F
or over a year, a troubling political phenomenon has intensified on a global scale. From Donald Trump in the United States to Javier Milei in Argentina, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and Vladimir Putin in Russia, an entire generation of heads of state has deployed communication strategies that have left democracies reeling.
We have been experiencing, at a transnational level, the political reign of calculated excess. At first glance, these presidents might seem to have little in common. Yet they share a method: the continual violation of democratic norms through provocation, excess and spectacle. Milei brandishing a chainsaw to symbolize his budget cuts, Trump multiplying scandalous statements on social media, Bukele photographing himself in prisons he controls with an iron fist – these staged displays are not slip-ups, but rather deliberate, intentional strategies.
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One year of Javier Milei: Chainsaws and controlled inflation in Argentina
