Javier Milei’s Freak Show Act Is a Taste of Things to Come
Argentina’s far-right president Javier Milei was enthusiastically received at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The warm welcome extended to Milei is a sign of where free-market radicalism is headed amid the deepening crisis of neoliberalism.
Argentine president Javier Milei delivers a speech at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on January 17, 2024. (Fabrice Coffrini / AFP via Getty Images)
Javier Milei’s warm welcome at this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos was the latest stage in the seemingly baffling rise of radical right-wing libertarianism to political respectability. The recently elected president of Argentina, who brandished a chain saw during campaign rallies to symbolically cut through regulatory red tape, has become the new hero figure of the libertarian right.
Libertarianism has long been underestimated as a fringe political movement. We should see its bid for the political mainstream in relation to the development of its closest ideological ally, neoliberalism, alongside which it emerged as a right-wing phenomenon in the 1930s. The fact that libertarian leaders are gaining popularity just as the neoliberal era appears to be coming to an end points to a consolidation of market-radical ideologies rather than their dissolution.
Star of the Show
Schmoozing with the economic elite in Davos, Javier Milei used his podium at the WEF to caution his listeners that the “Western world is in danger.” Greeted by WEF founder Klaus Schwab as an “extraordinary person,” the Argentine president launched into a tirade against feminists, climate activists, and much of the academic establishment, whom he described as enemies of freedom and prosperity.
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