2023-11-03 23:26:03
Juan Luis González (Buenos Aires, 1992) began to get to know Javier Milei’s entourage while covering the 2021 summer season for Noticias magazine in Pinamar, a city on the Atlantic Ocean, about 350 kilometers from Buenos Aires, to which The political meetings are moved to January and February. At that time, when the coronavirus health crisis was still setting the agenda, Milei was an ultra-liberal, anti-quarantine economist who animated television talk shows with his stridency and began to design a political party.
Later in the year, González began to follow meetings that Milei called through social networks on some corner of Buenos Aires. A couple of tweets from the extremist attracted the attendance of hundreds of people, with a striking first piece of information. These were not adults from the wealthiest neighborhoods of the Argentine capital who tend to vote for conservative parties, but rather young people, mostly men, from middle and lower middle class neighborhoods.
The journalist got into the depths of the Milei movement and published El Loco; the unknown life of Javier Milei and his emergence into Argentine politics (Planeta, July 2023). The text covers the controversial aspects of the economist’s personality, the influence of his dogs, the financing of his political career and the far-right network that, for the first time in history, can access the presidency through democratic means. The second round on November 19, in which Milei will compete with the Peronist Sergio Massa, will give the answer.
The book is titled El Loco and several public appearances, such as an interview after the first round that went viral, fuel doubts about his mental balance. Is Milei crazy?
I’m not a mental health specialist to say that. What is documented is that for six years he has been creating the fiction that his dog Conan is alive (he died in October 2017) and, when the clones (Milton, Murray, Robert and Lucas) arrive, he becomes convinced that the dogs have powers. I can also document the appearance of an anarcho-capitalist sorcerer, Gustavo, who is the one who convinces him that the powers of dogs are an energetic support. Later, veterinary doctor Celia Melamed leads him to believe that Conan was reincarnated into one of the clones. Melamed acts as a medium to communicate with Conan and trains Karina Milei (Javier’s sister) in this discipline. Over the years, in 2020, Milei fights with her only friend, (the economist) Diego Giacomini, and her psychologist dies due to the pandemic. That unbalanced him a lot. Karina sees him so badly that she takes him to live at her parents’. There Milei begins to say that he has dialogues with God and that he called him to be president in 2023. It would be very bold of me to say if he is crazy, but that someone who makes decisions based on his dialogues with dogs runs the country in the one I live worries me a lot.
People who knew him in other areas affirm that the public character is different from the private one. Can he have normal behavior?
When applied to a task, it is very efficient. In the Eurnekián world (by the businessman Eduardo Eurnekián, main shareholder of Corporación América) they speak well of his work (as chief economist), but they say that he struggles with social relationships. It is impossible to have a mundane dialogue with him about life, football or vacations, because he only talks about the economy or dogs, and it doesn’t go away from there. He uses the broadcast format, he speaks and does not listen, according to his classmates and from Aeropuertos 2000 (a Corporacion América company). There is a Milei until October 2017, when the dog dies, and another later. He takes on that loss in a father-son dimension, with the addition that he is extremely lonely. Milei spent at least 12 New Year’s holidays, between 2005 and 2017, alone at his house, toasting Conan. He adopted him in 2004 from an English mastiff breeder in Córdoba, he was in transition for a while and then took him to his house. The Milei of the years of Corporación América is narrated by Rafael Bielsa (former chancellor of Néstor Kirchner, former CEO of the company) as someone who never spoke about politics and much less claimed the military dictatorship. And then there is another Milei that emerges in 2020, after the fight with Giacomini. Politics, fame and votes worsened his most irrational side. He loses the two restraints and comedowns that were the therapist and the friend, and a sycophantic circle gains influence that exacerbates his tendency, as often happens to politicians. At Editorial Perfil we had a cordial and respectful treatment, we interviewed him dozens of times, until we published the plagiarisms in his books. From then on, the link was completely interrupted.
Milei often engages in provocations, and in this context he made public expressions that were shocking to democracy, historical memory, and minimal respect for others. To what extent does it represent a real threat?
There is a political game in it. On the night of the first round elections (October 22), he gives a more moderate speech than usual, which is what the channels broadcast. Then, with less media presence, he speaks to the militancy and denounces fraud. I sense a certain political strategy. “I harangue the convinced with fraud, like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro; on the outside I moderate.” There are obvious tensions between the extreme right and democracy, but so far, Milei has run at the polls in 2021 (he got 17% of the votes in the City of Buenos Aires, when he was elected deputy) and in 2023. One of his main advisors, Fernando Cerimedo, devised the fraud complaint raised by the coup plotters in Brazil. He was very discredited, but he comes from there. In Argentina, for now the attempt has not escalated, but we will have to be attentive.
