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libertarianism
Milei's Argentina Offers Terrifying Glimpse of Trump's Project 2025
Elon Musk has already told you what Trump has planned will cause "temporary hardship." Argentinians living under their new libertarian masters can tell already you already what that pain and suffering feels like.
Nov 07, 2024
As the world absorbs the shockwave of Donald Trump’s win in the US presidential election, the playbook for his second term, designed by a handful of right-wing extremists, is already underway in Argentina.
Project 2025 is set out in a nearly 900-page ‘Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,’ produced by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing U.S. think tank, as a ready reckoner for the incoming Trump administration. It details authoritarian tactics that exist in various parts of the world, from attacking public education to dismantling policies to tackle climate change to restricting the rights of women, LGBTIQ+ people, migrants, workers and Black people. But if there is one country already trying some of Project 2025’s most extreme policies to weaken the state and render the enjoyment of rights obsolete, it is Argentina.
“If you have any doubts about how Project 2025 would be implemented, you have to look at what has happened in the last year in Argentina,” human rights lawyer Paula Ávila-Guillén, told me in a thought-provoking interview. She is the executive director of the Women's Equality Center (WEC) which works on communication strategies on reproductive health and justice in Latin America.
I knew what was happening in my country Argentina. A 30% cut in state spending and an eleven percentage point increase in poverty in less than a year don’t go unnoticed – even if you don't live there. Nor do the struggles that family and friends go through in a society already used to economic crashes. Still, Ávila-Guillén’s provocation prompted me to delve into the way Project 2025 is being carried out back home.
When Milei took office, he warned the Argentine people that their economic plight might briefly worsen under his harsh measures. This is exactly what millions are now suffering: more poverty and recession.
Project 2025 has been spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, but includes an advisory board with more than one hundred other Christian right and far right groups and dozens of former Trump officials.
“It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration,” the Heritage Foundation says on its website to introduce Project 2025.
In the months leading up to election day, as Project 2025’s authoritarian goals were increasingly documented by the press, hate watch groups and trade unions, Trump tried to distance himself from it.
Javier Milei, president of Argentina since December last year and an emerging figurehead of the global far right, has never mentioned Project 2025. But he had been looking to establish ties with the Heritage Foundation since at least 2023, according to documents submitted by a lobbyist to the U.S. Department of Justice.
And a copy of the ‘Mandate for Leadership’ was handed to Milei by Heritage’s executive vice-president Derrick Morgan when the two met in Washington in February for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), according to Argentina’s government website which lists gifts received by the president.
A central goal of Project 2025 is to “dismantle the administrative state” allegedly co-opted by the left or wokism. It entails disbanding federal ministries and agencies, cutting public funding for health, education and welfare, and eliminating programs and resources to combat gender-based violence, discrimination, pollution and climate change.
If there is one country already trying some of Project 2025’s most extreme policies to weaken the state and render the enjoyment of rights obsolete, it is Argentina.
Milei has worked fast in his first ten months in power and has followed this script entirely. The argument for many of his new measures has been the need to lower public spending to balance a lopsided economy, with an annual inflation at 211% and a huge debt owed to the International Monetary Fund. There is nothing wrong with cutting superfluous spending of course, but Milei has gone so much further than anyone might have initially imagined, in what many have dubbed his “chainsaw-style approach” to reducing the size of the state.
“I love being the mole inside the state,”I Milei said in an interview in June. “I'm the one destroying the state from within”.
“I love being the mole inside the state. I'm the one destroying the state from within”
Milei
Milei has made an unprecedented cut to all public spending at close to 30%. He cut investment in education by 40%, denied increases to pensions, cut access to life-saving drugs for cancer patients, defunded the science and technology system and universities, and laid off almost 27,000 public employees.
He closed the public media and froze food distribution to soup kitchens. Now, he’s set to sell-off public companies in the fields of nuclear energy, aviation, fuel, mining, electricity, water, cargo transport, roads and railways.
Milei has eliminated nine ministries, including the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity and the Ministry of Education— something that the Mandate for Leadership mentions and Trump has also spoken about.
