Argentina is one of the few democratic countries with a government that, after a couple of years in power, still enjoys widespread support. She is also one in which it is reasonable to assume that the future could be much better than the present or the recent past. Were it not for the optimism underlying the belief that, sooner or later, the country will have a government that somehow gets things right and makes the economy boom and people’s lives better, Javier Milei would never have got close to power. He would certainly not be bestriding the local political world like a colossus without visible rivals, as he has done since his makeshift party, La Libertad Avanza, did unexpectedly well in the legislative elections of October after the United States government stepped in to give him a much-needed helping hand.
Despite the country’s many difficulties, the public mood prevailing here is far less gloomy than it is in European nations such as the United Kingdom, France and Germany which, until not that long ago, for many worried Argentines symbolised the “normality” that they yearned for. Like the fans of Donald Trump in the United States, who have come to the conclusion that they are burdensome dependents rather than valuable allies, there are plenty of Europeans who suspect that their countries are trapped in a death spiral from which they will be unable to extricate themselves.
Many attribute this to an addiction to excessive welfare spending, a fatuous belief that “soft power” would free them from having to conserve a considerable amount of the hard variety, a suicidal desire to fight climate change by sacrificing industry and agriculture in order to reduce carbon emissions to net zero, a demographic slump of truly historic proportions and, of course, the astonishingly short-sighted willingness of former governments to open the doors to immigrants whose beliefs are incompatible with those of the host population.
The pessimism so many Europeans feel when they look around them is behind the rapid rise of movements that defenders of the status quo anathematise as extreme right-wing. However, while the leaders of Reform UK, the French National Rally and Alternative for Germany have found it very easy to take political advantage of the crass mistakes that were committed by those men and women who took their countries to where they are today, the remedies they propose do not seem convincing. Though scrapping “green” policies would help save industry from the fate currently awaiting it, beefing up the armed forces would cost a great deal of money which would have to come from somewhere, while trying to do without them would greatly encourage the Jihadists people rightly fear. As for dealing with the problems caused by overspending on welfare, which have been aggravated by the mass immigration of for the most part uneducated and low-skilled workers, any measures taken by would-be reformers would be virtually certain to bring about social turmoil.
Milei is often treated as a card-carrying member of the “new right” fraternity and he evidently enjoys playing the role of the movement’s “rockstar” performer, but he does not really have that much in common with his hypothetical counterparts in Europe or, for that matter, the United States, none of whom are fanatical adherents to fiscal rectitude or wholehearted believers in the virtues of the free market. On the contrary, most, including Trump, seem unhealthily keen on increasing the power of the state. No doubt they see Milei’s enthusiasm for Austrian economists as an eccentricity befitting a President with a taste for leather garments and raucous music.
Milei is unlike most of the right-wingers he associates with because the problems Argentina faces are assumed to be very different from those that worry people elsewhere. Here, immigration, whether legal or otherwise, is not much of an issue because most people who come here share the country’s cultural mores. And, as things stand, there is no particular reason for Argentina to spend five percent or more of the gross national product on the Armed Forces, as the Europeans say they will have to do to prevent Vladimir Putin from attacking them even though it can be agreed that, because the Kirchnerites had it in for them, the men in uniform here have been on iron rations for far too long and should at least get a living wage.
In Europe, many, perhaps most people clearly feel that their national communities are approaching the end of a long journey which began over a thousand years ago and that, as there is very little they can do about it, they might as well enjoy things while they are able. This is the attitude of the many young people in France who took to the streets to protest angrily when the government raised the retirement age from 62 to 64 for those born after 1968, even though they must have known perfectly well that the system would go bust long before they themselves could start receiving any benefits.
Here, Milei could get away with freezing pensions because much of the population understood that unless public spending was brought under control inflation would continue to wreak havoc. In France, where the national debt is ballooning at a dangerous pace which, in the view of many economists, is likely to have catastrophic consequences, his chainsaw antics would have set off an uprising.
In contrast to the many Europeans who feel they have to choose between managed decline and what would almost certainly be a futile attempt to get things back on track before it is too late, Argentines have yet to resign themselves to collective failure. This is partly due to their awareness that the country has lagged behind for many years and is therefore playing catch-up, and partly because few people have even noticed that in the last decade the birth rate collapsed, as it did much earlier in Europe, an event with medium-term economic, social and psychological implications that would have much to do with the decline into irrelevance of the suitably named “Old Continent.”
