Javier Milei Wants to Rewire the Argentine Mind

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Javier Milei Wants to Rewire the Argentine Mind

Argentina’s right-wing president has tamed the country’s runaway inflation. Now he wants to transform its values.

Javier Milei in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in January at the Derecha Fest, a large right-wing gathering.

Javier Milei Wants to Rewire the Argentine Mind

Argentina’s right-wing president has tamed the country’s runaway inflation. Now he wants to transform its values.

Javier Milei in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in January at the Derecha Fest, a large right-wing gathering.

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By

Emma Bubola

Visuals by

Sarah Pabst

Reporting from Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata, Argentina

April 20, 2026

Leer en español

Draped in a yellow cape and black mask, Javier Milei

stepped

onto a Buenos Aires stage as a makeshift superhero. Brandishing a salvaged scepter and wearing kitchen gloves, he

announced his mission

: to rescue capitalism and restore the value of individual liberty to Argentina.

That was in 2019, when Mr. Milei was a fringe libertarian economist and media celebrity, shouting from the margins of a political establishment that did not take him seriously.

Since then, he has stunned the world with a meteoric rise to the presidency. He has become a right-wing global star, tamed Argentina’s runaway inflation and made friends with President Trump.

Now, Mr. Milei’s superhero avatar is back. Reimagined as an A.I.-generated, animated character on the president’s official social media accounts, the masked avenger can be seen flying over the Buenos Aires skyline

reaffirming

his key goal: “the cultural battle.”

This time, Mr. Milei has the power to take it on.

He wants to use his presidency not only to slash the country’s budget but to wage an ideological war and rewire the country’s mentality. He wants to dismantle what he calls the “aberrant” concepts of social justice and economic equality and make the nation’s core principles capitalism, the free market, a limited state and individualism.

“We are at war,” Mr. Milei

said at a right-wing festival

last year, and added: “We are fighting a cultural struggle, an ideological battle, a war for the survival of our freedom.”

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