Political Volcanos in Buenos Aires and Tokyo

The emergence of conservative political superstars is growing worldwide and is no longer limited to North America, Europe, and the Middle East, where the volcanic rise of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Giorgia Meloni, Viktor Orban, and Benjamin Netanyahu began a trend of global political realignment toward the right.

In recent days, Argentine President Javier Milei scored a totally unpredicted landslide victory in the country’s midterm elections, with his party more than doubling its representation in the Argentine National Congress. That result bolsters his earlier surprise election in 2023 as the first conservative libertarian leader of the South American nation.

Milei’s controversial economic policies have reduced his nation’s chronic hyperinflation from more than 12 percent to two percent and ended perennial instability. His eccentric personal style became a global sensation two years ago when he began appearing with a chainsaw as a metaphor for what he intended to do to Argentina’s bloated bureaucracy and decades of government waste and corruption.

The short-term hardships necessary for this economic transformation were thought by leftists and Peronists, as well as the hostile media in Argentina, to be likely to lead to his party’s defeat and a humiliating rebuff of his minority party’s momentum to restore the nation and its economy in the elections last weekend.

Instead, Argentine voters gave Milei and his party virtual control of the Argentine Congress and a mandate to continue his economic strategy — a result even Milei’s own political strategists did not anticipate.

Thousands of miles away, in Tokyo, Japan, Sanae Takaichi was just named Japan’s first woman prime minister ever. Often compared to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (whom she much admires), Takaichi is a strong conservative, and, like Milei, a big fan of U.S. President Trump. She is viewed by many as the ideological successor to former conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, another staunch Trump ally who was tragically assassinated in 2022.

An advocate of traditional Japanese values and customs, Takaichi is no voice for radical change. But she does represent a new Asian link to conservative democratic values and policies now growing across the globe. She has notably advocated for traditional views on gender roles and more restrictive immigration policies.

The emergence of conservative political superstars is volcanic because they burst onto the scene rather suddenly as voters across the world began to react to and reject a previous global movement to the left — a move away from socialist and liberal social welfare policies that were failing everywhere in the world’s capitalist democracies and republics where they were in control.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were progenitors of this rightward movement in the 1980s when they fostered a period of economic growth and the end of the Cold War.

This was followed by a period when many center left and far left leaders were elected but failed to generate better times.

The surprise election of Donald Trump as U.S. President in 2016 ushered in the present era, and his arrival occurred at about the same time British conservative Boris Johnson became prime minister, Hungarian conservative leader Viktor Orban was elected, and conservative Benjamin Netanyahu returned as Prime Minister of Israel, where he had earlier overseen the transformation of that nation’s original socialist economy into the entrepreneurial and innovative powerhouse it became.

Later, Giorgia Meloni won election in Italy, and conservative parties have gained dramatic strength in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and in nations across Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. Even more recently, conservatives have won elections in Bolivia and South Korea.

This movement is not universal. Leftist and liberal centrist leaders rule in Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Great Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Spain, and many other nations in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. Left-wing totalitarian regimes still control Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and elsewhere. But most leftist-ruled regimes are facing growing opposition, and most dictatorships have constant popular resistance.

The so-called “inevitability” of socialistic and neo-Marxist ideologies is running aground globally. Volcanos of conservative populism are erupting all over the world, sweeping away the false promises of redistributionist ideology and policies.

The politics of democracies do not go in a straight line forever. The battle between free market capitalism and a government regulated and owned economic model is a seemingly endless contest over the long-term.

But for now, thanks to several charismatic and visionary conservative leaders, capitalism is winning.

Barry Casselman is an AMAC Newsline contributor.