Politicians usually talk about belt tightening, or trimming wasteful spending with scissors. Argentine presidential candidate Javier Milei is ready to attack the system with a chain saw.
The self-declared anarcho-capitalist totes a power tool at some events as a symbol projecting defiance and strength to disaffected Argentines. They see themselves in Milei’s crusade to shred the bloated state and what he calls “the political caste.”
Most polls show him winning a presidential vote today and going to a runoff next month.
Photo: AP
“The caste is trembling,” he yelled last month, while brandishing a chain saw spewing diesel fumes on a crowded street.
In the poor, northwestern province of Salta last week, his caravan was welcomed by a group of workers waving their own buzzing chain saws in the air.
Argentina’s economy has been engulfed in crisis for years, but lately people feel they are being pushed to the brink. Inflation has rocketed into the triple digits, poverty is soaring and a rapidly depreciating currency is devastating the purchasing power of salaries. Many voters have lost hope that entrenched public servants can sort things out.
The chain saw is “a very explicit representation of what everyone feels, which is that the government is overflowing with people who, in general, don’t fulfill any function,” said Mariel Fornoni, a managing partner of political consultancy Management & Fit.
Milei presented what he called his “Chain Saw Plan” in central Cordoba Province in June last year. It is his blueprint for the wholesale reform of the state to slash public spending, scrap half the government’s ministries, sell state-owned companies and eliminate the central bank.
In a television interview in March, Milei said that his Chain Saw Plan was “all about tightening the reins on the spending of corrupt politicians.”
He has pointed to his strongest electoral competitors as embodiments of a parasitic establishment that has long considered itself beyond reproach or reckoning, and presented himself as the man to cut it down to size.
Most polls show Argentinian Minister of Economy Sergio Massa in second place, followed by former Argentine minister of security Patricia Bullrich of the main opposition coalition.
After Milei scored a surprise win in the August primary vote over the two seasoned politicians, he started toting a chain saw to his rallies. His supporters ate it up, and began emulating him.
At his closing rally in a Buenos Aires arena on Wednesday, many of his die-hard backers carried chain saws made of cardboard.
Martin Arganaraz, a 47-year-old artisan, was one of them.
He said he has been appalled to see politicians “setting up bike lanes or the subsecretariat of the subsecretariat, and it’s all unnecessary spending.”
Dolls of a character from the Japanese manga Chainsaw Man, a dog-like demon named Pochita, have started appearing at rallies too. The orange critter looks cute and cuddly — save for the chain saw blade protruding from its face.
The chain saw was not the first prop from Milei’s rhetorical arsenal.
A short campaign film of his from 2020 climaxes with a close-up of him grinning mischievously in a black leather jacket before grabbing a medieval-style war hammer to smash a model of the central bank. The mob of black-shirted, fist-pumping supporters huddled around him chanted: “Destruction,” then set upon the wreckage, tearing it to pieces.
“Here we have a demagogue who uses props to somehow put forward his fantasies about a state without a state, a state without institutions, and from the perspective of democracy, someone who promises violence against state institutions and perhaps against those he doesn’t like,” said Federico Finchelstein, an Argentine historian at New School for Social Research in New York.
Most have viewed Milei’s rage as mere histrionics and a strategy for bypassing the traditional process of launching a candidacy, although some find it more disconcerting.
Milei’s chain saw is peaceful, said Sebastian Borrego, a 51-year-old who traveled from a small city south of Buenos Aires to attend the rally on Wednesday.
He said he views it as a tool, like those he uses in his own garden.
“Pruning is a part of what it means to bring about transformation in the country ... cutting off parts that aren’t useful,” Borrego said.
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