The Ideology Behind Trump’s Favorite President
The Ideology Behind Trump’s Favorite President
Following the teachings of Murray Rothbard, Javier Milei wants to dismantle the state while also using it to consolidate his power.
Shortly after Donald Trump was elected in November 2024, he placed a call to Argentina’s Javier Milei. “You are my favorite president,” Trump told Milei. “The end.” The two had met briefly at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last February, where Milei revealed he was a Trump fan. Milei uses the chainsaw as a symbol to indicate his approach to cutting the size of the Argentine state. This approach has been a reference for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE); Musk has consulted with Milei’s specially appointed Minister of Deregulation, and, like Milei, he plans a 30 percent reduction in the U.S. federal budget.
Milei is a neoliberal of the Austrian school—a believer that the private market offers true freedom, while the state offers only repression. He is a particular admirer of Murray Rothbard, the Ludwig von Mises disciple and once-fringe libertarian whose thinking has become increasingly influential on the right. One of Milei’s five cloned dogs is named Murray. “We are fulfilling [Murray] Rothbard’s dream,” Milei announced in April 2024, while speaking about deficit reduction at a dinner hosted by the Fundación Libertad in Buenos Aires.
Rothbard, as Melinda Cooper and John Ganz have argued, helps bridge the gap between the libertarian and authoritarian elements of the contemporary right. Back in 1992, he prefigured the Trumpist rhetorical strategy:
The reality of the current system is that it constitutes an unholy alliance of “corporate liberal” Big Business and media elites, who, through big government, have privileged and caused to rise up a parasitic Underclass, who, among them all, are looting and oppressing the bulk of the middle and working classes in America. Therefore, the proper strategy of libertarians and paleos is a strategy of “right-wing populism,” that is: to expose and denounce this unholy alliance, and to call for getting this preppie-underclass-liberal media alliance off the backs of the rest of us.
Rothbard remains a fringe figure in the United States, but one linked to a minority current in a country where distrust of the state has been a consistent theme. In many ways, his ideas seem more out of place in Argentina. Though Argentina also has a federal system, there is no culture of states’ rights, nor are there the radical religious groups or militias that consider the central government the source of all evil. When Milei began to publicly preach the virtues of an anarcho-capitalist utopia, he appeared as a solitary prophet.
But some young post-adolescents began to be attracted to Milei’s rhetoric and foul language. These young people started to create WhatsApp groups to take part in events organized by Milei—including public classes on Austrian economics in city squares, book presentations, and plays—and to respond to Milei’s television appearances on social networks. In 2019, I conducted a series of interviews with these young libertarians. One of them (who had an image of Trump on his phone’s home screen) told me that Rothbard was the theoretical inspiration of the Argentine libertarian movement. He and his companions (more men than women, at least then) were reading the New York theorist, several of whose texts were being published in Spanish for the first time.
Rothbard’s ideas may seem like an unstable philosophy for a president, given that he seeks to abolish state authority. And Milei doesn’t shy away from this position. “I am a mole who came to destroy the state from within,” he repeats. But Rothbard’s work also provides a basis for Milei’s alliances with other reactionary groups—and the convergence between libertarians and far-right groups taking place in a number of countries. Milei really wants to abolish the state, but he also uses it to consolidate his power.
Born in 1926 in the Bronx, Rothbard came from a family of Russian and Polish Jews. Although many members and acquaintances of his family belonged to the Communist Party, his father had remained closer to the right. Rothbard first developed anti-statist feelings during his time in public school—“the most unhappy period of my life.” In the 1950s, he earned a doctorate in economics from Columbia University. Rothbard also felt close from a young age to the old right, rooted in an interpretation of the ideas of Thomas Jefferson: distrust of the central government, isolationism, and pacifism. Libertarianism led Rothbard—who was one of the founders of the Libertarian Party in 1971—to common action with the left in various areas, especially against the Vietnam War.
Later in life, Rothbard grew critical of the marginality of the Libertarian Party and developed an agenda he described as “paleolibertarian.” He reconnected with reactionary positions that he had never in fact abandoned and advocated “right-wing populism” as a political strategy.
Lew H. Rockwell Jr., a disciple of Rothbard, wrote a manifesto titled “The Case for Paleo-Libertarianism” in 1990. The text was full of contempt for the drift of the Libertarian Party toward countercultural positions on drugs and sex work. “Conservatives have always argued that political freedom is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the good society,” he wrote,
and they’re right. Neither is it sufficient for the free society. We also need social institutions and standards that encourage public virtue, and protect the individual from the State. Unfortunately, many libertarians—especially those in the Libertarian Party—see freedom as necessary and sufficient for all purposes. Worse, they equate freedom from State oppression with freedom from cultural norms, religion, bourgeois morality, and social authority.
