By CLAUDIO KATZ*
They are at opposite poles of the world's economic and geopolitical structure, but they are part of the same far-right wave that is capturing governments across the planet.
Donald Trump is preparing to begin his second term as the world's greatest power, and Javier Milei has completed one year as president of a peripheral country. They are on opposite ends of the world's economic and geopolitical structure, but they are part of the same far-right wave that is taking over governments all over the world. Observing what they have in common and what sets them apart helps to characterize the main enemy of the moment and define how to confront it.
Penetration of right-wing discourse
In both the United States and Argentina, the advance of reactionary currents took place in critical but not catastrophic contexts. Their success did not derive from the existence of extreme situations, uncontrollable circumstances or devastating scenarios.
Donald Trump achieved significant electoral results across all social sectors and expanded the support base of his first term, albeit with low turnout. The unease with inflation and high household debt were decisive for his success, in a context of already habitually low growth and low-quality employment. He managed to make immigrants the great scapegoat once again, in a context of reduced influx of undocumented immigrants.
The tycoon did not win the presidency by supporting some burning issue or as a great savior in the face of an unusual crisis. He won again due to the prior penetration of right-wing discourse in a large part of North American society. This influence allowed him to reinforce existing prejudices and repeat the protectionist demagogy that promises to restore popular income by increasing customs tariffs. He blamed immigrants for the deterioration of wages, covering up for the capitalists, and concealed the fact that workers of other nationalities contribute to growth and generate significant tax revenues.
Donald Trump’s speech pattern is the same one used by other far-right leaders to spread empty promises. Javier Milei won a surprising victory with the same formula. His economic slogan was not protectionism, but dollarization, which he praised as a magic cure for inflation.
The Argentine anarcho-capitalist took advantage of the discontent with the economy, in a situation of limited crisis and far from the catastrophes of 1989 or 2001. Like his North American counterpart, he took advantage of the acceptance of right-wing discourse and, therefore, was able to blame an indefinable political caste for all the country's misfortunes. He attracted the transversal vote of multiple sectors and the sympathy of impoverished young people.
At the end of his first year in office, he has caused a tremendous deterioration in the population's standard of living. He has destroyed half a million jobs, increased poverty and degraded the middle class with unaffordable increases in fares and pre-paid medical expenses. He has also increased job insecurity, with increasing layoffs in the public administration and has dynamited cultural heritage, with budget cuts that are suffocating public universities and recreating the brain drain.
To justify this devastation, Javier Milei uses absurd arguments, invented figures and counterfactual reasoning. He claims that wages are rising, pensions are recovering and growth is gaining momentum, after controlling a ghostly inflation of 17.000%. Only the penetration obtained by right-wing ideology in important segments of the population explains its audience for such delusions, after the harsh suffering it has caused in the bulk of society.
Frustrations and disappointments
The main reason for the rise of the far right is widespread disappointment with previous experiences. In the United States, Donald Trump channeled dissatisfaction with progressive neoliberalism, which endorsed all the fads of multiculturalism, environmentalism, and LGBTQI+ rights, while at the same time validating regressive economic models of privatization and inequality. The cosmopolitan discourse of respect for minorities coexisted with the reinforcement of social inequalities, which impoverished the majority and enriched those in power (Fraser, 2019). The tycoon's demagogy was greatly receptive among workers affected (or outraged) by this duplicity.
This precedent coincided with the impotence of Donald Trump's Democratic rival. Kamala Harris adopted her opponent's agenda, imitated her opponent and ran a Republican campaign. and, too, supporting the anti-immigration climate, bypassing the abortion battle and ignoring the demands of the African-American movement. His total validation of the genocide in Gaza fueled the disillusionment of progressive sectors who chose not to go to the polls (Selfa; Smith, 2024).
Kamala Harris simply repeated empty calls to “defend democracy” that were not resonated at all, as they were correctly interpreted as hypocritical messages. She worked to Wall Street and abandoned the working class, with speeches formatted for the wealthy sectors. Faced with such accommodation to the status quo, Donald Trump has easily managed to perfect his rebel image.
