By CLAUDIO KATZ*
Javier Milei prioritizes attacking the dispossessed with the same enthusiasm with which his First World partners stigmatize immigrants
Javier Milei positioned himself as a protagonist of the global right. As in other latitudes, he channeled much of the discontent generated by decades of economic crisis, social degradation and fatigue with the political system. And, like his peers, he channeled this malaise against the most helpless sectors of society. He took the same disruptive attitude, wore the same rebel disguise and adopted the same contesting pose.
The libertarian anticipates the attacks that his colleagues have prepared in other countries. He has already forgotten his caste and attacks the hungry, storing food that he does not deliver to community restaurants. He has made an unprecedented cut in retirees' incomes and increased layoffs with unprecedented cruelty and sadism.
Javier Milei prioritizes attacking the dispossessed with the same enthusiasm with which his First World partners stigmatize immigrants. Foreigners are not mistreated in the metropolis because they are from other places, but because of their lack of resources. They face an infamy that does not extend to the Arab sheikh of Marbella or the South American investor of Miami.
Javier Milei's scapegoat is informal workers in social movements. They are attacked with the same artillery as Africans and Arabs in Europe or Mexicans and precarious people in the United States. The libertarian uses the same smokescreen as his international cronies to defend the privileges of powerful capitalist groups.
In every corner of the world, the extreme right is expanding to crush popular organizations. In Latin America, it seeks to nullify the achievements made during the progressive cycle of the past decade. It uses explicit revenge against this process, to frustrate its current repetition and its future deepening. In Argentina, it intends to modify social relations of force to destroy unions, destroy cooperatives and shake democratic organizations. The ruling classes tolerate all of Javier Milei's lack of control in the hope of completing this outrage.
Common badges
The Argentine libertarian triggered the political turn towards reactionary authoritarianism, promoted by all his confreres on the planet. These two terms summarize the best definition of the current wave. It is authoritarian because it intends to strangle democracy within the current political regime, creating strong states that criminalize protests and subjugate opponents.
It is the model introduced by the leaders of Hungary and Poland and it is the program that Donald Trump promotes for his eventual return to the White House. The tycoon hopes to control the press, manipulate the judiciary and manage the intelligence services. The same scheme – with more repressive additives – is being built by Patricia Bullrich at the local level, to emulate the virulence of the coup plotters who govern Peru.
The reactionary brand is equally shared by all right-wing characters, who revive the myths of their countries. Donald Trump recreates the nostalgia of American global dominance, calling for the return of the greatness of the United States. His British colleagues promoted the Brexit with very similar reminiscences to the Victorian past. Vox invites you to fantasize about Spain's former colonial supremacy and Javier Milei is not far behind, with his calls to recreate the prosperity of an oligarchy that exported grains and meat at the country's expense.
The reactionary authoritarianism of the 21st century does not repeat classic fascism, which in the middle of the last century forged totalitarian regimes to intervene in the world war and suffocate the advance of socialism. But it aims to neutralize all democratic aspects of current constitutional systems, incorporating several elements of neo-fascism. It already includes, for example, the action of terrorist groups (for now marginal), which have committed more crimes than jihadism considered diabolical. One of the consequences of these frightening raids was the attempted murder of Cristina Fernández Kirchner.
Brown avalanche managers use four common flags around the world. Firstly, punitivism, heavy-handedness and zero tolerance for any crime committed by the poor. They completely exempt white-collar thieves from this penalty, with the model of indiscriminate incarceration that Bukele promotes and Bullrich considers.
Antifeminism is the second emblem of the right. They reject all the achievements of the women's movement and justify this opposition with a strange victimization of men, as the new victims of “gender ideology”. Female oppression is only highlighted when it contributes to the stereotypes of violence associated with a hostile minority (Islamic, African-American, indigenous). Javier Milei participates in this wave, closing institutes and withdrawing resources from research, with the aim of reversing the equality laws achieved in Argentina.
