Argentine Presidential election Sunday, Oct. 22

Javier Milei is a really nasty piece of work. And he has a good chance to be elected President of Argentina this coming Sunday. How nasty is he?

‘Tourism and Sports, out! Culture, out! Environment and Sustainable Development, out! Women, Genders and Diversity, out! Public Works, out! Science, Technology and Innovation, out! Labour, Employment and Social Security, out! Education, out! Transport, out! Health, out! Social Development, out!’

‘What remains of the state?’ he asked, admiring his work. Just Human Capital, Infrastructure, Economy, Justice, Security, Defence, Foreign Affairs and Interior. ‘The political con game is over! Long live liberty, damn it!’¹

A crackpot “libertarian” rightwinger, in other words.

This is an August report² from just after the first round of the Presidential election:

He’s a disciple of Murray Rothbard (1926–95) who was a fan of the far-right economist Ludwig von Mises who came up with his own quirky view:

… a distinctive right-wing variety of anarchism, later known as anarchocapitalism. Repurposing Mises’s economic theory, he argued for the abolition of the state in favor of completely free markets. In this respect, he went beyond Mises, who never questioned the necessity of a strong state to create and uphold a market order. ³ [my emphasis]

Milei describes himself as an “anarcho-capitalis´t”who:

… says he’ll slash public spending ‘with a chainsaw’, ‘blow up’ the central bank, dollarise the economy, break off relations with China (Argentina’s main commercial partner) because it’s ‘communist’, criminalise abortion, let citizens bear arms, jail protestors, and authorise the sale of human organs and even of children? In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro swept onto the political scene not long ago with a different style and background but selling a similar cocktail of authoritarianism, conservatism and free trade. Milei has likewise stepped into a void left by the reconfiguration of the right, which is mired in a crisis it’s struggling to overcome.⁴

Jacob Jensen describes Rothbard's viewpoint as "a racialized and gendered retreat into the domestic sphere, isolating individuals in their racial communities and familial households."⁵

Svenja Blanke associates Milei with authoritarian politician like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsanaro, as well as Rothbard:

But differently than his ultra-right “friends” Trump and Bolsonaro, Milei is a follower of an extreme libertarian ideology - so-called anarchocapitalism, which sees the sole function of the state to provide its citizens an army, police, and courts to protect their property rights. This theoretical school goes back to the American academic economist Murray Rothbard and proclaims on the basic of natural law that all goods and services in society should be regulated by free contracts between individual persons. The free exchange of good is the basic principles: this applies even to trafficking in human beings [!!] - or drug trafficking, street construction, weapons, education - even for children, who in principle could be sold by their parents. The state in this school of though the enemy and aggressor.⁶

Crackpot stuff, in other words.

Conspiracy theories that sprang up around the COVID pandemic seems to have played a significant role in making people more open to Milei’s appeal.⁷

It’s worth noting that the “dollarization” (pegging the Argentine peso to the dollar) he advocates the last time it was done, provoking a crisis that featured President Fernando de la Rúa leaving office by flying out of the Presidential Palace in Buenos Aires while an angry crowd filled the Plaza de Mayo in front of it demonstrating against him. “Born into a powerful landowning family, Bullrich joined the Marxist guerrillas in the 1970s,”⁸ but she has long since returned to the oligarchical fold.

He faces two opponents in Sunday’s election, the center-life Sergio Massa⁹ as the candidate of the Peronist bloc and Patricia Bullrich¹⁰, a dreary pro-oligarch candidate of the traditional conservative right, the candidate for the conservative bloc Together for Change.

“To win in the first round, a candidate has to obtain more than 45% of votes or more than 40% with a more than 10-point lead over the second-place candidate. If no candidate reaches this threshold, the top two will continue to a runoff on Sunday, Nov. 19.”¹¹

The current government is headed by the center-right Peronist Alberto Fernández and has been hampered by a long legacy of ruinous neoliberal politics, which left Peronist governments from 2003-2015 worked intensely to reverse. But now:

Argentina is struggling with more than 100 percent annual inflation, International Monetary Fund (IMF) pressures to reduce the fiscal deficit, and a stagnant economy.

So, the government is unpopular. But I should also add some caveats here. One big underlying issue was that the governing coalition never worked. That situation became more pronounced after the poor results of the 2021 midterm elections.