The Argentine case offers a more striking example of the disappointment with progressivism. Javier Milei’s presidency can be explained by the monumental failure of Alberto Fernández, who led the most failed administration in the history of Peronism. Not only did he validate all the economic demands of the powerful, he also gave up on waging any political battle against the unknown right-wing charlatan, who appeared with little training. Javier Milei paved the way for the presidency through the resignation of his opponents.
The large audience of his anti-statist campaign was nourished by this impotence. Alberto Fernández destroyed the positive image of public activity, abandoned informal workers, bowed to agribusiness and capitulated to the IMF.
From the presidency, Javier Milei has reaped greater rewards from this impotence of the Justicialism. He imposes his reactionary program with the support of a small minority of legislators, in the face of the passivity of the bulk of Peronism and the complicity of its most conservative sectors. He has not only absorbed the friendly right, but has also neutralized the segment that proclaims its rejection of the current direction.
This inaction allows him to maintain the inconsistent narrative that justifies his abuses. He attributes all the adjustments to an inherited burden, hiding the fact that his economic policy has imposed self-inflicted suffering on the bulk of the population.
Progressivism’s passivity in the face of the provocative audacity of the far right is not exclusive to Argentina. It was anticipated in Brazil with Dilma Rousseff’s quietness in the face of Jair Bolsonaro’s rise. The same dynamic was repeated in Peru during Castillo’s failed experience, who, in a chaotic administration, failed to fulfill his promises.
This background constitutes a serious warning for Chile. Gabriel Boric has validated the tyrannical management of military power and the control of the economy by a small elite of millionaires. The disappointment generated by his government shines a red light on the processes that maintain popular trust.
The priority of peace and the timid reforms that Gustavo Petro is promoting in Colombia will not prevent the return of the right wing, if it does not live up to the expectations of change that brought him to power. Nor will the limited economic relief introduced by Lula in Brazil be enough to contain the visible resurgence of Bolsonarism. Claudia Sheinbaum’s extraordinary electoral support in Mexico will quickly be put to the test if Donald Trump confirms the virulent attack he has announced against his neighbor.
Reversing democratic achievements
Donald Trump and Javier Milei converge in their reaction against the democratic achievements obtained in recent decades. They embody the typical conservative response against the rights won by different movements and repeat what happened in similar situations in the past. With this reactionary operation, they demonize the so-called “political agenda”. Woke”, a pejorative term they use to stigmatize any progressive achievement (Vergara; Davis, 2024).
Feminism is being attacked head-on to reverse the advances made by the women’s movement. The most exotic versions of this campaign present men as victims of “gender ideology.” They use this label to ridicule the respect for women that has been won in many countries after intense struggle. They also fight against the right to abortion, reviving old and worn-out confessional arguments.
The right’s counterattack against sexual diversity is even more furious. It includes brutal homophobia, combining clichés with biblical invocations to terrorize families with phantasmagorical dangers (“children will return from school with the opposite gender”).
The far right attacks traditionally hostile minorities with the same brutality in all countries. In the United States, it recreates the old racist pattern and tries to disrupt the movement. Black Lives Matter, created by African Americans to stop police violence.
Donald Trump combines this attack with chauvinistic nationalism. He calls for “making America great again,” reviving the imaginary white, patriarchal, Protestant essence of that nation. His counterparts in Europe use the same formula to defame immigrants from Africa and the Arab world, exalting the Christian-Western identity of the Old Continent.
With these campaigns, the far right updates the old recipe of dividing peoples into artificial antagonisms in order to consolidate its domination. It reinforces ethnic differences and accentuates religious tensions in order to transform the fear of the dispossessed themselves into hatred against their class brothers.
