Javier Mele has won the presidential election in Argentina. What does this mean for the country and what does it mean for Latin America? In this episode, I chat with Laura Astor, a regular presence in the online right-wing Twittersphere, and a Substack writer, about what this means and why it's such a big deal.
00:00:51.440And then they get elected and it's been a mixed bag.
00:00:54.320You have some people who seem like big successes.
00:00:57.340Some people who are very disappointing.
00:00:59.420And it's hard to know because the media just blows this stuff out of proportion how real these people are.
00:01:05.520How much of an effect they're going to have if they're going to be a positive force for their countries and for kind of the wider movement against the globalists.
00:01:14.500And so, one of those people who's obviously been a big deal has been Javier Mele.
00:01:32.060But I think what's most important is understanding the state that Argentina was in before that election.
00:01:38.100And so, to do that, I wanted to bring in somebody who could tell us a little more about the on-the-ground politics, the history, and what this victory means.
00:01:46.900Joining me today is the constant presence in the online right Twittersphere and a sub-stack writer, Lady Astor.
00:01:59.480No, it's great because, like I said, I saw you posting.
00:02:03.460And I was a little hesitant when I originally saw the win because, again, at this point, I've had so many times the press has hyped up these candidates.
00:02:11.580And so, I was like, I want to see some action before I get too excited.
00:02:16.340But you were letting people know that you felt this was a big win for the people of Argentina.
00:02:21.640And because, of course, you have far more knowledge when it comes to kind of the reality of this, I wanted to bring you on so you could let people know kind of the background and what this victory means.
00:02:34.660And first off, this was absolutely unexpected.
00:02:38.800I was rooting for the win and thought that he had a real shot.
00:02:43.660But never could imagine he'd win by such a high margin.
00:02:49.100We're talking 11, almost 12 points difference.
00:02:54.260Millet won by 56 percent easy, super comfortable.
00:02:59.660And I bet that if you take all the foul play that we're used to in this country, because, of course, there's destruction of ballots, miscounting,
00:03:10.480and especially in certain provinces, which are basically feudal, you know, enclaves in which the governor is lord.
00:03:20.760Some of them have been for decades in power.
00:03:23.760So they are able to even control, you know, the IDs of the people and you can fill out free ballots, you know, in those places.
00:03:34.460Of course, not in the cities that are controlled by other parties.
00:03:39.500But if you take that into consideration, I'd tell you that he won by 60 percent.
00:03:46.720This means that people were completely fed up and they wanted radical change and they were not turned off by all this talk about, like, he's a madman.
00:04:46.300Yeah, I think that's a pattern we've seen happen so often.
00:04:50.240Of course, a lot of people want to call him, you know, the Argentinian Trump.
00:04:53.740And it seems like everybody's, you know, every every the U.S. always wants to tie everybody to their latest election.
00:04:59.640But but a lot of people have seen that phenomenon of throwing off the establishment and being willing to take a chance with the unknown because the establishment is so frustrating.
00:05:08.620I want to dive into that history you've been taught you were talking about so that we have a frame of reference as to what this win means before we talk about Melee himself.
00:05:19.280But before we do that, guys, let's hear it from today's sponsor.
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00:06:57.300All right, so Lady Astor, like I said, I want to set that frame so we understand what happened with this election.
00:07:04.460So for people who are unfamiliar with Argentina and kind of the political dynamic there,
00:07:09.900I know there's probably way more that we can get into right now,
00:07:14.260but could you give a basic outline of the situation?
00:07:17.600I know Argentina, for instance, has defaulted on its debt multiple times.
00:07:21.420That's had a serious economic impact and an impact on, obviously, the way people are living their lives there.
00:07:27.300Could you talk a little bit about how things have been in the last 20 or so years in Argentina?
00:19:27.840Menem presents himself again and he actually won, but he went to Balotage against someone nobody knew who he was.
00:19:38.080This weird looking guy from Santa Cruz, it's a province in Patagonia with, you know, little population and a complete unknown comes with the right godfather, which is Dualde.
00:19:58.560Dualde, he's a kingmaker and he was a VP for President Menem and he's behind some shady stuff, but I'm not going to talk ill about him, you know.
