The Peronist Lion — Milei, Political Language, and the Illiberal Facade of Peronism

"There is a real world that exists independently of language and our beliefs, but much of that world—the social world—is created by us for our purposes."

John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, Free Press, 1995.

Searle allows us to begin with an elementary yet decisive distinction: not all uses of language are limited to describing states of affairs. Under appropriate institutional conditions, certain utterances modify the status of what they name. A signature can count as an obligation; an investiture, as authority; a declaration, as a legal act; an accusation, as a public imputation. In these cases, language does not merely function as representation. It functions as an act. It does not simply inform that something is a certain way; it contributes to making something count socially in a certain way.

Politics operates in this zone, for its words are not mere labels affixed to a reality already fully individuated. They intervene in the very individuation of the political object and determine whether a withheld transfer is understood as fiscal discipline or federal aggression; whether a journalistic investigation is treated as public oversight or an operation; whether negotiations with traditional leaders are seen as institutional pragmatism or the incorporation of what one claimed to combat; whether a protest is read as a legitimate claim or as the defense of privileges. In Russellian terms, what does not necessarily change is the set of atomic facts—who spoke, what was said, what institutional act occurred, what resource was withheld, what vote was cast. What changes is the description under which these facts enter the public sphere. And changing the description is equivalent to altering the inferential space—what follows from these facts, what responsibilities they activate, what responses they authorize, and what kind of subject is constituted by them.

Javier Milei’s language must be analyzed at this level. It is not merely an expressive vehicle for an economic program, since it is a mechanism for assigning status. Its core terms do not merely describe actors; they fix positions. “Caste,” “operator,” “feud,” “fiscal degenerate,” “decent people,” “popular mandate,” and “freedom” do not function as neutral terms. Once an actor is classified by them, their public intervention is situated within a pre-ordered inferential field. If someone counts as an operator, their question ceases to be primarily a question. If someone counts as feudal, their claim ceases to be primarily a federal claim. If someone counts as part of the caste, their objection ceases to be primarily an objection. In all such cases, the speaker’s status filters the content of what is said.

The pattern can be expressed in a simple formula. In a deliberative practice, if an agent xxx asserts a proposition ppp, the evaluation falls, at least in principle, on ppp (its truth, consistency, reasonableness, justice, institutional adequacy). In contrast, in a classificatory practice, the assertion of ppp is used to classify xxx, and that classification conditions the reception of ppp. One does not move from xxx and ppp to the evaluation of ppp, but from xxx and ppp to the classification of xxx, and from there to a degraded evaluation of ppp.

Deliberative model: (x,p) → Eval(p)

Classificatory model: (x,p) → Class(x) → Eval(p│Class(x))

The difference is structural. In the first model, disagreement retains a rational form: a proposition is formulated and remains available for evaluation by reasons. In the second, disagreement takes on a diagnostic form, since the proposition functions as an indicator of the attributed position of the speaker. Criticism ceases to appear primarily as a claim to validity and instead is treated as evidence of belonging. The question shifts from what reasons justify (p)? to what kind of subject is revealed by the affirmation of (p)? Rawls allows us to articulate the political relevance of this difference. Liberalism is not simply about preferring competitive markets, private property, or reduced public spending. These may belong to a liberal economic doctrine, but they do not suffice for a liberal conception of power. For Rawls, the exercise of authority in a constitutional society must be justifiable to citizens conceived as free and equal, and this requirement presupposes that disagreement not be treated in advance as a moral pathology of the speaker. It demands impersonal rules, limits on the executive, the legitimacy of the opposition, institutional stability, and a minimal separation between government, faction, and people.

By this standard, Milei-ism is liberal only at the economic register. Its economic ontology presupposes individuals: units of choice, calculation, risk, and responsibility. Its political ontology, however, presupposes positions of belonging—ally, convert, obstructer, traitor, enemy. In the first case, the agent is defined by their capacity for choice; in the second, by their relationship to leadership. The incompatibility is not rhetorical but structural, since the market demands individuals, while Milei-ist power demands its own people. Habermas allows us to frame the problem as a transformation of the regime of validity.

