Leading up to, and in the wake of Javier Milei’s historic and exciting victory in Argentina (we now have the world’s first openly libertarian head of state, and in a major country!), I’ve noticed a significant trend in the media, on social media, and elsewhere, of people trying to mislabel him and his party – the Libertarian Party of Argentina, or Partido Libertario in Spanish – and the La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances) coalition of which they are part, as “right wing” or even “far right” or “ultraconservative".
There may be some justification for characterizing the broader coalition as right-wing or conservative – my best understanding is that the other four parties allied with Partido Libertario, including the one with the most seats in the Argentine Congress, are more conservative – but it would still be remiss even in this case to ignore the libertarian aspects of its character, given both the name and Milei’s role as head of the coalition. He is a self-identified anarcho-capitalist, and while he does have some personal views that may be seen as leaning conservative, such as being pro-life on abortion, I’ve seen no evidence that he favors a statist approach toward such issues. The most troubling thing I’ve seen or heard is Milei and his surrogates making favorable comments about right-wing individuals like Donald Trump and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.
I believe it is of critical importance for the libertarian movement that we seek to correct the record, and make it clear that libertarian is libertarian. To the extent Milei, his party, or his coalition may “go off the rails” and embrace statist policies, they should of course be called out (or called in where possible) on this by libertarians, and those specific policies or actions labeled as right-wing, statist, and/or left-wing depending which label(s) seem to fit. But the branding of genuinely libertarian views and the people who hold them as right-wing is incredibly damaging to the worldwide freedom movement. For us to succeed, it is vital that people understand libertarianism isn’t just part of the same-old left-right paradigm, but something genuinely different – if not exactly new under the sun, nevertheless new to most political observers for whom it may have been off the radar up until now, but is increasingly likely to be on their radar. Otherwise we are likely to be politically marginalized so as to appeal mainly if not exclusively to people on the right, so that the movement over time loses its libertarian character, as well as (inevitably) becoming dominated by separate and opposing left-wing and right-wing factions rather than being broadly united for liberty despite “internal” differences.
One area I’ve been trying to fight back against this (often deliberate) mislabeling is on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. For instance, people keep changing the Libertarian Party of Argentina’s page – Libertarian Party (Argentina) - Wikipedia – to characterize the party as right-wing. After multiple efforts to push back against this, I just got a notice today from a Wikipedia bot that I’ve been blocked from editing the page for 24 hours. Unfortunately some of the bad edits are currently in place. If you use Wikipedia, and can go and fix some of these references, I think you’ll be doing our cause a service. You can also comment, as I and a couple others have, on the article’s “Talk” page (for discussing edits to the article).
Becoming truly proficient at editing Wikipedia is a learning curve, and I’m still by no means an expert, but the basics are fairly simple. You don’t even need an account, or have to sign in, to start editing. If you’d like to get started and don’t have a clue, please feel free to call me at the number below and I can walk you through it a bit. If you are a Wikipedia editor, especially a knowledgeable one, I’d love to hear from you. Usually when my edits are reverted (the quickest way of undoing someone else’s changes) I just let it go or wait and try again later, but I know there are more effective actions one can take to not be overruled, if one is familiar with the site’s editing and governance rules and policies. I encourage folks to go and do what you can there,
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
(415) 573-7997