00:20:13.540So some things happened and somehow Nestor Kirchner becomes president and he begins a turn completely left to the point that there's this anchor lady.
00:20:57.280Like with imagine that with like an elderly lady voice.
00:21:00.780She was actually smartly, you know, her kind of senses were wise to the fact that something had changed.
00:21:11.760And then comes complete alignment to Cuba and Chavez at the time.
00:21:19.640But what many people don't know is that there was also a philosopher, an Argentine married to a French lady that was operating from Britain, Essex University.
00:21:34.680His name was Ernesto Laclau, and his wife, Chantal Mouffeux.
00:21:42.200And they are the ideologues, the true godfathers of left wing populism.
00:21:50.120And I have no idea why nobody's talking about this, that basically all the left wing populism of Latin America in that decade, the 2000s, actually stems from Essex University in the UK.
00:22:12.960Because, as you know, well, we were in a war with Britain, but Britain tried to invade Argentina several times.
00:22:21.520You know, we fought two British invasions and we won.
00:22:27.520And then Roses was able to stop them in the river when the French and the British joint forces at the famed Vuelta de Obligado battle, in which eventually they're lost.
00:22:42.080But, you know, the embargo of the river was successful enough that they basically decided that it was too costly to pursue because of the blockade.
00:22:53.680So in the end, it ended up being successful.
00:22:57.500But Argentina is a mysterious country and there's a lot that is said and much of it is not true.
00:23:04.640And much of it, it's like propaganda being more successful than factual reality.
00:23:12.160For example, that notion that there's many Germans living in Argentina, which is not real.
00:23:21.020There's less than 8% of the Argentine population are descended from Germans.
00:23:27.080And more than half of those are Bulga Germans that came in the 19th century and have nothing to do with the others.
00:23:34.640But, you know, it's like the power of Hollywood and, you know, there's nothing we can do about that.
00:23:41.960So you were telling me that the last four years have been particularly brutal, especially on young people with the COVID lockdown.
00:23:49.880I was not aware of the severity that lockdown measures had gone to in Argentina during that time.
00:23:56.760Can you tell me a little bit about how that set the stage for Mele's win?
00:25:12.980So then the Kirchneristas, because of the bad economy, they are able to win again.
00:25:20.700And they bring Alberto Fernandez, who used to be mostly a political operator that was close to the Kirchners.
00:25:27.800And of course, Cristina as VP, because she's, of course, a big figure in Argentine politics.
00:25:36.000And I have to say, she's been smart and she had great charisma during her presidency.
00:25:43.680Now she's lost her shine, you know, and she's beleaguered.
00:25:50.160And I think that the attempted murder that she had, where people basically did not believe that someone truly wanted to kill her, I think that hit her in a big way.
00:26:03.100But, well, 2019, there's a very tough election, but this is still the election of the crack, in which the perception is that there's two sides in Argentinian politics.
00:26:19.460So there's a big part of the population that's completely forgotten by both factions that dispute power.
00:26:27.840Then, well, Alberto Fernandez wins, and then when he's about to begin his term, COVID hits, and somehow they become, I don't know if they were reading from the Chinese playbook or what, but the pandemic restrictions here were very, very tough.
00:26:54.000There was 155 days of full lockdown, we had curfews, you could only get out of your house to buy basic groceries, every restaurant, everything closed, everything that you could do outside, you could not even go to a park.
00:27:13.740I've had my sister come to pick up some food to my house.
00:27:18.020She lived only four blocks away, and she was chased by a police car, you know, because they wanted to see if she was going home, to where she was going, when it was my father's anniversary of his passing.
00:27:32.880Because his resting place is not in the city where I live, but in the outskirts of the city, and I could not take any vehicle or public transportation, not even an own car, because I had not a pass.
00:27:51.380I was not an essential worker or anything.
00:27:53.760So I was confined to my house, I would take a, like a, just a bag, like a shopper bag, and pretend I was shopping, and would walk many, many, many streets in order to cross the bridge and visit my father.
00:28:11.340That, you know, that for me was especially heavy, but for the children, and for young people, teenagers and children, they suffered the most, because soon it was evident that this illness, it was not hard for them.
