The day after the second round and the triumph of Javier Milei in Argentina, the writer Sandra Russo published a widely disseminated column entitled “The peoples are wrong”.

What happened is a clear victory of the disruptive in the face of the material reality of 150% annual inflation. The candidate of the chainsaw against the candidate-Minister of Economy who did not manage to improve the material living conditions of the popular sectors.

After Milei’s victory in the PASO (Simultaneous Compulsory Open Primary Elections) and Massa’s victory in the first round, most analysts and pollsters agreed that Massa would win, or that Milei would win very closely. However, against all odds, Milei won by more than 10 points over Massa. The analysts failed to read Argentine society and one question crosses my mind: Does the right read social unrest better than the left?

The other question, or rather almost certainty, is that a good part of the responsibility for Massa’s defeat lies with Alberto Fernandez. Milei would not exist without Alberto, a lukewarm and mediocre president, who leaves a balance of more than 18 million people in poverty, 4.3 of whom live in indigence, and who wanted to govern alone, leaving aside the historical leadership of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who they tried to kill physically and judicially.

I contend again. People do not make mistakes. The Argentine people cast an anti-Peronist and anti-Kirchnerist vote, a political identity in crisis to which the signifier of change went over its head and which did not know how to appeal to the popular sectors, which in large part voted for Milei.

After Alberto Fernández, the person most responsible for Milei’s victory is Mauricio Macri, who knew how to seize the moment and put a structure to Milei’s paleolibertarian superstructure, dismantling in turn his anti-caste discourse to the extent that a good part of his ministers will be placed by Macri, starting with Patricia Bullrich, former Minister of Security of Macri and future Minister of Security of Milei.

Therefore, problems are coming in the libertarian paradise to the extent that the vote for Milei was a vote to “let them all go” of a youth that is already far away from 2001, but that lives in a disenchantment with the traditional political class. But it would be a mistake to think that the 14 million votes Milei got are votes of the ultra-right. What Milei did well in the campaign, polarizing against an officialism that tried not to bother anyone, it is the turn of Peronism and Kirchnerism to do it now. Polarize against a government that is going to destroy the rights won by the working class with a speech in defense of life, freedom and private property, against any right granted by the State.

And here another question and a reflection arises, will Milei have the support of the youth and the middle classes in the face of the resistance of the unions and social movements? Argentina was the first progressive government of the 21st century to be won at the polls by the right (Macri, 2015), and it becomes the first progressive government to be won at the polls by the ultra-right (Milei, 2023). Previously, the right wrested power from the left through coups d’état (Honduras 2009, Bolivia 2019) or parliamentary (Paraguay 2012 or Brazil 2016), but Argentina is a pioneer in the electoral advance of the right and the ultra-right. Just as Chile was the laboratory of neoliberalism in the 20th century with the coup against Allende and the Chicago Boys, its neighboring country is a laboratory in the 21st century for the advance of the fascist ultra-right, disguised with a disruptive discourse that attracts young people and the middle classes, a discourse that is based on the mistakes of a government that did not even become the least bit progressive.

It is therefore the task of the Argentine national-popular project to make self-criticism of the mistakes made, and of the rest of the Latin American forces to learn from those mistakes in order to fight neo-fascism in our territories and at the ballot boxes, building political projects that seduce again our societies, which are no longer the same as the ones of the first progressive cycle.

(Courtesy: Resumen Latinoamericano. Resumen is a newsletter whose focus is news and analysis coming primarily from Latin America by writers, researchers, and activists living there.)