He has dismantled all gender policies and defunded services including those for survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Last year, more than 170,000 people accessed these services, while official figures show that a femicide is committed every 35 hours in Argentina. It is now unclear whether anyone will continue to keep track of these statistics.
He also closed the Institute against Discrimination, Racism and Xenophobia, which he called a “sinister body used for ideological persecution.” Project 2025 authors would no doubt be delighted. Their blueprint for Trump goes to great lengths to explain how every diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policy, program and fund must be removed.
The ‘Mandate for Leadership’ details the need to assemble an army of loyalists from day one to carry out this task of reducing the state. The Heritage Foundation has a database of some 20,000 people in the U.S. who would make up a transitional staff for Trump. But it would require firing tens of thousands of career civil servants to replace them with people loyal to their ideology and ban public employees’ right to unionise.
Milei is actively persecuting civil servants who don’t follow his mindset. In a letter to the diplomatic corps, he demanded those who don’t align with his foreign policy ideas to “step aside,” specifically referencing his plan to repudiate the UN's Agenda 2030 which governments have signed to combat poverty, inequality and environmental destruction.
Days later, in a statement, he announced a purge: “The executive branch will launch an audit of the career staff of the foreign ministry with the aim of identifying promoters of anti-freedom ideas.”
War on gender
According to Project 2025, the next US president must “remove from every existing rule, regulatory agency, contract, grant, regulation, and federal law the terms sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights.”
Abortion is mentioned 199 times in the document, including proposing a federal ban, increased criminalization, more restrictions on providing care for miscarriages and obstetric emergencies, defunding emergency contraception and strict surveillance systems on people who have abortions or suffer miscarriages.
Heritage also wants to impose its worldview across borders: restore the so-called ‘Mexico City policy,’ which prohibits any U.S. public funding to foreign non-governmental organizations if they include any abortion-related activity—even if they do so with their own funds.
The right to abortion, legalized in 2021 in Argentina, is in danger under Milei. His party introduced a bill to repeal abortion which he’s referred to as “aggravated murder.” He’s also defunded the distribution of abortion pills and contraceptives.
Milei eliminated a program to prevent teenage pregnancy and has not set aside any funds in the 2025 budget for comprehensive sex education—which is mandatory by law and considered essential to prevent child abuse. Instead, authorities hired the Chilean Catholic organization Teen Star, that promotes abstinence, for training teachers in charge of CSE.
Milei banned the use of gender inclusive language in public services, and put a Catholic lawyer, Ursula Basset, in the foreign ministry to review all the country's positions on gender and climate change. At the last Organization of American States (OAS) General Assembly, Basset stymied the negotiations by demanding the removal of “LGBTI people,” “gender,” “tolerance,” “climate change,” and “families” from agreed intergovernmental statements.
“Argentina was the only G20 country to oppose the Ministerial Declaration on Gender Equality,” signed last month in Rio, Ávila-Guillén told me. The disagreement stemmed from the fact that “family care” was defined as work and the term “reproductive rights” was mentioned. Argentina ended up in a more extreme position than Saudi Arabia or Russia.
“At the G20 meeting, Argentina ended up in a more extreme position on gender than Saudi Arabia or Russia”
Respectability and academic tone is just a veneer for hate in Mandate for Leadership. You only need to skim the document to find polarizing language and the construction of an internal enemy. Milei likewise calls his opponents “rats,” “human excrement,” “fucking lefties,” “imbeciles,” or “traitors.”
“The idea that Milei is the most Argentinian thing that could happen to Argentina is ridiculous; he is part of a much bigger agenda, crafted in the U.S. and which is trying to be implemented in different parts of the world,” Ávila-Guillén says.
The lobbyist that connected Milei with the Heritage Foundation last year is Damián Merlo, partner director of Latin America Advisory Group, a company which lobbies in the U.S. on behalf of authoritarian Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele. Merlo is close to digital strategist Fernando Cerimedo, who also works for Milei and has done so for the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Cerimedo is currently under investigation in Brazil for his alleged role in the 2022 failed coup attempt led by Bolsonaro against Brazilian president Inácio Lula da Silva.