00:28:31.500And they were forced to take years of their life for something that did not affect them, in order to safeguard who, obviously, the government considered more important.
00:28:46.720And you, you would see that they also had, like special privileges for people within the party, then when the vaccines became available, there was like a VIP vaccine list, so only people who were part of the party, you know, the nomenclatura of kirchnerismo, were able to get those shots.
00:29:15.020And, you know, people were, you know, people were allowed to visit their loved ones in hospital.
00:30:40.080And these Versailles wannabes, they were completely oblivious to the suffering of the rest of the population.
00:30:47.760Incoming with the downward spiral of inflation that's now reached 150%, then you can imagine the despair of the people.
00:31:01.880But there were some canaries in the coal mine.
00:31:04.620I remember at one point, a friend of mine who's a photographer, because they started to, at one point, they started to open up certain venues.
00:31:15.620But it was almost solely visited by people who were very young, the only ones who dared and were hungry to go out.
00:31:24.900So this photographer of mine tells me, okay, so I went to this party in Seaside Resort Town of Mar del Plata.
00:31:31.920And this, and I went inside with one of these, like, muscles for the face, right?
00:32:17.780And it's not going to be pretty because you have a situation of people who are getting lavish payments through government contacts and positions and make-believe jobs.
00:32:30.780But all these kids, these abandoned kids that are treated like they are the devil, because specifically, the administration of Alberto Fernandos was very pandering to all the woke pieties.
00:32:46.900Literally, it seemed that they had, I don't know, they were taking a script from someone in Williamsburg.
00:32:53.360It was like something that had no, you couldn't understand it.
00:33:01.040In the middle of the pandemic, when everybody was in lockdown, they presented an ID specifically for non-binary people.
00:33:14.180And then they have the census through the pandemic.
00:33:20.320And in the census, they put like a little section where people had to say if their gender did not fit the one that they were given at birth, whatever.
00:33:34.260So they wanted to see, okay, so how many people in this country are truly, you know, gender challenged?
00:33:56.920Basically, we're talking about 5,000 people in the entire country.
00:34:01.960And the truth of the matter is that very quickly, people like the mayor of the city of Buenos Aires, Rodriguez Larreta, who basically governed, he lost his election, but he governed by focus groups.
00:34:20.660He was like, okay, everybody just drop everything regarding inclusive language now, yesterday, drop it, ban it, get it out of here.
00:34:33.840We're not, like, we're not pissing people off because of 5,000 fanatics in the entire country.
00:35:06.52060% of children who cannot eat a square meal a day.
00:35:10.460And you have government-funded investigations at Conicet, where they are paying almost a million pesos a month to someone who's doing research on Batman's anus.
00:35:30.480So, unfortunately, while it's both sad and hilarious at the same time, this story sounds very familiar.
00:35:41.000It's, of course, got its own Argentinian flair, but, you know, the need of these people, the obsession with, you know, these leftist policies that feel, you know, imported from other places,
00:35:53.680just ignoring the devastation of the average person, their way of life, their well-being, so many people in poverty damaged by these leftist policies beforehand,
00:36:04.540and then, obviously, the lockdown and the focus on this stuff.
00:36:08.160It sounds, again, very familiar, and I think that's why we're seeing this pattern repeat over and over again.
00:36:14.340I'm really glad that you gave us that background, because I think that's going to help people understand more than about kind of what happened with Melee here.
00:36:21.980And I want to get into, then, you know, how this brings him, but maybe get a little more of his backstory,
00:36:27.540and then what you think he's going to do or how you think he's going to impact things.
00:36:31.540But before we do that, guys, let me tell you real quickly about The Blind.
00:36:35.900For years, Hollywood's been lacking when it comes to stories of redemption.
00:36:39.260Movies and TV shows have trended towards the antihero, a flawed person who makes no effort to change and just becomes worse and worse as the story goes on.
00:40:24.820Actually, no, I wanted to notice something.
00:40:27.820Actually, it was the feminists and their gruesome displays when they passed and celebrated the abortion laws
00:40:37.200that opened up the country to, like, the pandemic being over because their street celebrations gave us all the knowledge that, of course, the virus was not dangerous.
