Argentina was in the headlines again. It’s been lackluster since the World Cup: only the occasional inflation record or Messi whim in the Caribbean, the rest left to the specialists or the outright victims. But these days, the world’s major media was excited about the winner of their presidential primaries: a “far right tantric sex teacher,” says one English newspaper, a “far right libertarian,” says an American one, “Le nouveau Trump sudaméricain.” ” says a Frenchman to define the lawyer Javier Gerardo Milei.
And then they tell of their usual graces: going to an animal medium to consult their dead dog—of whom they have four clones they call “my four-legged children”—that they want to abolish the central bank, and the Introduce dollars as the national currency, which would allow the sale of organs and the carrying of weapons, which would sing at its rallies like geriatric karaoke, which would chastely end the “political caste”, which would abolish compulsory education and research centers and a large part of the public Health, who says that “global warming is another lie of socialism,” who, like every other nutcase on a street corner, spouts Bible quotes, who proclaims – he always proclaims – that “social justice is an aberration” and calls the shots that you don’t have to get involved. Not even the owners of the “market” he defends so much trust his market chaos.
The man is useful: he is folkloric, he lets himself be surprised and talks and complains about how bad the world is; After all, that’s what we do. Despite the noise, it is very difficult for Mr. Milei to win the presidency. And if a boring god insisted on pushing it, he could not govern: he would have Parliament against him and no pro-governor, and the unions and social movements would be fighting in the streets for the cuts he so often advocates preaches: the perfect recipe for another major short-term disaster.
But its 7,116,352 voters are full of lessons. Above all: that a third of Argentines feel violently outside the “democratic system” installed in the country 40 years ago and are desperately looking for someone to give them their place back. That this is the chosen one shows the depth of the crisis: his voters are not looking for a rational criticism, an attempt at change, a project; They want someone screaming that everything is going to burst.
They are right – or their reasons. And they’re part of this award-winning worldwide trend where it seems the only ones able to capitalize on well-deserved discontent are these memes of Hitler and Mussolini, two gentlemen living in similar circumstances also received the support of the masses who felt marginalized.
What is surprising is how, in such a short space of time, the left, so focused on small things, seems to have lost the ability to voice general discontent and propose changes that attract those who need them. (In America, the reasons seem clear: for 20 years, self-proclaimed left-wing governments strayed into welfare and patronage politics, ending in these chronic crises. So it makes sense that those who suffer , thinking that only the “anti-Bolche right”, the other per se, can save them.)
With two months left until the presidential election and in Argentina two months is two decades: so much can happen in the meantime. But in any case, the battle will most likely be decided between a right-wing candidate, Ms Bullrich, and a far-right candidate, the aforementioned Milei: together they received almost two-thirds of the vote on Sunday. What unites them is their rejection of the ruling false left, their intention to take “strong action” against criminals and demonstrators, and above all their anti-state thinking. Therein lies the heart of the matter.
In recent decades, names have changed – a little – to keep us from getting bored: They could be dogs or cats or camels or garden fish, but all the key politicians in Argentina have done nothing more than close the two opposing tendencies at home represent The capitalist consensus: statism and anti-statism. They are actually separated by a matter of dimensions. Anti-stateists assume that the state should be concerned only with the purest power: internal and external security, some justice and the full functioning of the market. The extras add a notion of social responsibility: that their subjects not die of starvation, filth, or preventable diseases.
For much of the last century in Argentina the position of the state was crucial: far more than in any other country in the region, the public sector supported schools, universities, hospitals, boarding houses, railroads, airplanes, telephones, electricity and water, oil. That was their radical difference for decades.
Until the global liberal revolution of the 1990s led to the “privatization” of these public companies. Politicians and propagandists managed to convince a large part of the population of a stupid mistake: the state to which they entrusted their government, their security, their justice is incapable of managing a railway line or gas distribution. In this way, they sold everything – mainly to pesoist Spain – and collected powerful illegal commissions. Meanwhile, millions of people supported the dollar-equivalent pesos and happily overthrew them.
But by the end of the decade, when the balloon burst and the banks kept the money, millions more took to the streets demanding that the politicians who had made it “all go away”. There have been four or five very ephemeral presidents, and at the end a South Menemist governor, Mr. Kirchner, who, faced with liberal failure, understood that it was time to propose more state — even though years earlier in his province he had privatized oil, he emerged.
In 2003, he gained national support with his statist proclamations. But the Argentine government was already very affected: Néstor Kirchner – and later his widow Fernández – used the remaining money to distribute all kinds of subsidies and alms. His aid policy has created this Argentina where a good third of the people without work or real income live on these handouts and must – or should obey – those who give them. These hopeless lives often end in indolence or violence.
Logically, many of them are now rebelling against the state that put them in this situation. And they blame their leaders, and again millions – not necessarily the same ones – want everyone to go and privatize everything. In the circular logic of these Pampas we now have an anti-state cycle. But if this state still had a lot to sell in Menem’s time, now it has nothing left: only debt.
Anti-state leader Milei can no longer propose privatizing phones or planes; It only remains to privatize each individual, his work, his rights, his body: the sell-off is an individual decision and the state does not prevent it. That’s what he envisions: Extending privacy so far that everyone has the “right” to sell their organs, for example – “because that’s another market, why should the state interfere in regulating what.” everyone wants?” to do with your body? If we want to respect property, why can’t I dispose of my body, which is my first property?” he said in an interview.
And the state is so discredited for its political commitment to social control that the state party that now runs it doesn’t even dare to justify the days when Argentines could read and write because there were public schools that didn’t just exist once served to feed them a day. Or to explain that the drop in child mortality from 60 to 6 children per 1,000 in half a century is due to public health. It cannot, for millions see it as a haven for renegade politicians who use it to buy wills for handouts and line their pockets or purses.
It is logical. The customer assistance system is so unfair and harmful without a doubt. But for people who have no other livelihood, taking that livelihood without replacing it with an integration that would take time and a lot of effort to build can be a disaster. Therefore, there is only one danger that Argentina cannot overcome: the famous “bukelization”. That, in order to function, it relies on its leader to achieve something tangible – even by the worst possible means. And it’s very, very unlikely that either of the two anti-state leaders – Milei, Bullrich – will get anywhere.
Argentina is not a country known for its patience and tolerance. If, as they say, one of these bosses tries to abolish the subsidies, there is a risk that the country will be in flames: millions on the streets, the real chaos. Or if they do the same as Mauricio Macri and don’t dare remove them and keep the situation in the same parameters, anti-stateism will last a few years and fail, and the state welfare discourse will return, spinning the same merry-go-round, merry-go-round or carousel again and again. Carousel.
Unless, exceptionally and without precedent, something happens to us.
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