When Milei took office, he warned the Argentine people that their economic plight might briefly worsen under his harsh measures. This is exactly what millions are now suffering: more poverty and recession.
In the last days of the U.S. election campaign, a similar message was spread by billionaire Elon Musk who put more than $100 million into Trump's campaign, and who would be, according to Trump, his “secretary of cost-cutting.” Such cuts, Musk warned, might cause “temporary hardship,” but they were necessary in the path to “long-term prosperity.”
Prosperity for whom is not clear—but a recipe for hardship, denial of rights and persecution is on display in Argentina, if you can bear to take a look.
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Elon Musk Shows Us Why Individuals Can't Save the World
"Live by public will, die by public will," is a mantra the faux libertarian techno billionaires should memorize. They are not our saviors, but rather obstacles to a better future for consumers and workers alike.
Jun 04, 2024
Elon Musk likes to be portrayed as a swashbuckling entrepreneur, a sort of romantic character in an Ayn Rand novel who opens up new enterprises and industries where others fear to tread. But these days, heroism is hard to find in at least one Musk-owned business: sales at Tesla are dropping, the Department of Justice is investigating the company for wire fraud given safety issues with their self-driving vehicles, and Musk is laying off the entire Tesla charging team.
Why the turn in fortunes? It’s easy to lay the blame on particulars: the rise of Chinese EV competitors, the difficulties of opening Tesla’s closed charging systems to other brands, and the complexity of making self-propelled autos that are, well, not that well-propelled. But the lesson might be a bit simple for Musk and others wrapped up in their own self-made stories: live by the public will, die by the public will.
As much as Musk has carefully cultivated an image of himself as a capitalist pioneer, his path has been paved by government largesse. SpaceX relies on federal subsidies, particularly from NASA, while Tesla had long relied on federal and state incentives inducing the broader auto industry to shed its addiction to fossil fuels.
Let’s stop focusing just on individual triumph in a world where success has also been greased by public policy and where the future will be determined by public approval.
His more purely private ventures have been less successful. The PayPal board ousted him as CEO in 2000—although he made off with enough stock to fund future adventures. After first making an offer whose dollar figure was seemingly influenced by a marijuana meme, he managed to purchase Twitter in 2022 at a price well above valuation. He then promptly renamed it as “X” and seems to be running it into the ground in terms of both finances and reputation.
From a respected site used by readers to track instant news coverage—along with the occasional glimpse at cute puppies, rap feuds, and dance trends—X has become host to a cesspool of right-wing conspiracy theories, all in the name of “free speech.” Earlier this month, Musk brought back onto the site, Nick Fuentes, an acknowledged white supremacist and antisemite whose reentry drew quick condemnation.
Hmm... and you wonder why Tesla is losing market share?
Certainly, it’s the fact that automakers, both in China and in the U.S., are finally making electric vehicles that are worthy competitors. But it’s also the case that the same people who are attracted to sustainability in their mobility options are generally not as enthusiastic about giving neo-fascists a safe place to practice and broadcast hate.
After all, Musk portraying himself as a political renegade who touts free speech and aligns himself with white supremacists is not actually a money-making strategy: Republican consumers may applaud that sentiment, but then they also lean away from zero emissions vehicles and lean into purchasing gas-guzzlers that show the planet who’s boss. Meanwhile, many of the potential consumers ready to take the leap to buy an EV struggle with Elon’s reputation.
And it’s not just about who he platforms but also who he ignores. Resolutely anti-union, he has resisted efforts to organize Tesla’s workforce despite constant complaints about the pace of work and the pay for work. The United Auto Workers, coming off a successful campaign for better contracts with the traditional Big Three automakers, now has Tesla squarely in its sights. The resulting conflicts will make for even worse publicity for a brand—Musk—already tarnished.
It’s easy to focus on Musk. But consider Marc Andreessen, a Silicon Valley investor who has been labeled the “godfather of the web browser” for his role in creating Netscape. He has attacked “statism” as an evil, even as the Internet that he helped make more accessible was actually birthed in the world by federal investments in technology.
