06 ISSUE II
JANUARY 2025
JANUARY 2025
The new language of rebellion
Making sense of the transnational right-wing movement coming into power across the globe by exploiting frustration with democratic institutions to justify an authoritarian grip on power.
By Mariana Giacobbe
What is animal telepathy, and how can it be used to determine matters of state? Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, may have a take on that. His anarcho-capitalist rhetoric is not his most unorthodox approach to governance: with the help of his sister, Karina Milei, a self-proclaimed medium and now General Secretary in the Presidency, he consults the spirit of Conan, his deceased English Mastiff, on matters of economy and “general strategy.”
This esoteric decision-making process has raised significant concerns among Argentinians, who question the credibility and stability of a president who appears so reliant on spiritism. While unprecedented, this peculiarity matches with a broader trend among the populist radical right (PRR) governments around the world, whose decisions emanate not from collaborative dialogue or subject to institutional checks but from a profoundly centralized and personal mode of governance.
The centralization is evident in Milei’s frequent use of executive decrees, underscoring his power consolidation. In the first ten months of his presidency alone, Milei issued 42 decrees, far surpassing the annual average of former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, in power between 2007 and 2015 and often criticized as authoritarian for issuing as much as 10 executive decrees per year during her tenure.
In this way, Milei joins a cohort of conservative leaders worldwide who use veto power and executive orders as tools to bypass legislative processes. His rhetoric further fuels this stance, dismissing political opponents as “mandrills” or “leftist criminals.” To Milei, all politicians are “burglars,” though he doesn’t include himself. His last declared financial assets showed that his worth had risen 500% compared to just one year earlier. Congress is a “rats nest,” and scientists, teachers, and intellectuals from public universities are considered part of the “impoverishing caste” who “believe that having an academic degree makes them superior beings.”
Milei’s approach appears in response to increasing widespread frustration with democratic institutions to justify an authoritarian grip on power. It is part of a larger transnational right-wing movement that has taken hold across the Americas. Milei and this new right avowedly seek to “implode the system from within,” dismantling long-standing democratic practices in favor of a governance model that is both confrontational and highly centralized.
Political theorist Margaret Canovan has argued that when democracy is mainly perceived as pragmatic political bargaining, disillusionment grows. Populists promise a revitalized democracy by positioning themselves as a movement that returns power to “the people,” confronting an elite or establishment perceived to have strayed from its true interests.
The populist radical right has harnessed the frameworks developed by the twenty-first century global movements like environmentalism, women’s rights, Black Lives Matter, and queer or identity politics, adapting their use of technology and signifiers’ strategies to serve their own agenda. The pandemic provided a unifying crisis that far-right actors used to articulate a shared agenda of elite distrust, resistance to public health mandates, and defense of personal freedoms. As governments around the world imposed lockdowns, mandated vaccinations, and restricted movement, populist leaders capitalized on these actions as examples of elite overreach. As a global movement, the populist radical right (or PRR) found a shared, transnational antagonist to fight: the World Health Organization (WHO), which was portrayed as a deep-state entity controlling citizens' lives. The narrative gained traction because it resonated with the tangible experience of lockdowns across borders.
So, a unified transnational right manages to reframe progressive movements as “social justice warriors” and elitists disconnected from people’s everyday concerns. The language of rebellion, once the common tongue of the left, is now co-opted by far-right movements that position themselves as defenders of "common sense.”
In Argentina, this dynamic was evident in Milei’s rise to power. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Peronist government attempted to address economic hardships by pursuing several 'symbolic victories' that promoted equity. These included the creation of a Women’s Ministry, the introduction of non-binary identification documents, and the implementation of trans labor quotas in the public sector. Milei’s supporters viewed legislation guaranteeing the right to an abortion in the same light.
Milei framed progressive policies as overreaching by an out-of-touch elite in the country with the highest inflation in the world during COVID-19. By connecting his economic agenda with a rejection of state interference and “globalist ideologies,” Milei tapped into shifts in public opinion.
In his latest book “¿La rebeldía se volvió de derechas?” (Has Rebellion Turned to the Right?), Argentinean historian Pablo Stefanoni describes it as a broader trend where anti-progressivism becomes a unifying force for diverse right-wing actors. Social media platforms proved to be prolific tools for disseminating extreme far-right narratives, allowing these movements to bypass traditional gatekeepers, reach broader audiences, and radicalize their message. Recalling the building of the 4chan community, Stefanoni found that “unlike in public squares, the community did not seek to see each other face-to-face; everything unfolded through avatars, nicknames, and fake names. This logic of impunity from social reproach has been a crucial factor in the radicalization process of the movement." The pandemic catalyzed this trend, as digital platforms became primary spaces for political engagement of discontent citizens during lockdowns.
Milei’s mastery of social media to promote his libertarian ideology and critique of progressive policies proved effective. By leveraging digital tools, Milei consolidated his political base and connected with international far-right networks, further embedding Argentina’s political dynamics into a global phenomenon. At the same time, his critique of state intervention – with an emphasis on individual liberties – reflects a rejection of collective solutions for collective issues, pushing to the limit the boundaries of the institutional scaffolding that lies at the core of any democratic society.
From countries as diverse as Brazil, Hungary, Turkey, the United States, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain, the reach of the Populist Radical Right (PRR) increasingly spans the globe in a shared wave. Coming from countries that do not necessarily share a common history, economic indexes, social cleavages, or political systems, the PRR has gathered against a common enemy in their speech and functions as a transnational actor, coordinating and unifying its strategies, support networks, and narratives.
Marianna Giacobbe Goldberg is completing an MA in creative publishing and critical journalism at The New School.