Milei is surrounded by men from finance, from Corporación América, conservatives, far-rightists, influencers and, since last week, former president Mauricio Macri and the former presidential candidate from Together for Change, Patricia Bullrich. Who will prevail if he comes to government?
We are in the midst of developing news. Not only because Milei changed; She punished herself after the first round, she made an agreement with the caste that she denounced (in reference to the agreement with Macri and Bullrich). She started saying things she doesn’t believe. In a matter of hours, she went from being a “bomb-throwing murderer” (which he blamed on Bullrich for her past on the Peronist left) to being called Minister of Security. The “shitty lefties” it turns out could now handle the Ministry of Human Capital. One of her great assets was her brutal honesty, an absolute creed, which was the only possible way to say that she wants to sell children. The turn is so abrupt, she loses track of it. She is getting involved in politics and sat at the table of the priests. Macri and Bullrich have decades of driving, negotiating and evil when it comes to executing. Milei goes to the second round almost as if she were third in the first round. There is chaos in her impressive space; They find out as they go how she negotiates with Macri. To the chaos that followed the emotional swings of the leader and her sister, she now has many more hands on the same plate. Macri gets involved to get a cut, not for love of the country; That’s what they think in La Libertad Avanza. It will be seen what space each one has because Milei is indomitable. She does not tend towards moderation and people who know much more about power than he does are getting involved.
Who is the maker behind Milei today?
Eurnekián pushed him into the media and into politics. Nicolás Posse, former manager of Corporación América, creates a civil association to channel contributions to the campaign, which could sound like a scandal. But this situation became a Frankenstein for Eurnekián. He wanted someone to respond to him and this appeared. Eurnekián is a businessman who does business with the State, depends on its regulations, negotiates with the provinces (his central companies are the airport concession, the CGC oil company and a construction firm), which is why he does not like a politician at all. who wants to cancel public works. Mario Russo, a consultant who had worked with Jaime Durán Barba (the Ecuadorian guru of Macri’s political rise), was very important in the 2021 elections, but he is fighting in 2022. Santiago Caputo, another consultant, a central figure today, arrives there. In recent weeks, Milei has made it clear to everyone that her owner is Guillermo Francos (a right-wing politician who was an ally of Kirchnerism and an executive at Eurnekián’s company).
Could the alliance with Macri and “la casta” disenchant the core of voters who accompanied him to Milei in the first place?
This year took away all the certainties I could have had. I thought Milei was going to do well in the primaries (August 13), but not so well (she won with 30% of the votes). I did not imagine in any way that Massa was going to win the first round (with 37%). I lost the compass. I tend to think that anyone who voted for Milei twice, in August and October, will do so in November. If I measure the amount of daily insults I receive on the networks, they have dropped drastically since the agreement with Macri. The nucleus that voted against the caste felt the blow.
After the alliance with Macri, will a right-wing, but more predictable Milei prevail?
We are meeting a new Milei who I don’t know how far he will go. He was extremely consistent with his thinking and took it so far that he justified the sale of children. A week ago he was asked on television if the dead dog dictates his political strategy and he did not deny it. With the pact with Macri, he betrayed himself for the first time; I see him disoriented. He got punched, but if he returns to the fight, he will be the tough guy he was before. La Libertad Avanza is creaking due to the advance of Macriism. I see forces in conflict. A tough guy, destabilized more than normal, he is dancing with none other than Macri.
It also implies a great risk for Macri, who aspired to inhabit right-wing circles with more prestige.
Macri is regressing and returned to a stage prior to Durán Barba. He returned to his stay patron stage. He goes forward, at the risk of Milei dragging him down in defeat, but she can drag him even more if he wins. Those who know him affirm that Macri is convinced that Massa is going to go after him with Justice, because he has several causes. It is a human and personal fear, because Macri’s children are involved in the Argentine Mail file (in the hands of the Macri family during the period in which he was deprived).
The candidate for vice president, Victoria Villarruel, represents dangers of another kind. She dedicated her entire life to vindicating the dictatorship and has historical ties to the world of repressors. Will someone be capable of lowering the flags of impunity for the sake of governability?
Unlike Milei, Villarruel did play politics his entire life. He has a very elaborate organizational chart. He gives Milei lyrics on the topic that interests him and he repeats it without changing a comma. Milei converted to anarcho-capitalism in 2005, but Villarruel has been a member of the military family for as long as he can remember. In 1987, his military father went to prison for refusing to respect the Constitution. It is a cause that he carries in his heart. He changed somewhat from the point where he previously openly defended the genocidaires, and, in recent years, he sought to represent relatives of victims of the armed organizations of the seventies. A turn. How far it can advance is anyone’s guess.
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