The third banner of the reactionary avalanche is delusional anti-communism, which presents Joe Biden as a renowned socialist. Javier Milei leads this McCarthyist blindness, placing Gustavo Petro, Lula or López Obrador in universes close to communism. He encourages a tireless campaign against Marxism, detecting radiations of this evil in all sectors of society. His cultural battle against the left includes the demolition of culture, the destruction of cinema, the deterioration of theater, the dismantling of Technopolis and the reorganization of school education through the eradication of the plurality of opinions.
Finally, the right tends to resurrect the old nativist nationalism, with its traditional charge of resentment against foreigners, to exalt the past and deify national identity. In this spirit, Vox reconstructs Spanishism, recalls the “war against the reds” of 1936 and exalts “race day” to repudiate the awakening of the original peoples of Latin America. Javier Milei shares this Falangist resurrection, reclaiming the dictatorships of the Southern Cone, and Villaruel revitalizes the same reverie with military parades, to demand a pardon for the genocidaires.
But this variety of nationalism remains muted in Latin America, as it has lost the prestige and military support of the past and lacks material bases or developmental pillars. In Europe too, nationalism reappears on the defensive. It incorporates an identity retraction very far from the old chauvinist nationalism that was the basis of the border wars of one power against another. What currently prevails is a pan-Europeanism hidden in the right to difference, which exalts a Christian, Western, white and patriarchal identity, in opposition to immigrants from Africa and the Arab world.
Strands under the same command
The extreme right emerges in the world as a consequence of the economic crisis and the exhaustion of the neoliberal dream of globalization. The new scenario of state intervention that followed the bailout of the banks (2008-2009) erupts and includes two contradictory trends. On the one hand, it embodies the Keynesian turn towards state regulation and, on the other, it reinforces mercantile individualism in neoliberal logic.
The regulatory element is visible in Trump's protectionism, in the intervention policies suggested by Meloni or proposed by Le Pen and in the defense of agricultural import tariffs from the European Union. The neoliberal element can be seen in the reinforcement of privatizations, tax benefits for the rich and labor deregulation.
This same brand is present in climate denialism at the service of oil companies and in the anti-green fantasy of resolving the environmental disaster with spontaneous market responses. The same commercial idolatry is professed by the new billionaires of the digital extreme right, who imagine a commercial conduct of Artificial Intelligence. They never explain how this direction could pave the way for the universal prosperity they sponsor.
Neoliberal culture is also very present among the religious sponsors of the right-wing trend. Christian extremism in the United States and Pentecostals in Brazil replace traditional worship with a theology of prosperity, in the hands of improvised preachers, who build their own churches to propagate the rules of entrepreneurship with messages of competitive individualism.
This neoliberal element predominates throughout the Latin American extreme right, which rejects developmental industrialism. Javier Milei goes further with anarcho-capitalist positions, but goes against the grain of his main colleagues from the developed world. The ultraliberal fanaticism he propagates is not just due to his ideological blindness. He is managing Argentina's very serious economic crisis at the service of financial leaders, who bless his speech to justify the adjustment and collect a fraudulent debt.
Donald Trump is, without a doubt, the main point of reference for the global far right. He heads a space forged in the United States from Ronald Reagan's conservative revolution, which was consolidated with the Tea Party. These two pillars fed the base of billionaires, media outlets, churches and activists who imposed the Republican Party's turnaround.
The tycoon expanded his network internationally, with the support of traditional American right-wing organizations (CPAC) and their religious branches. He tried, with Steve Banon, to create a Brown International intertwined with Europe, but faced resistance from Le Pen. Without forging this organism, he also introduced an unprecedented level of coordination in an unprecedentedly globalized extreme right.
Donald Trump is trying to articulate with his peers the reinforced trade war he is preparing against China. It acts in line with continued North American supremacy in the imperial system. He intends to consolidate a European agenda submitted to Washington, based on a certain agreement with Russia to end or moderate the war in Ukraine. Its partners on the Old Continent are already discussing this mandate, against a warmongering sector that refuses to surrender.
In Latin America, subordination to Trumpism is total and does not present these nuances. Javier Milei is a disciplined soldier under Washington's orders. With trips abroad, speeches in Davos, darts against China and withdrawal from the BRICS, he shows himself to be a typical lackey of North American power.
