Godard penned a poem that stood as a genuine ode to Alfred Hitchcock: “If he was the only damned poet who tasted success, it is because he was the greatest creator of forms of the twentieth century, and because it is the forms that ultimately tell us what lies beneath things. Now, what is art if not that through which forms become style and what is style if not the man himself.” The reflection of the father of the nouvelle vague extends well beyond cinema and literature, especially in times when politics manufactures “narratives” and mirrors the melodrama’s tricks. Javier Milei, desperate to regain the momentum he lost, has renewed his campaign against “the idiots and underdeveloped champions of form” (sic) and has added a new insult toward journalists: “human excrement and bloody little shits,” with apologies for the bad taste. This kind of fecal epithet, repeated dozens of times and done so compulsively by the highest institutional authority, reveals a grave pathology. The forms of the presidency speak about the person who holds the Presidency of the Nation. For, as Godard argued, it is indeed the forms that tell us what lies at the core of things. Or, in the words of Victor Hugo, the author of Les Misérables: “The form is the substance that surfaces.” And this is a fetid, murky, abusive, and unsettling substratum. Retired Republicans who betrayed many of their convictions, who look like a cheering squad and accomplices and who now found the National Submission Party forgot that the fight against Kirchnerism was also a struggle over the forms. The mechanics of the republic and the rule of law are based precisely on those forms that they now scorn, and the Camporistas sought to sweep them away to establish with greater impunity a “hegemonic democracy” that would finally erase “bourgeois democracy.” The old republicans must remain silent today in the face of the verbal aberrations of a president filled with anger and rancor who organizes campaigns of hate, which is one of the era’s most monstrous metamorphoses and represents a profound political fraud. Under the pretext of wanting to “blind the change” when what they aim for are seats, businesses, and the comfort of a caste —Together for the Charge, as Milei sarcastically noted— they have come to relativize this machine-gun of fecal outbursts that has become the official language of the State: the President’s personality is thus, you must understand the aggressor and the end justifies the means. It is worthwhile to recall history: after unchecked and prolonged violent rhetoric, real violence inevitably arrives. Words turn into deeds. Moreover, how potent and persuasive are greed and power as inhibitors of shame. Do you not feel a twinge of shame being guided by an extreme figure with almost mystical impulses who claims to dictate, in a stark black-and-white way, where good and evil reside? Can a normal country be built with this deranged, hallucinatory anomaly? Can a yellow-dressed deputy laugh at a Peronist who believes in astrology, while the new political chief of the “republican” —let us not speak of his dead dogs— is convinced he embodies biblical mandates? The libertarians latch onto any misdeed or dirty operation of Kirchnerism to defend the havoc they commit “in self-defense,” as if a police officer justified trigger-happiness or death squads on the grounds that criminals are extremely dangerous. On the other hand, the Topo’s fecal rain that comes to Destroy the State does not fall predominantly on the Peronist opposition, but on the press and on anyone who dares to question the narrative of the Casa Rosada. The lie is what Javier Milei arbitrarily decrees to be a lie, and everyone must submit and say: “Yes, master.” Because the ruler is the owner of absolute truth and patrols faces and networks. These outbursts of autocracy do not worry the compliant Cambiemistas, who have proven incapable —lacking political talent— of producing in three years a credible and coherent option: today they feign dementia, hand over values and votes in exchange for a small place under the sun, and practice, at best, self-delusion. As when they persist in claiming that Milei is not a right-wing populist: this week they returned to that convenient denial. It was a true liberal, Professor Loris Zanatta, who recalled the canonical keys of Isaiah Berlin for spotting a populist of any ideology. Berlin said that a populist is anyone who presents themselves as anti-politics, a redeemer proposing to be reborn after purging collective sins, a restorer who refers to a golden age to return to, and above all, a messianic leader who pretends to incarnate the will of a good people — Argentines of integrity — and then stigmatizes and vilifies the other half of society. Binary thinking, distrust of the “institutions of the caste,” cult of personality, caciquismo with religious rhetoric. Let us also add, of course, that Milei calls himself a “paleo-libertarian” and most admires the founder of that ideological branch, Murray Rothbard, and that this obscurantist stated in his final political manifesto the need to embrace right-wing populism (sic). In a paragraph of that historical text, Rothbard literally asserted: “We must forge a coalition that creates a right-wing populist movement that will be, to a large extent, libertarian. To bypass the leaders of the media and political elites and reach directly the middle and working class to spread the ideas of liberty and the knowledge of how they have been oppressed. That requires an inspiring and charismatic political leadership.” Before proposing a program for right-wing populism, the ideologue insisted: “Any libertarian strategy should acknowledge that intellectuals and opinion-makers are part of the fundamental problem.” His manifesto targeted not only journalists and thinkers, but very especially authentic liberals and conservatives, for him: cowards and timorous. The warnings have been duly presented.
No, not all of the old republicans —a duty to the noble cause— have knelt before the eschatological monarch. Some attempt to politics, to set limits and to avoid the verticalism, and to warn about dangers not merely of the forms but of the substance: since when do they agree with dismantling the State as “the largest criminal organization in the world”? Will benefiting always and everywhere the wealthiest necessarily bring prosperity to all? Can the economy run without any intervention at all? This week, after punishing anyone who doubted the dogma, the government team announced accessible mortgage loans using ANSES funds and promoted a minimum wage of over a million pesos. “Directive” measures to somewhat revive this waning economy: the ruling bloc did what it once denounced and acknowledged what it had aggressively denied. It will not apologize, however, to any of those battered who urged actions of this kind. Let us also acknowledge that Patricia Bullrich, with courage and dignity seldom imitated, said that fintechs and banks should solve the defaulter problem because “that theft cannot be tolerated,” and called for refinancing plans, effectively contradicting the libertarian idea that one should be detached from the drama and that capital always had the right. The deflated economy and the need to revive it and address the defaulter issue, as many journalists noted today, covered in the president’s discursive excrement, were reasonable concerns and overdue tasks: perhaps thanks to those same criticisms once contested, today the administration can attempt to repair the political damage. In the 70s, the irreverent Satiricón magazine displayed on its cover a group of politicians; a sea of excrement reached their throats. The headline read: “Don’t make waves.” It remains good counsel.
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