In a democratic public sphere, a statement (p) must be able to present itself as a claim to validity—something susceptible to acceptance, rejection, or revision for reasons. In contrast, in Milei-ist semantics, the evaluation of (p) is mediated by the prior classification of the speaker. The consequence is a loss of propositional autonomy. The statement is not eliminated, but it ceases to be the primary object of evaluation and instead functions as evidence of the political class attributed to the speaker. Thus, criticism no longer appears first and foremost as public reason, but as a symptom of belonging. The procedure reduces the cost of response, since degrading (x) allows one to avoid a full refutation of (p).

This structure is not accidental. Milei-ism reduces the deliberative status of its institutional counterparts. Actors who, in a constitutional grammar, should count as interlocutors endowed with their own competencies (opposition, Congress, provinces, press, universities) are redescribed within a grammar of obstacles. The opposition shifts from legitimate adversary to moral residue; Congress, from autonomous power to friction against the mandate; the provinces, from federal units to objects of fiscal discipline; criticism, from public oversight to interference. The common effect is the same: the actors called to limit, control, or dispute the executive are redescribed so that their institutional function is degraded before political confrontation even begins.

This operation allows us to distinguish two senses of liberalism. Economic liberalism is compatible with a decisionist executive: it can defend markets, property, deregulation, and fiscal discipline without necessarily committing to a restrictive theory of power. Political liberalism, however, requires that the conditions of legitimacy not depend on the contingent relationship between actors and the government. This implies at least four constraints: that institutions retain authority even when they limit the government; that the adversary retain the status of interlocutor even when politically undesirable; that federalism function as a rule and not as a reward; and that terms such as “freedom,” “republic,” or “mandate” not be semantically administered by the executive. Under these conditions, Milei-ism presents a conceptual asymmetry: it has a liberal vocabulary to justify its economic program, but not a liberal grammar to organize power.

The consequence is a dissociation between justificatory semantics and institutional practice. At the semantic level, Milei-ism invokes freedom, market, property, and the individual. At the pragmatic-institutional level, it classifies actors by alignment, redescribes controls as obstructions, and converts certain disagreements into symptoms of belonging. This dissociation allows us to formulate the central thesis. Milei is Menemist in economic content, Kirchnerist in discursive practice, and Peronist in political form. This is not a doctrinal identity, but a functional differentiation across levels.

The Menemist component resides in economic content. The Milei program belongs to the family of 1990s market reforms, defined by privatization, openness, deregulation, fiscal discipline, shock modernization, and a conception of the state as a source of distortion. But Menemism was not liberalism external to Peronism. It was a Peronist realization of a market program. Its historical importance lies in having shown that the Peronist form of power could accommodate privatizations, openness, and deregulation without abandoning personal leadership, verticalism, doctrinal pragmatism, territorial negotiation, and plebiscitary legitimacy. Consequently, the Menemist component of Milei-ism does not place it outside Peronism. It links it to one of its internal variants.

The point has a precise logical form. If Kirchnerism is a historical subclass of Peronism, non-membership in Kirchnerism does not imply non-membership in Peronism. The inference anti-Kirchnerism, therefore anti-Peronism, is invalid. It would only be valid if Kirchnerism and Peronism were coextensive. But they are not. Peronism admits non-Kirchnerist variants, including Menemism. Therefore, an economic program of Menemist matrix does not prove exteriority with respect to Peronism; rather, it proves inscription within one of its internal variants. The Milei self-description exploits this ambiguity. It presents its opposition to Kirchnerism as if it were a rupture with Peronism as such, but the negation of one modality does not equate to the negation of the genus. Milei may not be Kirchnerist and, at the same time, reactivate a Peronist form of market economy, governability, and leadership.

