Davos: Javier Milei Contra Wokeism

Source: FSSPX News

Argentine President Javier Milei during his speech at the Davos Forum

On Thursday, January 23, 2025, Argentine President Javier Milei gave an address at the Davos Forum that left most of the participants speechless. For half an hour, he engaged in a fierce and systematic criticism of wokeism, in particular accusing the Forum itself of having favored and encouraged it.

According to several journalists present, the tension was palpable when Javier Milei approached the microphone to speak in front of an audience of multinational bosses, bankers, billionaires, politicians, and the cream of the intelligentsia active around the world. The organization had announced around 3,000 guests.

The Argentine President's speech last year had already more or less stunned the audience. But this year, while waiting for Donald Trump's address via videoconference, many at the forum were beginning to see their star fade. He accused them of being the actors of Western decadence.

The one who has been nicknamed "the lion" because of his mane of hair, first congratulated himself on no longer being alone against "the absolute global hegemony of the left in politics, in educational institutions, in the media, in supranational organizations, or in forums such as Davos,” citing as "allies," Elon Musk, Giorgia Meloni, Victor Orban, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump.

His entire speech revolved around dismantling the “ideological edifice of unhealthy wokeness,” accusing “forums like this one that have been the protagonists and promoters of the sinister agenda of wokeness that is doing so much harm to the West.” Even if one may not agree with certain elements of his analysis, it remains truly relevant on many points.

A Historic Change

The Argentine president sees a “time in which the rules are rewritten” emerging because the formulas in place – which he accuses of being socialist – for decades are exhausted. But for that, it is necessary to get rid of “the mental virus of woke ideology,” which has “colonized the most important institutions in the world,” parties, states, global organizations, NGOs, universities, media.

Javier Milei believes that the West’s success is due to “a convergence of fundamental values, respect for life, liberty, and property, which made possible free trade, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and the other pillars of Western civilization.” But during the 20th century, these principles were betrayed by socialism.

Socialism used the power of the state to distribute the wealth created by capitalism. “Their justification was the sinister, unjust, and aberrant idea of ​​social justice,” he adds. At the heart of the system lies the postulate that equality before the law is not enough, because there are injustices that must be corrected, a goldmine for bureaucrats aspiring to omnipotence. 

The following analysis is well-seen: “From negative rights to life, liberty, and property, we have moved on to an infinite number of positive rights: education, then housing, and then to trivial things like access to the internet, televised football, theatre, beauty care, and a host of other desires transformed into fundamental human rights, rights that, of course, someone has to pay for. And which can only be guaranteed by the infinite expansion of the aberrant State.”

Wokeism and Its Repercussions

Then “the lion” gives his vision of wokeism: “A single-minded regime, supported by various institutions with the aim of criminalizing dissent, supporting feminism, diversity, inclusion, equality, immigration, abortion, environmentalism, gender ideology,… so many heads of the same creature whose aim is to justify the advancement of the state by the distortion of noble causes.”

Then he attacks these woke manifestations, starting with “radical feminism,” which “is a distortion of the concept of equality and, even in its most benevolent version, is redundant.” He attacks the term “femicide,” which causes an imbalance in the law.

Milei moves on to “sinister radical environmentalism and the banner of climate change.” He explains: “Preserving our planet for future generations is a matter of common sense—no one wants to live in a landfill.” But, he adds, “wokeism has evolved into a fanatical environmentalism where human beings are a cancer to be eliminated.”

Milei notes that “it is no coincidence that these same people are the main promoters of the bloody and murderous agenda of abortion, an agenda conceived on the Malthusian premise that overpopulation will destroy the earth,” a principle that has been adopted to the point that the population issue has become problematic.

Milei continues with the issue of gender: “From these forums, they promote the LGBT agenda, wanting to impose on us that women are men and men are women if that is how they perceive themselves,” citing some cases of aberrant or monstrous results of this ideology and adding that they “cause irreversible damage to healthy children.”

Milei points out that “if it happened that their family did not agree, there would always be state agents ready to intervene in the name of what they call the best interests of the child.” He concludes: “the scandalous experiments carried out in the name of this criminal ideology will be condemned and compared to those that took place during the darkest periods of our history.”

He goes on to vilify “the eternal victimization always ready to launch accusations of homophobia or transphobia and other inventions whose sole purpose is to try to silence those who denounce this scandal in which the national and international authorities are complicit.”

Still in the name of wokeism, “merit has been pushed aside by the doctrine of diversity, which implies a regression to the noble systems of yesteryear. Quotas are invented for all the minorities that politicians can imagine, which only harms the excellence of these institutions.”

Wokeism “has distorted the cause of immigration,” because “the West being the supposed the cause of all the evils of history, it must redeem itself by opening its borders to the entire world, which necessarily results in a reverse colonization, which is akin to collective suicide.”

Milei further accuses wokeism of seeking “to seize our future,” because “by occupying the chairs of the most prestigious universities in the world, it trains the elites of our countries to question and deny the culture, ideas, and values ​​that have made us great, thus further damaging our social fabric.”

He then targets his listeners: “All these aberrations… are, unfortunately, the beliefs that institutions like this one have promoted for forty years. No one here can claim to be innocent. For decades, they have venerated a sinister and murderous ideology as if it were a golden calf and have moved heaven and earth to impose it on humanity.”

Finally, Milei criticizes the modern vision of the party-state: “The functions of the state should be limited to the defense of the right to life, liberty, and property. Any other function that the state would arrogate to itself would be to the detriment of its fundamental mission and would inexorably lead to the omnipresent Leviathan from which we all suffer today.” He ends with a call to all world leaders to get out of the scenario of the last forty years.

Once again, some elements of this discourse can be contested, but the general vision of wokeism and its profound influence on states, international bodies, and culture cannot be denied.