On the precipice of what could be an astounding change, in a country that has lurched through history with the scars of economic and political crisis on display. Last week, Mr. Milei once again excoriated the peso as “excrement,” and urged his fellow citizens not to be so foolish as to save in the local currency. The value of the peso immediately plummeted, rocking the sputtering economy. If Mr. Milei becomes president, there may be even more serious consequences to the radical shock doctrine he is promoting. He’ll need to forge alliances if he wants to actually govern. Although if there is one thing that we know for sure, it’s that he has already turned things upside-down. The rules do not seem to apply to Mr. Milei.

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