Agustín Laje, Milei's advisor and global propagandist for the "new right."

– I've been working on The Cultural Battle since 2018. Two years earlier, I had published The Black Book of the New Left with Nicolás Márquez, Javier Milei's biographer. Later, I realized that it was necessary to deepen the relationship between culture and politics , and even more so, with politics in partisan terms. I wrote The Cultural Battle slowly, because it was combined with lecture tours in different countries. It only saw the light of day in 2022; it was presented by Milei at the Book Fair that year. The Battle aims to organize a cultural strategy for what I call the "new right," a term that wasn't fashionable; no one was using it in any context before Milei's rise and Donald Trump's return to the White House... And Globalism will be published in 2024.

–"Globalism" contains a crushing critique of the international system, starting with the United Nations.

–Yes, it deals with the advance, in terms of the accumulation of power, of supranational organizations, and how this phenomenon should be closely monitored by libertarian sectors that have historically been concerned with controlling and diminishing state authority. We know that new power structures have been forming above the state apparatus for some time now.

–How much does your Catholic faith influence your political views? In fact, your YouTube followers' comments address you as if you were a preacher of the "new right."

–Well, the idea of evangelizing is also associated with that of being a political activist. It's part of the same theological-political language. The linguistic and semantic transfers from religious discourse to political discourse in the course of modern secularization are very interesting. Getting to your question, I was estranged from my faith for several years, even as I just mentioned The Black Book of the New Left. When we published it with Márquez, we had no religious influence, at least not consciously. Over the years, I returned to the Catholic Church. Today I try to practice my faith as much as possible, going to Mass on Sundays and confessing once a year. But my political thinking bears no relation to my beliefs. You don't find a single biblical citation in my writings.

–However, your positions on family, birth, and abortion are common to Church doctrine. At times, they seem like religious dogma applied to politics.

–They would be religious texts if their foundation were religious, but that's not the case. Besides, to be against abortion, you don't need to believe in God. I'm not an activist against masturbation, for example. You could say, "Well, masturbation is sinful according to the Catholic Church too. Why haven't you written a book against masturbation?" Well, because I don't find a violation of fundamental rights in masturbation. On the other hand, I do see a violation in abortion , the most important of all: it affects the organic condition of existence, that is, the right to live. It's quite clear that I'm not a religious crusade. I don't work on the notion of sin, but rather on a political-legal notion. I insist, I give lectures in secular settings. But notice that every time I'm invited by a church, I also go. And I'm invited to evangelical churches much more than to Catholic ones, the faith I profess. But because of the structure of the church, the type of organization, and also the type of leadership, I haven't received any invitations there.

–Do you identify with the views of advisor Steve Bannon or Elon Musk, as a "new right" proposal?

–Look, I don't identify with them, not because I don't agree ideologically, but because my role is different: writing books. Musk is an entrepreneur and a technologist. Bannon is a campaign advisor; I'm not a strategist but a political scientist. And among the wide range of possible activities, I dedicate myself to political theory and philosophy.

–What's your assessment of the president's speech at the Davos Forum today? It was said that you were the author.

–No, it was written by someone else, but I don't know who. What amused me was the level of certainty with which the media claimed I had written it. If I write a speech, you'll realize why I appeal to authors. What's more, if I had written the Davos speech, I would have reinforced the issue of pedophilia (the controversy arose because Milei associated this crime with homosexuality), referring to the enormous number of authors who have been key to the development of gender theory and who sought to relativize the harm and horror of pedophilia.

–Which essayists do you accuse of this relativization?

–I would have mentioned the Canadian radical activist Shulamith Firestone, the French philosopher Michel Foucault, of course, Simone de Beauvoir, and Judith Butler (an American feminist and professor). A number of very important authors in gender theory say, in one way or another, that the relationship between adults and children must be deconstructed, not demonized or prosecuted. In fact, for example, Michel Foucault and Simone de Beauvoir made public appeals on behalf of pedophiles. Or, for example, I would have also mentioned that pro-pedophile organizations operate in the US, which rely on gender ideology to present their sexual deviance as part of the contemporary deconstruction of gender. Returning to the question, I didn't give the speech nor was I involved in it. But what's the matter? I've been talking about these issues with Milei for years. So, I can't rule out, let's say, that he's read some of my ideas; he has my books.

–Do you advise the president?

–That would be saying too much. I can talk to him about various topics. The only thing I can tell you is that he has my books; every time I publish one, I send it to him. We've talked about abortion, for example, about feminism and immigration, about cultural issues and post-Marxism.

–The Davos speech was widely rejected and sparked a large protest.

–Yes, a march by groups that have never voted for Milei and will never vote for her... It was much more due to the media hype, because there are very militant and vocal groups in the media, feminists with significant lobbying power , who created the feeling that this had upset Argentines. Based on subsequent polls, I don't see it having a political impact. There wasn't really anything new in Davos. He had already said he was going to close the Ministry of Women, that he was against abortion and gender ideology.

