[The Argentine primary elections caused a political earthquake,
with libertarian Javier Milei taking first place and Peronism coming
in third. Never before has the radicalized right won so many votes.]
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THE HARD RIGHT CAPTIVATES THE ARGENTINE ELECTORATE  
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Mariano Schuster and Pablo Stefanoni / Nueva Sociedad
August 15, 2023
NACLA Reports
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_ The Argentine primary elections caused a political earthquake, with
libertarian Javier Milei taking first place and Peronism coming in
third. Never before has the radicalized right won so many votes. _

Far right presidential candidate Javier Milei launches his party La
Libertad Avanza in 2021, (Wikimedia Commons / Sargen220 / CC-BY-3.0)

 

The Argentine election brought a seismic shift on Sunday, August 13.
The extreme right-wing libertarian candidate—and outsider of
traditional politics—Javier Milei won first place, with 30 percent
of the votes. The liberal-conservative opposition came second, with
fewer votes than expected at 28 percent, and Peronism, for the first
time in history, came in third, with 27 percent.

The open, simultaneous, and mandatory primaries (known as PASO)
constitute a kind of sui generis election: in theory, they allow each
party to choose its candidates, but in practice, since the whole
electorate votes, they are a pre-first round that sets the climate for
the real election that will take place on October 22. Therefore, the
PASO has two implications: on the one hand, determining who wins each
internal election (if there is competition), and on the other hand,
revealing the correlation of forces between the different parties and
coalitions.

Regarding the former, the victory of former security minister Patricia
Bullrich over the mayor of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta,
from the party Juntos por el Cambio (JxC), stands out. It is a
victory, in short, of the "hawks" against the "doves" in the main
opposition force; of Bullrich's "If it’s not everything, it’s
nothing" against Rodríguez Larreta’s gradualist proposals.
Bullrich's campaign was endowed with all the ingredients: it
simultaneously had a matter-of-fact style and a strong emphasis on
deploying an iron fist against both insecurity and social protest. Her
triumph in the internal elections provided Bullrich with a good chance
of reaching the Casa Rosada. A militant of revolutionary Peronism of
the 1970s, Bullrich later turned to the hardline right. She maintains,
however, liberal positions in other areas, reflected in her support
for the decriminalization of abortion and approval of marriage
equality.

In terms of the primaries themselves, there were no surprises in
Milei's wing, since he was the only contender within his platform, La
Libertad Avanza.

Finally, for Peronism, the “unity” candidate Sergio Massa, an
ultra-pragmatic centrist supported by former president and current
vice president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, won by a wide margin.
However, Juan Grabois, a left-wing populist close to Pope Francis, won
the vote of several left-wing Kirchnerists who were reluctant to vote
for Massa. Grabois's voters tended to see him as a sort of “Kirchner
purist" who revived part of the narrative and legacy of the original
Kirchnerism, especially its Cristinista version. This represents a
somewhat strange dynamic, insofar as Fernández de Kirchner herself
had bet on Massa, the current economy minister. The "Jefa"
(“boss,” as she is known) backed Massa after current minister of
the interior Eduardo "Wado" de Pedro withdrew his candidacy
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De Pedro belongs to La Cámpora, the political youth group established
by Fernández de Kirchner’s son Máximo Kirchner and the most
important of the Cristinista structure. After a group of governors
asked Massa to be the candidate, Fernández de Kirchner gave the
go-ahead. In this sense, Grabois's ideological proposal constituted a
"Cristinismo without Cristina"—an ideological current without the
real support of the figure they invoked.

In short, the only true primary was that of JxC, in which the
right-wing candidate won.

