Milei's Revolution Blues
Going Yankee at CPAC Argentina
A week before I was due to cover the first CPAC Argentina, on December 4th, I listened to Neil Young’s “Revolution Blues” like a zealot. In the composite voice of the Manson family, Young narrates an invasion: from living on “a trailer at the edge of town” to “hangin’ ‘round” enough to affirm, in Young’s acute angry drawl, “it’s so good to be here, asleep on your lawn.” The guard dog’s “whining all night long” finit, to an epic expanse: “bloody fountains,/and ten million dune buggies coming down the mountains.” In the place of euphoria, Young finds spleen: “But I’m still not happy/I feel like there’s something wrong.” The madman is asking himself the revolutionary’s question: what is to be done?
Javier Milei, now a year into his presidency of Argentina, dreams of a permanent revolution, much like the Trotskyists he loathes. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I arrived early at the Hilton Buenos Aires—swanky in a mentally suburbanized, gringo-friendly way—where a redheaded American CPAC employee kindly solved some problem that had arisen with my ticket. This magazine had to buy one (price: U$S100) after CPAC rejected my accreditation, as they did to a few other left-wing publications. We did not splurge for the “premium” ticket, which cost $5000 and included access to a secretive VIP lounge from which Mileiist elites emerged throughout the event. There was coffee in the lobby, which was a relief because the event started about an hour late, as if the Americans were assimilating to Argentina’s lax sense of timeliness. The press swarmed around Eduardo Bolsonaro, Jair’s surprisingly handsome son and a regular CPAC speaker. We were ushered into a half empty conference hall, though by the time Milei spoke, 8 hours later, there wasn’t an empty seat in the house.
The night before, CPAC hosted a gala dinner at which Milei joined guest of honor Lara Trump and multiple red-faced, white-haired Americans to imitate Donald Trump’s arthritic-but-charming dance moves. He also awarded Lara Trump the freshly created “Domingo Faustino Sarmiento” award, named in honor of the father of Argentine settler colonial genocide, education, and literature. Milei delights in sycophancy—following Trump’s electoral victory, he had proudly sprinted off to Mar-a-Lago, the first foreign dignitary to do so, and one suspects that this ability to kiss ass has served him well throughout his career as an economist and politician. Trump, we know, loves adulation, and Milei puckers up well.
Before the talks started, the Argentine and American anthems sounded and I spoke with Andrés Mego, editor of Hojas del Sur, Argentina’s leading publisher of organic right-wing intellectuals like Nicolás Márquez and his protégé, Agustín Laje; their Black Book of the New Left, first published in 2016, is a landmark text of Latin America’s New Right. “I’ve been doing this since the beginning, since 2004,” when he published Márquez’s La otra parte de la verdad, an extensive and controversial vindication of the Argentine military’s genocidal behavior during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, at an event for which Márquez met the young Laje.
I found a seat in the hall just as Matt Schlapp, CPAC’s chair, entered the stage with his wife, Mercedes Viana Schlapp, the Cuban American daughter of a failed Castro assassin who fled for Miami. The Schlapps turned CPAC, which Reagan founded in the 70s, into a key node in what some have called “Reactionary Internationalism,” the geopolitical arm of the New Right movement spearheaded by Trump, Milei, Orban, et al. Mercedes, who speaks Spanish, opened by jokingly calling her husband a “gringo”—high praise among right-wing Latin Americans—before Matt clarified: “Yo soy jefe,” I am the boss. “In America,” he said, “it’s a new day.” Trump is a “man of history” with God at his back and ready to “fight, fight, fight to our last breath.” The struggle is only starting, the revolution must not cease.
Lara Trump then took the stage and rather forgettably rehearsed talking points about the “deep state” and “prosperity through freedom” and her father-in-law’s genius, much like she had at the RNC. She praised Elon Musk, who got the first of many rounds of applause and Milei seems to think will “save” Argentina. (Like every speaker throughout the day, she called Musk’s “everything app” Twitter, not X.) She reminded the audience that, as Musk himself claimed, the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) which the South African will lead with Vivek Ramaswamy was inspired by a similar unit in the Milei administrative state led by long-time neoliberal economist Federico Sturzenegger. She flattered Milei’s Davos speech and insisted that Trump was “fighting the same battle” as Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil, though she did not clarify what battle she was referencing, perhaps because there’s few similarities between Trump’s ultra-protectionist economics and Milei’s laissez-faire fantasia. Behind me, a mother with her twin boys, probably age 10, listened attentively; all three wore simultaneous translation headsets.
