When Javier Milei began rising in the polls leading up to the 2023 Argentine presidential election, Western media was overrun with news stories about the sideburn-sporting economist. Pictures surfaced of Milei at comic conventions dressed as his anarcho-capitalist superhero alter ego, “Captain Ancap.” Videos from the campaign trail showed him wielding a chainsaw to rapturous cheers, while clips of outbursts from his career as a talking head went viral.

What set Milei apart from the right-wing populist politicians of the past decades was the academic flavor of his targets. Rather than attacking the usual suspects—immigrants, gay people, women—he singled out “Keynesians and collectivists.” And when he did attack civil rights, it was often on economic grounds: abortion should be criminalized due to the “familial bond” between mother and fetus, but once born the parents should be allowed to sell the child to the highest bidder in the name of freedom.1.

Milei’s vocal opposition to migrants, feminism, antiracism, and DEI initiatives was rooted in his hatred of special privileges meted out by the “party of the state.” The Argentine central bank represents one such vessel of arbitrary state power in Milei’s eyes, which is why he promised to abolish it for good. Yet again, an unusual target for right-wing populists. Confused reporters had to google the names of his mastiffs—four of which were cloned from his original dog—to understand which obscure economists Murray, Milton, Robert, Lucas, and Conan referred to.

This is not your average far-right demagogue. Milei’s combination of libertarian and reactionary views, violent rhetoric, geeky fandom, and academic references pointed in another direction. According to historian Quinn Slobodian, Milei is one of “Hayek’s bastards,” a diverse group spawned by a mutation of neoliberalism that started in the 1980s, which he calls the “new fusionism.”

The Turn to Nature

When Friedrich Hayek entered old age, he was a fêted figure, lionized by the Swedish central bank’s “Nobel” Prize in Economic Sciences and coveted by mainstream media around the world as an expert on the economy. With the monetarist turn in the Anglo-Saxon heartlands underway, the Keynesian consensus in tatters, and a Soviet Union in obvious decline, one could be forgiven for thinking that the primal father of neoliberalism would feel at ease. For Hayek, however, the battle was far from over.