“I am the king and I will destroy you!” »: the Argentine president organizes a frenzied appearance in the stadium | Javier Milei

The Argentinians call him “the Madman”. This week he declared himself monarch.

“I am the king of a lost world!” I am the king and I will destroy you! » Javier Milei screamed into the microphone Wednesday night as the Argentine president took the stage for his first stadium concert since his election last year.

The concert, held at a famous 8,000-seat arena in Buenos Aires called Luna Park, drew hordes of adoring right-wing fans – mostly young men – who came to see their rock-loving libertarian leader up close. and dressed in a knee-length leather jacket. .

“I did it because I wanted to sing,” proclaimed Milei, 53, who as a teenager was the frontman for a Rolling Stones cover band called Everest and is also said to be a fan of the opera composer Giuseppe Verdi.

Loyalists appreciated Milei’s decision to perform on a stage previously graced by artists like Frank Sinatra, Duran Duran, Liza Minnelli and a-ha – and where football legend Diego Maradona hosted a lavish wedding reception in 1989.

Sergio Gómez, a transportation company owner who traveled more than 700 miles to attend Milei’s “freedom party,” admitted that the president’s radical economic policies had, without exception, “directly harmed my personal activity.

“He removed all subsidies for public passenger transport, prices increased and this directly affected people,” Gómez said. “But I am convinced that we must complete the economic cleansing – we cannot continue to live a lie,” he added, echoing the frustrations of the more than 14 million voters who brought Milei to power .

Ana Eugenia Clemente, a 33-year-old Venezuelan actress, seized on Milei’s new book while extolling the Argentine artist-in-chief. “I feel a deep hatred for the evil left that has damaged my country and I think Milei is a person who came not only to save Argentina, but also the world,” she enthused.

Argentina’s opposition was less impressed, calling the jam session an attempt to distract from domestic problems exacerbated by Milei’s austerity drive and reforms, which former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said described as “Thatcherism on steroids”.

“With his show at Luna Park, Milei is covering up a huge economic and social crisis, which his economic administration has only worsened,” said Itai Hagman, a lawmaker for the center-left Frente de Todos coalition. “(There is) no prospect of improvement in the short or medium term; the idea of ​​a rapid recovery or a boom in foreign investment is only in the president’s mind.

The newspaper La Nación said Milei’s “utterly flamboyant event” was unlike anything Argentina had experienced before “especially in times of crisis and (economic) adjustment.”

“It was a two-hour pagan mass celebrated by an ecstatic president,” the newspaper said of the spectacle, designed to promote Milei’s latest book, Capitalism, Socialism and the Neoclassical Trap.

The rock concert – at which the president’s specially assembled band played songs by Argentine hard rock band La Renga – will help cement Milei’s growing international reputation as what Time magazine this week called “the most eccentric head of state in the world”. It will also strengthen his position as a leading member of the global far-right, alongside Donald Trump, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Playing drums alongside Argentine President Bertie Benegas Lynch, a pro-Milei congressman, whose T-shirt featured Gadsden’s yellow rattlesnake – a symbol of Milei’s movement and the American far right – and the message: “Don’t tread on me!” »

During the show, Milei denounced the “damned communists” whom he accused of being responsible for Argentina’s economic malaise and the “enemies who are trying to overthrow this government because they want socialism and misery continues” as well as the “murderous” pro-choice movement. “I eat the elites for breakfast!” Milei sang, slightly changing the lyrics of La Renga’s track, Panic Show.

But critics say this clearly unpresidential performance will do little to solve problems such as growing poverty and unemployment and one of the highest inflation rates in the world. Argentina now suffers from the most serious economic crisis in two decades – a situation that Milei pledged to resolve after his election last November. But six months after he took office, three out of five citizens live in poverty and annual inflation has soared to almost 300%, ahead of Syria, Lebanon and Venezuela, although monthly inflation has slowed somewhat these last months.

Hours before Milei took the microphone, the government statistics office announced that economic activity fell 8.4% in March from a year earlier. The informal dollar exchange rate, known as the “blue dollar,” reached a record high of 1,280 pesos. Last week, protests erupted in the northern province of Misiones, as police officers and teachers demanded pay rises to help them cope with rising inflation.

Gustavo Córdoba, director of political communications consultancy Zuban Córdoba, said Milei’s “tribal and self-celebrating” show was an attempt to inflame his base at a time when many Argentines were unconvinced by the economic “revolution” of the president.

“The government… urgently needs favorable economic results,” Córdoba said. In the absence of these, “what it does is entertain.”