In the general development of the global far right, long-standing processes coexist with more recent irruptions. As in the United States, the European gestation has already lasted several decades, and Italy is an example of this maturation. There, it first emerged with a neoliberal brand (Berlusconi), then consolidated itself without extreme aspects (Fini) and, finally, replaced the hostility of the North of the country towards the South with the Europeanist rejection of Third World immigrants (Salvini). More recently, he reaffirmed these changes (Meloni).
In Latin America, this changing right-wing dynamic is more recent. Javier Milei arrived at the last moment, usurping the preparation that Mauricio Macri started and which came to the fore during the pandemic. Together with Benjamin Netanyahu, he embodies the most virulent variant of the current wave. Both moved away from the previous narrow model to put incendiary messages into practice. The genocide in Palestine and the brutality of the adjustment in Argentina illustrate this brutal implementation of the reactionary program.
Javier Milei's obscene affinity with Benjamin Netanyahu also illustrates the general turn of the old anti-Semitic right towards Islamophobia and the validation of apartheid annexationist of Zionism. The Argentine anarcho-capitalist takes this convergence to the extreme with ridiculous attitudes, adopting the codes of medieval sects of Judaism and carrying out a shameless aggression against the Arab world.
Javier Milei added to his usual quota of exoticism the most unusual traits of his international partners. He especially adopted a paranoid view of political reality, which attributes any adversity to the presence of a conspiracy. He disseminates this crazy simplification with the same ease with which his colleagues extolled anti-vaccination and flat-earthism. But the Argentine president faces a much more adverse scenario than his supporters. He is still dealing with an explosive economic crisis and has not formed the addictive troop of support on the streets, which includes Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Marine Le Pen.
Answers on the way
It is true that the extreme right is advancing in the world, with a strong presence in key countries such as India. This trend will be consolidated if Donald Trump wins the elections, after having forced the defection of his aging rival. The same space expanded its legislative centrality on the Old Continent, but without gaining direct control of the European Union.
All aspects of the reactionary spectrum take advantage of the credibility crisis in traditional communication to increase their influence on networks, with the monetary support of big capital. In a general context of great disbelief, they captured the disagreement with this shameless use of the digital universe. Javier Milei perfected this manipulation, with the lies installed by his band of trolls to determine the day-to-day political agenda.
But the continuation of the worldwide right-wing avalanche is not inevitable. The regressive tendency can be defeated in the streets and at the polls if decisive steps are taken to subdue it. This response is possible, but strong policies are needed to overcome current hesitations.
Reactionary incursions have already suffered several defeats in Latin America. The coup d'état in Bolivia and the secession of Santa Cruz failed. The riot in Brazil and the attempt to overthrow progressivism in Mexico also failed. In Venezuela, another decisive game is now being played against the architects of countless conspiracies, and in Argentina the final outcome is still awaited.
It is important to note the lessons that France brings to this resistance. There, great relief was achieved in the last elections. There was a great threat of victory for Marine Le Pen and a surprising success from the left emerged. It was an irony of history that the electoral system forged to prevent this outcome facilitated the defeat of the far right.
Popular mobilization, the rapid creation of a front and the success of unifying the candidates were decisive for this achievement. The anti-neoliberal program disseminated by the left was also decisive, with radical proposals for a Constituent Assembly and taxes on large fortunes to finance retirements. In the campaign, an effective counterweight was achieved to the media that demonized Jean-Luc Melanchon and, after the elections, the solid message to promote a left-wing government was impressive.
It is true that the right has doubled its percentages and continues to be the main enemy. But there are new scenarios open, including internal battles on the left against the renewed social-liberal influence of the Socialist Party. There are many debates about the possibility of cohabitation with the left, but France has already indicated a way to stop the right.
Argentina has some similarities with France in terms of educational resistance, the strength of the social movement and the centrality of unions. But it does not share the existence of a political force capable of containing the extreme right. What already exists in other countries continues to be absent in ours, and Javier Milei's defeat requires us to overcome this lack.
*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 da Neves.
Summary of the work presented in Rebellions, Nueva Derecha and fight against fascism, 31-7-2024, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Buenos Aires.
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