Rockwell later added that the party “may never have gotten 1% in a national election, but it has smeared the most glorious political idea in human history with libertine muck.” Paleolibertarians, by contrast, believed that one must not confuse “natural authority” (which arises from “voluntary” social structures like families, businesses, and churches) with the authority imposed by the state. From their perspective, the Libertarian Party had transformed into a group of anti-authority hippies isolated from the American people and their beliefs.
When it came to civil rights, the paleos rejected them outright. “State-enforced segregation, which also violated property rights, was wrong,” Rockwell wrote, “but so is State-enforced integration.” For Rockwell, forced segregation was not wrong in itself, but because it was a state imposition; communities, however, were free to make their own rules. The same went for restrictions favored by others on the right, like anti-abortion laws. These types of positions allowed libertarians to form alliances with various sectors on the right, from fundamentalist Christians to the Ku Klux Klan, in the name of freedom, autonomy, and the rejection of federal power.
Although paleolibertarianism did not prosper as a political movement in the strict sense, Rothbard accurately perceived the crisis brewing in traditional conservatism and the rebellion gathering at the base of the Republican Party. These energies eventually produced the Tea Party and then Trumpism, which took on a number of elements of the paleo program.
Milei, who trained as an economist at the University of Belgrano, was converted to the Austrian school of economics around 2013, after reading Rothbard’s “Monopoly and Competition”—a text that made him revise all his previous convictions. After this point, Milei began to appear on television programs, gaining popularity for his eccentric performances, which would veer from Austrian economics to tantric sex. He grew adept at generating attention through controversy, a talent he put in service of his new cause: the anarcho-capitalism professed by Rothbard. He would call Keynes’s The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money “general garbage,” and make declarations like, “between the mafia and the state, I prefer the mafia,” because “the mafia has morals, the mafia fulfills, the mafia doesn’t lie, the mafia competes.” He defined himself, in language incomprehensible outside certain niches, as “minarchist in static terms and ANCAP [anarcho-capitalist] in dynamic terms.” In other words: the minimum program is minarchism, the minimum state; the maximum program is its abolition.
As a public figure, Milei made an enemy not just of the eclectically center left-wing Peronist party but also the center-right party of then-President Mauricio Macri. To Milei, the center-right party represented a “yellow socialism.” In El consultorio de Milei—a ramshackle 2019 theatrical work in which Milei delivers monologues on economics—Milei attacked the moderate wing of Macri’s administration as the enemy of freedom, while the public insulted his ministers. The work ended with Milei crudely destroying a prop Central Bank with a baseball bat.
Milei saw himself as engaged in a cultural battle for a country that he believed was dominated by leftists. He combined Rothbard’s ideas with the epic vision of capitalism found in the novels of Ayn Rand, all seasoned with the post-democratic sensibilities germinating in Silicon Valley. In his earlier TV appearances, the “economist with weird hair” (as the newspaper Clarín called him) dodged direct political questions, taking shelter in the notion that he only knew about economics. As he began to move from a cultural battle to a political-electoral one, he sought answers in the ideas of the alt-right. Milei shaped an Argentine version of MAGA ideology—the local translation of a more global zeitgeist—and made common cause with other reactionary forces, united in their shared contempt for “progressivism.”
Milei’s intellectual consigliere is the far-right writer Agustín Laje, who provides readymade arguments for the “anti-woke” battle. Laje, who is popular in right-wing networks throughout Latin America, discovered Rothbard when asked by the Unión publishing house to write the prologue to a 2019 Spanish translation of Rothbard’s Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature. In it, Laje vindicates the “right-wing Rothbard,” who “foresees the cultural struggles that we endure and resist today.” Rothbard is, according to Laje, a breath of fresh air in the face of so much political correctness. He provided justification for the central idea that libertarianism “not only has to recognize existing inequality; it has to defend that if that inequality is the result of free and voluntary interactions, it must endure over time.”
Prior to Milei’s presidential campaign, the name Murray Rothbard was unknown to the public. But a number of controversies have brought him to public consciousness. At one event on the campaign trail, a journalist asked Milei about Rothbard’s defense of markets in children. Milei responded that it was “not the time” for that discussion, because “society is not ready.” Patricia Bullrich, the rival candidate from the more traditional right-wing coalition (who now serves as Milei’s security minister), tried to use Milei’s affinity for Rothbard to disqualify him, saying Milei wants “a society where you can let your children starve to death.” But for many of the voters who launched Milei into office, fed up with years of devastating inflation overseen by establishment parties, the provocation was the point.
