Rio de janeiro Brazil - The election of Javier Milei in Argentina marks a significant shift in the country's political and economic landscape, echoing a conservative wave seen in other nations around the globe. This phenomenon, fraught with complexities and potential impacts across various spheres, raises important questions about Argentina's future, its relationship with Brazil, and the realignment of power on the international stage.

Argentina under Milei: Between the Promise of Rupture and the Risk of Regression

Milei's victory, fueled by an anti-establishment discourse and promises of radical reforms, comes at a time of profound crisis. Rampant inflation, growing poverty, and distrust in institutions paved the way for a candidate who proposes dollarizing the economy and brutal cuts in public spending. Such measures, while seductive to part of the electorate, are not without severe consequences: loss of monetary sovereignty, collapse of public services, and increased social inequality.

But an even more alarming dimension is emerging: the systematic attack on the production of knowledge, especially in the areas of humanities, social sciences, and critical studies..

The Dismantling of Science and the Silencing of Difference

In a recent statement, a non-binary Argentinian professor, a member of a research group investigating post-human issues, the effects of climate change, and life in times of collapse, reported a direct attack by the Milei government:

The government spokesperson went on social media to attack a research project, saying it had no use for society. But this project is the result of serious work by a group of professors, researchers, and students who are thinking about urgent issues—like what it's like to live in a collapsing world. This is part of a campaign to devalue the humanities, stifle critical thinking, and silence difference. They want to force-feed us colonized, racist ideas that don't accept any diversity. We're being attacked for being professors, researchers, for being trans, Black, disabled, poor. It's a government that's hurting a lot of people.

This powerful testimony exposes the authoritarian project underway: This is not merely an economic dispute, but an attempt to erase bodies, knowledge, and epistemologies that challenge the dominant model.Milei's policies promote the active erasure of plurality, dissenting thought, and marginalized voices.

Psychoanalysis, Desire, and Conservative Silencing

The political climate doesn't only affect the economic sphere. There are psychological symptoms that deserve attention. One curious and revealing fact: the possible shift in leadership of the global ranking of pornography consumption, which historically had Brazil at the top. With the rise of the conservative right in Argentina and the hardening of discourses of moral repression, there are indications of a shift in the mechanisms of social sublimation. From a psychoanalytic perspective, pornography consumption can express anxieties, displacements of desire, and compensatory strategies in the face of social and political frustration.

The repression of desire — sexual, epistemic, affective — is not merely symbolic: This translates into an attempt to erase dissenting subjects from the public sphere.whether through budget cuts, censorship, withholding invitations to conferences, or the deliberate silencing of trans, Black, and Indigenous voices.

As denounced by the same Argentinian professor:

“They kill us in silence, in the denial of opportunity. That's where they kill us. They don't invite us to colloquiums, congresses, conferences. They silence Jário Carioca, ignore Nova Iguaçu, but bring people from Morocco to debate segregation in the Lacanian field. They don't want to listen to us. Because they're not used to those who say: this shit is wrong.”

Conservative Triumvirate: Argentina, USA, and Brazil

The convergence between Milei in Argentina, Bolsonaro in Brazil, and a possible return of Trump in the US constitutes a conservative triumvirate with serious global implications. Nationalism, racism, anti-scientific sentiment, and authoritarianism appear disguised as "economic freedom," while democratic structures are eroded from within.

The weakening of multilateral organizations, climate change denial, and attacks on diversity are intertwined in a global logic of resentment. The desire for control turns against those who think differently, love differently, and live outside the norm.

Between BRICS and Bullets: Contradictions and Geopolitical Reconfigurations

The BRICS meeting in Brazil exposes yet another tension: How can we maintain cooperation between countries with such different models? Argentina under Milei, although it flirted with joining the bloc under the previous government, now prioritizes relations with the US and rejects what it calls "21st-century socialism." This ambiguity reveals the instability of the current world order, where even strategic alliances are impacted by radical ideological decisions.

The scenario unfolding in Argentina under Milei is not isolated. It echoes in Brazil, the US, Hungary, and so many other contexts where difference is treated as a threat. But it is also strengthened by resistance.

As the Argentinian professor reminds us, Thinking today is an act of courage. Studying, teaching, existing with intellectual and gender autonomy, is a form of rebellion.

Against necropolitics and necrophilanthropy, we are left with the radical production of life—and of thought.