The uncalled-for, insulting, and scatological expressions often used by Argentine president Javier Milei to disqualify his opponents, in a permanent tirade unprecedented in a presidential figure, try to hide the massive popular mobilizations that mark the thermometer of the unease of the middle and working classes against the anarcho-capitalist government.
Milei’s scatological diatribes run parallel to the commotion provoked by the government’s destructive strategy, which destabilized the opposition parties, the friendly opposition, the ruling party, and also the business centers such as the Argentine Industrial Union, worried by the abrupt fall in consumption at all levels (from automobiles to food and clothing). This continuous bashing, however, has not yet been reflected in a decisive shift in policy preferences.
Two years ago, he said that if he were to become president in 2023, he would raise “the price of anti-diarrhea medication because all the politicians will be shitting themselves”.
In his presentation to the audience during the dinner of the ultra-right-wing Fundación Libertad, the Argentine president rudely expressed himself with several neoliberal economists, among them the deputy Ricardo López Murphy, who described as “an unacceptable rudeness for a President” the phrase of Javier Milei “Do you know how the economy will grow? Like a diver’s fart”.
“I don’t like rudeness, it degrades society. I would expect our presidents to lift us, not to be a carousel. The barbarities and insults said by the president are bad for the country”, said López Murphy, reigniting the controversy over the vocabulary and the permanent rudeness of the tenant of the Casa Rosada.
If there is one thing that has become evident in contemporary politics, it is that vulgarity yields good results in establishing bonds of loyalty with the majorities. Insulting, lying, misrepresenting, and assuming arrogant postures in contexts close to entertainment have become one of the dominant trends of our times,
Undoubtedly, Milei is not original. One of the most prominent exponents of this trend has been (and continues to be) former US president Donald Trump, who the more outrageous he appears, the more his popularity ratings seem to rise.
Aware that the tawdrier he is, the more he will be acclaimed and loved, he seems to be engaged in a race against himself to try to outdo himself by spouting nonsense left and right, notes Costa Rican academic Rafael Cuevas. And it seems that Milei imitates him even in that, but he has not yet reaped Trump’s laurels.
A few days ago, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni (whose CV states that he is an economist) distributed an editorial and style guide to public bodies, with several errors, in which, in addition to eliminating inclusive language, he makes recommendations to “establish basic guidelines so that writing criteria are clear, organic and have editorial coherence”, although they do not respect the guidelines of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE). He refrains from urging presidential language.
The document is headed by a quote in quotation marks, “To break the rules, you must first know them”, a phrase attributed to the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso: “Learn the rules as a professional, then you can break them as an artist”. The art of official communication is executed above all on social networks, with the X account “Office of the President”, where words written with initial capital letters abound.
James Bond used to say that once is chance, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pre-established plan. A ritual has become so repetitive in our institutional life that we no longer know how to describe it.
A man who has come from nowhere is promoted without anyone knowing why to responsibilities he knows nothing about: he is hailed as the new savior of the world and, suddenly, we are told that the evil one disappeared billions of dollars without anyone noticing how, writes Venezuelan writer Luis Britto García, referring not only to his own country.
That the most insulting of an insulting era won the election and became president exceeds public discourse analysis. Sebastián Lacunza defines Milei’s grievances and his promise to make the population suffer for the sake of what economists without relevance once wrote, his enjoyment of the bankruptcy of companies, his cruelty to patients undergoing medical treatment, his praise of ignorance, his contempt for knowledge, his strength with the weak and his submission to the powerful.