Kirchnerism ⊂ Peronism

Milei ∉ Kirchnerism ⇏ Milei ∉ Peronism

Milei’s self-description depends on an ambiguity between anti-Kirchnerism and anti-Peronism. It presents the negation of Kirchnerism as the negation of Peronism, even though that inference does not hold. The Milei economy refers to Menemist Peronism; its governability incorporates figures and names from Peronism; its authority structure preserves formal traits of the Peronist tradition. The presence of Martín Menem as president of the Chamber of Deputies and Daniel Scioli in the executive is not a peripheral datum, since it functions as institutional evidence against the hypothesis of a strong anti-Peronist exteriority.

The Kirchnerist component of Milei-ism does not belong to the doctrinal plane, but to the pragmatic one. There is no identity of ends, only partial identity of operation. In both cases, disagreement is processed through a redescriptive function: an intervention (p), formulated by an agent (x), is not primarily evaluated by its propositional content, but by the political class attributed to (x). The statement operates as an index of belonging. The difference between Kirchnerism and Milei-ism is, at this point, semantic, since continuity is pragmatic. Kirchnerism could redescribe certain criticisms as expressions of corporations, concentrated powers, destituent media, or anti-popular positions. Milei-ism can redescribe analogous criticisms as defenses of the caste, media operations, provincial feudalism, sectoral privilege, or sabotage of the popular mandate. The terms change. The processing rule remains.

The structure can be formulated generally. In a deliberative model, (x) asserts (p), and (p) remains available for public evaluation. In a classificatory model, (x) asserts (p), (x) is subsumed under a class (K), and the evaluation of (p) is conditioned by (K). Criticism ceases to function primarily as a claim to validity and instead functions as evidence of belonging. Disagreement shifts from the space of reasons to the space of identities. At the formal level, Milei-ism reproduces a Peronist structure of power. The assertion does not imply doctrinal continuity with Justicialism nor adherence to redistributive politics. It designates a form of political individuation. The relevant unit is not the citizen under impersonal rules, but the subject defined by their relationship to leadership. The minimal structure is triadic: leadership, one’s own people, and internal enemy.

Peronism, in this formal sense, is not defined by a particular economy. It can accommodate statist, privatizing, distributive, adjustmentist, national-popular, or pro-market programs. What persists is a logic of identification in which the leader presents themselves as the privileged interpreter of a popular will; their own as the authentic people; their adversaries as obstacles to the realization of that will. Milei-ism preserves this form under a libertarian semantics. The incompatibility with political liberalism appears at this point. A liberal institutionalism does not deny the existence of majorities, leadership, or conflict. It denies that a majority can appropriate the total moral authority of the people, that the leader can monopolize the interpretation of public legitimacy, and that the opposition can be degraded to a foreign body. The Peronist form of power tends to collapse these distinctions. Milei-ism does not restore them; it reinscribes them under a different vocabulary.

Federalism confirms the same structure. Within a liberal-institutional framework, federalism functions as an impersonal rule for the distribution of competencies, resources, and limits. In Milei-ism, its application is conditioned by the political relationship of the provinces to the executive. The aligned province may count as responsible; the resistant province may count as feudal. The claim for resources may count as a federal demand or as privilege depending on its position in the conflict. The rule does not disappear, but loses autonomy in relation to leadership.

Continuity with Kirchnerism is not in the economic instrument, but in the structure of centralization. Kirchnerism used selective resource expansion as a mechanism of territorial discipline. Milei-ism uses fiscal restriction. The difference in economic sign is evident. The formal similarity is also clear: the national executive retains the position of the central distributor of rewards, punishments, and legitimacy. The provinces do not appear primarily as federal units, but as variables of behavior toward the center. The category “caste” operates under the same logic. It has no stable conditions of application. If it did, many allies, officials, and recycled figures from the ruling party would fall within its extension. Its functioning is relational. Traditional politics counts as caste when it resists the project; it may count as experience, governability, or pragmatism when it integrates into it. Belonging to the class does not depend solely on the agent’s historical properties, but on their current position in relation to leadership. Obedience modifies status.