00:40:52.060Oh, so this is like your BLM where all of a sudden you're supposed to be locked down.
00:41:14.020After the passage of a law that was passed at 4 a.m. in the morning, people have to understand that Argentina is a country very much infected by radical feminism
00:41:27.020because Argentina has 53% females and only 47% men.
00:41:36.180So this creates a situation of imbalance and the movement that was funded lavishly by foreign NGOs has appended the country.
00:41:49.040Basically, there's been like a vicious deployment of lawfare upon men.
00:41:55.120So this law that I'm talking about is called Ley Olimpia.
00:42:00.620The law Olimpia basically punishes any man who dares to disrespect or in any way direct violence against a woman online.
00:42:16.360And this also includes WhatsApp or Signal or Telegram.
00:42:21.420And it's so vague, this law is so vague that it says that it's by action or omission.
00:42:27.940So maybe you ghost someone and they denounce you.
00:42:33.180You know, they create all this, you know, these laws that are very broad in spectrum.
00:42:40.920So they can basically throw a net to everyone that might be problematic for their mantras and dogmas.
00:42:52.060You know, so this bashing reached a fever pitch when two radical feminists murdered a child, a five-year-old, whose name was Lucio Dupuy.
00:43:16.120But I believe, and many of my friends and even my husband believe, that the gruesome torture and murder of Lucio by the hands of these individuals,
00:43:29.720let's not say more monsters, let's not say more monsters, that kind of opened something up.
00:43:37.160People were already suspecting that there was a lot of hypocrisy in this movement and it was getting out of hand.
00:43:45.600There was true hatred against men and any woman who has brothers, boys as children, you know, uncles, fathers, any man in their family, home, friends, you know,
00:44:02.220they kind of allow this craziness to go on.
00:44:04.840So basically you have a whole class of boys and young men who've not only been maligned by press constantly,
00:44:14.820they go to school and there's literal classes that were inserted by leftist politicians that only get like 1% of the votes,
00:44:26.240but they are in Congress, they get into the Education Commission and they are able to, you know, write policy that then every children has to endure.
00:44:38.100So they went to school and they were told basically that if you are born male, you are a monster.
00:44:50.900So at one point, things begin to happen online.
00:44:57.920Podcasts begin to emerge, groups, annons, and this starts fermenting because some of us, I completely include myself,
00:45:11.540we began getting close to the American and the European rights and their talking points.
00:45:19.580So we begin to see with Brexit in 2015 and with Trump in 2016, that there is an international thing going on that somehow the international left that's always been international,
00:45:43.480They've always been, you know, connected, but we haven't.
00:45:47.320And suddenly, for some reason, we start to coalesce and we start to interact and we start to tell each other, hey, look, this is happening.
00:47:03.920Yeah, a lot of people have been worried about the libertarian title because, you know, he's running around with, you know, the ANCAP, you know, comic book suit and things.
00:47:13.500And, you know, well, that is because that is because Lilia Lemoyne, who is part of one of the founding members of the La Libertad Avanza, his political party, she's a cosplayer.
00:47:26.560And it was her behind some of these actions that, despite this, this happened years ago.
00:47:35.460But despite of how funny this seems now, it was actually a way of bringing younger people into it.
00:47:45.780Well, actually, Lilia, despite the fact that every time she opens her mouth, well, not every time, sometimes she says things that I agree with, but she has a way of getting enmeshed in scandals.
00:47:59.280And sometimes she says things that she couldn't say, she shouldn't say, but she is attractive and interesting.
00:48:07.100And, you know, she's, she was very successful in making the party noticed.
00:48:15.460And this, you know, is, you know, sometimes things that seem funny are also attractive, you know, and it was positive propaganda at the time.
00:48:29.220Nobody would have imagined at the moment when Milet was, you know, cosplaying as Captain Ancap, that he would become actually the president of the country.
00:48:41.220Yeah, you probably didn't see that coming.
00:48:43.020But there's something that I have spoken about on my TL several times.
00:48:48.540And I go back to this, like you have the devil, you know, like in the tarot cards, you know, you have the devil, of course.
