Argentina’s ____, Javier Milei, entered this electoral ____ as he entered his first: the libertarian deputy ____ of the debate and changed the agenda. Javier Milei is going to win, of that he is convinced. He says that it was God Himself – one of the supernatural presences with whom he began to interact after the death of his dog/son Conan in 2017, the moment marking the beginning of his mystical journey – who told him that he is destined to a “mission” to save Argentina from “evil.” With that powerful conviction Milei faced his electoral challenge as if it were ____ a further step in a story already written in Heaven. But although it sounds ____, Milei is right. Proving that the deputy really is the chosen “Number One,” as he calls it, ____ this article (in my book El Loco*, further revelations may be found), but at another level the economist was ____. He’s going to win because he has indeed already won. Let’s get down to the ____. His La Libertad Avanza alliance is ____ two years old. It was born as a novel project beyond the logic of Argentina’s famous ‘la grieta’ ____, bringing together liberals, libertarians, conservatives, pro-lifers, ultra-nationalists and influencers – a ____ interpreting the mood of the times very well.At its head is Javier Milei. He’s an extravagant figure, with a past as a ____ economist projecting ideas which sound new and which, combined with the right dose of insults and shouts and that particular style of ____ hair, transformed him into a practically irresistible personality. His name brings television ratings and social network clicks, an ideal combination for the era of WhatsApp, Twitter, and Instagram videos (he is the Argentine politician with the most followers online, ____ Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Mauricio Macri). If Brazil had Jair Bolsonaro and the United States had Donald Trump, many see Milei as the Argentine incarnation of the two. The combination of Milei and La Libertad Avanza, added to the indices of inflation and the ____ of the Frente de Todos ____ straight after Macri’s Cambiemos administration, produced something totally ____. A list just six months old, whose leader had not even participated in a university election, with a high percentage of militants without any political experience, managed to win 17 percent of the votes in the 2021 ____ in the heart of the country, the place that has produced the last two presidents. La Libertad Avanza won two ____ in the lower ____ Chamber of Deputies, five in the Buenos Aires City ____, one in the La Rioja Province Legislature and another the following year in the province of Tierra del Fuego. Milei and La Libertad Avanza also achieved something more intangible but much more important, ____ the ____ between Fernández de Kirchner and Macri, the ____ of Argentine politics since 2007. Milei became the ____ haunting the profitable game of la grieta and, with the ____ of a ____, shifted the ____ of all discussions. The privatisation of all state companies, the dollarisation of the Argentine economy, the declaration of war against progressive, feminist and “gender” ideologies, the destruction of the Central Bank, the total elimination of public works, freeing the right to ____, the abolition of the ____, ____ of the figure of 30,000 disappeared by the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, the extreme defence of ____ and “liberty”– these have all come to form part of the common ____ of political ideas.The libertarian ____ has transformed taboo issues into television subtitles, media ____ and applause on social networks with so much ____ and success that he has obliged everybody to pay attention to his almost magical formula. The parvenu has passed from pupil to teacher in a matter of weeks and something more: he has served ____ that there is a “cultural battle,” an invisible war for civic common sense on Argentine soil. And which he has been winning thus far. Seized by panic ____ his growth and, ____ an exodus of votes, Juntos por el Cambio gave ____, doing what Spain’s Partido Popular had done with the eruption of Vox – forced by the appearance of a ____ in the same ____, they migrated their discourse to much harsher ____. Their ‘hawks’ became more ____ than ever, yelling like Milei, incorporating their arguments and ____ fights with the same enemies. “Nobody pushes my discourse around, whether progressives or cynics, I cannot stand them any longer, where the hell are the priorities?” said Macri when presenting one of his books in October 2022. That was the same leader who liked to look in the mirror of Barack Obama and European social democrats when he reached the presidency. It was also his first insult in public in his entire political career. “The yells, the insults do not speak of me, they speak of you,” Macri had declared as he opened congressional sessions for the last time as president, while Kirchnerite deputies ____ him from their ____ .Three years later the insults and yells continue without speaking of Macri: they speak of Milei and the lack of hawkish responses to his appearance in politics. For the opposition coalition’s ____ the challenge was even tougher. Delivering the ____ great arguments, like dialogue and healthy democratic coexistence, ____ with the new fashions and ideas was a task worthy of ____. Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, the leader of that sector, had to leave his ____ to ____ opinions in which he obviously did not believe. For example, City Hall passed from dictating workshops about inclusive language for its employees and publishing sexual health ____ to using the letter ‘X’ to prohibit inclusive language in schools in June, 2022. Rodríguez Larreta, in person, passed from agreeing with the taxation of ____ (October, 2021, in an interview with Ernesto Tenembaum and Jairo Straccia) to “not ____ a tax on empty housing” (October, 2022, in an interview with Luis Novaresio). Peronism, ____, followed with attention these ____ in the heart of the adversary, despite initially taking Milei as ____ more a joke when he first entered the political arena. But after that 17 percent, the historic movement began to take the libertarian ____, debating whether to raise him up as the great ____ in politics and thus devalue the Macri camp, or imagining him as a tactical ally in the future to guarantee the robbing of votes from the opposition. This year Peronist mayors throughout the country have been passing around an imaginary cheque-book on how much it would cost to finance a local candidate with the approval of Milei to compete within their list ____ the governors provided financial or logistical aid for the liberal’s candidates in their province. ____ a political and economic crisis of Frente de Todos’s making, the libertarian – and the votes ____ Juntos por el Cambio – promises to be an indispensable ally in their ____ to maintain power. “We’re imploring Milei to win many votes, that speaks of how much we have ____,” said Fernando ‘Chino’ Navarro, an official of President Alberto Fernández’s government, in a burst of sincerity during a recent interview. In some cases, this idea went further. The case of Tigre, where Economy Minister Sergio Massa’s wife Malena Galmari ____ the La Libertad Avanza list of municipal councillors and defined the top candidate (as those expelled denounced to Noticias magazine) is good evidence of that. Milei has done much to ____ the landscape by planting himself at the centre of the agenda, obliging all the actors to ____ and transforming himself into a player in ____ He has thus provoked a tsunami for all rules, rewriting Argentine politics and transforming words like “taxation,” “dialogue,” “state” and “progressive” into sins which only the valiant dare to pronounce, while “liberty,” “liberalism,” “caste” and insults of every kind have come to be ____ with voters. Historic Peronists, Radicals of various generations and stripes, confessed Macri fans and repentant Kirchnerites have all ____ and have begun to proclaim themselves lifelong liberals with the intention of improving their numbers in the social networks and opinion ____. It is for all these reasons that Milei has already won. Not just because of his phenomenal election performance, installing ____, rewriting the agenda and transforming the other two major ____. The libertarian is little more than the ____ personality of an Argentina exhausted by years and years of economic and political crisis. The phenomenon ____ him, although he gives it its face. * Juan Luis González is the author of El Loco, a biography of Javier Milei. ** El loco: La vida desconocida de Javier Milei y su irrupción en la política argentina by Juan Luis González is published by Editorial Planeta. https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/opinion-and-analysis/javier-milei-the-libertarian-who-speaks-to-the-dead-has-already-won.phtml

Opinion: Javier Milei, the libertarian who speaks to the dead, has already won

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