One of Argentina’s presidential candidates is unlike the others. La Libertad Avanza’s Javier Milei whizzes past crowds shaking a chainsaw in the air and roaring his catchphrase ‘¡Viva la libertad, carajo!’, or ‘Long live freedom, goddamnit!’.
In the run-up to the general election, on 22 October, this anarcho-capitalist libertarian has flipped from being a joker wild card – and something of a meme – to the front-runner. Milei, a pro-life, climate change-sceptical libertarian, sends a message of his intentions to chainsaw through the red tape of what he considers the most prolific ‘organised crime group’, otherwise known as the state. His chainsaw has become such a signature accessory that figurines have gone on sale of Milei armed with one engraved with his slogan.
Milei wants to scrap sex education – despite being a former tantric sex coach
But Milei is no joke: this summer, he won thirty per cent of the vote in the primary election in a shock victory, beating the two main coalitions: the Peronists and the centre-right Juntos por el Cambio. So how did such an eccentric political figure, who is casting a long shadow over the other presidential candidates, rise to the top of Argentine politics?
This once-affluent nation is now grappling with the third-worst hyperinflation rate worldwide after a century of boom-bust cycles. Inflation soared past 124 per cent last quarter. Every month, shops are raising their pricing to keep up. Argentinians are desperately spending their cash, or else watch their savings turn to dust.
Milei claims to hold the answer to Argentina’s economic downfall and to balancing the budget ‘within months’. First on his to-do list is to swap the bloated peso for the US dollar, and ‘burn down’ the central bank, which has been printing streams of money to fund government deficits. He has also vowed to slash public spending by closing down or privatising state-run companies and bodies that he claims are ‘used as a haven for people collecting a paycheck without doing actual work’. This entails ending free higher education, replacing free universal healthcare with an insurance system, and selling the national oil and airline companies. Social media videos show him tearing cards with the names of ministries and tossing them into the air, cutting them down from eighteen ministries to eight.
Milei’s stances are full of surprising juxtapositions. On one hand, he is in favour of relaxing gun laws, cutting taxes, and scrapping sex education – despite being a former tantric sex coach. On the other, he takes a laissez-faire approach to drugs and gender identity, stating ‘As long as you don’t make me foot the bill, be whatever you want’. Even more bizarre is that, while Milei is anti-abortion, he has suggested people should be freer to do what they want with their bodies when it comes to organ trading.
But if Milei wins he might be in for a nasty shock. Argentinians are accustomed to stashing wads of USD under their beds, yet dollarisation, as adopted by Ecuador, El Salvador, and Zimbabwe, is a simplification of Argentina’s problems and no golden goose. The most obvious obstacle is the government’s lack of the necessary stock of liquid dollars, and having been cut off from international debt markets since its last default in 2020.
Yet Milei isn’t fazed by opponents who point out these things. His suspicion of the state is ideological and deep-rooted. His views echo the sentiment of libertarian thinker Murray Rothbard, who saw states as ‘organised banditry’ and taxation as nothing but ‘theft on a gigantic, and unchecked, scale’.
Milei admires Rothbard to such an extent that he named one of his five dogs after him; he also claims he can communicate with his deceased dog through a medium, and makes important decisions based on his conversations with it.
By background, Milei is not your typical politician. The 52-year-old bus driver’s son only entered the political arena four years ago, and has never held executive office. Beforehand, he worked as an economist in universities and think tanks, and even had a stint as a Rolling Stones-style amateur rocker in his youth. His history places him at odds with the political elite about whom he furiously rants on his 1.4 million follower-strong TikTok account.
The Argentinians from both working class and affluent neighbourhoods have demonstrated willingness to give Milei a whirl, in defiance of both the right and the left. In the next couple of weeks leading up to the general election, all eyes will be on Milei. His juxtapositions are leaving us wondering who is pulling his strings. After his primary election victory, the peso devalued by a staggering 22 per cent over the subsequent days. The world will be anticipating Argentina crumbling into deeper inflation on the 22 October if Milei triumphs.
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