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How the Argentine Left Created Milei | Compact

compactmag.com · 1,520 words · saved by 1 readers

Javier Milei’s triumph in the first round of the Argentine elections last year—the first of three that make up our tortuous process of electing a president—provoked not just shock, but confusion. Immediately, WhatsApp threads were bursting with different versions of the same question: Was he “far right”? Or was he something more bizarre—the first libertarian candidate in the world with a chance to win? The question was—and is—far from foolish. Milei presented himself as a central part of a new right-wing international, expressing solidarity with world leaders like Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. Everyone was happy then: The global right had a new idol in the Global South to celebrate, and the left had a new mini-Trump to combat. In an era of flat politics and memes turned into presidents, that would seem to be enough. But things aren’t that simple. The category of “far right” suffers the same fate as the concept of neoliberalism—both are ideas that, in their effort to explain

Javier Milei’s triumph in the first round of the Argentine elections last year—the first of three that make up our tortuous process of electing a president—provoked not just shock, but confusion. Immediately, WhatsApp threads were bursting with different versions of the same question: Was he “far right”? Or was he something more bizarre—the first libertarian candidate in the world with a chance to win? The question was—and is—far from foolish. Milei presented himself as a central part of a new right-wing international, expressing solidarity with world leaders like Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jai

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