Javier Milei: ‘El Loco’ and the Challenge of Making Argentina Great Again
Photo Courtesy // Wikimedia Commons
Last week, on 19th November, the people of Argentina elected Javier Milei as their new president. With 55.7% of the vote, Milei defeated Sergio Massa, the former economic minister. Since starting his campaign for power, Javier Milei has become quite famous for his radical positions and his “chainsaw” policy to completely change the structure of the government and society of Argentina.
Born in 1970 in Buenos Aires, Javier Milei had a complicated childhood, with violent and negligent parents with whom he was often in conflict. At school, he was perceived as reserved but aggressive, for which his classmates nicknamed him “El Loco” - the crazy one. After studying economics, he became an economist and political advisor to prominent names like Antonio Domingo Bussi, a former national deputy who was accused of crimes against humanity. Milei became publicly known in 2014 when he was regularly invited on TV shows to share his views on the economy, controversially contesting that the state should have no role in the economic development of a country. In these polemic interviews, he used coarse words, insulting politicians, to aggressively defend his positions. He officially entered the political domain himself in 2020 by protesting against COVID-19 quarantine measures. In September 2021, as head of the libertarian party, which he created in 2018, he was elected deputy and made headlines by putting his salary on raffle every month to denounce corruption of the politicians, essentially creating his fame by creating controversy.
The new president positions himself as both an ultra-liberal and a part of the extreme right-wing. He is ‘different’ from all the other politicians Argentina has known so far, as someone part of the people, someone “like them”, the only one able to shake Argentina up and “make it great again”. Often compared to Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, Javier Milei is following a discourse that would out the state of society matters. He has created international debate with positions that go against moral values like the legalization of child trafficking and positions that question the practicality of democracy and Keynesian economy - which argues for the necessity of the intervention of the state in the economy. From dollarizing the economy to removing ministers of education and transport, the president has a lot of ideas to reform Argentina. In sum, Javier Milei has two watchwords: liberty and the end of corrupted politicians. Defining himself as the image of libertarianism, Javier Milei wants liberty for all individuals, encompassing everything from allowing the open carrying of weapons in public spaces to authorizing organ trafficking. On the subject of corruption, the president is clear: he wants to get rid of lazy politicians that get richer and richer while the population suffers. Separating the economy from the state not only means destroying the Central Bank of the country, it means destroying ministers that only “nourish the laziness of the working people”. He’s not just fiscally radical - Javier Milei has denied climate change while positioning himself as a misogynist, wanting to prohibit abortion, which was just legalized in Argentina.
The extremity of Javier Milei’s ideas makes one question how he could ever have been elected. The success of a candidate like this highlights how deeply a crisis can influence electors, and the lengths to which they will go to fix their situation. Javier Milei was elected in the context of a profound economic crisis, as inflation in Argentina has risen 138% in the last year, increasing poverty rates. When people live in such despair, they lose trust in old institutions that have so far failed them and instead look for something different. When looking at this election, it is crucial to focus on the context in which it happened, not judge the population that elected this candidate. The success of personalities like Milei or Trump are the result of a distrust in democracy and a growing anger against the state. We must be concerned that people with views like this are gaining power as it shows a broad belief that radical change is needed among people who no longer believe in the viability of traditional politics.