I have written and been interviewed several times about President Javier Milei of Argentina. Like most observers, my focus has been on his economic policies. This is understandable. Milei often describes himself as a professor of economics who happens to be president. Yet few thought that his policies could succeed. The most ominous prediction came from more than 100 economists, including Thomas Piketty, José Antonio Ocampo, and Branko Milanovic, who in a widely publicized letter forecast chaos and societal meltdown if Milei won.
During a recent speech to the Asociación de Dirigentes de Marketing, a Uruguayan marketing association, Javier Milei summarized his economic views superbly, saying,
Economic growth depends on institutions. The central axis is the institutions because those institutions shape the framework and the moral foundations of a society. Therefore, when a society embraces values such as envy, hatred, resentment, unequal treatment before the law, or even murder, which is what socialism does, it always ends in a catastrophe, inexorably, because it goes against human nature and goes against the best of human nature.
He then focused on what leads to integral human development. When a society
embraces the ideas of freedom, it prospers because liberalism is the unrestricted respect for the life project of others, based on the principle of non-aggression and in defense of the right to life, liberty, and property. And when you embrace those values, you can only be successful by serving your neighbor with goods of better quality or better price. Those who are successful, in reality, are social benefactors.
Argentina is one of the few remaining countries where liberalism is used in its noncorrupted sense. Brazil and Guatemala are others. Milei does not want to relinquish the word, and in his recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he again used it as a synonym for classical liberalism. Milei also self-defines alternatively as libertarian and anarcho-capitalist. He doesn’t care much about these differences. During his most recent Davos speech, he even quoted Ayn Rand.
This past December, accompanying Dr. Arthur Laffer, the prominent supply-side economist, I had the privilege of being with several of the most relevant figures of Milei’s government. During our off-the-record conversations, Milei’s team stressed the importance of not merely the economic battle but the cultural one, too. Only one of the government figures, an outstanding economist, described the cultural malaise of Argentina in political-economic terms: “the thought that the state is essential to solve all the problems in life.” Yet Milei also stressed the importance of values in his Uruguay speech: “The set of values that a society embraces is fundamental. … I always reflect on embracing the values of the West, the values that achieved the greatest civilizing feat that one can imagine, and that—precisely—the basis of those values is Israel.”
Surprised? Although baptized in the Catholic Church, Javier Milei has a special relationship with Judaism and Israel. I first saw this Jewish connection during his inauguration on December 10, 2023, at the religious ceremony. Representatives of the Abrahamic traditions gave “sermons” at the Buenos Aires Cathedral. The Roman Catholic bishop gave a scripted speech. Rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish, on the other hand, spoke directly to Milei’s heart and spirit: “God has faith in you, Mr. President.” His words shook Javier Milei, who could not contain his tears. Tears of inner joy accompanied the awareness of the weight of immense responsibility. Milei appointed Rabbi Wahnish as his ambassador to Israel.
Moreover, after winning the presidential election, Milei’s first foreign visit was to the grave of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson (1902–1994), in the Jewish cemetery of Montefiore, in Springfield Gardens, Queens, New York. Milei is not shy when speaking to the press, but he preferred to remain silent on this occasion. His entourage described the visit as “strictly private.” Milei later said that his visit was to “thank” the rabbi after “the Creator placed me in this place of maximum responsibility,” and that “he hopes to rise to the occasion.” Before the elections, Milei had visited the place to ask for “wisdom to distinguish good from evil, courage to choose good and temperance to accept the will of the Creator.”
I asked Pablo Kleinman, an Argentine-born trustee of the Hispanic-Jewish Foundation in Spain, about the relevance of Rabbi Schneerson. He told me, “Schneerson, of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, was a very charismatic rabbi and the last of the Chabad movement to reframe the group’s goal to promote a revival of the faith and bring secular Jews ‘back’ to religion. My dad once made a pilgrimage to meet him at his headquarters in Brooklyn back in the late 1980s and was very proud to have shaken his hand. After that, he began to practice more, put on the phylacteries, and say the morning prayers daily.”
Kleinman added, “The Chabad people managed to bring back to religious practice thousands of Jews who were practically only nominally so. Unlike typical Orthodox Jews (the very religious ones), they have a very open attitude, accepting secular people, hippies, non-practicing people, and without judgment. ”
As with many other religious organizations, including the Catholic Church, the Chabad Lubavitch also had to face allegations of abuse within its community; that does not change the essence of this article as it tries to show a different side of President Milei. “Chabad” is an acronym for the Hebrew words Chochmah, Binah, Daas, meaning “wisdom,” “understanding,” and “knowledge.” The movement emphasizes intellectual engagement with Jewish teachings and the application of these teachings to everyday life. Milei is proof of Chabad’s global reach.
