The populist Milei hits a nerve in crisis-stricken Argentina with his bullying appearances: He wants to “saw apart” the country’s political caste – and has the best chance of being elected president today.
In a suburb of Buenos Aires, Javier Milei pulls out a chainsaw – in the middle of a crowd – and lets it roar loudly. Then he throws paper money into the air. Fake dollar bills with his own likeness emblazoned on them. Milei has the best chance of becoming Argentina’s new president. “The caste trembles before us,” he roars. “The caste is afraid,” the crowd cheers.
It is Milei’s battle cry against Argentina’s establishment, which has always enriched itself at the expense of everyone else. His plan, however, was to saw apart the state apparatus. Milei wants to blow up the central bank, dissolve half of all ministries and introduce the dollar as a means of payment. Pay taxes? He thinks it’s a violation of human rights: “I’m not running to lead a flock of sheep. I’m running to wake up lions. Long live freedom! Damn!”
With a chainsaw through Buenos Aires: With such provocative appearances, Milei achieved high poll numbers in the presidential election campaign.
Comparisons with Trump and Bolsonaro
In doing so, Milei hits a nerve with Argentines, whose country was once considered the richest nation in South America, but has been sliding from one crisis to the next for decades – caught in a hopeless vortex of inflation, excessive indebtedness and economic decline. Current data: More than 140 percent inflation, more than 40 percent poverty, more than half of the people stay afloat with precarious jobs.
The sociologist Eduardo Fidanza from the political think tank Poliarquía compares him with ex-US President Donald Trump and Brazil’s ex-President Jair Bolsonaro: “Someone who is produced by a political system that is on the verge of collapse because it is becoming increasingly less successful to take care of people’s simplest needs. Milei appears as the messiah who can restore self-confidence to the disillusioned, angry population.”
Election campaign in front of schools and in poor neighborhoods
For a long time, the libertarian populist with his hairstyle like a synthetic wig was laughed at: anarcho-capitalist, that’s what Milei calls himself. He is 52, studied economics and previously worked as a consultant for one of the richest men in the country. He became known through eccentric appearances on tabloid TV. His furious frontal attacks against “those up there” made ratings.
It was the young voters who first cheered him on. Milei went in front of schools for selfie shoots, gave open-air economics courses in poor neighborhoods, and raffled off his first salary as a member of parliament on the Internet in 2021. He denies climate change, calls the Argentine Pope Francis II an idiot who is close to murderous communists – and Milei wants to open up the trade in organs. He now has more than 2.8 million followers on TikTok.
Team of sister and dictatorship apologist
“Before he became the leader of the new right in Argentina, Milei was a very, very lonely man,” says journalist Juan Luis Gonzalez, who wrote a biography – neither authorized nor denied by Milei – about the son of a bus driver and a housewife wrote. “El Loco”, her name is the crazy one.
Milei’s parents abused and humiliated him. His closest confidant became a giant mastiff: Conan, who died in 2017 and which he had cloned. Today he lives with his five four-legged descendants, who he named after his favorite economists. At his campaign’s closing event on Wednesday, he called the dogs “the best strategists in the world.”
Also always next to him: his younger sister Karina, whom he calls “el Jefe”, the boss. She manages his party “La Libertad Avanza”, which means “freedom advances”. Milei’s running mate, Victoria Villaruel, is the daughter of high-ranking military officials who trivializes the dictatorship.
“Very high level of improvisation”
But there is something else that worries political scientist Juan Negri – in the event of Milei’s election victory – about Argentina’s democracy, which has just turned 40 years old: “He would be a president with very little institutional support, much less than Bolsonaro had in Brazil or Trump in the USA. There are very few experienced political cadres who accompany him, which means there is a very high degree of improvisation. He will not be able to meet the different expectations that the voters have of him, I believe, and quickly Lose popularity.” Negri fears that if Milei becomes president, Argentina will face “institutional standstill and great social tensions.”
However, it is also no secret that Milei has long been forging alliances with long-established politicians in order to achieve his goal – i.e. with the very caste that he actually wants to saw apart.