Not speaking clearly may be the first problem of politics. It is much like the old axiom, often misattributed to Burke, that for evil to triumph it is only necessary for good men to do nothing. In much of the world, conservatism has been living in fear since the last century. In Latin America, social-communism remains a plague because too many of its nations are beaten down day after day by years of compliance, of life without freedom, of criminal inertia and “populist” mafias.
From Venezuela to Argentina, they have had no chance of standing up to the Bolivarian monster of the sickle, the coca leaf, and the hammer. Argentina, only recently so wealthy, should have been the exception, but it was not: because the fears and complexes of the right outweighed the inefficiency and larceny of the Kirchnerist left wing. And that is saying something.
But there is light. A light that brings with it lessons for any country that aspires to live in freedom. It comes from a disheveled-looking guy, with a hint of old rock star in his expression, thoroughly unashamed. He is an economist and lecturer; his name is Javier Milei. He shouts like an angry bear, and he is a political outsider who decided a year ago that he would run as candidate for the Argentine national congress for the City of Buenos Aires.
Milei’s most repeated catchphrase during this summer’s campaign, unprecedentedly harsh against Kirchnerism and cultural Marxism, is a bombshell that resounds throughout the country: “I did not come to lead lambs, I came to awaken lions”.
And it has awakened them. Last September 12, in the open, simultaneous, and mandatory primary elections (PASO by its acronym in Spanish), Kirchnerism suffered a painful electoral fiasco in the ever decisive city of Buenos Aires, with 24.66 percent of the votes, while the moderate former President Macri’s Juntos por el Cambio (Together for Change) grew to 28.19 percent, and, against all odds, the newcomer Milei’s party La Libertad Avanza (Freedom Advances) became the third most voted force with 13.66 percent of the vote. Between now and the next elections, Milei has a vast field in which to grow, continuing his trend of the last few months.
The primary result is a symptom of something larger, not just an anecdote. Milei has been the most mentioned politician on the social networks; he has pulverized all the audiences during the campaign; and with his vehemence and casual style he has enticed a growing crowd of young voters to whom never before had anyone spoken to so outrightly against socialism, communism, and what Milei calls the “political caste.”
“We are going to overthrow the model that the political caste have defended,” he said at the closing of the campaign, “as all it has achieved is to turn the richest country in the world into one of the poorest countries in the world.” He has repeatedly hollered from half the stages in Argentina: There is not a single leftist model that offers good results, because “everywhere they have been applied, it has brought economic, social, and cultural disaster.” It may seem like stating the obvious to say this in Argentina. But Milei does not just state it, he screams it with his eyes bulging out of their sockets.
Dozens of headlines can be extracted from any of his speeches. “We, who love liberalism,” he said a few days ago, “operate on the basis of unrestricted respect for the life projects of others, based on life, property, and freedom. The others claimed that they loved the poor, but they multiplied them.” At the end of the day, he makes no secret of his one-hundred-percent liberal recipe for pulling nations out of the abyss of poverty.
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