After Trump came Steve Bannon, who sent a video message from Mar-a-Lago, and looked stressed and focused. Bannon’s intelligence is evident–he is, without a doubt, the organic intellectual of what he called the “global national populist movement.” He addressed Argentina’s branch of the movement directly, suggesting that not one country in the “Judeo-Christian World” had the country’s problems, and that the “fate of South America” rested with Milei. Argentina, he said, was “the tip of the tip of the spear,” the vanguard, and that should Milei fail, another “century of darkness” would come. He wished he could be here, but of course the process of “deconstruct[ing] the administrative state” in the US required his attention. One hears Bannon and shudders: he’s sharp and imaginative, unlike most conservatives, has read the Left’s texts and weaponized their insights. I suspect that the tariff master, Bannon, only sees himself in alliance with Milei because they are both obsessed with protecting “the West” against its enemies from within and without, from “darkness” encroaching, presumably, from the East.
Bannon’s was not the only video message: another came from Jair Bolsonaro, who was meant to travel before having his passport retained by authorities in connection to his involvement in the planning of a coup and, apparently, a plan to poison current Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. Eduardo spoke later in the day. Both called for Milei and the Argentine government’s support: many Bolsonaristas, accused of participating in the January 8th, 2023 uprising in Brasilia, fled to Argentina and requested asylum. Of the 200 or so that are confirmed to be in the country, 61 have been indicted or found guilty in Brazil and have outstanding arrest warrants in both countries, some with prison sentences up to 17 years. Eduardo gave a quasi-TED talk spelling out the persecution and lawfare that his father and their movement have suffered. At the end, he unfurled a moss green banner with the faces of all 61 wanted Bolsonaristas. Unfortunately, Milei had entered the building and much of the audience was outside the hall trying to get a picture, so few paid attention and, indeed, Milei himself has displayed little interest in their plight. They are now losers, the movement’s past.
Agustín Laje had also recorded a video message–he was in Mexico on a speaking tour–and provided a detailed critique of the institutions of international governance that Milei, too, has attacked. In particular, he denounced the UN’s “2030 Agenda” as the product of unelected, autocratic bureaucrats, insidiously scheming to concentrate global power “behind the backs of the people.” He accused the UN’s “maximalist” and “uncontroversial” list of 17 objectives–eradicating world poverty and hunger, gender equality, affordable and non-contaminating energy–which, he said, embodied a UN “cult of totalization” and were for the consumption of “idiots” and in service of “indigenismo.” Doubling down, Laje affirmed that one had to have “very big balls” to go against the “failing” 2030 Agenda, as Milei did at Davos and in the UN’s general assembly, though why–considering the UN’s distinctive powerlessness–he did not clarify. Under Milei, Argentina would recover its position as a “beacon of the West,” a position lost following the collectivist decay inaugurated circa 1916, when Argentina’s first democratically-elected president took office. Laje’s vision, like Bannon’s, is one of a global right-wing movement, what Milei, in closing the program later, would call “a rightist international” with Argentina as a model, a bulwark defending the white West against its invaders and their “dune buggies,” as Neil Young would put it.
A short procession of bureaucrats–Patricia Bullrich, fallen aristocrat, once a revolutionary guerrilla fighter and now Milei’s security minister following a multi-decade sojourn through every political ideology available; a couple forgettable but sinister Hungarians, surprisingly fluent in Spanish–led up to everyone’s favorite champion of “facts and logic”: Ben Shapiro. The original annoying-debater-turned-conservative presented a rigorously soporific argument describing Peronism as anti-middle class “socialism”--trust me, if there’s one thing Peronists hate, it’s socialism–and a politics of “radical dishonesty,” a brief rant about the “labor theory of value,” and the claim that Mansa Musa was “poor by today’s standards” as a check mate to leftists arguments. He, too, lauded Milei’s attempt to return Argentina to its early 20th century wealth, griped about the country’s downward mobility starting in the 80s (nobody tell him what ideology ruled most governments since then), and rather awkwardly uttered Milei’s catchphrase: “Viva la libertad, Carajo!” Serial election loser and Arizona politician Kari Lake, since named the incoming head of Voice of America, called Milei “President afuera” and “President Abrazo,” but few listened. Likewise, a roundtable of right-wingers from Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Uruguay garnered no attention. Losers don’t thrive here.
The evening’s great surprise was a video appearance by none other than María Corina Machado, leader of the Venezuelan opposition, who spoke from an unknown location in her country while hiding from the regime. She spoke only about the future of Venezuela–”the energy hub of the Americas”--and the undeniable weakness of Maduro’s position, though she knows with whom her allegiance ought to lie.
