Javier Milei, Trump and Bolsonaro admirer, leads Argentina presidential race - The Wash... - 0 views
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Most of the thousands who packed the Movistar Arena for Milei’s campaign-closing rally on Wednesday were men, many of them young and all of them seemingly angry.
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Angry with a leftist establishment that has failed to control spiraling inflation and economic stagnation. Angry with a government that has allowed their currency to plummet and their earnings to vanish.
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Young people are a political force in Argentina. Young women here were on the front lines of massive protests for the “green wave” abortion rights movement that spread across Latin America. They’ve led a campaign for gender-inclusive Spanish and helped bring the populist movement of former Argentine leaders Juan and Eva “Evita” Perón back to power.
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Now, after the Peronista government of Alberto Fernández and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has failed to halt the country’s economic decline, a new force among Argentina’s Generation Z is rising.
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An admirer of Donald Trump and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, Milei is campaigning on an Argentine version of “Drain the Swamp.” His aggressive style, outlandish comments and unusual presentation — he claims he hasn’t brushed that hair in years — have drawn millions of viewers to his videos and disrupted traditional politics
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He has branded Pope Francis — the Argentine former Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Bergoglio, the first South American pontiff — an “evil” leftist. Climate change, he says, is a “socialist lie.” He would hold a referendum to undo the three-year-old law that legalized abortion. He has called for creating a market for the sale of organs.
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But he has also offered frustrated Argentines a break from the status quo: He has proposed shutting down the central bank, dollarizing the economy and taking a “chain saw” to government spending.
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His attacks on the peso are already shocking the Argentine economy; the currency has taken a nose dive in the widely traded black market in recent weeks. The inflation rate has skyrocketed.
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If Milei wins, it will likely be on the strength of the country’s young. Voters aged 18 to 29 account for a quarter of the electorate, and polls show they’re overwhelmingly inclined to vote for the iconoclast. That’s especially true for young men.
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Coronel grew up watching the North American right-wing provocateurs Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos on a YouTube channel that translated their words into Spanish. “They were a fundamental part of my ideological awakening,” he said. But his greatest inspiration was Trump.
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“While everyone was focused on feminist demands and gay rights, there was a generation slowly starting to pay attention to Javier Milei.”
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He decided to become an economist in 1989 during the early days of hyperinflation in Argentina. He worked as a risk analyst for Corporacion America, owned by one of Argentina’s billionaires, before leaping into television as a regular guest on shows.
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Milei’s unconventional ideas and brash style — rants peppered with personal insults — was a TV hit. As the peso plunged and inflation skyrocketed, his economic theories began to find an audience.
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He was elected to Congress in 2021 on pledges to tear the political elite down. He gained national prominence by raffling off his congressional salary each month.
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Milei describes himself as a liberal-libertarian or a miniarchist. He supports limiting government to just a few functions — ideally, only security and justice — a night-watchman state.
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He promises to slash the number of federal ministries from 18 to eight. He applies his free-market ideas to just about everything — he proposes loosening gun restrictions to “maximize the cost of robbery” — and letting the invisible hand of the market do the rest.
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“Sometimes I have to pinch myself to ask whether I am living a dream or it’s a reality,” he told The Washington Post. “Because what Javier Milei proposes in politics hasn’t been heard in Argentina for 80 years.”
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Milei’s originality is perhaps exactly why Gen Z is so transfixed by him. It’s a generation craving authenticity, Argentine political analyst Ana Iparraguirre said. “They see this guy telling it like it is,” she said. “I might not like that he’ll be selling guns in the streets, but at least this guy is not faking it.”
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Most of his 1.4 million TikTok followers are younger than 24, according to his social media team. Iñaki Gutierrez, a 22-year old unpaid volunteer who manages his TikTok, said Milei managed to win the primaries in remote provinces “we didn’t even set foot in.” “TikTok was the answer,” Gutierrez said.
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The fastest-growing social media site in Latin America has helped elect a wave of millennial presidents in the region, including Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and, last week, Daniel Noboa in Ecuador.
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Milei’s TikTok posts offer Gen Z voters an outlet for rebellion against a system that they say is doing very little for them.
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According to one recent survey, more than 65 percent of young voters say they would leave Argentina if they could.
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“They feel they have no future,” Iparraguirre said. “If you’ve got nothing to lose you may as well try something different.”
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Fragoso’s girlfriend, Victoria Alegre, 23, walking with him in a mall in Buenos Aires this week, said she thinks Milei is a machista who could roll back rights for women. Fragoso said he also dislikes the way Milei speaks about feminism. But he’s willing to overlook it, he said, to take a chance on something — anything — different.
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“They said we were dangerous and that we needed to be quiet,” Milei shouted. “But we’re here, we fought the battle and we’re going to win!