#Also Argentine mutuals please let me know if I missed something important.

[womanfredvonkarma]

Hi!

Just read your "what's happening in Argentina" post and while I'm not the original asker, I would have a follow up question if it's all right.

How could Milei be popular enough to get elected if previously (and possibly still) the country held so progressive values? Also can the Argentine people do something against these decisions or are you only able to whether the storm so to speak? And lastly can someone from a different country help in any way?

Thank you in advance

Have a great day?

SVH

So, that is a complex question, so please bear with me.

First off, he gained a lot of popularity on social media. This is the stupidest answer, but unfortunately it worked--a large part of his voters consists of young people, mostly men in their 20s but a good number of women too. But this is only a factor, and there are many underlying causes at play.

Peronism is a multifaceted political movement with a complex history that would take me many paragraphs to explain, but it promoted industrialisation and is the reason why workers obtained the rights that protect them during the 20th century (hence the opposition it faces from the wealthy rural sector, which wants to keep the agro-export model as the dominant one)--since then, it has swerved between the far-right and the center-left, and this is all exacerbated by the fact that (1) it's characterised by personalism and (2) Juan Domingo Perón, the late founding figure of the movement, never expressed a philosophy, and many of his actions contradict each other. Whatever the case, almost every relevant movement nowadays is defined either as Peronist or explicitly anti-Peronist. You cannot talk about Argentine politics without discussing Peronism.

One such center-left facet of Peronism is Kirchnerism, which began with the presidency of Néstor Kirchner in 2003. The country had suffered a near-total collapse in late 2001 as a result of the neoliberal policies implemented by right-wing Peronism in the 90s.

Now, I personally (because it's difficult to offer an unbiased perspective on this, the best I can do is disclose my biases) criticise a lot of things about the Kirchnerist administrations, which extended from 2003 to, after Néstor died and his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner won the presidency for two consecutive terms, 2015, which I won't get into here. But remembering the tail end of the CFK administration and comparing it to everything that came after and to what I know of pre-2003 times, it would be dishonest if I didn't say that their administration brought a lot of conquests in the realm of social development, public finances, and quality of life. Whatever my qualms regarding the welfare state as a tool of class conciliation and some policies I strongly disagreed with--I cannot downplay the good that was accomplished in that time because I benefitted from it growing up.

This garnered Kirchnerism a level of near-unprecedented vitriol from right-wing media, especially during CFK's back-to-back administrations for reasons I partly attribute to misogyny. It came to a point where The chasm in politics was whether you were Kirchnerist or anti-Kirchnerist ("la grieta", they called it). Lots and LOTS of money were poured into attacking Kirchnerism on the most mainstream TV channels in the country. The corruption allegations may have been legitimate, but--here's my personal appraisal--I don't think whether a specific figure is corrupt matters as much as whether the system encourages corruption (as it DOES and has been culturally normalised since the Menem administration in the 90s, see right-wing Peronism), and the whole thing strikes me as missing the forest for the trees. You don't have to think about the complexities of the currency trade and how they impact finances if you have the TV to tell you that CFK stole money in cash and that she buried it in the Patagonia (they sent machines to try and dig it up a while back. The media circus was insane).

In any case, following the last CFK presidency, we have Mauricio Macri, part of the anti-Peronist side of the chasm and a neoliberal. His greatest impact was taking on a massive, illegal, illegitimate debt with the IMF--which allows it to dictate policies, and as always they involve austerity. His economic policies were disastrous for the working class. And also very importantly, he eliminated the law that regulated the media and was instituted by CFK--its main impact was reducing the monopolistic concentration of power in the hands of Grupo Clarín S.A. (right-wing media).

After that, in late 2019 Alberto Fernández, with CFK as his vice-president, becomes president. His administration was, in my opinion, disastrous, partly but not entirely due to the IMF debt and the pandemic. He also didn't reinstate the Media Law. Between a new economic crisis in the country and the media constantly bombarding people with right-wing propaganda, Milei rose from a nobody to the most likely presidential candidate in like no time.

People were tired of seeing the same faces on the ballots and nothing changing, this is true--but this is not sound logic, in my opinion. For one, Milei was accompanied by people of very old families and interests--his vice-president, Villarruel, was the daughter of a military man involved with the dictators of 1976. Secondly, Milei's neoliberal campaign promises were merely an even more extreme version of things that had literally been tried before--by Macri, by the 90s right-wing Peronist administration, and by the dictators--and hadn't worked. And thirdly, it's telling that their "let's be crazy and try something new" vote is for the far-right. For some reason (sarcasm), nobody ever says "hey, neither side works for me, so I'm going to go out on a limb and vote for the Trotskyists". This ties into a global trend that veered towards the right--with Trump, Bolsonaro, Vox... We're not exempt.

An argument you also heard from his voters was that they didn't think he was going to do what he was promising he would do. As you can see, there's a lot of... political ignorance. And I think many people who voted for him were actually voting out of hatred for "the other side" rather than support for him.

In any case, the primaries and October showed an odd three-way election where the most popular candidates were Milei, Massa (a candidate for the Peronist coalition, famous for being a traitor and whose main draw was openly "at least he's not Milei"; he was even Minister of Economy at the time, so you can imagine his administration didn't earn him many supporters--he was called the Minister of Inflation by some media outlets), and Patricia Bullrich (one of Macri's friends who, as a fun fact, made campaign spots specifically saying one of her campaign promises was to "destroy Kirchnerism forever"). After Bullrich came in third and a runoff between Milei and Massa was announced, Bullrich, Macri, and their party predictably allied themselves with Milei despite the vitriol both sides had spouted at each other before the elections (IMO this alliance was planned from the start). Ergo, Milei won the runoff, and we find ourselves in this situation.

As for what Argentines can do about it, the main forces of resistance have always been on the streets. Despite Bullrich's (now Milei's Minister of Security) anti-protest protocols, there has been a record number of massive protests since Milei took power. In fact, his Omnibus Bill was defeated in Congress thanks to popular resistance (although now it's back in discussion). Things are looking very tough, but there are things that can be done.

To wrap it up, and to answer your last question, the currency exchange rate means that dollars are worth a lot of money here. Supporting small Argentine creators by buying from them if you're USAmerican is a way to greatly aid individuals in making it to their next paycheck. I think a list was compiled by some Tumblr users after Milei won the elections, so if anyone reading this has it on hand feel free to add it to the post.

Thank you for your interest and I hope that was at least decently explicative!