2023-08-14 02:59:00
Javier Miley is going to win. He is convinced. He says that it was God himself, one of the supernatural presences he began to interact with following the death of his dog/son Conan in 2017 -a moment that marked the beginning of his mystical journey-, who told him: that is destined for a “mission”, to save Argentina from the “evil”. With that powerful conviction, she faces his first electoral challenge, as if it were just one more step in a story that already It was written from the heavens.
But, Although it sounds strange, Milei is right.. Proving that the deputy is indeed the “number one” chosen one, as he calls it, exceeds the work of this note -in “Crazy”, the book just published by Planeta editorial can find more revelations-, but on the other point the economist hits the mark. He is going to win because, in truth, he has already won. Let’s go to the facts.
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Freedom Advances, his space, is barely two years old. It was born as a novel project and outside the logic of the crack that brings together liberals, libertarians, conservatives, light blue scarves, hard nationalists, and influencers, a diverse alliance that knew how to interpret the climate of the time very well.
At the head was Milei
He He is an extravagant figure with a past as a media economist, with ideas that sound new that, combined with the right dose of insults and shouting and the particular touch of his long hair, had already transformed him, even before he jumped into politics, into a practically irresistible character. His name on television gives rating and in the networks clicks, an ideal combination for the era of clipping videos on WhatsApp, Twitter, and Instagram (he is the Argentine politician with the most followers, above Cristina Kirchner y Mauricio Macri). If Brazil had Bolsonaro and the United States had Trump, many saw or wanted to see Milei as the Argentine incarnation of them.
Combining Milei and Freedom Advances, added to the inflation rates and the debacle of the Frente de Todos that happened following the debacle of the macrismo, produced something totally out of the ordinary. A six month old space whose leader had not even participated in a university electionwith a large percentage of militants without any political experience, obtained 17% of the votes in the 2021 legislatures. And it happened in the heart of the country, in the place where the last two presidents came from. Freedom Advances got two seats in the Chamber of Deputies of the Nationfive in the Buenos Aires Legislature, one in the Legislature of The Riojaplus another that they would get the following year in Land of Fire.
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But they also achieved something more intangible but more important.. They put in check the balance of forces between Kirchnerism and Macrismo, the unalterable postcard of Argentine politics from 2007 to today. Milei became the phantom that threatened the profitable game of the crack and, with the subtlety of a punch to the jaw, she moved the axis of any discussion. The privatization of all public companies, the dollarization of the Argentine economy, the declared war once morest progressivism, feminism and “gender ideology”the destruction of Banco Centralthe total elimination of public works, the free carrying of arms, the abolition of the minimum wage, the denial of the thirty thousand disappeared and the defense at all costs of the free market and the “freedom” in general they became, thanks to him, stable cast of political ideas.
Milei transformed taboo topics into television plaques, media headlines, and social media applause with such ease and success that she forced everyone to pay attention to her almost magical formula. The newcomer went from student to teacher in a matter of weeks, and did something else: he warned that there was a “cultural battle”, an invisible war for the common sense of citizens, on Argentine soil.. And that it was he who was winning it.
Swipe in Together for Change
Faced with panic due to its growth and, above all, due to the flight of votes, Together for Change swerved. He did what the Popular Party had already done in Spain before the irruption of VOX: forced by the appearance of a big fish in his own fishbowl, he migrated his speech towards much tougher positions.s. The hawks were more hawkish than ever and they began to shout like Milei, to incorporate their theses and to look for a fight with their own enemies.
“They don’t run me anymore with the cynical progressive discourse, I don’t bank on it anymore, where the fuck are the priorities?”, Macri said at the presentation of one of his books, in October 2022. He was the same leader who, when he came to the Rivadavia chair, liked to look in the mirror of Barack Obama and European social democracy. It was also the first insult in public that he made in his political career. “The shouting, the insults, they don’t talk regarding me, they talk regarding you,” he had said at his last opening of sessions of Congress when he was President, while Kirchnerista deputies fought him from their benches. Three years later, the insults and shouts were still not talking regarding Macri: they were talking regarding Milei and the lack of responses from the hawks to his appearance in politics.
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For the opposition pigeons the challenge was even tougher. Making the great theses of this opposition side, such as dialogue and healthy democratic coexistence, coexist with the new ways and ideas in dance was a task worthy of contortionists. Horacio Rodriguez Larreta, leader of this wing, had to leave his comfort zone to rehearse opinions in which he clearly did not believe. For example, the Buenos Aires government went from holding inclusive language workshops for its employees and publishing flyers on sexual health using the letter X to banning inclusive language in schools in June 2022. Larreta, in person, went from agreeing with a tax on idle housing -October 2021, in an interview with Ernesto Tenembaum and Jairo Straccia- to “do not support a tax on empty houses” -October 2022, in an interview with Luis Novaresio.
What happened in Peronism
Peronism, for its part, carefully followed this trembling in the heart of the adversary, despite the fact that when Milei launched into the political arena they took it as little more than a joke. But following 17%, the historic movement began to take the libertarian into account, either to raise him up as the great cuckoo of politics -and thus lower the price of macrismo-, or to imagine him as a future tactical ally that would guarantee to steal votes from the opposition.
During 2023, Peronist mayors from all over the country passed among themselves a checkbook that imagined how much it would cost. finance a local candidate who will get Milei’s OK to compete within his list, while governors provided financial or logistical help for the landings of the liberal in their province. In the midst of the political and economic crisis of the Frente de Todos, the libertarian -and the votes he was able to wrest from Juntos- promise to be an indispensable ally in trying to maintain power. “We are praying that Milei gets many votes, that speaks of the fact that we have lost our way,” he said. Fernando “Chino” Navarrosecretary of Alberto Fernandez, in a rapture of sincerity in an interview. In some cases, they went even further. The case of Tigre, with Malena Galmari hanging around on the list of LLA councilors -and, as the expelled denounced in NEWS- putting the first of them, is good proof.
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It is that Milei did much more than shake the scene: was planted in the center of the agenda, forced all the actors to keep up with him and ended up becoming one of the owners of the ball. In this way he caused a full blown tsunami and rewrote Argentine politics. It transformed words like “taxes”, “dialogue”, “State”, “progressivism” into sins that only the brave dared to utter, while “freedom”, “liberalism”, “caste”, and insults of all kinds became be blockbuster slogans. Historical Peronists, radicals of several generations, confessed Macristas and repentant Kirchnerists they erased their past with their elbow and began to proclaim themselves “liberals” of a lifetime, with the intention of seeing their numbers improve on social networks and in surveys.
For all this, the libertarian has already won, even if he did not get a single vote when the polls open (which is also quite unlikely). He installed issues, rewrote the agenda, transformed the other two big parties. Of course, Milei is hardly the best character in an Argentina overwhelmed and tired following years and years of economic and political crisis. The phenomenon exceeds him, although he puts his face on it.
The only question that remains, then, is how it will take when the most probable thing happens: that on December 10 he does not wear the presidential sash. Will he feel it as a betrayal by God, the one who swore to him that he was “the chosen one”? Will he have a crisis of faith? Or will he know how to adapt to the new challenge?
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