Javier Milei calls it a “type two error.” “It’s when you do everything wrong and the end result turns out right.” That is the somewhat humorous way in which the libertarian explains his own success. Valeria Di Croce, on the other hand, has another way of approaching the phenomenon. The writer detected and dismantled all the architecture that preceded and surrounded the long-haired economist on his way to the Casa Rosada. And his work shows that this victory is far from being an isolated carom.
In “El arca de Milei”, the book published by Futurock editionsDi Croce exposes the plot around the libertarian, a story that involves actors recycled from old politics with intellectuals with the smell of mothballs, virulent tweeters with rusty lounge liberals, conservatives who could never get two votes together with businessmen in search of a business Thus, his work became a glossary of names, biographies and careers that orbit in the world of Freedom Advancesa necessary manual to get through this time.
Furthermore, the writer did not only look at the local scene, but also linked Milei’s victory with the ghost of the new right that travels the entire world. And he does something else: contrary to the epic that the ruling party wants to install, Di Croce evaluates what has been happening in Argentina in recent years as a consequence of a new phase of capitalism, that of “platforms”and as a “traced copy” of the phenomenon that was born in the United States and that emanates from there to the entire world. “With a particularity of this land: anti-Peronism,” he says.
“Economic power is changing around the world. Sometimes there is the idea that those who are rich are all the same: Bill Gates is the same as Elon Musk. But no, explains Di Croce. There is a new subject of economic power that was born with the 2008 crisis and that has been consolidated in the last four years, accelerated by the pandemic. Today eight of the ten richest entrepreneurs in the world are linked to platform capitalism. Why is Musk sticking to Trump in the last month of the campaign? Why do you put thousands and thousands of dollars to get people to vote for Trump? Someone who has 24 cases linked to interest problems with the State, and is in charge of guaranteeing the efficiency of the State. Milei, in Argentina, is the representative of this new economic actor, who no longer wants politics to mediate between them and the States. It acts as a complement to this new capitalism, it wants to be part of a process, and in that process you have to be a colony. “He is not looking to be a peer of Trump.”
News: With this diary from Friday, it would seem that Milei’s victory was inevitable. Interpret this new world more.
Valeria Di Croce: And if. That’s why in the book I try to go further back, not stay with the last five minutes, with the idea that the feminists passed three towns. It’s not real. It is a global problem, which is being seen in all States, in some places it wins and in others it does not, but it is a phenomenon that is here to stay. Bolsonaro loses but the way he proposes of seeing the world, dehumanizing, wins in some governorates. It no longer matters if it is presented in the future or not, it will be someone else in any case, but there is already a question of representation there, who represents that dehumanized capitalism that makes people believe that with a device in their pocket they have the solution to all the problems, that a 13-year-old kid can be a mini-trader in the stock market and that with one click he can generate more money than his father who has three jobs. This is a capitalism that proposes chaos, and in chaos Milei grows.
News: Let’s define “dehumanizing.”
Say Croce: Let’s continue with the example of games. When I was a kid you had to buy a token and you had to manage a resource: you had to stand in line, be patient, you had three lives and that’s it. Afterwards you had to socialize with the rest in the fichines. Today you have kids who, due to their parents’ overwork, the dynamics of capitalism and the lack of money, start a device in which the game begins and never ends. They grow up in a world that dehumanizes the bond with the other. The kids deal with each other as if there were a device: you “scroll” until you stop when you like something, but when you get bored you pass it, which is the opposite of the logic of a human bond. The dehumanizing thing is that the other is no longer there. That is why it is much easier to propose eliminating the other, exterminating the othertame the other, which is the language proposed by the Milei ecosystem. And this has spilled over into everyday life, which is what happened the day Cristina was almost killed. That is why I maintain that there were three shocks that made Milei’s victory possible: the economic one, the conditioning that comes with the debt with the IMF, the pandemic and the political one.
News: In this scheme, “cruelty”, a word that is very much in vogue these days, is not accessory but central.
Say Croce: It is almost a driving force in this space, but it is not new, it happened with the bombings in the Plaza de Mayo as well. The novelty here is the visibility of this cruelty through the cell phone, which then has validation in the media ecosystem. There is a history of cruelty in Argentina, which always has to do with otherness, but it is not typical of Milei: there was always an other to destroy and leave out. That is why it seems more accurate to me to talk about a dehumanizing process, and not call Milei “fascist,” something that also takes responsibility away from the rest of the political actors who voted for his laws. But the violence does not start with him, perhaps he knew how to use all those elements that were there floating around, with the impunity of someone who has no political correctness and who therefore does not pay costs when he does it.
News: What do you see as anti-Peronist in the phenomenon?
Di Croce: It is convenient for Milei to polarize with Cristina today, but to completely eat Macri Cristina today. The message he sends is: in my Government they condemned her, in my Government she can go to prison. We should never underestimate resentment and affective feelings in political terms. And there is anti-Peronism, there is anger towards what Peronism recovered, which recovered human rights flags. Agustín Laje gives you the explanation more than I do: we have nothing in common, he says, except the enemy. What they call left in this country is Peronism. In many of those best-known influencers there are hours and hours of hatred of Peronism. The underlying discussion is whether or not the State intervenes to equalize opportunities. When Milei says let’s go back 100 years he is talking about a country in which Peronism did not exist, and when he proposes thinking individually it encourages chaos, it means competing with everything you have around you and it means not needing anyone. And it is the complete opposite of building a community. The community does not exist in your head because the community does not exist in platform capitalism, which is why you have to think of it as an emergent of this new capitalism.
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