‘The wig’ brings Trumpist anti-politics to Argentina
He believes selling human organs should be legal, climate change is a “socialist lie”, sex education is a ploy to destroy the family and that the Central Bank should be abolished.
He also could be Argentina’s next president.
Javier Milei, an admirer of former United States President Donald Trump, is the latest example of rightwing populists making inroads in Latin America, appealing to a citizenry angry at politicians and eager for outsiders to shake up the system.
A libertarian economist, Milei made a name for himself by shouting against the “political caste” on television. His presidential candidacy looked like a sideshow until recently. Polls show his popularity rising, and his proposals dominate discussions ahead of October elections.
“No one can say Milei isn’t someone who could get the presidency,” said Luis Tonelli, a political scientist at University of Buenos Aires.
Milei jumped from talking head to politician in 2021 when he won a seat in Argentina’s lower house of Congress. Since then, he’s had little legislative activity, but 2.7 million people have signed up for his monthly raffle to give away his salary.
Recently, fans lined up at the Buenos Aires Book Fair to see him talk about his latest book on Argentina’s rampant inflation. The book calls for cutting spending, abolishing the Central Bank and moving to the US dollar.
His fans are mostly young men who treat the 52-year-old politician like a rock star and affectionately refer to him as “the wig” because of his signature mop of hair.
“The caste is afraid,” Milei said, and his followers chanted along.
Afraid or not, the country’s political leaders now see him as real
competition in an election that until recently seemed like a contest between two electoral coalitions that have dominated for years.
Analysts have drawn parallels between Milei and Trump, because they both espouse far-right views and vow to return the country to a mythical period of greatness.
Federico Finchelstein, an Argentine historian at New School for Social Research in New York, describes Milei as the kind of candidate who appears “with magical solutions” when people see traditional politicians as failing to meet their demands.
Milei sprinkles his economic messages with a heavy dose of far-right policies, such as opposition to abortion, which the country legalised in 2020. He dismisses global warming. He calls sex education a post-Marxist programme to destroy the family. He’s proposed “market mechanisms” to deal with long waiting lists for organ transplants, arguing organs are a person’s property to sell.
For many of Milei’s supporters, though, what he proposes takes a back seat to how he proposes it.
“It’s about vengeance,” Tonelli said. “It’s the vote of ‘these people deserve it because they screwed me over, and now I’m going to screw them over’.”
Milei’s ascendance is part of a regional change arriving in Argentina later than elsewhere in the hemisphere, Finchelstein said. In Brazil, former President Jair Bolsonaro, often called the tropical Trump, ruled from 2019 to 2022.
In Chile, the right-wing Republican Party recently won a majority to rewrite the country’s constitution. And in El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele’s popularity is soaring amid a brutal crackdown on gangs that has led to human rights abuses.
Some analysts have questioned whether Milei can win without a national structure to mobilise votes. But Argentina’s presidential election includes a runoff, which means that squeaking by to the second round could be enough for Milei to ultimately win.