Near the top of a long list of “Things we never thought we’d see” is Argentina’s flamboyant libertarian president Javier Milei invited back to the World Economic Forum’s annual confab at Davos. Last year, the cocky new president torched Davos and most of its attendees with a blistering and unapologetic condemnation of globalism, socialism, and woke ideology, an unprecedented affront to the global gathering that was met with equal parts dismay and ridicule among attendees and in the legacy media.
Yet, to its limited credit, the World Economic Forum appears to have taken Milei’s rebuke in stride and invited him back this year.
“The Mental Virus”
And “El loco” did not disappoint, delivering an even more strongly worded diatribe to a gathering whose discomfort was palpable. Where last year’s address verged into a lofty academic treatment of economic growth and its relation to both sociological and political trends, this year’s Davos speech centered on the global culture war encapsulated by “wokeism.”
“The great burden that is the common denominator among the countries and institutions that are failing is the mental virus of woke ideology,” Milei told his squirming audience. “This is the great epidemic of our time that must be cured. This is the cancer we need to get rid of. This ideology has colonized the world’s most important institutions.”
Characterizing wokeism as a “reversal of Western values,” Milei went on to pillory every one of its derivative ideologies, including radical feminism, “sinister radical environmentalism,” the “bloody, murderous abortion agenda” (which, Milei averred, was designed to be a tool for Malthusian population control), the homosexual agenda, transgender ideology (whose proponents he characterized as “pedophiles” for their advocacy of child genital mutilation), the “eternal victimhood narrative,” and the epidemic of mass immigration (which, Milei trenchantly observed, is motivated “not by national interest but by guilt”).
Criticizing Collectivism
Ever the economist, Milei also took the time, late in his address, to demolish anew certain widely accepted economic sophisms used to justify planned economies, such as the absurdity that “market failures” in need of government correction are inherent to economic behavior.
Milei also noted the winds of change now blowing across the world, a transformative gale that has arisen because of the discrediting of, after decades of praising, the mantra of collectivism. He exhorted his listeners to heed changes in places like the United States, Italy, El Salvador, and Hungary, where elected leaders are working to restore cherished Western values of liberty and equality under the law, and where the counterfeit ideology of “liberation” is being renounced.
It is time, Milei told Davos conferees, to let go of, and not cling to, the failed policies of the past, and to “make the West great again.” And although many of his pleas likely fell on deaf ears, he did receive a robust ovation and assurances from the host that his remarks were appreciated, and that Davos was an “open forum.”
Of course, if the WEF truly had the best interests of the peoples of the world at heart, Milei, who is presiding over an economic miracle in Argentina, would receive a hero’s welcome, and his policy prescriptions would be taken seriously.
But we’re not holding our breath.
