Milei vs. feminism, environmentalism, and the sense of reality
Javier Milei's speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos reinforced narratives built on false information and seeking to construct an enemy: human rights.
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Javier Milei's speech today in Davos was serious. Not only because of the direct attack on the feminist and environmental movements, with the resulting consequences for the safety of women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and human rights activists, but also because of the accumulation of misinformation. He repeated conspiracy theories and reinforced his messianic rhetoric. He blamed feminists for state bureaucracy and environmentalists for abortion (?!). The Argentine president's speech not only reinforces prejudices that can lead to violence but also distorts history, inventing a world in which many people need to believe.
What Milei said today isn't new; it was one of the cornerstones of the libertarian campaign, and it's not an original creation either. The only original things about the president are the cloned dogs and his public mystical delusions. The rest is a clumsy copy of the international right-wing and far-right agenda, which uses terms like "cultural Marxism," "neo-Marxism," "collectivism," or "socialism" to refer to a rights agenda, such as the rights of women, LGBTQ+ people, Indigenous communities, and the environment.
Today, Milei defined feminism as "a ridiculous and unnatural fight between men and women." According to him, this conflict was invented by socialism after it ran out of money to use the class struggle. Socialism also invented the environmental movement, which in turn invented "the struggle of man against Nature." According to Milei, "socialists maintain that human beings damage the planet." Climate change is an invention of socialism and international organizations.
What do we do with these absurdities? We are witnessing live one of the most violent attacks on the meaning of reality. Milei turns concepts on their head, repeating ad hominem fallacies (in this case, against a collective subject, that of human rights defenders) and ad populum fallacies , a hackneyed tactic of populist and authoritarian rulers. His way of arguing is precisely by saying that those who have co-opted common sense and the "facts" are the others, the neo-Marxists, whoever they may be.
His discourse isn't delusional, it's perverse: he attacks by inverting arguments. I insist, Milei is neither original nor alone. From the political and economic sectors he represents, he is waging a multifaceted cultural battle, encompassing science, history, and, of course, language. Milei and the libertarians have created their own language where the meaning of words has nothing to do with this world, but rather with the fiction they are creating. This is how ideology operates, of course, but they claim to be against ideology.
What do we do when words are turned against us? How do we translate the world? What languages can we use? And finally: How can we fight the war against common sense?
I'll leave this question open; I hope it doesn't take us too long to answer it.
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