By this point, Mileiist royalty joined the party. Manuel Adorni, official spokesman for the government, strolled past me on his way to the VIP section, and I found myself surrounded by ecstatic libertarians in their early 20s, with about one woman for every 10 men, cheering on their friends and bosses as they went up on stage. They are part of what Crisis magazine has termed the government’s “digital militia,” allegedly coordinated by the powerful, shadowy intelligence operative Santiago Caputo–distant cousin of Milei’s economic minister and a scion of the wealthy Caputo clan which has long-running ties to right-wing politics in the country. Many of these “tuiteros” have received official government positions and were given stellar billing at CPAC. Their leader, “Gordo Dan,” Daniel Parisini, is a geneticist who has since taken a position in the Milei administration and hosts a show in a right-wing streaming channel. Days earlier, he generated controversy after describing his forces as the “armed branch” of the Mileiist movement, “armed with the most powerful weapon of all: the cell phone.” Dan’s explicit allusion to 70s-style armed struggle scandalized Argentine liberal media; it was no accident, but a sort of right-wing détournement.
Dan was one of a handful of “tuiteros” that spoke on stage, including Agustín Romo (a representative in the lower house of the Buenos Aires province legislature and former head of digital communications for Milei’s party), Nahuel Sotelo (“Secretariat of Religion and Civilization,” and, yes, the civilization bit is new), and Santiago Santurio, representative in the lower house of the Argentine Congress. Their focus, and CPAC Argentina’s central thread, was the vaunted “Cultural Battle,” not the business of governing but the conquering of the digital public sphere. Argentine politics has often been hashed out on the streets, which Peronism has dominated since its working-class base “invaded” the aristocratic throughways of Buenos Aires on October 17, 1945, to demand Perón’s release from jail. Milei’s government has, instead, taken over the Internet, using it to combat and mock opponents both discursively and with various modes of doxxing and intimidation. Dan, too, insisted on Argentina’s place as a “beacon for the world,” and insisted that theirs was a movement of “common men” against the left. Short-circuiting the reflexive, bland liberalism that has ruled Argentine Twitter for years turned out to be rather easy work for them. The web cannot match the street, but its absence hamstrings any opposition.
Before Milei came on the stage, an announcer clarified that all recording devices would be turned off. The house was full, even vibrant. As he entered, the teenagers around me roared and Milei, looking our way, smiled and pointed before opening with his low, scratchy “Hello everyone.” Milei can often be awkward, especially in overly rigid and formal events of state; he was entirely at ease, joking constantly with as favorable an audience as he’s likely ever had. His government was at its peak, somehow both popular and strong despite a legislative minority and a recession likely to land at around 4%-5% for the year. He had, it seemed, tamed inflation and his political opposition; as a friend put it that day, “it’s like they can do no wrong.” Despite internal squabbling with his vice-president and with his ally on the center-right, Mauricio Macri–whose political party seems primed to be mostly eaten alive by Milei’s in next year’s legislative elections–Milei strolled onto the stage a powerful man, king and leader.
His speech, titled “Decalogue of Mileiist Action,” was an attempt to produce what Lenin termed “revolutionary theory” for a “revolutionary movement.” The first commandment: “An uncomfortable truth is preferable to a comforting lie”; the third: “We must never negotiate ideas to scratch out a vote”; the fifth: “the only way to combat organized evil is with organized good”; the 9th: “the only way to fight socialism is from the right”; and the tenth: “We defend a noble and just cause, much larger than any one of us. People are mere instruments of this cause and we must be willing to lay down our lives in its service.” He was here to give the movement, which only a year and a half ago was composed of scattered dorks and took the entire political ecosystem by surprise, its scripture.
Milei’s ambitions have always exceeded Argentina and the political power of the presidency, and amid misreadings of the Torah chapter that I read for my bar mitzvah (outrage!) he again named himself “the second most important politician in the world,” presumably after Trump. The world, by which he means “the West,” must be protected. The apparent ideological contradiction between Trump and Milei–one a nationalist protectionist, the other a hardline free-marketer–is revealed as a trick of their relative positions. Milei is a defender of the faith and Trump is his god; America is the Holy Land, Buenos Aires the beacon lighting the path to a restored West, a city on a hill with no enemies inside the gates. Beware.
Listening to Milei’s surfeits of confidence–”we have the best ideas”; “all of their victories are pyrrhic”--his ultimate goal blurred in my mind. Is the wholesale repeal of Argentina’s 20th century, the breaking of our clock, really the end of his ambition? Calling for a “rightist international,” a vanguard ready for his global leadership and prepared to unspool the liberal world order, is not exactly nationalist. They promise to return Argentina to agro-exporting (and lithium mining) glory, turn it into an austral Peru, but even if they succeed, their revolution will not end there. Perhaps he has, in Dorothy Thompson’s parlance, gone Yankee. As Milei ended his speech with the now-immortal chorus of “Viva la Libertad Carajo,” I sat quietly. When the doors opened I wandered off, waiting for a bus that never came.