00:48:57.520And you have the fool, you know, the fool sometimes is the joker, but the fool is always, you know, innocence.
00:49:08.520You know, this crazy person, this oddball, many of us thought, okay, all the serious people were not able to fix this problem we're enmeshed in and that we've been trying to get out for so many years.
00:49:22.620So maybe the madman is the right choice for us.
00:49:26.660Because in the land of the mad, who else but the mad hatter himself to lead you out?
00:49:33.220No, yeah, again, I think that's, again, echoes a lot of how people felt about Trump.
00:49:40.880You know, is he this practiced politician?
00:49:58.780And he can do things that are weird, like the weirdness of, like, trying to convert to Judaism or the weirdness of talking to his dead dog or, like, many other things, you know.
00:50:13.820But he's a goofball and people maybe don't understand this, like, that scene from the perspective of Argentina, these are not things that set in stone.
00:50:27.360Like, he, or, for example, like, I was the other day surprised and, like, he met Clinton.
00:50:33.640And I'm like, why the hell are they bringing him to meet Clinton, of all people, you know, who have nothing to do with him?
00:50:41.400But then it was explained that a businessman named Bertain, who was traveling with him, brokered that meeting.
00:50:50.860And probably Millet just didn't want to, you know, lose face because Millet actually loves the United States of America, loves them.
00:51:04.160Like, and in a bit of a boomerish way, I don't know if you understand what I'm meaning by this, like, he's a bit naive to what the U.S. is now.
00:51:16.820Because he's idealist about you and perhaps has a notion closer to what the U.S. was 20 years ago and not what it is right now at the moment or the internal conflicts.
00:51:33.320But at the same time, you know, he has people with him.
00:51:37.140And I'm going to mention again, Victoria Vicharroel, who's the VP, but she will have a big, you know, she's going to have a big say in everything related to security and defense, because that's where her expertise lays.
00:51:54.740So she's going to bring much more balance and a more traditionally right wing, you know, side to the government.
00:52:03.980So in the last, oh, sorry, we're running up against our time here.
00:52:08.620So I just wanted to get in the last, in the last few minutes, I just want to get, what are some of the things that you're optimistic about with Millet?
00:52:16.820Like, what do you think that you expect him to do or that you would hope that he would do changes you think that he'll make that are going to be positive?
00:52:24.220He already has promised to cut the ministries from 18 back to the traditional eight that existed in my childhood.
00:52:33.380He's already going to cut most of the bureaucracy.
00:52:37.940Diana Mondino, the chancellor, said today that it's very likely that over 500 laws that are BS laws will be cut.
00:52:48.840But the ministry of gender and women is going to be gone.
00:52:54.740And I'm very happy about that because I'm throwing that one off the board there.
00:56:08.820And that was the sort of inspiration that made me get so involved in American politics because American politics are geopolitical, world-making, king-making politics.
00:56:22.700You know, it's like that's the game of all games, the true great game.
00:56:28.460You know, so if you don't pay attention to that, it's like it's imperial politics.
00:56:32.660Like if you live in Pontus, how can you not look at Rome?
00:56:37.260I'm always in despair, praying that the emperor allows him to become a part of the Roman society again.
00:56:46.340Yeah, for better or for worse, we are the global hegemon.
00:56:50.720Hopefully one day we'll be exporting something that's far more worthy of that.
00:56:55.720But for now, I'm glad that things have seemed to be turning in a good direction for you guys.
00:57:00.840I'm glad you're excited about your future.
00:57:06.060And I really hope that things develop, as you say, because obviously it sounds like Argentina definitely could use somebody who can reform what is going on.
00:57:19.420Well, thank you again for coming on, everyone.
00:57:21.600Please make sure that you're checking out Lady Astor's work.
00:57:24.820And of course, if this is your first time on my channel, make sure that you go ahead and subscribe to the YouTube channel.
00:57:30.340And if you'd like to get these broadcasts as podcasts, you can go ahead and subscribe to our McIntyre show on your favorite podcast platform.
00:57:37.960Thank you, everybody, once again for coming by.
00:57:39.860And as always, I'll talk to you next time.