Dante Augusto Palma: Milei is fighting the cultural battle by defending the “ideas of freedom”.

Dante Augusto Palma is a professor of Philosophy and Doctor of Political Science, and a researcher on issues related to political philosophy, philosophy of law and philosophy of communication. In the last decade he has participated in public debates with articles in media such as Disidentia and The Objective, and has collaborated on radio and television. He is the author of several books, including Borges.com (2010), Quinto poder (2014) and El gobierno de los cínicos (2016).

Álvaro Peñas: Milei won and more than six months later he is still winning, to the despair of a Left that is not adapting to the new situation.

Dante Augusto Palma: Yes, the Left does not accept the new reality, it is still installed in a discourse based on fear. The same one that is also used in Europe to stop people from voting for the Right: “They are coming for your rights”. But what rights? I haven’t had them for a long time. What is Milei threatening me with, people think. In Argentina we had a poverty rate of over 45% and millions of destitute people living on subsidies and social benefits. Rights? They’re coming for your rights, it’s a joke. So how could Milei not win when he said that we had to try something new after everything before, Alberto Fernández or Macri, had failed.

The message of Peronism and progressivism is really: anyone who opposes me is the ultra-right. What has ended up happening is that there were more and more things of the ultra-right. If you disagree with the omnipresence of the state, you are ultra-right; if you are against abortion, you are ultra-right; if you want security, you are ultra-right; if you warn that self-perception as a criterion for determining identity is problematic, you are ultra-right. Everything is ultra-right. So millions of Argentines were suddenly considered far-right, so why would they stop voting for Milei?

Milei also won despite not having a territorial base.

Yes, and in fact it was said that Milei could never win because he lacked that territorial base, and had no governor or mayor. There were provinces where he did not present lists because he had no one. But he still won. 

Has that changed? Is there a movement building around Milei?

What has happened is strange and reminds me of an article by Murray Rothbard, “Right-wing populism: A strategy for paleolibertarianism”, from 1992, in which he argued that libertarianism should become a populist movement. It is Trump’s platform twenty years ahead of his time. Rothbard said that you don’t need to go village by village or church by church to create communities of support, but that what you need is a great leader. You don't need anything else. I don’t know if Milei read it, but he did.

Yes, but there is a time limit. In Spain we have seen it with Podemos, the leadership ends up wearing out and decadence sets in.

Yes, in the end a classic structure is needed, a caste structure, and Milei is building his party structure. As soon as he came to power, Milei pushed through the basic law, with more than 600 articles and in practice a constitutional reform, and he did so with 37 deputies out of 257 and 7 senators out of 72. Of course, he had to cut two thirds of the initial project, but the negotiator was his chief of staff and interior minister, Guillermo Francos, an experienced caste politician. On the one hand, there is the anti-caste discourse, but in practice, and it seems to me the most sensible thing to do, you have to negotiate.  

With the ruinous economic situation in Argentina, recovery can only be traumatic. How is the situation right now?

There are structural issues in the economy that had to be changed, regardless of whether Milei was there or not. Electricity, water, gas and public transport fares were very cheap because they were 80-90% subsidised by the state, and that generated unsustainable public spending and a huge fiscal deficit. Milei updated all that in December and inflation went from 12% to 25%, but in May it was already down to 4%. Logically, social and economic spending is enormous and the adjustments are tough, but the people understood that it is not possible to live in a country where inflation reached 211% in 2023, with a history of hyperinflation of 3000%. That is why they voted for Milei.

Milei’s other big change, besides the economic one, is that he is confronting the ideas of the Left.

Milei is fighting the cultural battle by defending the “ideas of freedom”. And it is a phenomenon that is paying off for him and that is very similar, not in terms of magnitude but in terms of the profile of the voters, to what is happening in Spain with the voters of VOX and Alvise; the majority of his voters are young men who want change, who are fed up with feminist discourse and being accused of being privileged when they have no privileges and no jobs. Fifty-six percent of Argentines are not libertarians, but they voted for Milei because he speaks openly and is the only one who has given this discourse. And he has delivered, because one of the first actions of his government has been to close the Ministry of Women and also the INADI (National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism), claiming that these were forms of covert subsidies, with state funds, to left-wing activists.

Has the cultural struggle always been Milei’s main proposals?

At the beginning, Milei was a rather extravagant economist who talked about rather unknown second and third line authors, but who was very successful in the media; in fact, for several years he was the economist with the most minutes on television. Over time, Milei has gained a more philosophically robust discourse that combats the woke ideology. On the other hand, the arrival of vice-president Victoria Villaruel has brought in more conservative ideas.

And thanks to this struggle, the idea of meritocracy is also being recovered, an idea that is very much part of the popular classes because social ascent has always existed in Argentina. However, meritocracy has been attacked by progressive sectors as an allegedly liberal idea, while at the same time claiming a romantic idea of solidarity. How can it be argued that merit is bad? This kind of socialism, equality of results over equality of opportunity, has been a very harmful idea.

You mentioned the woke ideology. Argentina is one of the countries where radical feminism and gender ideology have taken root the most.

Yes, woke ideology is like a new religion for the Left. In addition to gender self-perception, voices in favour of transracialism, i.e. a person of one race perceiving themselves as another, or trans-age, may soon appear. The same that is said of normative gender could be applied to race, age and any kind of claim that can be presented as representative of a minority. The discourse is the same, and if that minority does not exist, it is invented. And in all this context, it is natural that a figure like Milei, or like others who have appeared in different countries with greater or lesser success, should emerge who are setting a limit. Even feminist sectors on the Left understand that their feminism does not commit them to the new postmodern queer feminism. If rebelliousness is becoming right-wing, then sanity is also becoming right-wing.

What would happen if the elections were repeated today?

I have no doubt that Milei would win again and with an even higher percentage of the vote. The need to change the policies of the last decades is so great that, if the elections were held today, Milei would win by more. In a country where Peronism is a religion and a culture, the man who boasts of making the biggest cuts in the state in world history has popular support and has managed to gain a foothold in those sectors that only Peronism could reach. There were huge signs that something had been going on deep inside society for years, but just as it was unpredictable to imagine Milei’s triumph, it is surprising how much popular support he still enjoys.