Result falls short of giving Milei a congressional majority but surprises many analysts after series of scandals

Result falls short of giving Milei a congressional majority but surprises many analysts after series of scandals

The party of Argentina’s far-right president, Javier Milei, has won Sunday’s midterm elections after a campaign in which Donald Trump announced a $40bn bailout for the country and made continued aid conditional on the victory of his Argentinian counterpart.

With more than 95% of ballots counted, La Libertad Avanza secured 40.84% of the nationwide vote, in an election widely seen as a de facto referendum on the self-styled anarcho-capitalist’s nearly two years in power. The Peronist opposition, Fuerza Patria, secured 31.67%.

While the result falls short of giving Milei a congressional majority – which remains with the Peronists – it has surprised Argentinian analysts, given the recent blows to the libertarian’s popularity from corruption allegations involving his sister to the current economic crisis.

  • porcoesphino@mander.xyzEnglish
    2·
    5 hours ago

    No worries. I edited my reply to put both words on the same sentence to help if that was the issue.

    I did wonder about this a bit though. He is often framed in media as far right but unlike Trump or Farage he doesn’t seem to be so loud with anti-immigrant statements in the same sort of demonising way. Eventually I found this and I’m curious how wrong or right you think it is:

    https://www.swp-berlin.org/10.18449/2024C37/

    Here’s some (biased) quotes that I think make it seem like the far right label is reasonable but I’m sill pretty ignorant myself (and sorry that the vocabulary is different, it was a pain for me so I’m guessing it’s not perfect for you):

    Milei cultivates a populist political style and espouses a libertarian-authoritarian ideology that is on the far right of the national political spectrum. His success as a politician can be attributed to a mix of national and international factors: He is both a product of the supply and demand within his country’s political arena and a part of the rising global radical right.

    Milei is a proponent of anarcho-capitalism, which was founded in the 1950s in the U.S. by Murray Rothbard. In the early 1990s, Rothbard argued that libertarian ideas needed an active and aggressive strategy to gain majority support in the U.S. and be politically viable. He, therefore, advocated right-wing populism, the programmatic core of which is at the heart of Milei’s dis­course. Rothbard proposed an “outreach strategy” in which libertarians would ally themselves with paleoconservatives and traditionalists while making certain ideo­logical compromises, such as adopting a socially conservative agenda – an ideological shift that is visible in Milei’s discourse development. According to Rothbard, this new broad right-wing populist movement should be led by a charismatic presidential candidate whom all right-wing anti-estab­lish­ment forces would enthusiastically support.

    In typical populist style, Milei blames “the caste”, as he calls the political elite, for all of Argentina’s ills, describing its mem­bers are “parasites” that feed off the coun­try’s wealth. He claims to despise politics, regarding it as a “dirty business”. Milei does not acknowledge the factual inequality among people due to the double contingency of social origin and the personal talent con­ditioned by it. Instead, he assumes a theo­retical equality of origin, which should not be confused with equality of value. Thus, Milei views political and legal systems not as enabling frameworks that include equali­sation mechanisms such as rules to prevent oligopolies, but merely as constraints on the free development of individuals and the market. In this regard, he sees redistribution as a source of injustice. Consequently, he categorically rejects approaches to af­firma­tive action or positive discrimination, the protection of minorities and social policy.

    Milei’s ultra-liberal stance, evident in his advocacy for allowing the sale of one’s own organs under market conditions (“My first property is my body; why shouldn’t I be able to dispose of it?”), quickly reaches its limits when it comes to the self-deter­mina­tion of pregnant individuals. Together with his vice-president, Victoria Villarruel, he campaigns for the repeal of the legalisation of abortion approved by Congress in 2020. Milei considers abortion to be “murder between relatives”, which should be subject to particularly severe punishment.

    Milei believes that the lack of gender equality is an invention of the left

    Milei tends to relativise the crimes committed by the Argentine military dictatorship (1976–1983). He admits that there were excesses in the “war against subversion”; however, he denies the systematic nature of the human rights violations committed (kidnappings, torture, assassinations, and disappearances)

    But Milei’s mission is backward-looking. According to the 2023 electoral programme, the declared aim of his LLA alliance is to use liberal policies to return Argentina to the economically, politically, culturally and socially prosperous country it was supposedly (as the first world power) at the begin­ning of the 20th century – a time, inciden­tally, when universal and secret suffrage did not yet exist. This topos of a glorified past, which is reminiscent of the “Make America Great Again” sentiment, is central to Milei’s rhetoric and typically characterises the radical right