Javier Milei, presidential candidate of Argentina's Liberty Advances coalition (Image: AP/Natacha Pisarenko)

“An elephant passed in front of us and we did not see it” is the headline of a piece in Clarin, Argentina’s largest newspaper, after Javier Milei took 30% of the vote at last week’s open primaries, beating mainstream candidates on the left and right and putting himself in the position to possibly win the presidency in the general election in October.

In the midst of economic chaos in the country, the lowest voter turnout since the country started holding primary elections delivered a stinging and thoroughly unexpected rebuke to the the center-left Peronist coalition and the main conservative bloc centred around the Together for Change party.

“Milei’s growth is a surprise. This speaks of people’s anger with politics,” former conservative president Mauricio Macri said on election night.

You may argue it is lazy shorthand to dub every eccentric far-right populist as “X’s Trump”, and we in the bunker agree — indeed, there are marked policy differences between the two. However, Milei was dismissed as a daytime-TV buffoon with no serious bona fides, working his way through the election with outlandish and unworkable policy platforms, until he defied the establishment, the media and the pollsters to win. So it all sounds a little familiar.

He’s an anarcho-capitalist

A radical libertarian economist with hair that recalls murder trial era Phil Spector on a relatively quiet day, Milei had achieved notoriety on the talk-show circuit in his home country over the past few years, as much for his work as a tantric sex coach as for his right-wing theories of economics. He eventually founded the Liberty Advances party and parlayed his celebrity into a seat in the lower house of congress in 2021.

Milei believes the country’s central bank should be abolished and wants to essentially replace Argentina’s plummeting local currency, the peso, with the US dollar. He plans to bin Argentina’s health, education and environment ministries, and doesn’t plan on stopping there — via YouTube he promised: “Culture ministry — out! Environment – out! Ministry of women and gender diversity — out! Public works — out! Science — out! Labour and social security — out! Ministry of education and indoctrination — out!”

His libertarianism extends as far as organ trade (should be “just another market”) but not, curiously, as far as freedom of choice when it comes to abortion. He also advocates a ban on sex education in school. Typical of his ilk, he rails against “cultural Marxism”, gender ideology, apparent “indoctrination” happening in public education, and the “socialist lie” that is climate change.

And while his anti-politics stance has seen him unleash florid rhetoric at the “establishment”, there are some parts of the mainstream he’s less vituperative towards — his running mate, Victoria Villarruel, has been accused of denialism regarding her long public advocacy defending the murderous dictatorships led by Jorge Videla and Leopoldo Galtieri.

His colourful rhetoric

He has promised this election will put an end “to the parasitic, larcenous, useless caste that is sinking the country”. He has called Argentina’s central bank “the worst garbage that exists on this earth”. As has become his custom, he dedicated the victory in the primary to his dead dog Conan and three surviving dogs.

Indeed, the late Conan is very important to him — to the point that he doesn’t deny communicating spiritually with his dead dog to ask it for political advice.