So he launched his presidential campaign… they intended to fill the stadium of the El Porvenir club, in Gerli. However, it turned out to be a total failure: little more than 1,500 people attended a place where ten times more people could fit. It was a true failed rally, which unleashed immediate and harsh tensions between the liberfascists. Besides this fiasco, dinosaurs are a danger we have to continue fighting against in all fields.
By Pablo Vasco
This emerging political force, which is running to lead the fate of our country, is supposed to prepare its presidential launching event with a certain level of seriousness. This was not the case. First, before an audience that arrived mostly in buses like the ones they criticize so much, Dipy sang out of tune: “He who does not clap his hands is a cat, he who does not clap his hands is a communist”….
At night, came the candidate’s political skid. From a lectern with a lion logo and in his usual messianic tone, Javier Milei blurted out: “I got into the filthy swamp of politics so that Argentina becomes a powerful country again. The formula is capitalism and hard work”. And then in his speech, which lasted only 20 minutes given the small attendance, he boasted: “We are the ones who have come to change history”.
Tougher than in other political forces, the internal debate about the resounding failure was fierce. The neo-liberal leader Carlos Maslatón accused Karina, Milei’s sister and right-hand woman, of being a “cheap and ignorant dictator”, and Carlos Kikuchi, the founder of the space and former spokesman of Domingo Cavallo, of being a “traitor and infiltrator” and of leading Milei’s project to an “irreversible catastrophe”.
From Brazil, where he met with other notorious ultra-rightists such as Bolsonaro’s son and the former Chilean candidate Kast, Milei ratified his sister as a leader. With still a year and a half to go before the presidential elections, the liberfascist internal debate is already on fire and promises new incidents.
Dollarization and pyramid schemes
Notwithstanding the joke-like nature of the event, it would be wrong to minimize Milei, Espert and their liberfascists. Not only because their leader has some 600,000 followers in their social media platforms and a colossal handle of big media looking for a right-wing presidential candidate, but also because the underlying political causes of their rise persist.
In the current context of capitalist crisis and social polarization, here and in many countries, the growing anger towards political sectors that have already governed or govern now-such as Juntos and Todos- leaves room for growth of far-right phenomena. What is more: the whole bourgeois class benefits from such an element, because it pushes the whole economic and political agenda of the country further to the right, towards more austerity, surrender and repression.
But let’s talk about controversy. It turns out that this supposed “head” of the economy advises to dollarize. But this solution, which in the eyes of some people appears as a possible brake to inflation, is a lie. Monetary emission is not the main issue; the key is the dependent capitalist nature of the Argentine economy, with low productivity and subject to the IMF and multinationals’ schemes. Hyper-indebted, increasingly concentrated and an exporter of raw materials with little added value (agribusiness and hydrocarbons), here we pay for industrial goods at the price that imperialism wants. If, on top of that, the Central Bank were to be closed down, as Milei proclaims, there would no longer be the slightest sovereign decision on our currency, the exchange rate and the management of foreign currency. If you need any proof, look at Ecuador: there, dollarization aggravated misery, social inequality, ended up bursting its weak economy and today there are peasant blockades in 16 of the 24 Ecuadorian provinces.
But what recently made Milei’s rise in the polls turn around, among other reasons, is that this know-it-all has advised to invest in shady financial caves! This is what happened with the CoinX World cryptocurrency platform, praised by him, which promised an annual return of 35 to 40% in dollars, unprecedented in this world and its surroundings…
Well, the company CoinX ended up being notified by the National Securities Commission for lacking legal authorization, closed its doors and left all the unwary who trusted Milei’s advice in the lurch. As Cele Fierro rightly pointed out, “If now as a congressman he recommends swindlers, imagine being president. This is how the ‘free market’ promoted by these liberfascists works: the law of the capitalist jungle, always towards the detriment of the workers and middle sectors”.
Always against workers
If you do not have a job, you already know that Milei proposes to cancel all social assistance plans and, on top of that, to repress protests: in other words, he wants hunger and sticks. But in some workplaces there are those who, fed up with Macri and also with the Alberto-Cristina tandem, are beginning to look at Milei with some sympathy. Do not be fooled. The electoral platform of Avanza Libertad, Milei’s party, is extremely clear and direct in its proposals against the working class(1):
Labor flexibilization: “to make the terms and ways of hiring more flexible; to recognize the multifunctional, multi-professional and polyvalent nature of the tasks; to allow functional and location mobility; to incorporate remote and home-based work; to allow flexible remuneration schemes based on productivity”.
Encouraging layoffs: “eliminate the regime of compensation without just cause and replace it with unemployment insurance”, which “will eliminate the cost of layoffs that become indispensable; reducing state employment by 1.5 million people is possible and desirable”.
Retirement privatization: “to eliminate employer contributions… personal contributions for retirement will have the character of compulsory contributions to individual accounts, as in any private capitalization system”.
Lower wages and collective bargaining agreements: “wage and working conditions negotiations will be carried out at the company level. Collective bargaining agreements at a lower level will prevail over those at a higher level without the need for prior approval”.
