It may have been a book launch masquerading as a rock concert, or perhaps vice versa, but the event had the air of frenzied desperation that invariably accompanies an administration on the slide. On 6 October, in front of an audience of 15,000, the Argentinian president, Javier Milei, took to the stage as another of his various personae: this time that of ageing rockstar. Dressed in black with the requisite leather jacket, Milei opened his show by reworking the lyrics to La Renga’s classic ‘Panic Show’ for political effect: ‘Hello everyone, I am the lion… I am the king, and I will destroy you, the whole [political] caste is my appetite.’

The vocal lacked any force or colour – it was also out of tune – but the Argentinian president certainly knew how to play the part. There was a sense this was what Milei had been after all along: to front a rock band before an adoring home crowd. He employed adolescent sloganeering, beloved of the more political musician, between songs. ‘Are you listening, Kirchnerists? You may have won a round, but not the battle, let alone the war.’

The concert, uneasy in its mixture of rock and politics and not without catharsis for the beleaguered president, also sought to launch his 576-page book, The Construction of the Miracle (the use of the definite article before ‘Miracle’ reinforces Milei’s gospel). An anthology of speeches and ephemera, the book offers little for the reader already acquainted with the president’s previous work, much of which can be found on the government’s Casa Rosada website. The cover is a primer in kitsch – perhaps an Italian inheritance – with Milei brandishing a golden presidential chainsaw with the engraved legend, ‘The Forces of Heaven’, running along it. Both book and concert were an attempt to inject vitality into the president’s campaign for the midterm elections on 26 October.

The position Milei finds himself in economically and politically is not dissimilar from that of Argentinian presidents who have come before him. Last month, the ruling right-wing coalition suffered defeat in the local legislative elections in Buenos Aires province by 47 per cent to 34 per cent. Milei had tempted fate beforehand by taunting the opposition, the Peronist Fuerza Patria, with its imminent extermination: victory, he crowed, would ‘put the final nail in the coffin of Kirchnerism’. No stranger to a saloon-bar insult, Milei had repeated what he said last year though this time without the qualifier, ‘with Cristina [Kirchner] inside’.

While Milei has managed to slash red tape and bring inflation down from over 200 per cent to 32 per cent, the country still suffers from high poverty rates and low purchasing power. Inflation remains an Argentinian obsession, which is not surprising given that from 1944 to 2025, the country’s rate averaged 189 per cent annually. But for Milei to succeed in the Trumpian formulation of ‘making Argentina great again’, he needs a sweeping reform agenda that must also overcome a byzantine bureaucracy, an inefficient tax system, and a lack of investment in public infrastructure.

That Milei’s bombastic fiscal promises were unlikely to be kept was never the issue. It now seems that much of the disappointment in his administration, apart from the country being on the verge of recession, lies in the scandals and corruption that have encircled his presidency. Most recently, José Luis Espert, a political ally, is said to have received a $200,000 transfer from an alleged drug trafficker. Milei’s own sister, Karina, known as ‘el jefe’ and the power behind the throne, has been embroiled in a bribery scandal over kickbacks for pharmaceutical contracts. The scandal broke after Milei had vetoed increases in pension spending and disability benefits. And, early this year, there was Milei’s own involvement in the $LIBRA cryptocurrency scandal.

Milei’s dramatic rise to power came with a fixation in smashing Argentina’s political ‘caste’ system. ‘The caste is made up of thieving politicians,’ he liked to explain. ‘The caste is afraid,’ showed he was now coming for them. These words, however, have become Milei’s hostage to fortune. In his outbursts, all ire and sideburns, the incumbent president has come to resemble the 19th-century tyrannical caudillo (‘strongman’), Juan Manuel de Rosas, who also employed political polarisation (‘Death to the savage, disgusting, filthy Unitarians!’) to devastating effect. Despite seeing himself as an outsider and individualist, Milei is very much in the tradition of the Argentinian caudillo. For all his rhetoric about coming from the future, he is beginning to resemble a politician of the past.

In his 2021 presidential campaign, Milei made much of his self-conceived exceptionalism: ‘I am not a politician, I am an outsider, and I am getting involved to put an end to the political caste.’ The anti-establishment posturing, too often aggressive in tone, included a sweeping away of the status quo and the destruction of inflation. Props and costumes enabled the self-styled anarcho-capitalist to reinforce his belief system. In 2019, Milei had donned a black-and-gold costume at Buenos Aires Comic-Con to unveil his superhero alter-ego, ‘General AnCap’, to an unsuspecting world and ‘kick Keynesians and collectivists in the ass’.

Not content with one superhero, early in his presidency Milei later chose the Janus-like fictional character, ‘The Terminator’, both superhero and super-villain, and posted an image of himself as the fictional character with the legend ‘Casta a la vista, baby’. Perhaps this is a case of what is termed ‘enclothed cognition’, the influence of clothing on a person’s psychological state.

It should come as no surprise that this comic-book-like president likes popular culture as his reference points. He named his English mastiff Conan, after Schwarzenegger’s breakthrough film Conan the Barbarian. After the dog died, he was reported as having communed with it through a medium. Moreover, La Nacion reported that Milei and Conan had met 2,000 years before as gladiator and lion in Rome. For all his free-market certainty, the Argentinian president has always been susceptible to the mystical. Institutional mistrust, rather than distrust, and a life on the margins – like his US counterpart – has allowed the conspiracy theory to flourish.

Eccentric as these alter-ego choices may be, they contain a certain logic, especially for those acquainted with Argentinian letters. Milei can be seen as being in keeping with some of the country’s great classical heroes: Martín Fierro, a late 19th-century epic poem that also serves as the country’s shaper of identity, chronicles the story of a gaucho who, through misfortune, becomes an outlaw and fugitive. Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote extensively on gauchesque literature, called Fierro ‘the lone man fighting against the group’. Fierro epitomises the ‘gaucho malo’ (‘bad [or lawless] gaucho’) – other popular examples include Juan Moreira and Hormiga Negra – who as an individual fights against the state and its agencies.

In his 1946 essay, ‘Our Poor Individualism’, Borges sought to explain the Argentinian character through its relationship to the state: ‘Argentines, unlike North Americans and almost all Europeans, do not identify with the state. This may be attributed to the fact that, in this country, governments tend to be terrible, or to the general fact that the state is an inconceivable abstraction; the truth is that Argentines are individuals, not citizens.’ He signs off by addressing ‘the most urgent problem of our time’, which he sees as the intrusion of the state into the actions of the individual (vide Nazism and communism). In taking this anti-Keynesian position, Borges perhaps found the best justification of Argentinian individualism. It is a position with which Milei would hardly disagree, but would express more coarsely. He once acknowledged his ‘contempt’ for the state was ‘infinite’.

In the 47th president of the United States, Milei has found another superman to hero-worship. After years of what can only be termed as ‘benign neglect’, the US administration has come to Argentina’s rescue with a $20 billion swap-line. The lifeline, however, has come at a cost. Trump has made it clear that the US will not ‘waste [its] time’ with Argentina should Milei lose the elections. And in Milei, the US has a geopolitical ally that, according to the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, is ‘committed to getting China out of Argentina’. That OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, wants to establish a mega data centre in Patagonia may indicate where US future interests in the region lie.

Since Argentina’s return to democracy in 1983, the longest period of democratic stability in the country’s history, seven out of the ten presidencies have managed to complete their term. Three have resulted in resignation. How Milei will stay the course may be decided on Sunday. Failure in the midterms will make any radical economic reforms difficult to implement. Success, on the other hand, will beget its own set of complications. For all his posturing contra mundum, Javier Milei remains what he is: a very Argentinian president.