Why does the Milei phenomenon so intrigue the Western world? What does Milei tell us about our times and our times about Milei? Let's rule out from the start what you would like to hear: you are not interested because you are carrying out “the greatest adjustment in the history of humanity”, a prelude to the “Argentina power”. No.
If anything, this makes us doubt its seriousness; it sounds like fanfare from a frustrated country in search of a world record, even if it is for the harakiri championship. No, definitely not, that's not what Milei's world is interested in.
What fascinates or disconcerts, attracts or scares about Milei is something else. It is mysticism. A mysticism so clear and radical that it illuminates what in other similar phenomena appears muffled. I explain. We live in a difficult time. I couldn't say if it was more than others, but dense: armed wars and cultural wars, civil wars and ideological wars, holy wars and virtual wars.
The twenties of the 21st century smell like the twenties of the 20th century: the same decline of the West, the same crisis of democracy, the same decline of bourgeois civilization, the same return of religion, the nation, identity. Déjá-vu, déjá-vecu. The last time didn't bring anything good.
The West is sick, it is shouted everywhere. Ill of what? The diagnosis is reminiscent of the past: he is sick because he has abandoned his roots.
What roots? The symptoms are the same as always: individualism, relativism, secularism. The recipe? Moralize, unite, believe. Is God dead? It must be resurrected. “Deus acima de tudo,” said Bolsonaro, God and Homeland resonates in the mouths of Giorgia Meloni, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orban. Donald Trump distributes Bibles on the campaign trail.
“Everything good that exists is due to Christianity,” said Murray Rothbard, Milei's favorite. Starting with the free market, the son of the Salamanca school of Catholic Christianity, he affirmed, challenging Weber and the evidence.
As a century ago, here is the idealized resurgence of medieval civilization, the stateless society that governed itself in communes, guilds, corporations in the shadow of faith. Confessional and hierarchical, of course, establishment and not at all liberal, but what about?
It is an old story, one more stage in the effort to Christianize liberalism, as if illiberalism did not itself have Christian roots. To what end? That of cutting off its secular and enlightened roots, of erasing Spinoza, burying Voltaire and tracing everything back to Saint Thomas Aquinas, thus established as the father of liberalism. A little exaggerated...
The Inquisition, dogmatism, censorship, the mortification of individual freedoms, the less honorable baggage of Christianity against which secular thought rose? Poof, as if it hadn't existed!
Seen this way, the Pope's embrace of Milei is more understandable. Unlike Ratzinger, who credited the Enlightenment with inducing the Church to reform, Bergoglio always celebrated the self-sufficiency of “Catholic modernity.” This is how Alberto Methol Ferré taught it. A modernity that is more fundamentalist than liberal.
Those who have browsed some milleist blogs during the last Holy Week will have noticed the frequent hymns to the cross and the sword, to the Church militant, to the Christ Pantocrator of baroque and authoritarian Christianity. That this is reconciled with the Austrian school of economics, which is not at all religious, makes one smile but gives chills: what an infinite capacity for mimesis does the Hispanic heritage possess!
It is explained. Much is due to the drunkenness of recent years, to the obtuse aggressiveness of “identity politics.” By establishing itself as a new orthodoxy, an intolerant guardian of what is “politically correct”, the sacrosanct demand for rights hitherto mortified has betrayed itself by tribalizing itself.
Of course, she also has her excuses: it is no coincidence that “secularism” has more radical features where the Christian order was more totalizing! But the fact is that the conservative bounce was in the air and Milei successfully jumped on it.
What conclusions to draw? One structural, another circumstantial. The first is that Milei's mysticism is for the West what the national-religious mysticism of Putin and Kirill is for Russia, Islamic mysticism for radical Islam, Jewish mysticism for Jewish fundamentalism, Hindu mysticism for today's India, etc. . Mutatis mutandi, of course.
Like all of them, Milei's “culture war” invokes a monist idea of civilization, his West is not the West of the democratic and open liberal society, but the intolerant and identitarian West of the confessional tradition.
The ferocity towards all dissidence, the violence against enemies, the contempt for heretics, the desire to destroy those who stand in their way, understood as the only possible path to “salvation”, are clear proof of this.
The conjunctural conclusion is more possible. Precisely because the Milei phenomenon was born and lives in an open Western society, it will not be able to give free rein to its mystical vein. Both because he is in the minority and because his conservative fury risks breaking the alliance with the secular and liberal soul of the government.
It is a dilemma that has already been raised elsewhere. You will have to choose. Whether to water down the mystical wine with a lot of politics, Meloni style, or play the knight of the apocalypse, Trump style. In the first case, he may reap the benefits of political stability, even if it is at the cost of normalizing his leadership. In the second, there will be chaos and conflict.
Loris Zanatta is a historian. Professor at the University of Bologna, Italy.