Racial prejudices against neighboring peoples (Paraguayans, Bolivians) are also part of the far-right’s recipe in Argentina. But Javier Milei has focused his anti-democratic onslaught on two other objectives. The first is to reverse the great achievement that led the genocidal dictatorship to prison. He has promoted a campaign of oblivion that praises Videla and questions the number of 30 disappeared, in order to force the pardon of military personnel serving sentences. The group that spreads his ideas (Laje, Márquez) was forged in a crusade against this extraordinary democratic achievement (Saferstein, 2024).
Javier Milei’s second goal is to change the dominant social power relations in the country, in order to destroy unions, destroy cooperatives and weaken democratic organizations (Katz, 2024: 305-322). He has the support of the ruling classes, who tolerate all his impulses and accept his chaotic management of the State in the hands of unsavory characters. The media and judges forgive him all possible embarrassments, because they hope to achieve with the current government the desired goal of pulverizing popular organizations.
Belligerent remodeling
Both Donald Trump and Javier Milei came to power as a result of the far-right’s own internal transformation. This movement replaced its former elitist, conformist and conservative profile with an attitude of implosion, with rebellious disguises and protesting poses. It copied the left’s positions with opposite objectives (Urbán, 2024). It uses disobedient makeup to sustain capitalist exploitation, encourage the persecution of minorities and impose the demobilization of workers.
With this cosmetic rupture with countercultural gestures, it expanded its centrality in the middle classes and achieved an unprecedented impact among wage earners and the impoverished. It took advantage of the credibility crisis of traditional communication to extend its influence on the networks with the support of well-known multimillionaires. In a context of great dissatisfaction with conventional journalism, it imposed the blatant use of the digital universe. It perfected this manipulation, with the lies installed by its trolls to control the daily political agenda.
The change in climate on this issue is visible in the replacement of renowned personalities. The neoliberal philanthropy of Bill Gates – who set himself up as an advisor to solve all of humanity’s problems – has lost weight. Now the brutality of Elon Musk prevails, who does not hide his narcissism and contempt for any noble cause. He has turned Twitter into a cesspool of hate speech, anti-feminist attacks and racist insults. He is now preparing to strengthen his business of privatizing outer space, from the high public office given to him by Donald Trump.
Javier Milei not only shares these habits of the new right, but is also committed to conceptualizing them in order to convert them into dominant themes in international politics. This is why he invests so much energy in the cultural battle against progressivism. He believes that neoliberalism has already defeated this trend in the economic sphere by universalizing the principles of competition, the market, and profit. But it has not achieved the same success in the field of thought, values, and attitudes. To achieve this second victory, it faces a “struggle for hegemony,” to use the terms of the reviled Marxist Antonio Gramsci.
But this dispute of ideas is not very amenable to the extreme right, which feels more comfortable in the struggle for power through the use of force. Although it mentions without understanding the Gramscian notion of hegemony, its behavior continues to be guided by Schmittian principles of authority, decision and the definition of an enemy to face. With this background, it takes advantage of the impotence of its opponents and the passivity of its adversaries to impose its codes in each confrontation (Sztulwark, 2024).
Donald Trump used the same criteria to build power with arrogance and hubris. He boldly proclaimed his intention to contest any election result other than his own triumph and prepared an army of followers for this revolt. With this attitude, he presents himself as the leader heavenly destined to resurrect the United States' global leadership.
This same bully style is used by the far right in other countries to neutralize the centrality of its former partners in traditional conservatism. It sets the agenda and permeates all debates, establishing the priorities of the political system. This advance coincides with the renewed influence of theorists of extreme liberalism (Hayek), to the detriment of their conventional colleagues (Aron). It is also related to the exhaustion of the neoliberal consensus, which in recent decades has ensured the alternation of traditional forces in the management of the same capitalist order (Merino, 2023).
Donald Trump supports this reactionary turn in the tradition forged by the “conservative revolution” inaugurated by Reagan and consolidated by Tea Party. He recreated the vast network of millionaires, media outlets and churches that took over the Republican Party and provided personnel and a militant base for his next administration.