Contradiction is not eliminated, but managed. Discourse preserves its core terms through flexible rules of redesignation. If a traditional actor joins the ruling party, their status may be revised. If a province limits the executive, federalism may be reinterpreted as feudalism. If an institution exercises oversight, oversight may be reinterpreted as obstruction. If criticism is inconvenient, criticism may be reinterpreted as an operation. The stability of the vocabulary depends on the variability of its applications. The affective dimension also operates within this structure. Milei-ism does not merely express affects; it assigns them epistemic and moral functions. Anger counts as lucidity, verbal violence as sincerity, cruelty as realism. Excess counts as authenticity. Punishment counts as reparation. The general form is again classificatory: an affective state (a) counts as a political virtue (v) under the discursive context (C).

The problem is not the presence of affects in politics. The problem arises when affective intensity substitutes for justification. In that case, the public force of a statement does not depend primarily on its grounds, but on its capacity to express a shared discharge. Verbal violence counts as authenticity; punishment, as reparation; cruelty, as realism; excess, as proof of exteriority with respect to conventional political language. Emotion ceases to accompany the argument and begins to occupy its functional place. At that point, political language ceases to organize reasons and starts to organize belongings, and it does not merely describe a conflict; it distributes affective positions within it. It identifies the guilty, the obstacle, the traitor, and the savior. It defines what should outrage, what should be tolerated, what should be punished, and what can be excused. Leadership does not merely propose arguments; it authorizes emotions and assigns them direction. Affect becomes grammar.

Thus formulated, the thesis does not depend on superficial analogies. It holds that Milei-ism is Kirchnerist in its pragmatics because it processes disagreement as a symptom of belonging. It is Peronist in form because it organizes power through leadership, one’s own people, and an internal enemy. And it is Menemist in economic content because its program belongs to the pro-market variant of historical Peronism. The liberal semantics does not cancel these levels; it overlays them.

The conclusion is functional, not doctrinal. Milei-ism combines economic liberalism, Menemist content, Kirchnerist pragmatics, and Peronist form of power. Its inconsistency does not lie in an isolated contradiction, but in the coexistence of two registers. In the economic register, it presupposes autonomous individuals. In the political register, it produces subjects defined by alignment. It predicates freedom as a property of the individual, but administers legitimacy as a function of belonging. The result is a form of power that does not coincide with its liberal self-description. Milei invokes individuals, but produces belongings. He invokes freedom, but uses it as a field marker. He invokes impersonal rules, but classifies actors by their relationship to the executive. He invokes federalism, but disciplines provinces from the center. He invokes anti-caste, but incorporates traditional politics when it serves the project. He invokes anti-Peronism, but governs with a recognizable combination of Peronist materials.

Liberal criticism must not be confused with a defense of the status quo. It is possible to argue that the Argentine state is inefficient, that public spending has been used in clientelist ways, that inflation has destroyed daily life, that the economy needs more stable rules, and that Kirchnerism degraded institutions. But from these premises it does not follow that any pro-market government is liberal in the political sense. Liberalism is not a theory of the chainsaw. It is a theory of limits. If economic freedom is combined with plebiscitary leadership, moral classification of the adversary, and weakening of legitimate disagreement, the result is not political liberalism. It is a market under populist guise. That is why “The Peronist Lion” should not be read as an insult. It is a conceptual hypothesis. Milei is not Peronist by doctrine; he is by form. He is not Kirchnerist by ends; he is by praxis. He is not Menemist by aesthetics; he is by program. The combination can be expressed thus:

Milei = Le + M + Kp + Pf

The final point is this: Milei does not constitute a liberal exit from Peronism. He constitutes a libertarian translation of available Peronist forms. His economy looks to Menem; his treatment of the adversary looks to Kirchnerism; his authority structure looks to Peronism as a form of leadership. Liberalism provides the vocabulary of the market and the individual, but does not fully organize political practice. Where political liberalism should appear—impersonal rules, legitimate adversary, limits on power, stable federalism, public justification—there reappears the old Argentine matrix of leader, one’s own people, and internal enemy. The Peronist Lion designates this anomaly: a government that preaches free individuals in economics but produces aligned subjects in politics; that invokes freedom as a principle but administers it as belonging; that declares itself anti-Peronist but can only become governable through Peronist materials.