President Javier Milei, a social media addict, has fired off a steady stream of insults at his critics during his first year in office, using inflammatory rhetoric that has poisoned the political discourse.
Milei – a libertarian economist who admires US president-elect Donald Trump and shares his taste for earthy language – has labelled economists who question his policies "econochantas" ("eco-phonies") and trade unionists "garcas" ("crooks").
Political opponents, he calls "mandrills" (a type of monkey), "rats" and "parasites."
Milei's spokesman, Manuel Adorni, downplayed his boss's crude rhetoric, saying that the President "is a very respectful person who defends freedom of expression like no-one else."
The President's outbursts on social media were, Adorni said, his way of establishing "direct communication with people," without the filter of traditional media.
Brandishing freedom of expression as an "absolute privilege" is a hallmark of the far-right, said Ezequiel Ipar, head of the LEDA unit studying democracy and authoritarianism at Argentina's San Martín University
While hate speech in Argentina did not start with Milei, the president's rhetoric "is atypical in its aggressiveness and symbolic violence," he added.
According to a September poll by consulting firm Zuban Córdoba, 65.7 percent of Argentines believe that "hate and intolerance are on the rise" since Milei took office.
The centre-right think tank Movement for Development counted 2,173 insults levelled by the president at people or institutions in his first year in power, including 110 instances of labelling people "sons of bitches."
The media are a repeated target of the self-proclaimed "anarcho-capitalist" leader, who on December 10 marks the anniversary of his inauguration.
On X, where he has 3.6 million followers, Milei has described journalists as "microphone criminals," and in speeches attacks them as "corrupt."
At a recent political gathering he defended his army of online supporters for "showing reality" better than the press.
Argentina's ADEPA media association has denounced the president's "hostility" toward the media.
"The accusations and presidential insults fuel an army of trolls which, under cover of anonymity and with opaque financing, steps up verbal aggressions and thus opens the way to physical violence," the association wrote.
'Tensions'
The government's online shock force repeats and amplifies the President's insults through campaigns of harassment, intimidation, and doxing (the leaking of people's private information online).
One such account on X is titled "Ministry of Trolls."
A group of libertarian influencers and activists recently launched an organization called "Forces of Heaven" which it presented as the president's "Praetorian guard."
Its leader Daniel Parisini, an influencer known on X as "Fat Dan," vowed the group would defend Milei with mobile phones, "the most powerful weapon in the history of humanity."
One journalist, Clarín's Alejandro Alfie, who wrote about trolls attacking the media was harassed online and hit with a lawsuit.
Milei's government has also been on the receiving end of insults, with one leftist leader, Juan Grabois, calling his cabinet "a bunch of sons of bitches" on social media.
Analysts say the violent rhetoric risks inciting physical violence.
One self-described libertarian influencer, Franco Antúnez, was attacked by demonstrators at an opposition march when he posted on X a derogatory message against "shitty leftists," a term often used by Milei.
For Ana Sliovich, a social media researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), the government's confrontational tone is "pushing the boundaries of what can be said, and how it is said" and is generating "an amplification of violence."
Ipar, of San Martin University, noted that, when a country's leadership "expresses itself in this manner, it allows others to unleash that sort of violence."
by Ana Prieto & Martín Raschinsky, AFP
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