The conflict between President Alberto Fernández and [left Peronist] Cristina Kirchner had to do with three main points: the level of public expenditure, the agreement reached with the IMF in 2020, and, finally, who really holds power within the government. Kirchner’s wing attacked Fernández for cutting public spending and signing a new deal with the IMF, although it’s difficult to separate that critique from a more general struggle for power within the coalition.¹² [my emphasis]

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was the first elected female President in Latin America and was part of the progressive “pink tide” trend in Latin America. She was an effective and visionary leader and is deeply hated by Argentine rightwingers. She was President from 2007 to 2015.

She was the target of a nearly-successful assassination attempt in 2022.¹³

A quirky position on the Malvinas/Falkland Islands

For a far-rightist, Milei’s position on Argentina’s sovereignty over the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands may look somewhat surprising. On the one hand, he recognizes Argentina’s rightful claim to the Malvinas. But he also basically endorses the British position that the people living in the Malvinas - i.e., British colonists - should be able to determine the island’s future status.¹⁴

This is a British tactic: take over another country’s territory, populate it with loyal British citizens while excluding citizens of the other country, then declare they want the current inhabitants to “democratically” select to continue to be part of the British Empire.

But generally, support for Argentine sovereignty over the Malvinas is widely popular across the political spectrum. Possession of the Malvinas also involves rights to fishing and oil rights. It’s far from a purely sentimental concern.

1. Correa, Anne-Dominique (2023): Which right will be right for Argentine voters? Le Monde Diplomatic English Oct. 2023, 8-9.

2. What's behind Javier Milei's election win in Argentina? - Inside Story. Al Jazeera English 08/18/2023. (Accessed: 2023-17-10).

3. Jensen, Jacob (2022): Repurposing Mises: Murray Rothbard and the Birth of Anarchocapitalism. Journal of the History of Ideas 83:2, 315-332. <https://muse.jhu.edu/article/855169>

4. Correa, op. cit.

5. Jensen, op. cit. See also: Costa, Daniel: anarcho-capitalism. Britannica Money, n/d. <https://www.britannica.com/money/anarcho-capitalism#ref1307299> (Accessed´: 2023-17-10).

6. Blanke, Svenja (2023): Wut gegen das System: Kommt der argentinische Trump? Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 10/2023, 27-30. My translation from German.

7. Milei ratificó su postura sobre Malvinas y la "autodeterminación" de la población ocupante. Página/12 13.09.2023. <https://www.pagina12.com.ar/587715-milei-ratifico-su-postura-sobre-malvinas-y-la-autodeterminac> (Accessed: 2023-13-09).

8. Correa, op. cit.

9. Molina, Melisa (2023): Los números de Sergio Massa, con la mira puesta en la segunda vuelta. Página/12 05.09.2023. <https://www.pagina12.com.ar/584994-los-numeros-de-sergio-massa-con-la-mira-puesta-en-la-segunda> (Accessed: 2023-05-09).

10. Heath, Maximilian (2023): Argentina election 2023: what you need to know. Reuters 10/16/2023. <https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/argentinas-presidential-election-who-are-candidates-what-is-stake-2023-10-13/> (Accessed: 2023-16-10).

El acto de Patricia Bullrich que terminó en una banalización de la dictadura. Página/12 17.10.2023. <https://www.pagina12.com.ar/598880-el-acto-de-patricia-bullrich-que-termino-en-una-desafortunad> (Accessed´: 2023-17-10).

11. Correa, op. cit.

12. Allen, Nicolas (interviewer) & Pryluka, Pablo (2023): The Face of Voter Disaffection in Argentina Is an Anarcho-Capitalist With Sideburns. Jacobin 09/06/2023. <https://jacobin.com/2023/09/javier-milei-argentineelection-voter-dealignment-massa-bullrich-macri-peronism> (Accessed: 29-09-2023).

13. Alonso, Juan (2023): Tejido de impunidad: La trama de poder en torno al intento de asesinato de Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. El Cohete a la Luna 03.09.2023. <https://www.elcohetealaluna.com/tejido-de-impunidad/> (Accessed´: 2023-17-10).

14. Milei ratificó su postura sobre Malvinas y la "autodeterminación" de la población ocupante. Página/12 13.09.2023. <https://www.pagina12.com.ar/587715-milei-ratifico-su-postura-sobre-malvinas-y-la-autodeterminac> (Accessed: 2023-13-09).