Javier Milei does not have the party, the congregations and the financial entanglements of his Yankee godfather. He came to government by chance, without the troop of worshippers formed by his White House boss. That is why he invested much of his first year in office in creating this support. He governs by radicalizing actions and raising the stakes to create a movement identified with his figure.
So far, the results of this operation have been meager. Its anarcho-capitalist version is alien to the Creole liberal tradition and professes a creed far removed from the old reactionary nationalism. Its gurus have attempted to merge their minority Austrian ultraliberal dogma with the conservative Catholicism of their closest collaborators (Johannes, 2022). But this cocktail of libertarians and traditionalists has not attracted much support so far. In fact, it emerged gracefully from its first year, more due to the support of the opposition than to the consolidation of its own strength.
A radicalized neoliberal matrix
An important foundation of Donald Trump and Javier Milei is the ideological regression generated by four decades of neoliberalism. During this period, all the myths currently exacerbated by the far right were introduced. The insertion of these fallacies allows reactionary leaders to capitalize on the discontent aroused by the model that preceded them. They are at the same time a product of this scheme and a reaction to its consequences.
During the prolonged period of neoliberal preeminence – which inaugurated Thatcherism and consolidated the implosion of the Soviet Union – the ideology of competition, the market and individualism penetrated vast sectors of the population. This impact went beyond its traditional centrality among the elites and its known influence on the middle classes, to capture significant sections of the population. This influence created the conditions for the emergence, in the last decade, of far-right convictions that radicalize the neoliberal matrix.
This shift to extreme forms of the same foundation explains the erosion of solidarity among workers themselves. Neoliberalism has generalized the individualist assumption that the wage worker is to blame for his or her difficulties. It postulates that this responsibility derives from his or her inefficiency when employed and from his or her reduced competence when unemployed.
This myth has been disproved by the inequality, low incomes and precariousness of work that capitalists have expanded to increase their profitability under neoliberalism. But this evidence has not resulted in a resurgence of socialist consciousness, but rather in an inverse process of capture of popular malaise by the far right.
These trends have transformed the neoliberal principle of holding people responsible for their own misfortunes into a belligerent criterion of blaming the most disadvantaged sectors. Individual blame has been replaced by the defamation of the most oppressed, but without ever altering the absolution of capitalists. The campaign against immigrants, the poor and the informal economy is based on decades of neoliberal beliefs that exempt millionaires and blame the helpless for society's misfortunes.
Donald Trump uses this inversion of reality to defame immigrants and Javier Milei uses the same fallacy to attack precarious picketers. In both countries, they take advantage of the internalization of neoliberalism's competitive fables to contrast the poor with the poorest.
This same radicalization of the neoliberal ideological matrix can be observed in other fields. The exaltation of deregulation, the praise of privatizations and the flattery of the market resulted in apologies for capitalism that exalt social inequality. The praise of businessmen resulted, in turn, in a greater glorification of bosses.
For decades, neoliberalism has used praise for capitalism to defame socialism, proclaim “the end of history” and decree the burial of any project of equality. Based on this, the extreme right uses a delirious anti-communism. Donald Trump places Biden close to this disgrace and Javier Milei denounces radiations of the same evil in Gustavo Petro, Lula and López Obrador.
Certainly, the universe of networks governed by lies has contributed to fueling these delusions. Since the pandemic, a spectrum of paranoid visions and evil conspiracies has taken hold, with strong flat-earther and anti-vaccination flavors. These delusions thrive on the fertile ground of beliefs introduced by neoliberalism and reformulate the far right.
Social and political adversities
The far right channels discontent with neoliberalism worldwide through the weakness of the left. All anti-capitalist movements continue to be affected by the crisis of credibility of the communist project, inaugurated by the fall of the Soviet Union. This blow to socialist consciousness is not an invariable or eternal fact, but has been recreated by the discouraging experiences of progressivism.