This last point leads to a more general reading of the
election. Never before has the far right obtained so many votes in
Argentina: between Milei and Bullrich, they accounted for almost half
of the electorate. The election was marked by the August 9 death of
11-year-old Morena Domínguez in a violent robbery much like so many
other such incidents that shape the daily lives of residents of Buenos
Aires’ urban periphery, known as the _Conurbano Bonaerense_. More
broadly, the election was marked by an endless economic crisis
epitomized in a more than 100 percent annual inflation rate. In this
context, Bullrich capitalized on the security crisis while Milei
capitalized on the economic situation, betting on a dollarization
proposal that harks back to the era of the neoliberal Peronist Carlos
Menem (1989-1999), when the value of the peso was tied by law to the
value of the dollar. Within this framework, the Left that remains
outside of Unión por la Patria (Peronism and its allies), grouped in
a Trotskyist front, also suffered a hard setback.

In this election, there was something of a "_retorno de lo oprimido_,"
or return of the repressed, of 2001, a turning point in Argentine
political history. Despite the looting, massive protests, and
President Fernando De la Rúa fleeing by helicopter from the roof of
the Casa Rosada, progressive discourses prevailed and ultraliberal
solutions were on the menu during those days of 2001, attracting
significant support. Not coincidentally, in the 2003 elections, Carlos
Menem proclaimed the need to move from “convertibility” to the
outright dollarization of the Argentine economy, historically marked
by persistent inflation. The paradox of this whole story is that
Bullrich, De la Rúa's most unpopular minister at that time, has been
reborn in these elections as a phoenix, as a sort of savior of the
nation.

The person who has most connected with this climate of dismantling old
structures, which today has no masses in the streets but a lot of
social frustration, is Milei. The libertarian imported not only
the paleolibertarian ideology
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U.S. economist  Murray Rothbard—whose anarcho-capitalism leads
Milei to defend the purchase and sale of organs—but also the
denunciation of "caste," taken from the Spanish left-wing party
Podemos. Milei, who received the support of Jair Bolsonaro, did not
shy away from using national rock songs previously sung by the Left,
such as those of La Renga or Bersuit Vergarabat, and even the "anthem"
of 2001: the refrain "_Que se vayan todos...que no quede ni uno solo_"
(Out with them all...let not a single one remain), which resounded
thunderously in his closing campaign event.

But Milei's libertarianism has another dimension, which used to go
unnoticed by progressives: his idea of "freedom" resonates in a
popular and lower-middle class world at risk, where the demand for
public services coexists with quite radical forms of anti-statism,
associated with the moral economy of informal "entrepreneurship."

The scheme of poverty subsidies and even the so-called "popular
economy" work quite well as a protective umbrella in times of crisis,
but they do not build desirable futures, which today are more
associated with "individual effort." In the 1980s, liberal
conservatives tried to set up a popular Thatcherism. This was
especially the case of lawmaker Adelina Dalesio de Viola, but her
party appeared too elitist and her endeavor ended up co-opted by
Menemism, which managed to assemble Peronism and privatizing
structural reforms.

But Milei achieved surprisingly good results in popular neighborhoods,
including in traditional Peronist areas such as La Matanza and even
more in the provinces. In fact, he came first in 16 of the 24
provinces and swept two, including Salta, in Argentina’s Andean
north.

As usually happens with other radical rightists nowadays, Milei ended
up serving as the name of a rebellion. In fact, many of his voters do
not want to abolish the state, buy or sell organs or children, torpedo
the Central Bank, or do away with public education or health care.
But, as was seen in the street polls conducted by the sensationalist
channel Crónica TV, for young people and precarious workers, as well
as gig workers, the name “Milei” ended up being a sort of empty
signifier in a moment of national polycrisis.

Contrary to what some progressives believe, Milei was not a product of
the economic establishment or of the media. The business class became
interested in him when he started to grow—he was always seen as
unpredictable. The media gives him air time because he gives them
ratings. In other words, they have made use of his popularity more
than they contributed to creating it, although obviously the hours of
screen time ended up increasing his performance. An exception is the
channel of the newspaper _La Nación_, LN+, which functions as a sort
of reactionary local Fox News-style powerhouse.

Milei and Bullrich, unlike Larreta and obviously Massa, embody a
strongly anti-progressive, refoundational discourse—similar to, but
the ideological inverse of, the discourses of the Pink Tide of the
2000s. A weapon in the hands of the voters to blow up the "system,"
whatever that means for each of them.

