Published November 22, 2023 at 8:45 am. Updated November 22, 2023 at 9:57 am
Insurrectionary statements against the “parasitic political caste”, promises of freedom against the “enemy state”: the ultra-liberal economist Javier Milei, who was elected Argentine president on Sunday, has turned the country’s politics inside out in two years, thereby drawing the anger of the population. As an economics graduate, he worked as a consultant and lecturer in the private sector and wrote economics books and columns, which sometimes earned him accusations of plagiarism.
From 2014, Javier Milei entered the Argentine media landscape as a polemicist with an economic analyst tendency, whose principles are based on the Austrian school, which advocates the rejection of state intervention. More than once, his political rivals have pointed to his “aggressiveness” and tried to portray him as “emotionally unstable,” even “crazy.” “The difference between a genius and a madman is success,” he likes to say. Four examples of surprising facts about Javier Milei, the new Argentine president.
1. He cloned his dog
The new Argentine president’s loved ones have four legs. During his presidential campaign, he called his dogs “the best strategists in the world” before dedicating his victory to his “four-legged children.” Four dogs who are clones of his first “son” Conan, based on Conan the Barbarian. An English mastiff who was his faithful companion and with whom, according to him, he was connected in another life when they met 2,000 years ago in the Roman Colosseum and were gladiator and lion, as the Argentine newspaper La Nacion explained. Javier Milei says he can still communicate with him, as well as with missing economists.
In 2018, Milei paid around $50,000 to the American company PerPETuate to clone Conan using his DNA, according to Portal and The New York Times. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper “20minutos” in August, his biographer Juan-Luis González assures that the Argentine “is convinced that the dogs advise him in different areas: one in politics, another in economics, another give him general advice.”
2. “Anarcho-capitalist”
Javier Milei describes himself as an “anarcho-capitalist”, libertarian, with right-wing extremist positions. Among the main measures of his program are the dollarization of the economy and the abolition of the central bank once the greenback has replaced the peso, the national currency, which he treated as “excrement.”
He also said he wanted to implement a far-reaching privatization program: “Anything that can get into the hands of the private sector will be.” » He cited oil giant YPF, which was nationalized in 2012 under the presidency of Peronist Cristina Kirchner. But he also denounced public media such as the official Telam agency and TVP television, “which have become a propaganda mechanism,” in another interview on Radio Miter.
3. Chainsaw enthusiast
Javier Milei has a favorite object: a chainsaw, often brandished in meetings, symbolizing the impending cuts in public spending to put an end to “this deviation called social justice, synonymous with budget deficit.” However, Javier Milei wanted to be more reassuring towards the end of the presidential campaign, in a country where 40% of the population lives below the poverty line. “We will not privatize healthcare, not education,” he promised in his latest campaign clip.
4. Supporters of organ sales, but opponents of abortion and climate skeptics
During his election campaign, Javier Milei made his voice heard through controversy and shocking statements. Like the deregulation of arms sales, a “market solution” for organ donations or the rejection of abortion, which was legalized in Argentina in 2021.
He also wants to work for individual freedom on other issues, such as the legalization of drugs, “as long as it doesn’t involve state aid.” He also positions himself as a climate skeptic, saying global warming is just a “cycle” and “not human responsibility.”
With AFP