Argentina’s President Javier Milei speaks to lawmakers during the opening of the 2024 session of Argentina’s Congress on March 1, 2024, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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The “global hegemony” of left-wing politics and ideology is “beginning to collapse,” Argentine President Javier Milei said at the World Economic Forum on Thursday.
“What once seemed like the global hegemony of the ‘awakened’ left in politics, in educational institutions, in the media, in supranational organizations or even in forums like Davos, has begun to collapse,” said right-wing leader Milei, who took office in 2023. , he told business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland.
The divisive term ‘woke’ usually refers to supporting social justice issues and political activism.
The Argentinian politician, who sees himself as similar to US President Donald Trump, said he has forged alliances with other like-minded leaders.
“During this year, I have found incredible allies in this fight for freedom in every corner of the world [tech billionaire] Elon Musk to that fierce Italian lady [Prime Minister] Giorgio Meloni, from [President Nayib] Bukele in El Salvador to Viktor Orban in Hungary,” he said, also naming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump among his allies.
“Slowly an international alliance is being created among all those peoples who want to be free and believe in the ideas of freedom,” he said.
Miley’s comments typify the deep divide between global leaders on the left and right of the political spectrum, with the two camps making little effort to overcome or understand each other’s ideological differences and positions in recent years.
Following his inauguration on Monday, President Trump signed a series of executive orders reversing policies introduced by his predecessor Joe Biden, such as commitments to combat climate change. Democrat Biden did the same with Trump’s policies when he entered the White House in 2021, after the Republican’s first presidential term.
Milei said he came to Davos to warn that “the battle is not yet won.”
“Although hope has been rekindled, it is our moral duty and responsibility to dismantle the ideological edifice of sick vigilantism,” he said.
Argentina’s president made headlines at the WEF last year when he called on global leaders to reject socialism and instead embrace “free enterprise capitalism” to end world poverty.
In his keynote address last year, Milei warned that “the Western world is in danger”, saying that “those who are supposed to defend the values of the West have been co-opted by a vision of the world that leads inexorably to socialism and thus to poverty”.
The libertarian Milei is credited with restoring market confidence in Argentina’s economy by implementing cuts in public sector spending and energy subsidies, among his policies. Inflation also fell from one of the world’s highest annual inflation rates of 289.4% in April to 117.8% in the year to December 2024. according to data from the country’s central bank.
Critics of Milea’s austerity program and attempts to reduce government spending yet they say poverty increased during his tenure.