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence, an achievement attributed to tech geniuses, basically consists of scraping that same internet for the world’s knowledge and regurgitating it for profit. And in keeping with the idea that the commons is key, think of all the private investor interest in the new green economy, an economic shift made possible by social movements—some born and spread on the internet—pressing for global climate responsibility.
So let’s stop focusing just on individual triumph in a world where success has also been greased by public policy and where the future will be determined by public approval. Consumers, labor unions, and government officials are seeing through to the real story—that markets and fortunes are made by all of us.
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The Terrifying Amount of Koch Millions Flowing Into US Universities
The right-wing billionaire's foundation pumped over $52 million into higher education last year to advance its libertarian agenda.
Dec 02, 2023
Charles Koch contributed $52.6 million in grants to colleges and universities through his Charles Koch Foundation in 2022, an analysis of the personal foundation’s latest IRS filing obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) found.
Last year’s total is $29 million less than the Charles Koch Foundation spent on higher education in 2021, and a small fraction of what the Koch political network spends in one year. A CMD analysis found that a fleet of 27 organizations controlled by the Koch patriarch, his son Chase, and other Koch Industries executives spent a combined net total of $656.8 million on political and charitable causes in 2021.
Koch political network spending is likely to go up in 2022 with news of Charles Koch’s gift of $4.3 billion of Koch Industries stock to the newly formed nonprofit Believe in People that Forbes reported on last month. Believe in People’s 2022 IRS filing is not publicly available as of publishing.
The new filing shows that the Charles Koch Foundation now has $793.7 million in net assets after less than $300,000 was contributed, but investment income brought in $108.9 million.
CMD identified 126 higher education grants in the filing, with some schools receiving multiple donations. Again, George Mason University received the largest amount of Koch cash, raking in a total $8.2 million. $5.9 million of this was directed to the university’s Institute for Humane Studies. Charles Koch currently sits on the Institute’s board of directors as chairman emeritus along with the Koch Foundation’s Ryan Stowers, who is the current chairman, and Stand Together‘s Brian Hooks.
Grant agreements posted on the Charles Koch Foundation website show that the remaining $2.9 million went to George Mason’s law school, economics department, and its Center for the Study of Social Change, Institutions, and Policy.
The next largest recipient of Koch Foundation funds was Utah State University, which received $3.1 million. $625,000 was directed to the Center for Growth and Opportunity (CGO) at the school, and the grant agreement with Koch shows that the remaining $2.5 million is for the Huntsman Scholar Program at the School of Business.
CGO was founded in 2017 with a $50 million commitment from the Charles Koch Foundation and the Huntsman Foundation. Jon Huntsman was the founder of the Huntsman Corporation, a multinational chemical manufacturer.
Rounding out the top three higher education grantees was New York University with a $3 million contribution from Koch. According to the grant agreement, this Koch cash is to support The Center for Social Media and Politics to “study how information flows online.”
While these grants were published by Koch, only a selection of grant agreements are listed to date in the section of the site dedicated to sharing information on annual grant agreements.
Almost 50 years ago, Charles Koch urged the Institute for Humane Studies Board of Directors to avoid giving money to universities unless they would help advance business interests:
[W]e have supported the very institutions from which the attack on free markets emanates. Although much of our support has been involuntary through taxes, we have also contributed voluntarily to colleges and universities on the erroneous assumption that this assistance benefits businesses and the free enterprise system, even though these institutions encourage extreme hostility to American business. We should cease financing our own destruction and follow the counsel of David Packard, former Deputy Secretary of Defense, by supporting only those programs, departments or schools that ‘contribute in some way to our individual companies or to the general welfare of our free enterprise system.’
In addition to the higher education grants, the Koch Foundation sent $2.3 million to right-wing litigation, advocacy, and other tax-exempt groups. The lion’s share of that funding, $1.9 million, went to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.
Charles Koch is the CEO and chairman of Koch Industries and is worth $52.4 billion, according to Forbes.
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