The brown wave is also rooted in the regressive social transformation introduced by neoliberalism with the segmentation of the working class, the expansion of precarious employment, the rise in unemployment and the growing informality of work. This rupture in the social cohesion of the proletariat facilitates the erosion of cooperative traditions and weakens trade union organization. It has created fertile ground for the right to challenge collective action.
But the right’s main support comes from the results of the class struggle. Various adversities have recreated negative scenarios with a major global impact. The tragic defeat of the Arab Spring – with dictatorships, the destruction of countries and the preponderance of jihadist brutality – had this impact.
On another level, the decline of movements that had raised hopes in Europe, such as the indignados in Spain, the militants in Greece and the yellow vests in France, was also significant. Two key sectors, such as feminism and environmentalism, also faced serious obstacles.
Donald Trump’s electoral success was influenced by the cumulative decline of popular struggles. This decline has not been reversed by the more recent mobilizations of women, African-Americans, unions and youth for Palestine. The rise of Bernie Sanders (and the Democrats for Socialism movement) stalled before achieving the impact necessary to win over significant swathes of the electorate.
In Argentina, Javier Milei came to power at a time when social struggles were in decline and initially faced great popular resistance, with two general strikes and an extraordinary march for education. However, he later managed to force the decline of the mobilization through repressive intimidation, pressure from unemployment and rising poverty.
The anarcho-capitalist uses these resources to attack state unions and contain the struggle of retirees. He counted on the complicity of the union bureaucracy and the support of Congress to approve the austerity laws. This support encouraged him to multiply his aggressions.
But this onslaught can be halted if the actions of educators regain energy and become a lasting movement, like the one led by Chilean students. The fight for education has a strong social following due to the prestige of public universities, which traditionally concentrate the greatest expectations of social advancement. This institution continues to awaken hopes among impoverished families, as a space for free education that would allow them to reverse the collapse of their incomes.
Javier Milei crowns his first year in office with triumphalism and a climate of certain stability. The main explanation for this result lies in the decline he imposed on the popular movement. Since the central purpose of his mandate is to subdue the workers, this indicator is the main barometer of his administration.
If social resistance resurfaces in the coming months, Javier Milei could face the same defeat in the streets that marked the fate of Mauricio Macri in 2018. If, on the other hand, he manages to consolidate the retreat of this struggle (and manages to project this data into a good electoral result), he could come close to the success against the strikes that Menem achieved to initiate convertibility.
Another economic scenario
Donald Trump and Javier Milei emerged in the same context of the crisis of neoliberal globalization, which began in 2008 with the great collapse and bailout of banks. This impact defined two very different periods of the current capitalist model. The great initial expansion of financial, productive and commercial globalization was replaced by protectionism and the current reorganization of value chains.
This reorganization favors the proximity of supplies (nearshoring) and transfers factories from nearby locations to headquarters (friendshoring) to reduce the risk of a supply cut (derisking) in the tense scenario of conflicting trade blocs.
It is currently being discussed whether this restructuring slows down globalization (slowbalization) or reverses it (deglobalization). But the upward internationalization has slowed down and this shift facilitates the replacement of neoliberal globalism by far-right nationalism.
This change includes increasing state intervention, no longer to bail out banks in emergency situations, but to sustain the economy with the regulations that neoliberalism tried to eliminate. The current model continues the previous scheme, but in different forms from its initial matrix and in conjunction with neo-Keynesian policies.
The far right navigates this ambiguity, supporting interventionism on some issues and extreme neoliberalism on others. The strong presence of the State to deal with the resurgence of inflation and the loss of control of public debt is an example of the first scenario.
These actions are intended to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial collapse, which threatened the survival of the seven largest Western banks and the continued existence of capitalism. That crisis left a lasting sense of dread, reflected in the panic that accompanies every tremor on Wall Street. No one knows whether these tremors are part of the stock market routine or whether they are a new beginning in the financial system’s turmoil.
