In a vulgarity-laden statement posted January 21 on his X account, Argentine President Javier Milei defended billionaire Elon Musk’s Nazi salute and fascist views, while threatening to hunt down and exterminate left-wingers in the name of “Liberty.” Milei’s statement reads:

Nazi my balls!

Elon Musk must be one of History’s most important men, pushing forward human progress at a giddying pace, always defending liberty in its purest form.

There’s no doubt that his purchase of X [formerly Twitter], considered crazy from a business point of view, will be seen as one of his greatest gifts to humanity, taking over what was allegedly a public debate forum— actually it was programmed to cancel all speech different from woke hegemonic speech.

That is why international progressivism denounces @elonmusk’s innocent gesture to call him a Nazi; because his fight for liberty threatens the hegemonic control of international woke-ism.

But the world has changed. Elon is not alone. Those of us who fight for liberty are no longer alone. We are millions. Now that we have recovered the “land of liberty” [a reference to the US] that used to be in their hands, thanks to our beloved @realDonald Trump.

We are not afraid of them, on the contrary: We will hunt them across the planet in defense of LIBERTY.

Tremble, you leftist sons of bitches! Liberty moves on.

HAIL TO LIBERTY, DAMN-IT!

Musk, who has become Trump’s main oligarchic backer and will lead a Department of Government Efficiency tied to the White House, responded to Milei’s X statement with an approving heart emoji. 

Milei’s 13-month rule in Argentina has been one of continuous attacks on the jobs and living standards of workers and retirees, along with sharp cuts to education, healthcare and public entitlements. 

He now considers himself fully vindicated by the presidency of Donald Trump, whose inauguration Milei had just attended the day before, together with Italy’s fascist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and a collection of members of fascist-oriented political parties from across the world. Now, Musk has announced plans to cut social programs by $2 trillion, or a third, proportionate to Milei’s own cuts in Argentina.

The X statement was a prologue to a speech given by Milei two days later at the 2025 World Economic Forum this week in Davos, Switzerland, which brings together financial oligarchs, heads of corporations and politicians from across the world.

In his speech, Milei called for an end to the “ideology of woke-ism,” which he claims had dominated political life over the last 40 years, particularly since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Under the umbrella term “woke,” Milei includes Marxists, socialists and even liberal Democrats squeamish about extreme social and economic inequality, who, in his view, are at war with the values of the Western, “Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian” civilization that gave birth to capitalism, and which stands for “life, liberty, and property.” His description of Western civilization is, at the very least skewed and racist:

The West is the highest point of the human species, the fertile land of its Greco-Roman heritage and Judeo-Christian values planted the seeds of something that had never been seen in history. After defeating absolutism … [brief interruption in audio], a new era in human existence, a philosophical and moral framework that placed individual liberty above the wishes of tyrants. The West was able to unleash human creative capacity, that generated a wealth-producing process, never known before.

His speech listed the characteristics of what he terms as “woke ideology,” which in addition to environmental policies, abortion and other democratic rights, included public education and housing, access to the internet, television and theater. “Someone has to pay for these,” declared Milei. Instead, he called for absolute freedom for markets, which “never fail.” He reserved some of his most ruthless words for immigration, denouncing “hordes of [Middle Eastern] immigrants” that attack, rape and murder Europeans, because Europeans “have the wrong religion.” He declared that immigration policies should depend strictly on “national interests,” which for Milei and his allies are identical with the interests of imperialism and corporations.

Milei’s speech divided society into the class that pays taxes and the class that sucks away their resources, including universities (“brain-washing centers”), the government bureaucracies, public firms, trade unions, and “social organizations.” Uncharacteristically, he also placed in that group those financial institutions that were rescued in the 2007-2009 global financial implosion.

The Argentine ruler compared the world created by “woke” politics to the dystopia portrayed by the right-wing ideologue Ayn Rand in her novel Atlas Shrugged, social decline due to state interference with capitalism, whose unfettered domination constitutes for Milei and fascism the only possible economic system corresponding to Western thought.

Pointing out that he had said some of these same things in his 2024 Davos speech, he added that this year he has allied himself with leading fascists from around the world:

I have found partners in this struggle over the ideal of liberty in every corner of the planet, including the marvelous Elon Musk, that fighting Italian lady, my dear friend Giorgia Meloni; El Salvador’s Bukele, Hungary’s Victor Orban; Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump in the United States. We have slowly formed an international alliance representing all those nations that want to be free and believe in the idea of liberty.

While Milei speaks of dismantling the state as part of the war against woke-ism and the working class, he places the Argentine state at the service of the global agri-business and extractive monopolies, including through its brutal attacks on every remaining democratic and social right of the working class, as well as the lands occupied by indigenous communities. Milei’s current policies intensify attacks on Indian land and water rights that were already taking place in the previous, Peronist, administration. 

In December 2024, his administration suspended, by decree, a 16-year-old law that guaranteed that lands being occupied by the Mapuche Tribe in the Patagonian region would remain in their hands. The Argentine president cynically justified turning these lands over to extractive corporations by claiming that his decree was in defense of “private property” rights over the oil and mineral wealth on the Mapuche territories.

On January 9, as security forces evicted three Mapuche families from the Pailako community in Chubut Province, government officials, including Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, arrived in helicopters to engage in a photo opportunity in the abandoned town.

Bullrich, the organizer of brutal acts of armed repression against workers, pensioners students, and native communities, endorsed Milei’s Davos speech by declaring: “Argentina now stands strong, defending liberty and leaving behind years of submitting to populism, which impoverishes and destroys the capacities of human beings. Enough with political correctness. Today we became a country that inspires, that points the way forward, and that leads.”

In a sign that the war against Argentine workers will surely escalate this year, she concluded her statement with the following words: “The message is clear, the era of weakness is over; the era of bravery begins.”