When Javier Milei returned to protest as President of the Argentine Republic, he defined himself as the first liberal libertarian to hold this position in the history of Latin America and the world. In a repetitive rhetorical game, it would seem that insightful discussion often requires us to reflect on a concept that is so sacred: freedom. It’s not enough to be a liberal, you had to anaphorically add the label “libertarian” to liberalism to make it sound even more attractive; an even greater destroyer of exclaving cadences.
Nowadays, after two years of “liberal libertarian” rule in the South American nation, and the emergence of people in Mexico who somehow identify with this supposed libertarianism, such as Señor Ricardo Salinas Pliego, it is useful to reconsider what this horde of people mean by the term “libertada”.
In politics, words and discourses are very important, but it is always more important that both correspond with actions. It is in this contrast that one can observe whether there really is a compromise beyond what has been said, or whether it is just empty demagoguery left in plain sight, or worse, disillusionment, which the speaker tries to use to hide his true intentions.
It follows the case of the finished Argentine president. A man who, in order to win the election, would have to put himself on the fringes of politics, who wanted to transform him from the outside, while the race of the country forged alliances with old figures from Argentina’s political and business caste – such as Eduardo Eurnekián or the wider ranks of Mauricio Macri’s party – and who was inspired by the latest Argentine military directives.
So the Milei did not just return as traveling companions to the embittered baggage of Argentine anti-liberal fascism until he had promoted them at remarkable expense. Thus, the current vice president of Argentina is Victoria Villarruel, a woman with public fame born as a defender of soldiers who committed crimes against humanity between 1976 and 1983.
This is serious in itself and timely for the reason that they have predicted two grotesque lies since Mile’s government: that the violence of the dictatorship was an undesirable but necessary reaction against subversive violence (when in fact guerrilla groups were marginal and repression against them and other forms of history before 1976); and denying that the cause of dictatorial crimes follows thirty thousand dead, a number that serious organizations and investigations have agreed upon decades ago.
The consequences of these mistakes shine in the light: the Mileio government formalized an anti-liberal discourse that denies the crimes of the past and breaks with the minimal democratic consensus of “never again” in 1983. And in fact, it is the government that responded to the sadism of the Repressor incorporated against the elders who seek cheers behind their backs.
In the economic field, Mileia’s followers are not only serious and undermine the ability to take over Argentina’s highest decisions, because they are openly acts of arrogance that violate the basic rules of electoral democracy.
In recent times, this has meant a government of the type called the “Mozart of economics”, including the freedom of citizens to increase public deed cases, cut gas in social programs and the welfare state (which classical liberalism was equally necessary to truly build a society where full political freedom can be enjoyed); and cowardly if you have to throw in a fascist like Trump (who in the end seems to despise mexicans and argentinians alike) this condition will win the midterms in an unprecedented way loan offer to that Mileios side.
With a speech denying plurality and minimal standards of civility, like “zurdos de mierda”, and surrounded by monstrous figures that represent even more postmodern fascism (like Agustín Laje and other cyberporros and internet trolls); Mileia’s government is a constant denial of basic freedoms – identity and economic – which, moreover, it repeats, knowingly or unknowingly, at the expense of Argentina’s recent past: a statement that denied the freedom of existence to thousands of people, those who ended up not knowing what crime they were accused of.
With these things in mind, Miley’s discourse of being a “libertarian libertarian” is more than a double denial of what is really real: a government that has a personal complex and disdain for many legitimate sectors as official policy.
In Mexico, unlike the Argentinian nation, there is a very clear moment, because in the place of the decade of Brega, it seems to emphasize a certain solidary consensus, for example, about the paper that the state must judge in public life and how it hopes to build the minimum bases of bienestar for it. It is not only a triumph in the frames of this vision in 2018 and 2024, but it seems to be a truth embedded in the mainstream Mexican sentiment.
However, this does not prevent the emergence of people who want to create a political identity of a violent and disgusting form, to oppose this minimal consensus. At a moment of crisis in Mexican political parties, I suddenly heard a person like Ricardo Salinas Pliego.
What does this person represent politically? More than these attributes, this man was busy exposing himself to more replicas. Hij evasive businessman – Hugo Salinas – and financier of openly fascist movements – as in the past years of MURO -, Salinas believes that he owes his presence in public life to a random act – he will be the heir of a rich man – and an act of traffic influence, the creation of a television channel thanks to its salty members in the nineties.
The three most prominent reasons in politics are corruption (which is why it turns out to be the most famous case of doggedness in tax evasion in the last decade); violence (as shown by his armed group, with which he was exposed to the evil of the public channel) and lying (as systematically shown on television, mocking disgusting chismarrajos or news articles that incite terror with chupacabras, anti-scientific criticism during a pandemic or through fixated anti-communism).
All, crowned with a vocabulary worthy of a public toilet or a troubled teenager (eg calling Mexican officials “marrana” or “putonas del bienestar”); and in alliance with fascist leaders led by open societies who enjoy the pain of the innocent as I hear them called La derecha newspaperthe story of the slander that, with the celebratory acts of the murder of the town’s resident Renée Good, set Goebbels in awe.
Salinas Pliego copied the Milesian style to querer falsify his political identity late against “zurdos de mierda”. And if in front of what he wanted, with a minimum of political decency, he revealed himself not only as an irresponsible deudor and late puberty, he could only feel two feelings: alertness or nausea.
But there is something that both people will appreciate, both the virgin five that Argentina enjoys and the living coprolalia that is Salinas Pliego. And that’s what they clarified what “liberty” means to libertarians: it doesn’t mean being without vats and demanding that other people’s vats be broken. Above all, it means not being under surveillance and feeling unhealthy pride about it.
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