The paths of Olga Wornat and Javier Milei crossed for the first time in a television studio in Buenos Aires. She was a regular guest of a Show political talk show and he was a histrionic economist, whom the channel used regularly. On one occasion, Wornat asked Milei to detail one of his ideas and he, out of nowhere, lost his temper. He yelled, insulted her and got up from the table. She was stunned and managed to tell him to calm down and respect her. Through the headset, one of the producers insisted to Wornat that he get involved in the lawsuit, which was raising the stakes. rating and that the audience wanted to see more. In a matter of months, the story would take an unexpected turn.
Milei—the crazy one, the politician who raised his voice more than anyone else, the showman who threw expletives into the air and imitated the singer Leonardo Favio to win the applause of the public, the candidate with the chainsaw, the cloned dogs and the plagiarism—easily won the second round of the presidential elections on November 19. Argentina, a country angry and fed up with politicians, embraced a far-right candidacy for the first time in 40 years of democracy. “I don’t think a Milei will be repeated in other countries, it is truly unrepeatable, not even Trump dared to do so,” says the 67-year-old writer and journalist. “The left-wing and progressive parties have to open their eyes and analyze deeply within themselves whether they are really addressing the needs of the people and reconfigure themselves to adapt to the new times we live in, because if not this type of characters, with their own characteristics, They will continue to appear in other countries, even in Mexico,” he adds.
“This was a tremendously atypical campaign, first because Argentina is experiencing a catastrophic situation, whether one wins or the other wins, the economic situation is going to explode,” says the writer, about the political environment in the South American country. The presidential election pitted Milei, the outsider that promised to give a drastic turn to the feeling of permanent crisis, with Sergio Massa, the Minister of Economy of a country with almost 150% year-on-year inflation. “Between the bad and the worst, Argentina chose the worst, it is a nightmare,” laments Wornat. “In the world, but especially in our countries, extreme right-wing governments almost always ended very badly or in tragedy.”
Rivers of ink have flowed to analyze the triumph of the ultra candidate and the reasons that elevated him to power. “There is tremendous ignorance about what Milei represents, we saw politicians and people who came out to celebrate his victory without even knowing who or what he is proposing,” says the writer. “It’s so early that I honestly think no one has the ability to analyze it in depth yet,” she adds.
Wornat gives a long account of the unknowns and contradictions left by the last Argentine elections: entire towns that turned to Milei, even though he did not visit them; native peoples who came out to celebrate her triumph, despite the fact that he said they were “aesthetically inferior”; union workers who did not foresee the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of public positions and who are already beginning to regret it (although the new president has not taken office), rich kids with nods to authoritarianism and poor people from slums who came out to vote and shout in unison ” Break everything”. The writer pauses and then points to her phone: “And this also had a lot to do with it and it did not exist in the dimension that it exists today. Now anyone has a cell phone, any kid has a Tik Tok account and yes, many voted for Tik Tok or for what their family told them.”
—Was it more of a vote for the extreme right or an anti-system vote?
—The thing is that many do not know what the right is, many have no idea. How many of those people knew that they had voted for proposals as absurd as the sale of organs or that parents can sell their children? How many knew that one of their main advisors is a flat earther? How many kids talk about defending freedom, but did not live through the dictatorship? How many were promised that dollarization would solve everything without knowing what was experienced in the nineties with Menem, the wave of privatizations or how there were entire families who began to literally live off of garbage and collecting cardboard? How to vote for someone who vindicates Menem and denies the crimes of the dictatorship? They do not know. I say that my country is like a big madhouse. My country elected a madman, a deranged person.
—How much responsibility do Peronism and the Government of Alberto Fernández have in this triumph?
— Very much. They opened the door to the monster. Let’s say, we were already bad. In reality, we were never okay, there was never a “normal” country, it has always been like a roller coaster.
Wornat gives a long historical account of the political ups and downs of Argentina, from Raúl Alfonsín to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, but he spends several minutes on the role of Alberto Fernández and Mauricio Macri, the last two leaders. “Alberto does not recognize anything, absolutely nothing. In four years he did nothing. If everything was Cristina’s fault, then why did you accept the position? He has always seemed like a mediocre being to me,” questions the writer, who also does not believe the decision of the still president to go to Spain after finishing his term. Macri is surprised by the ability to “infiltrate” the new Milei Government, as he himself had anticipated months before, with several appointments linked to him in the economic Cabinet, “the same ones that left us a melted country,” in his words. “He is a sinister being,” she says about Macri.
—Were you surprised by the reaction of the Mexican right to Milei’s victory?
– Yes and no. I’m not surprised by someone like Claudio I am not surprised by Eduardo Verástegui, he is a poor being. I believe that the hatred towards López Obrador is so great that it leads them to say anything. It’s like that. That’s what I think. That’s why they are the way they are. Fox was always the same, but now at eighty-odd years old, he says whatever nonsense.
“I don’t believe there is a Mexican Milei, he emerged at the right time and in the right place,” insists Wornat. “There are things we don’t like about this president, but he is a democratic president, he is a human being and he makes mistakes, but he is democratic. Democracy is not in danger, as the right says. Hatred and resentment are more powerful than thinking and seeing how they can win democratically,” he points out about the differences between Argentina, his homeland, and Mexico, the country where he has carried out a good part of his journalistic career, always as a vocal critic of the governments of Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón and the PRI. Mexicans will go to the polls in six months to elect a new president.
“What I do see is a shift to the right around the world,” he says. Talking about the rise of the extreme right is also talking about a country where four out of every 10 people are poor and where the volatility of prices makes the speeches of traditional politicians ring hollow. On the other hand, one of the main fears is that the Milei Government will open the door to the criminalization and persecution of poverty. “It is a terrifying paradox,” says the writer, “the biggest losers are going to be those who voted for this man, who screamed like a madman and promised the impossible.”
Wornat, who suffered the excesses and had to flee the dictatorship, assures that he is not afraid of the installation of a repressive apparatus in the Government to silence criticism and is preparing the relaunch of Whores and Guerrillas, the book she wrote with Miriam Lewin about the abuses against women who went through concentration camps in Argentina. “Milei is no longer Milei, he is not the same as he was in the campaign, although he is still violent, deeply authoritarian and can do anything.”, She comments. “I’m more afraid of the violent people who follow him and who are more violent than ever, of someone yelling at me, you fucking left-hander, and breaking a stick over my head, out of nowhere,” he admits.
“A very dark time is coming,” predicts Wornat, who closes the diagnosis with a panorama even more darkened by the degradation of democracy and the failure of the State to cover the basic needs of the population. And above all, due to a profound degradation of a society that is entering an unknown political moment. “Argentina is becoming a cannibalistic country, I am afraid of that,” says the writer. “Nothing good can come of this.”
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