With Milei, Argentina enters unexplored territory, by Ramon Aymerich

Futurism, the Italian artistic movement of the first decade of the 20th century that was so popular with young fascists, exalted war and speed. It was his way of visualizing his rejection of the past and betting on modernity, technology, revolution. There is no revolutionary or disruptive proposal in Javier Milei's message. What stands out, what has inflamed his younger voters, has been his fascination with destruction. That chainsaw with which he appears at demonstrations, those blows and outbursts from his television outbursts. Today everyone in Argentina hopes that all this destruction remains in gestures and not in the vibrations of a volatile and unstable person.

Javier Milei has won in Argentina with a libertarian-inspired program. It may seem like an exotic proposition. But there is nothing mysterious about it. It is a set of basic ideas that translate into an intimate rejection of the State, of everything public. In the 1930s, anarchism was a thing for the poor, for people without bread. They distributed leaflets with the motto "Neither God, nor Country nor Patron." Milei's anarchism is very different. It is a later invention of the most radical faction of liberalism and that the technocracy of Silicon Valley has rehabilitated, an ideology defended by magnates such as Peter Thiel or Elon Musk. It seeks to do without the State, to put taxes at zero on the scoreboard. And this makes it a dangerous dystopia in complex economies and a hell for the societies that suffer from them. In this policy, any desire to redistribute resources and responsibilities, to restore equal opportunities, disappears.

The winner's ideology is simple and he wants to reduce the State to its minimum expression.

The conversion of the State to the minimum expression could be a catastrophe for Argentina, as defended in a manifesto distributed a week ago by a group of international economists. The winner of the elections has proposed eliminating the Central Bank and dollarizing the economy. The Argentine upper classes, in fact, are already dollarized and have their accounts with that currency in Miami. It is likely that when push comes to shove, Milei will not be able to put those ideas into practice. Because he lacks a sufficient majority in the chambers and in the search for the necessary partners to apply them, he is forced to moderate them. By then, the damage will already be done. Her victory will have validated ideas that should be locked inside a lamp and never have left them.

But Milei has been the bet of many young Argentines and also of a significant part of poor Argentines. Many observers indicate that in his victory there is no adherence to his ideas: the liberalization of the sale of weapons, the liberalization of the sale of organs, the suppression of the right to abortion or climate denialism, which he describes as the latest invention of the socialists. . Nor does it mean that they think that the left, characterized as the enemy, and indiscriminately described as communist, should disappear. Nor do they share the candidate's understanding of the crimes of the military dictatorship, "excesses" according to him, which led to the death or disappearance of 30,000 people.

No. In his vote, what there is is desperation. Fed up with a policy that has impoverished them for years. Tiredness of a traditional party system involved in corruption and that has been unable to resolve a crisis that broke out in 2000 (actually due to ideas close to those of the now winning candidate). Declassification is an uncontrollable force. Anxiety over the loss of status of broad social strata leads society to chaos. It makes the political system incomprehensible. That's where we are today.

Milei's victory is extraordinary for the world's extreme right, including the Spanish one.

In few societies like Argentina, inequality is experienced in such a bloody way. Latin America's second economy, rich in energy and food, is a cultured and educated society. Although, paradoxically, in this drunkenness over cuts, Milei also wants to cut spending on education, one of the main assets of this society. It will be difficult to solve the ills of Argentina, an economy that in the last half century has lived on a true roller coaster of defaults, payment suspensions and in which inflation periodically destroys the savings of the poorest. To solve this, we must reform the party system and dismantle a system of benefits and clientelistic subsidies of Peronism. But it is something complex and slow. And ultimately, you must also have luck and a favorable international framework. Because, like other South American economies, Argentina is too dependent on the prices of the raw materials from which it obtains its wealth. It's not something that can be fixed with a chainsaw.

This is an extraordinary victory for the international far right. Donald Trump was the first to congratulate him. Jair Bolsonaro the second. And shortly after Elon Musk did it from the social network of which he is the owner. But Milei's victory is more significant. It means the propagation of a corpus of ideas as simple as they are dangerous. Young people like Milei. She conveys a carefree and informal image. And she achieves great success in the Spanish-speaking world. Also in Spain, where her victory is being very celebrated today