The eccentric far-right populist Javier Milei has failed to win the first round of Argentina’s presidential election, with the centrist finance minister Sergio Massa unexpectedly beating his radical challenger.
Supporters of Milei, a potty-mouthed political outsider described as an Argentinian mashup of Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson, had hoped he was heading for a sensational outright victory similar to Bolsonaro’s shock triumph in Brazil in 2018.
The poor and middle-class, you know, the majority of the population, have been beaten down by the “corrupt elite” for centuries. The problem with using a term like “far-right populist” is that the far-right are always on the side of corporate interests, additional corruption of government to weaken its power, and anything that would further promote the already fucked wealth gap we have between the rich and the poor. They are the corrupt elite!
Just using your example of Trump’s MAGA movement, Trump is just a grifter trying to promote an image of an outsider, but he very much isn’t one. Calling somebody a “far-right populist” is lying about what their true goals are. It is an oxymoron.
People from the Occupy Wall Street movement, even as misguided and directionless as that movement was, were trying to reduce the power of corporations through their protests. They weren’t lying about being populists.
A better example would be somebody like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, whose actions and voting record are consistent with ones who are trying to take power from corporations and give it back to the rest of the public.