To annul the right to strike: “to eliminate the extortion capacity of the union apparatus through general strikes and the occupation of public spaces. Limit the right to strike in any activity. In any case, strike days will not be paid. Limit to an exceptional minimum the legality of general strikes. State employees and employees of privatized essential services will not have the right to strike”.
All these quotes are verbatim and you can corroborate them in the link at the end of this article. If after reflecting on these anti-worker proposals you still have any illusions about Milei, it’s not on us. Coming out of his mouth, “hard work” is literally exploitation reloaded.
This outsider-style character comes across as “new” and “different,” but he is neither. Milei praises Carlos Saúl Menem as “the best president” and Domingo Felipe Cavallo as “the best economy minister.” But those ideas are older than time itself, they were already applied years ago and led to the total failure of the country, the working people and the middle sectors.
Milei’s idols brought us privatizations of services that continue to this day, thousands and thousands of layoffs, inflation, greater social inequality, surrender to corporations and the famous carnal relations with imperialism. Milei is the return to capitalist neoliberalism, enemy of the employed and unemployed working class and of all social rights.
With the business and the political caste
In order to take advantage of the generalized anger against politicians, Milei rants against “the caste”. In this way, he tries to camouflage the fact that he and his associates, in reality, work every day for the worst of the castes: the dominant capitalist class, which waters his little plant and gives him air in case the other presidential friends lose too much prestige. That is what happened in the United States with Trump and in Brazil with Bolsonaro… and we know what the results were.
With the business caste… and the political caste…
To take advantage of the generalized anger against politicians, Milei rants against “the caste”. In this way, he tries to camouflage the fact that he and his associates, in reality, work every day for the worst of the castes: the dominant capitalist class, which waters his little plant and gives him air in case the other presidential friends lose too much prestige. That is what happened in the United States with Trump and in Brazil with Bolsonaro… and we already know what the results were.
But this “anti-caste” person, who is demagogically avoiding his pay, but who uses the congressional tickets, is negotiating with the same old political caste that he criticizes so much. To begin with, his assemblies in the provinces are made with the pro-genocide Ricardo Bussi in Tucumán, with the Democratic Party at the national level, and with the punteros and similar apparatuses in other provinces. In some cases, it allies itself with displaced sectors of the PJ. That is to say, it shamelessly pacts with the old caste of reactionary politicians who have decades-long records.
However, the icing on the cake is Milei’s meetings with Mauricio Macri, the last one just a few days ago, preceded by some winks from Patricia Bullrich to the libertarian. Of course, these negotiations make Rodríguez Larreta and Vidal very nervous, but especially the UCR and the Coalición Cívica, so far allied with the PRO in Juntos.
It is clear that the liberfascists and the former president are trying to weave some electoral pact, perhaps by holding an internal one, in view of the 2023 elections. But where are we, Milei? weren’t you an anti-caste and different from everyone else? Or does anyone in this country believe that Macri is not part of the political and business caste that has already ruled us and failed miserably? Returning to his own words, Milei is an active part of the same bourgeois “filthy swamp of politics”.
“Freedom” to choose organ trafficking
Another little highlight that detracted points from Milei were his brutal declarations in favor of the free market of organs, no less. Our comrade Guillermo Pacagnini, leader of CICOP and of the MST, refuted him clearly: “It is an attack against public health. To promote the buying and selling of organs, considering them as market goods, is an attack against human rights and public health. And the justification of such an aberration based on social needs, selling for hunger, configures a new contempt for the working people and the most needy.
“After many claims there were advances in the legislation to facilitate organ donation, but it is still lacking. Contrary to Milei’s opinion, far from being a commodity, organs should be considered a social good, of public utility to save lives, not to make business deals. Whatever this person may think, this is an act of solidarity, but it is also an expression of the right to health. The INCUCAI, as a state agency, must remain as the only entity in charge of organ management, public, free and based on international scientific and sanitary criteria”.
As part of his privatist conception, Milei proposed to close the National Ministry of Education. He also promised to close the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity, rudely saying “I will not apologize for having a penis”. And days ago he lashed out against public health including a very sensitive issue socially, such as human organ donation and transplantation. In turn, encouraging the purchase and sale of organs means enabling the barbarity of mafia trafficking. How much for a young heart, Milei?
Wherever they go, we will find them
Even though their balloon had been rising in the polls, it is now mildy deflating, Javier Milei, José Luis Espert, Ramiro Marra and all these liberfascists represent danger. The wear and tear of the political variants of this decadent capitalist system and the media handle allow them to run. Moreover, their hate speeches give them a pass for hate actions and hate crimes. And as we are seeing, sectors of Macrismo aim at siding with them in order not to lose votes and, for its part, the ruling Peronism does not criticize them much either because it speculates that they take votes away from Juntos por el Cambio.
It is then the task of revolutionary socialists, and in fact of every person who considers themselves a true democrat, to fight without respite against these fascist pigeons. To all oferta the above we add that they deny climate change and defend polluting extractivism, defend the genocides of the military dictatorship and the police trigger, attack gender rights and even pretend that the native peoples return their ancestral lands to the Army that took them away from them. They are retrograde through and throughout.
If you share these ideas, we invite you to organize with us to join forces from the left and stop them. Liberfascists, they will not pass!
1. https://avanzalibertad.com/plataforma-electoral/