Argentinian here: we have absolutely nothing to show for it and yet people keep voting the right.
and yet people keep voting the right
What would you say is the reason why that keeps happening?
I once saw a Milei interview on YouTube. It was from before he became president. He went on a deranged tirade about how “the central bank are thieves” without explaining why. In the comments, a British guy was commenting about how wise he was.
The interview where he was spouted this nonsense and the “interviewer” just sat there nodding in agreement reminded me of India’s news media of today. Billionaires have an unopposed and total control of TV news channels and newspapers which then do uncritical PR for their favoured political party of their patrons (mostly BJP) and most of the “news” has devolved into an electoral circus where the “news” is concerned with what this and that politician said about an event rather then the event itself.
The billionaires that own these news outlets welcome imperialists plundering their motherland as long they get a cut from it. I reckon it should be similar in Argentina.
The interview where he was spouted this nonsense and the “interviewer” just sat there nodding in agreement reminded me of India’s news media of today. Billionaires have an unopposed and total control of TV news channels and newspapers which then do uncritical PR for their favoured political party of their patrons (mostly BJP) and most of the “news” has devolved into an electoral circus where the “news” is concerned with what this and that politician said about an event rather then the event itself.
As a USian, this sounds very familiar
I don’t think there’s a unique cause this happens. Different people will have different motives. Having said this, some causes are:
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Anti-peronism. As shown in the last election, there’s like 20-25% of the people that will vote for whatever opposes the Peronist party.
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Social media, especially tiktok. Milei has been extremely successful conquering that space, so younger generations just get excited to see some “radical change”.
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Perceived corruption of the peronist party. I won’t say this isn’t real, but I don’t think it’s as bad as most people think. Also, all corruption concerns fly out the window once a right wing guy is in the government.
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Traditional media. We have our own version of Fox News, which is also quite successful at appearing neutral to these that can’t criticize what they consume.
Some people also overfocus in whatever feel is the current issue, two examples.
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People worried about inflation remember fondly the 90s, despite unemployment getting close to 20%.
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People worried about crime will remember fondly the last dictatorship because “you could walk safely at night”. This last one is especially false, because every statistic shows that Argentina isn’t an insecure country and it was the military that could kill you at night without consequences.
Sisillion, which the rough number of how much debt Egypt owes
JFC I’m sorry Argentinian comrades.
egypt always topping the charts that no one should want to top.
This seems to be the source: https://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/tad/balmov2.aspx?type=TOTAL
But the outstanding amount seems to be in SDRs (Special Drawing Rights). They list SDR valuations in various currencies here: https://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/data/rms_sdrv.aspx
According to this, 1 SDR is about $1.3237.
So looks like Argentina owes (30987500000×1.3237 ≈) $41 billion instead.
So it’s even worse than it appears.
I have to wonder, at what point will a country finally have the guts to say they refuse to continue to acknowledge the legitimacy of this debt? Afghanistan for instance could easily just come out and tell the IMF to go fuck themselves. The US already stole all their sovereign reserves. What are they going to do, invade again just to get humiliated by the Taliban a second time?
Sankara said this in one of his speeches to some union of African countries. I saw it in The Upright Man documentary. He said that if they collectively default then the debts would mean nothing.
