Establishment Shaken by Libertarian Candidate’s Victory in Argentina’s Presidential Primary

A libertarian member of Argentina’s parliament shook the establishment Sunday night by becoming “the most-voted-for presidential candidate in a key primary election,” as reported by the Buenos Aires Times.

The outspoken and at times outlandish Javier Milei took 32.57 percent of the votes in Sunday’s primary election to determine the candidates for the next stage in the presidential election scheduled for October 22.

The outcome has been described as a “tsunami” and a “political earthquake,” an indication of the power such political outsiders have of destroying despotic regimes and those that depend on the perpetuation of their power.

Unlike many recent candidates seeking the support of libertarian voters through pretended professions of that faith, Javier Milei is a man so committed to libertarianism and free-market economics that he named his dogs — English mastiffs — after famous figures from the Austrian school: Milton, Murray, Robert, and Lucas.

As would be expected, Milei’s unexpected upset Sunday night was painted by the mainstream media as a victory for the “far right.” Take the following headlines as examples of the efforts by the establishment’s mouthpieces to marginalize Milei: 

• “Far-right outsider takes shock lead in Argentina primary election” (The Guardian)
• “Argentine peso plunges after shaggy-haired rightist who admires Trump comes first in primary vote” (AP News)
• “Far-Right Libertarian Wins Argentina’s Presidential Primary” (The New York Times)

As does AP News, the BBC tries to malign Milei by trying to tie him to Donald Trump: “Javier Milei: Trump admirer leads race for Argentina presidency.”

In fact, the BBC article under that headline doubles down on its effort to make Milei guilty by association, writing, “In a policy that brings to mind Brazil’s former far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro, Mr Milei also proposes loosening gun controls.”

“Loosening gun controls” is a “far-right” position to people who favor consolidating the control of guns into the hands of the government and its agents.

Of course, being a libertarian is about the farthest one can be on the political spectrum from “far-right,” but if an article set about accurately reporting Milei’s platform, there’s a chance that such positions might gain support in other countries where inflation is enervating the economy (the United States, for example).

It is illuminating, in fact, to read the establishment’s rap sheet of Milei’s “crimes” against their grip on government.

For example, the BBC attacks Milei not only for wanting to reduce regulations on guns, but for having “attacked sex education in schools as a ploy to destroy ‘the traditional family.’…”

Milei is adamantly pro-life, promising in his campaign literature to “protect children’s lives from conception.”

Additionally, The Guardian takes a swipe at Milei not for his policy positions, but for being “a Donald Trump-like character at first dismissed as a daytime television buffoon.”

The fact that nearly every story published by the mainstream media this morning points out that Milei has described climate change as “a socialist lie” tells you all you need to know about the establishment’s response to his rocking of their boat.

Furthermore, all of the stories announcing his primary-election victory describe Milei’s supporters not as independents or libertarians or people fed up with the status quo, but rather as “fanatics” and “the extreme right,” and call them out for waving “the yellow Gadsden flag….”

Such attempts to poison the political well are to be expected by the state-approved media. These outlets realize that should candidates whose messages could unite the politically disenfranchised on the right and the left begin winning elections, then the entire foundation of fascism upon which these media and their political benefactors are built could come crashing down around them.

Candidates for major political office are not supposed to say that students in government-managed public schools are “hostages of a system of state indoctrination.” Candidates for major political office are supposed to promote the propping up of those schools and the teaching of curricula aimed at convincing the young that the government is the giver of rights and the righter of wrongs.

Candidates for major political office are not supposed to say that they would abolish bureaucratic agencies. Milei must be mad to declare in a campaign video:

Culture ministry – out! Environment – out! Ministry of women and gender diversity – out! Public works – out! Science – out! Labour and social security – out! Ministry of education and indoctrination – out! [Translated by the author.]

Milei had the audacity (courage, others would say) to blame “the parasitic, larcenous, useless” political class for “sinking the country.”

It should be little wonder that a man so unmanaged and unmanageable should attract the attention and votes of millions of Argentines who suffer from the debilitating diseases brought on by the very parasites Milei means to remove from the body politic in his home country.

As reported by many outlets this morning, Argentina’s inflation has ballooned to 115 percent, while about 25 percent of people in that country live at or below the poverty line. 

Those papers also assume, however, that Milei and his supporters believe government has failed to fix those problems. They do not. Milei and many of those who cast ballots for him see government as the cause of those catastrophes, not as the solution to them.

It would seem indicative of newspapers’ ability to successfully expose the weaknesses in a candidate’s message when article after article criticizes his haircut rather than his platform.

Finally, at a gathering of his supporters celebrating his victory, Milei explained the reason not only for his victory in Sunday’s primary election, but for the growing popularity of his message:

We are the true opposition, we are the only ones who want a real change, because remember, a different Argentina is impossible with the same old people, with the same old people who have always failed, with the same old people who have been failing for 100 years. [Translated by the author.]

The first round of the presidential election will be held on October 22, followed by a head-to-head match up of the two top vote-getters on November 19, assuming no candidate wins 45 percent of the votes or wins by a margin of more than 10 percent after the October 22 votes are counted.