During an interview on the campaign trail, he was asked a simple question: “Do you believe in democracy?” Milei countered: “Do you know Arrow’s paradox?” He was appealing to a model made by an American economist on inconsistencies between individual and social preferences to express his objections to liberal democracy. But Arrow’s paradox has little to do with Milei’s distaste for democracy. Liberal democracy requires parties, and parliamentary politics, which are interdependent with the state—the “pedophile in the kindergarten,” as he once defined it. Milei also despises democratic deliberation as a waste of time and parliamentary deliberation as an expression of the politicking of the political caste.
In his disillusionment with democracy, Milei resembles many of the libertarians who swarm around Silicon Valley, like Peter Thiel, who said that he “no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible.” (Thiel visited Milei in Argentina last May.) There is also the obvious affinity with Elon Musk, Thiel’s former partner. Milei has paid homage to him on a number of occasions; at the most recent CPAC, Musk wielded a chainsaw given to him by Milei. For these libertarians, freedom is compatible with an authoritarian regime like the one proposed by neo-reactionary Curtis Yarvin, who has expressed that the United States “must lose its phobia of dictators” and to whom radicalized sectors of the Republican Party now listen attentively.
In the government, Milei has had to deal with the absence of Rothbardian cadres. As a result, he has had to appoint former officials from Macri’s government and the administration of Carlos Menem (the president in the 1990s who symbolized the neoliberalism of that era). Even so, the governmental dynamics are far from continuous with the past. The unusually minoritarian character of his administration (his party, La Libertad Avanza, is new and has little representation in Congress) has reinforced his right-wing populist discourse, in the form of anti-parliamentarianism and a direct rhetorical relationship with “the people.” Milei has aroused a growing cult of personality among his followers. They mix old forms of exaltation with new technologies (like the AI-constructed memes where he appears as a lion) and languages (he is often compared to a comic book superhero).
Milei boasts of his global influence. He loves attending the international summits of the far right. At the same time, he seems bored by day-to-day administration. He delegates much of his job to trusted officials, including his sister Karina Milei, known as “The Boss,” and his advisor Santiago Caputo; management, negotiation, and administration would attenuate his utopian perspective. Meanwhile, at the international events, he can deploy his maximalist discourse and messianic vision of politics (he has compared himself to Moses)—no longer a mere president but a “world leader of freedom.”
Paleolibertarianism allows for broader alliances with far-right groups. But it also sets limits that Milei has transgressed. Rothbard was always anti-militarist, since the armed forces are the heart of the state. Milei, however, supports authoritarian governments abroad, such as those of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and seeks to reinforce the military and intelligence apparatus in Argentina. (He is also a staunch ally of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu, despite Rothbard’s comments on the “uniquely pernicious” nature of the Zionist project.)
Because there are so few true paleolibertarian believers in Argentina, Milei’s adherence to Rothbard is only shared by a handful of militants in government. The effect has been a duality between a hydroponic anarcho-capitalism without real roots in society (or the state) and an authoritarian neoliberalism that mobilizes anti-progressive perspectives on the cultural terrain.
Nevertheless, Milei has essentially retained the support of those who voted for him—approximately half of the electorate—because the “shock treatment” he has applied has been successful in curbing inflation. Milei pushed through a series of spending cuts—especially in public works—and has stifled universities with his warnings about “cultural Marxism,” but he has avoided cutting social assistance for fear of causing unrest. (The second Trump administration and DOGE inherited very different conditions, and voters in the United States might not respond the same way to shock treatment applied to a relatively healthy patient.)
Perhaps that will not last. Rothbard inveighed endlessly against the power of central banks and “fiat currency.” But if Rothbard preferred gold, his descendants today favor cryptocurrency. Trump made billions from a useless memecoin as he was taking office, which has since lost much of its value. In February 2025, Milei endorsed a different memecoin called $LIBRA from his personal account on X. As fears grew that the coin would engage in a “rug pull”—destroying its value while enriching its creator—he deleted the post. The coin’s creator has claimed he controls Milei, texting: “I send $$ to his sister and he signs whatever I say and does what I want.” The boundaries of the scandal are expanding quickly in Argentina. His fate may show that extremism, whatever its momentary appeal, exacts a heavy cost in the end. The rug pull is on all of us.
Translated by Patrick Iber.
Pablo Stefanoni is a journalist and historian. He is the author of ¿La rebeldía se volvió de derecha? And the editor-in-chief of the journal Nueva Sociedad.
