Javier Milei

Image by Tomas Cuesta / Getty Images.

Lately, the newly elected president of Argentina has stirred both the media and his political opponents worldwide. At a quick glance at the news articles, he has been named Donald Trump of Argentina, usually paired with a less than flattering picture of him. Seemingly, the attempts of making him a clown-like figure by everyone opposed by the idea of him becoming the head of state in Argentina have been plentiful. Not that he has not made the attempts of discrediting him easy by throwing some rather peculiar acts in the public himself, though. He definitely has.

However, as the political left is still attempting to pick their jawlines up from the floors on which they fell upon hearing the news, very rarely have we heard proper reasoning to the question of why Argentinians elected Javier Milei in the first place. I think the reason is very much the same for why Americans voted for Donald Trump.

Like most of us, I am not an expert on the politics of Argentina. Still, it does not take a long while to take a look at the problems Argentina has been suffering from lately, and realize why people over there might not want the same things to happen there in the future. It is all provided to us freely by the Internet (assuming you are living in a country in which the world wide web services are the same as they are in western countries, as in not under heavy censorship). With a mere ten minutes long look-around, I was able to find three very good reasons for why I as an Argentinian would have voted for Javier Milei myself as well:

1. Argentina – like many other countries – has been suffering massive inflation. Javier Milei is a capitalist and an economist, with long experience in the field of economics.
2. The current president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, is a left-wing politician who solved monetary and financial issues by raising taxes, thus harming the average people even more on top of the inflation which was at ridiculous numbers already.
3. The current president was behind massive lockdowns and human rights infringements during the hype of COVID-19 pandemic. Javier Milei is a libertarian, and promises never to stand behind these kinds of actions.

If I was more of an expert on Argentina, I bet I could find more reasons, but as for myself, those three would be enough for me to make a decision on who to vote for already. Allowing the individuals to prosper and to live as they so wish – as long as they are not hurting anyone else in the process – is what the governments should aim for. The governments and the politicians are supposed to be there for the people, not the other way around.

Lastly, one of the most important reasons for why figures such as Javier Milei will gain popularity, and why Donald Trump is standing a good chance of becoming the president of the United States once again, is that those voting for these politicians labelled by the mainstream media as "extremist" are fed up. They are fed up with countries and governments not treating their own people well, but making the living conditions in their own countries worse, one step at a time. As long as the traditional politicians keep on doing this, there will always be a significant number of people willing to vote for anyone else – even if they are bearing a clown-like image in the newspapers and other media outlets.

The question becomes, is it better to replace a left-wing extremist politician with a right-wing extremist politician? When it comes to reducing polarization in the common people, no. As for everything else... I guess we will find that out in the coming years.