Argentina’s “Milei phenomenon” first gained footing when the far-right politician scored an unexpected victory in the August presidential primaries. Now donning the presidential sash, Javier Milei is the first self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist and libertarian to lead a major national economy.

An economist by training, Milei first became known as a firebrand television and social media personality prone to expletive-laden and misogynistic tirades. Milei’s official entry into Argentine politics came shortly after, in 2021, when he won a national congressional seat. A longtime practitioner of tantric sex, devotee of neoliberal gurus Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, and owner of several cloned English mastiffs he calls his “four-legged children,” Milei proclaimed hours after trouncing his Peronist opponent that “everything that can be in the hands of the private sector will be in the hands of the private sector.”

Milei has in mind all of Argentina’s 137 public companies, such as the state-owned energy company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF), the country’s extensive public media network (Radio Nacional, TV Pública, and the Télam news agency), the postal service, and the national airline Aerolineas Argentinas. He has also hinted that he will dismantle Argentina’s public health system and privatize large parts of its primary and university education systems, including its publicly funded higher-education research institution. Milei has also courted US capital to conduct unregulated extraction of the country’s sizable lithium and shale gas reserves. Perhaps most brazenly, he has promised to do away with Argentina’s Central Bank, dollarize the economy (following the examples of Ecuador, El Salvador, and Zimbabwe), liberalize markets, and lift the country’s strict currency-exchange controls.