On the side of Peronism, Fernández de Kirchner's strategy led to a
dead end. As the unity pre-candidate, Massa faced, in practice,
rejection from a large part of the Peronist militancy who saw him as a
traitor due to his recent anti-Kirchner past. In spite of “Operation
Clamor” led by a militant base, Fernández de Kirchner not only did
not give in, but, after briefly supporting De Pedro’s failed
candidacy, she decided to support Massa, who many Kirchnerists
consider right-wing. While the slates for Congress are full of party
faithfuls, uneasiness reigns
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the most “believing” Kirchnerists. It is the third time (2015,
2019, 2023) that, despite Fernández de Kirchner being one of the most
important politicians in the country, Kirchnerism has not had its own
candidate for the presidency. In the Conurbano bonaernes, two
elections are being held in parallel: the Peronist vote of these
populous localities should serve to boost the presidential candidate,
Sergio Massa, but also to guarantee the reelection of Governor Axel
Kicillof, one of Fernández de Kirchner’s men. The problem is—as a
strategist of the governor pointed out—among the potential bases of
Peronism, despondency reigns.

For different reasons, in Peronism there is a climate similar to that
of 1983, when defeat gave way to renewal. But what does renewal mean
today? How can the different planets of the Peronist
universe—governors, mayors, unions, coalitions—be realigned? What
role will be played by Fernández de Kirchner, battered by this
result?

In a recent interview
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Sociedad_, journalist Martín Rodríguez pointed out that Kirchnerism
is, above all, a "structure of feeling." As we pointed out in another
article
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this structure of feeling not only appealed to a good part of
Peronism, but also attracted the remnants of different leftist
political cultures: communists, socialists, leftist populists,
autonomists of 2001, those nostalgic for the armed struggle of the
1970s, human rights activists. The 1970s-style discourse also managed
to give historical meaning to the political and military defeat of the
dictatorship: all that suffering, including a decimated generation,
would have been worth it. The country was finally being re-founded.

As essayist Beatriz Sarlo pointed out in her book _La audacia y el
cálculo _(Boldness and Calculation), the 2010 Bicentennial sealed
the staging of a new "inclusive" country at the peak of Kirchnerism.
But today that structure of feeling is seriously damaged. Before her
“believers,” Fernández de Kirchner cannot explain her own
decisions. And those believers, without political positions or
aspirations to secure them, are not only the electoral but also the
emotional basis of her political project. The vice president seems to
have been trapped in a somewhat curious mixture of ideologism and
pragmatism. The different Peronisms seemed to neutralize each other.

The country is moving forward, in a panic, towards the October 22
elections. There are more questions than answers: will Milei be able
to use this result as a lever to continue growing, or will the vertigo
effect of an anarcho-capitalist who wants to dynamite the state
reaching the Casa Rosada activate some kind of emergency brake? Will
Milei's "madness" allow Bullrich to appear more reasonable, as
happened with Marine Le Pen against the far right Éric Zemmour in
France?  Will Peronism be able to show some reflex so as not to end
up once again in third place?

Analysts are resetting their GPS.

_This article was originally published in Spanish by __Nueva
Sociedad_
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by NACLA._

_MARIANO SCHUSTER is Nueva Sociedad’s digital platform
editor. He was editor-in-chief of the Argentine socialist
publications La Vanguardia and Nueva Revista Socialista. He
collaborates with media such as Letras Libres and Le Monde
diplomatique, among others. He is a contributing author to ¿Tiene
porvenir el socialismo? compiled by Mario Bunge and Carlos
Gabetta (Eudeba, Buenos Aires, 2013)._

_PABLO STEFANONI is editor-in-chief of Nueva Sociedad. He is
coauthor, with Martín Baña, of Todo lo que necesitás saber sobre
la Revolución rusa (Paidós, 2017) and author of ¿La rebeldía se
volvió de derecha? (Siglo Veintiuno, 2021)._

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* Argentina
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* Peronism
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* far right
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