Agustín Laje has no doubts: the “cultural battle” is far from being closed: “The cultural battle, unlike the electoral battle, does not have fixed temporal rulesThere is no “D-day” or scrutiny. It is “every day” and in “multiple scenarios”: media, universities, schools, cinema, radio, television and churches. In this logic, what may seem like a momentary political victory does not imply a cultural victory: the conflict continues, mutates and is disputed in layers, from language to social consensus.
With that premise, Laje anticipated in El Disparador (Delta 90.3) with Maxi Sardi, that Javier Milei will return to Davos in a tone similar to that of his previous interventions: disruptive, confrontational and more focused on values and ideas than on macro technicalities. He does not present it as a whim but as a strategy: the World Economic Forumhe says, is often misread by the popular imagination as “a group of far-right capitalist businessmen.” For Laje, it is “quite backwards”: a space of economic elites that “have been committed in recent decades to… the progressive agenda“, later baptized as woke culture. For this reason, he maintains, Milei seeks to “paint their face” there: to mark that the enemy is not defined by income but by ideas.
Davos as the “Soros’s SalieriLaje lists an ecosystem of philanthropy and soft power: “Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation… Bill Gates…“, in addition to the corporate world. The conceptual label he uses to describe them is provocative and does not come from the right: remember that Slavoj Žižek called this phenomenon “liberal communists”, an “oxymoron” to refer to magnates who embrace an ideological platform sympathetic to progressivism.
In this framework, the focus of Milei’s speech, according to Laje, would once again insist on the central idea: the battle is not against “the rich” but against a dominant cultural consensus which, even in a forum of millionaires, tends towards progressivism. Laje suggests that mileism finds a tactical advantage there: the reaction of the “established order” may be critical, but the message circulates and catches on in the “new right”, especially the MAGA universe in the United States. He presents it as a political-cultural “good deal,” even if it was not calculated from the beginning. In fact, remember that Milei’s first Davos occurred before Trump won his election, and that the second was already with Trump recently inaugurated. The President’s previous speeches in Davos—published in full by the Casa Rosada and also by the WEF itself—show this orientation: criticism of the “woke left” and the progressive agenda as a threat to “the ideas of freedom.”
But Laje does not stop at the ideological diagnosis: he connects the cultural dispute with a regional electoral forecast for 2026. There his idea of a pendulum appears: “At this point the pendulum has certainly swung to the right.“, not only in Argentina but in “the entire West.” And in Latin America he imagines a pivotal year for three key elections: Colombia, Peru and Brazil.
In Colombiahighlights the emergence of a “Milei-like” outsider, with a “disruptive, extravagant, eccentric” style: Abelardo de la Espriella. According to Laje, he already leads measurements within the spectrum opposed to Gustavo Petro’s government and could prevail in a hypothetical second round. This reading coincides with recent coverage that shows him approaching international far-right networks and disputing leadership in the Colombian conservative space facing 2026.
In PeruLaje focuses on Rafael Lopez Aliagamayor of Lima, as a figure comparable to “mileismo”: he narrowly came in third in the last presidential election and now, he says, he arrives with “management experience” and competitive numbers. In Brazildescribes a weakened Lula and projects a right-wing internal conflict between a Bolsonaro “inheriting” his son’s candidacy and alternatives such as the governor of San Pablo. If two of those three countries turned to the right, he concludes, “we are going to have a very different continent” than the one that existed when Milei took office in December 2023: in a few days they will celebrate another festival. La Derecha Fest in Mar del Plata.
Laje’s synthesis is clear: the cultural battle does not end because we do not vote once; is permanently disputed. Davos is, for him, the ideal setting for this clash because it exhibits a paradox: economic elites that finance and legitimize the global progressive agenda. And 2026, if Colombia, Peru and Brazil move in the same direction, could consolidate a regional reprofiling to the right with Milei as a symbolic, exportable “center of gravity” and—according to his reading—already imitated from Chile to the United States.
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