Opinion: Javier Milei, Argentina’s new presidential candidate from the right, receives a large following

(Opinion) New political figures from the Right are consolidating their weight in Latin America as in Europe and other world regions.

Entirely new ideas in the television studios on the electoral dispute and the growth of the conservatives are now challenging the hegemony of the traditional leadership at the regional level.

How can this sudden and fast change be explained?

The rapid growth of new and different-thinking personalities in the face of the general crisis of the continent’s traditional parties has brought new faces of the Right into the public debate, and there is nothing to suggest that this is a fad.

Although Argentina’s next presidential election is still a year away, a recent poll has nominated Javier Milei for the first time for the October 2023 election with a surprising 23.6% vote, with the distinct possibility of a second round.

This puts the economist at the top of the most likely politicians, competing for votes with possible candidates from the ruling Frente de Todos.

Milei became known in 2017 for his unconventional appearances on television, where he proclaimed a discourse against the political leadership, which he called a caste.

His slogans – including a proposal to abolish the central bank and ban the carrying of weapons – went viral on social media and his popularity skyrocketed.

In July 2021, in his first foray into politics, Milei founded the La Libertad Avanza party, which made him a national deputy just four months later.

Argentina, in agony, had been eagerly awaiting a new face after decades of Peronism and Kirchnerism that put this proud country in permanent intensive care.

He immediately received no less than 17% of the vote in the city of Buenos Aires, and now, less than a year later, the polls give him concrete chances of being elected president in 2023.

The popularity of this politician is increasing, mainly because young people like him.

According to a study by the consulting firm Taquión, to which the newspaper Clarín had access, support for Milei is over 55% of 18 25-year-olds.

The Argentine economist phenomenon is anything but an anomaly.

Nahuel Sosa, sociology, director of the Centro de Formación y Pensamiento Génera, believes it is due to young people’s disenchantment with politics.

“90% of young people think that the situation is bad. This, together with poverty and unemployment, is a breeding ground where these discourses can easily take root,” the expert said in an interview with Sputnik.

Ezequiel Ipar, a sociologist and professor at the University of Buenos Aires, adds that “the discomfort explains part of the adherence to his figure that young people suffered during the pandemic.

You don’t have to wonder that love dies when you force people into lockdowns, isolation, muzzle, and impose vaccine mandates or similar.

No one will forget that. Never.

The economic situation in Argentina, with inflation at around 100 percent year-on-year and poverty at over 35 percent, deepens young people’s disenchantment with traditional politics.

A GLOBAL PHENOMENON

“The shift to the right is happening all over the world, not just in Latin America: there is a global trend,” Verónica Giordano, Ph.D. in social sciences and a researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), told Sputnik.

Experts agree with the scenario described by Giordano.

Nahuel Sosa notes, “there has been a process of change that has deepened. What was cultivated there is beginning to affect Latin America.”

In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro received 43.2% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, garnering more than 51 million votes, one and a half million more than in 2018.

And his Liberal Party won gubernatorial elections in eight states, displacing traditional parties such as the Brazilian Democratic Movement and the Brazilian Union.

This gives the president a real chance of winning the Oct. 30 election against Luiz Lula da Silva.

In Colombia, millionaire businessman Rodolfo Hernández narrowly beat Gustavo Petro in the first round of voting, with 50.4% of the vote.

The 77-year-old tycoon, who claims a radical discourse against the political caste, received a historical 47. he voted, ousting traditional parties such as the U Party, MIRA, the Conservative Party, and Creemos Colombia.

Chilean José Antonio Kast, whose Republican Party defended the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), received 44% of the vote in the runoff against Gabriel Boric in March of this year, the highest number of votes for a second candidate in the country’s history, displacing the historical parties that have ruled the country since the return to democracy.

Hungary and Poland have been ruled by the Right for years, Austria changed sides in 2021, and Sweden and Italy a few weeks ago.

In Germany, the rise of the AfD can no longer be stopped.

The international picture explains the framework in which the phenomenon of the new number occurs.

The popularity of personalities like Milei, Bolsonaro, Orban, and Meloni cuts across social classes.

“They are heterogeneous profiles: They are supported by the marginalized groups, but also by the university sectors and the upper middle class,” the researcher adds.

THE CRISIS OF TRADITIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND PARTIES

Solid social discontent is no longer channeled through traditional parties, left or right.

As larger and larger segments of the population wake up and begin to understand that lies are dominating them, staged crises, political actors, and manipulative mainstream media, they are banding together and looking for new ways.

We have gone from a phase of depoliticization to a great and irreversible weariness with the ruling political class, a movement that is certainly unstoppable.

You can see this well right now in Brazil.

Jair Bolsonaro may not be elected president again.

Bolsonarismo, on the other hand, has taken most of the Brazilian states and the Congress in Brasilia by storm and will ensure that the movement not only outlives the movement’s founder but will very soon do him all the honors.

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