Argentina's New President Is Trump...on Steroids
Matt Vespa
Is populism dead? It depends on who you ask. In Argentina, right-wing populism thrives after nearly two decades of left-wing Peronism, leading to two lost economic decades. A whopping forty percent of the population now lives in poverty, the peso has collapsed, and inflation is sky-high. Does this sound familiar? In a country dominated by the Kirchners, it’s quite a slap in the face to the nation’s political class that Javier Milei is the new president. It’s much like Trump’s 2016 win, a rejection of eight years under Obama.
Milei is reportedly a Trump acolyte, and it shows with his interviews railing against “shit leftards/leftists” who are ruining the country. Read the subtitles in Trump’s voice, and there is little that differentiates between the two—both men are very much alike regarding their messaging skills. Milei is a bit more jacked up, carrying chainsaws to political rallies (via WaPo):
A radical libertarian and admirer of Donald Trump rode a wave of voter rage to win Argentina’s presidency on Sunday, crushing the political establishment and bringing the sharpest turn to the right in four decades of democracy in the country.
Javier Milei, a 53-year-old far-right economist and former television pundit with no governing experience, claimed nearly 56 percent of the vote, with over 80 percent of votes tallied. It was a stunning upset over Sergio Massa, the center-left economy minister who has struggled to resolve the country’s worst economic crisis in two decades. Even before the official results had been announced Sunday night, Massa acknowledged defeat and congratulated Milei on his win.
[…]
Wielding chain saws on the campaign trail, the wild-haired Milei vowed to slash public spending in a country heavily dependent on government subsidies. He pledged to dollarize the economy, shut down the central bank and cut the number of government ministries from 18 to eight. His rallying campaign cry was a takedown of the country’s political “caste” — an Argentine version of Trump’s “drain the swamp.”
Massa was emblematic of that ruling elite — “the king of the caste,” political analyst Pablo Touzón said. The career politician attempted to distance himself from the leftist government of Alberto Fernández and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the heirs to the populist dynasty first launched by Juan and Eva “Evita” Perón in the 1940s. Along with a grass-roots campaign of activists, Massa sought to stoke fear over a Milei presidency they argued could threaten Argentina’s democracy and way of life.
But ultimately, anger won over fear. For many Argentines, the bigger risk was more of the same.
“We don’t have anything to lose,” Tomás Limodio, a 36-year-old business owner who voted for Milei in Buenos Aires on Sunday. “We’ve had this type of government for so many years, and things are only getting worse.”
more
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/11/20/argentinas-new-president-is-going-to-be-fun-n2631409
