Why does the right worship Milei?
“Libertarianism” — which is just another word for authoritarian neoliberalism — is a dead end for national conservatives
I’ve written for UnHerd about the curious cult for Argentine “anarcho-capitalist” president Javier Milei among among heterodox conservatives and MAGA-style right-wingers, and why “libertarianism” — which is just another word for authoritarian neoliberalism — is a dead end for national conservatives:
Trumpism, like analogue national-conservative movements in Europe, encapsulated an intuitive understanding that the values cherished by conservatives — family, community, religion, solidarity — can only flourish in a context where the state intervenes to restrain the socially destructive effects of unfettered capitalism. Trump’s former US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer captured the new conservative zeitgeist when he said that libertarianism is “a philosophy for stupid people”.
In this regard, as Sohrab Ahmari has noted, Milei represents a rejection of “nearly everything ‘MAGA’ populists… claim to stand for”. Milei is a self-described ultra-libertarian and pro-market extremist who has vowed to “liberalise and privatise everything” (including organ transplants), slash welfare programmes, gut workers’ rights and permanently shackle the Argentine economy to the Federal Reserve by abolishing the Central Bank of Argentina and adopting the US dollar as the national currency.
So why are so many MAGA-conservatives attracted to Milei? In strictly political-economic terms, it shows that conservatives, particularly in the US, still very much live in the shadow of Reaganism: they adhere to a cartoonish form of libertarianism, where the state is the source of all evil and oppression, while the self-regulating market — or “true capitalism” — is framed as a promised land capable of delivering freedom and prosperity. This is tragically naïve.
Read the article here.
Thomas Fazi
Website: thomasfazi.net
Twitter: @battleforeurope
Latest book: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green)
Thank you, Thomas. I like the end: ““embedding” the economy in society, in subordinating it to its citizens’ material needs, beliefs, values, customs and traditions”, which does not only apply to Argentina only. At this point, it seem like a dream.
>>Why does the right worship Milei?
Because his first official act was to convert to Judaism.