–Your speech puts a lot of emphasis on saving the West.

–Look, the West is the conjunction of three fundamental traditions for the area of the world in which we live: the ancient Greeks, the Romans, and Christianity. From that worldview, in which the three strands feed off each other, we arrive at modernity. But note that modernity seeks to return to Antiquity and its roots, especially during the Renaissance. Even in the revolutionary period of the West, the 18th century, those who were building a new world couldn't stop talking about the Old World. Robespierre couldn't stop thinking about Sparta and Greece; Saint-Just did the same; Montesquieu, shortly before the French Revolution, looked to Rome and Greece. In the 19th century, the new philosophy that had already emerged in the previous century drifted toward a developing collectivism and manifested itself in the 20th century in a totalitarian mode. We only emerged from that in the 1990s. And this century finds us in a new world traversed by the acceleration of technology to unsuspected levels; recently it has become more dynamic in our lives every day.

–Why do you think the West is better than other civilizations?

–Can the West be saved by fighting wokism?

–Politically, there's a lot to do. When the new right comes to power, it begins to defund those cultural destruction mechanisms that the left was advancing in the countries it governed. An example is the USAID cooperation programs, canceled by Donald Trump. Let's look at the USAID scandal, where it was seen how the money was used to spread woke ideology and projects in other countries. At the same time, within the US, you had all the university funding, for example, at Harvard, which in recent years instilled anti-Americanism in the minds of young people. Today, you go to these universities, even the large ones, the so-called Ivy League, and you see a self-flagellating politicization that's frightening. American flags were burned there. A version of history is taught where the American people have been the cancer of the world. These are some examples of how, when the left comes to power, they advance these ideologies, and when the right does, they try to defuse them or at least defund them.

–I'm not necessarily saying it's better; I'm just saying it's ours. On the other hand, if we want to see which is better or which is more important, the scientific method and the philosophy studied all over the world came from the West. You're going to say, "Well, but also in the East." True, but in the East they also study us. Even the revolutions in other latitudes, the Chinese Revolution and the Russian Revolution, were entirely Western. The West is the cradle of great things, but there has been a self-flagellation, a new philosophy that appeared in the West in the second half of the 20th century, which is the philosophy of deconstruction (French post-structuralist school): a philosophy of self-demonization: destroying what is one's own with the excuse of embracing the other, embracing the strange to emancipate ourselves from ourselves.

–But you feel part of the new right.

–Yes, of course. When I wrote The Cultural Battle, I subtitled it “Critical Reflections for a New Right.” It was necessary to call it the right; it was essential to remove the shameful aura it had long held. For decades, being left-wing was very cool ; anyone who called themselves left-wing wouldn't have any problems, not even at university or with their friends. Now, calling yourself right-wing was tantamount to being the bad guy. I've experienced it at university and in a wide variety of contexts. That's what's changing right now.

– At times, it seems that this energy and aggression in you is a product of frustration and woke doctrinal excesses. But others fought against these exaggerations: they fought without needing to feel right-wing, against abortion, wokeism, and feminism. You appear to be the newcomers; it reminds me of Giuliano da Empoli's essay "The Engineers of Chaos."

–Look, I'd say that we are new because before, there was no right-wing option with a real chance of winning. At 36, I don't remember a right-wing option existing. Mauricio Macri wasn't a right-wing person, not even he defined himself that way. Macri sought every possible way to say that the Pro had no ideology, or at most, that it was centrist. If you're referring to an alternative to Kirchnerism, I'd say that yes, of course, there are partisan alternatives to Kirchnerism. Now, ideological alternatives, where the political ideology is truly the antithesis of Kirchnerism, are only offered by the new right.

–What do you have in common with Kirchnerism? LLA's tactics sound very similar in several areas. You, too, base your identity on denouncing the enemy.

–What is shared is a vision of the political. It turns out that the philosophers of Kirchnerism, Ernesto Laclau and company, embraced the political ideas of Carl Schmitt. This German jurist, in his book The Concept of the Political , defines the political around the opposition friend/enemy. He says, "Just as we define morality by the opposition good/bad, aesthetics by the opposition beautiful/ugly, economics by the opposition profitable/unprofitable, we define the political by the proposition friend/enemy. Kirchnerist populism developed in a Schmittian manner; therefore, what it did was constantly construct enemies. It renewed them to energize its own power. The Armed Forces, the agricultural sector, the media, the judiciary, etc., all passed through there."

–The tactics of the new right are relatively similar.

–We talk about a cultural battle because we are facing people who have defined us as enemies in the first place. First it was the left. They advanced on us and our

after two decades of freedom. Therefore, asking us not to adopt a Schmittian approach to politics, simply because we have the power, is absurd.