Much of Donald Trump’s economic program is consistent with this new scenario of state intervention. But his interference is also motivated by the loss of competitiveness of the US economy in the face of its Chinese rival, and this decline cannot be corrected with simple regulations or increases in customs tariffs. These measures merely illustrate the defensive improvisation of a power that is unable to contain the deterioration of its productivity (Roberts, 2024).
In other areas, Donald Trump recreates the most extreme deregulations of neoliberalism. This tendency can be seen in climate denialism. He promotes oil extraction that increases the destruction of the environment and the consequent increase in droughts, floods, and waves of polar cold or tropical heat. This support is due to his close association with oil companies and the military-industrial complex. This is why he encourages the anti-green fantasy of solving the climate disaster with some spontaneous market response. Among those closest to him, there are even figures who relate the environmental crisis to divine punishments for sinners who have turned away from religion (Seymour, 2024).
Another link with pure neoliberalism can be seen in the intertwining of Trumpism with Elon Musk's digital economy. This favoritism tends to accentuate the preeminence of a sector that is sailing on the frontier of overinvestment. If the uncontrolled business expectations that would be opened by Artificial Intelligence continue to attract capital that is greater than the profitability that this sector generates, the danger of a technology bubble will grow.
An outburst like this (the dot.com crisis) shook all markets at the beginning of the new century. Trumpism cannot escape this repetition, because it reinforces several imbalances introduced by neoliberalism without correcting the others. Ultimately, it generates the same capitalist system that gives rise to these tensions.
In this economic domain, Javier Milei stands in stark contrast to his regent. He uses ultra-liberal and anti-statist rhetoric that contrasts sharply with Donald Trump’s declared interventionism. It is not only Argentina’s trade liberalization that clashes with US protectionism. Privatizations and the dismantling of public works in the Southern Cone are also diametrically opposed to the subsidies supported by the Northern magnate.
Because of this radical counterpoint, the Argentine economy has been left largely unprotected in the face of the ongoing Americanist shift. The country will become a sink for the world’s surplus goods if Donald Trump’s tariff war begins. It is highly unlikely that the protectionist in the White House will exempt Argentina from the trade walls.
Much more dangerous are the potential consequences of an interest rate hike, which would be imposed by the US financial regulator (FED) to moderate inflation triggered by the tariff conflict. If this measure were to repeat the usual outflow of capital to the North, Argentina's current financial dry spell could be abruptly destroyed.
Speculators who bring funds from abroad to profit from the sky-high yields on local bonds and stocks would be tempted to end the financial cycle to protect their profits by returning to the US safe haven. This sequence precipitated the financial collapses that, in recent decades, have brought down the Argentine economy.
It is true that this possible collapse is mitigated by money laundering, which, for the umpteenth time, rewards those who evade large sums of money. In the medium term, the new trade surplus that oil and mineral exports will provide could also compensate for the lack of dollars. Javier Milei hopes to stabilize his model by relaunching debt and assumes that Donald Trump will ease this mortgage by supporting a new IMF loan.
But none of these hypotheses dilutes the danger of a financial crisis, precipitated by some unforeseen local or international event. These black swan events triggered the collapses of 1982, 1989, 2001 and 2018. Javier Milei has made the Argentine economy more fragile than ever in the face of these dangers, by recreating the model of easy money and cheap dollars that encourages debt, discourages investment, wastes foreign currency and destroys the productive apparatus. While the country’s partners devalue themselves to face the storm that Donald Trump is preparing, Argentina is becoming more expensive in dollars and is preparing to repeat a variant of Convertibility, much more damaging than that suffered in the 1990s. The country is a great showcase for the international experiments of the extreme right.
*Claudio Katz is professor of economics at Universidad Buenos Aires. Author, among other books, of Neoliberalism, neodevelopmentalism, socialism (Popular Expression) [https://amzn.to/3E1QoOD].
Translation: Fernando Lima das Neves.
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