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Although Javier Milei is not a conservative in the traditional sense, some of his stances, such as being pro-life from conception till death, not buying into gender ideology, and refusing to follow cataclysmic environmental dogmas, tend to be similar to those defended by conservatives. His pro-life views earned him the support of many Catholics, who represent 60% of the Argentine population (less than 1% are Jewish).
Uruguay is another matter. It is the most secular country in the region. So when Milei focused most of his presentation on Verdi’s Nabucco and the story of Moses, he surprised his audience. Congressman Pablo Viana, who attended the event, applauded Milei for his courage in using religious themes to a mostly secular audience.
Milei went on to explain in detail the relevant part of Giuseppe Verdi’s life and how he came to compose Nabucco, Milei’s favorite opera. Nabucco presents a “parallel between the occupation of Israel by Babylon and the occupation of Italy by the Austro-Hungarians.” Milei shared his fascination for one of the characters, Zacharias, the main rabbi: His “message is impressive because he is the one who is constantly haranguing the people not to give up. And he does not give up, and does not give up, and does not give up. Zacharias’s message is very strong, asking the people to continue fighting so that freedom, somehow, would come.”
As for the eponymous hero of the opera, “Nabucco falls into a kind of heresy, where he demands that everyone bow down before him because he was not only the King of Babylon, the King of the Assyrians, but he was God, and then he is struck by lightning and left lying on the ground.” After he is freed by the people of Israel, the Hebrew slaves chant the “Va Pensiero,” and at the first showing, Milei explained, the audience “fully internalized what the ‘Va Pensiero’ was transmitting, and it was the hope of the Italians to be able to free themselves from the Austro-Hungarians.”
Those of us who were there knew that Milei regarded this cultural gem as a song of liberation: not of the Jews or the Italians but of the Argentines from the enslavement of the State. In Milei’s words: “It is a history linked to freedom, … the history of the people, who have given the greatest testimony of the fight for freedom, the most persecuted people in history, and who always managed to prevail.” Many powerful have tried to “destroy Israel, and they could not. It is incredible; more force from heaven is impossible.’’
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The last part of Milei’s speech in Uruguay was devoted to Moses. His story shows how difficult it is to fight for freedom. When the Pharaoh allowed the Hebrew people to leave, most preferred to stay. Why?
They preferred free fish. That is why there is a wonderful phrase by Milton Friedman, a Jew of Polish ancestry, which is on a wall in Chicago, that says: “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” because free lunch was free fish, free fish was slavery in Egypt. In other words, you had free fish, but in exchange for that, you lost freedom. That is, there is nothing that is free. Every time the State says it is going to give you something, it is taking away your freedom. That is why I am an anarcho-capitalist because I hate the State. After all, the State is a violent criminal association that lives off a coercive source of income, which is taxes. In fact, what is slavery? A 100% tax, which is not very different from what communism is.
It gives solace to Milei that Moses, the person he regards as the greatest temporal liberator, was also frequently criticized: “If Moses got up early, they said he was fighting with Zipporah, his wife; if he got up late, they said he was scolding; and if he got up on time, they said he got up on time because he had nothing to do.” Milei is often criticized for not accepting criticism. His reply? “The only thing I ask is that, when they criticize me, they do it with the truth, not with lies.” I have spoken with many close to Argentine power who describe an atmosphere near the president wherein “those from other parties are regarded as the adversaries; those from his party as the enemies.”
Moses’s followers doubted he could part the sea. Many doubted that Milei could part with significant areas of the State. Yet, since becoming president, Milei has cut several ministries and the federal workforce by 37,000. That is the equivalent of President Trump cutting the federal payroll by more than 250,000 in just one year.
During his speech in Uruguay, Milei also called for courage: If we embrace the values “of free enterprise capitalism, we will prosper, and we will be able to have a wonderful future. … But also understand that, even when miraculous things happen, there will be a part that does not want to, that is afraid. In other words, freedom also implies an act of courage, and that path is not easy because you will be criticized and betrayed. But the most important thing in life is to keep moving forward despite the blows thrown at you.”
And to the leaders he wished to inspire going forward, he said: “It is much better to cry because you tried and failed than to regret not having tried.”
