Javier Milei has two reasons to celebrate today.
The first is clear: he arrived in the first year of his government, a date that many predicted he would not see from the Casa Rosada, and on top of that with a high approval rating. The other reason for his happiness is less obvious, less strident, something that the libertarian will probably celebrate with a fist under the table and without the fuss with which he usually announces the rest of his successes. The thing is that the bulk of the coverage, national and international, on the anniversary of his administration is not going to mention a topic that for him is so sensitive that in fact he swore to destroy the publisher Perfil for daring to publish it: today it will be almost impossible to read in any analysis the small detail that the President swears to be an envoy of God on earth, with whom he communicates through the services of his dead dog and through the intermediation of his medium sister.
What has been said until now does not seem to be of much importance if we look at the coverage of the date. That the President believes he has a link with a supernatural being who entrusted him with a divine mission – he predicted, at the end of 2020, that he would be president of Argentina four years later – or the fact that he claims to play every morning with an animal that does not exists, just to name a few extraordinary events (in the literal sense of the word), they are topics far from the political and media agenda of the day.
When, rarely, someone addressed any of these topics during this year, it is done as if they were telling a funny eccentricity or, on the contrary, they are brought to light only to criticize those who investigate it, ensuring that they are matters of a private nature. that are of no public interest.
But, despite the efforts, on many occasions these sensitive chapters of Milei’s life jump the barrier and appear in everyday discussion. When that happens, sometimes even by Milei himself, the coverage usually does not go beyond the merely descriptive.
It is not the purpose of this note to judge any other work. Taken as isolated facts, Milei’s personal particularities may well seem like that: aspects of his intimate sphere without major relevance to the rest of the society he governs. There is also a hypermodern worldview that pushes all this under the rug: Western society has become accustomed to religion and politics running on separate tracks.
However, we should start taking them as a whole. Milei’s mystical conviction is not only literally the event that pushed him into politics – after 50 years of living away from it and even detesting it – but it is what explains it and what gives him strength. What orders his narrative, increasingly determined and vehement, of the fight of “good” – as he said in the post he made on his networks for the anniversary – against “evil”, “light” versus “darkness” . Presented as eccentricities or anecdotal episodes, these are the facts and situations that reveal a more complex and worrying reality, a mask that hides the real Milei.
This is the backbone of this phenomenon. Milei is much more than a politician or an economist. He is the one chosen by a higher being. And, like any messiah, he seeks the radical transformation of a society that the “One” entrusted him to lead.
This reality, far from being an individual and private belief of the President, explains transcendental decisions of the Government and those who lead it. It explains Milei’s insertion in the world, the global field in which the forces of “the light” fight against “the darkness” and explains the very worldview of the ruling party. It also explains the strength of his official narrative, which divides Argentine society in two and whose followers, as he said at CPAC, have to be willing to give their lives. This was the year of the Messiah. And this divine story has just begun.
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