The Argentine president has labeled the West’s left-wing ‘woke’ ideology a “cancer we need to get rid of”
Argentina’s President Javier Milei delivers his speech at the Annual Meeting of World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 23, 2025. © AP Photo / Markus Schreiber Argentine President Javier Milei has criticized European leaders and condemned “woke ideology,” branding it an “epidemic” that must be cured. Addressing the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Thursday, he claimed that the “global hegemony” of left-wing politics and ideology is “starting to crumble.” Making his second appearance at the WEF, the outspoken president defended what he called the traditional values of the West, describing them as “the peak of the human species.” Milei then doubled down on his “cultural battle” against so-called “wokeism,” a term often used by right-wing political movements to criticize progressive policies addressing social inequalities. “What once seemed like a global hegemony of the ‘woke’ left in politics, educational institutions, in the media, in supranational organizations or even in forums like Davos, has begun to crumble,” he said.
According to Milei, wokeism seeks to penalize any kind of opposition “because beneath the rhetoric that they so often preach what truly lies is their blatant desire to eliminate dissent, criticism and ultimately freedom so they can continue to uphold a model in which they are the main beneficiaries.” He took aim at Britain, asking: “Is it not true that right now as we speak, in the UK, citizens are being imprisoned for exposing horrifying crimes committed by Muslim migrants? Crimes that the government seeks to conceal?” Milei was referring to a wave of protests in the UK last summer against Islam and mass immigration which resulted in large-scale arrests. British authorities responded to the riots in draconian fashion, with more than 1,000 people arrested, 480 charged, and 99 sentenced for their role in the disorder, according to figures published by the BBC. The Argentine leader, who attended US President Donald Trump’s inauguration last week, also targeted the EU, accusing the bloc of scrapping the presidential election in Romania. “Didn’t the bureaucrats in Brussels suspend Romania’s elections simply because they didn’t like the party that had won?” he asked.
Romanian right-wing candidate Calin Georgescu, a critic of NATO and the EU and a staunch opponent of sending aid to Ukraine, topped the now-annulled first-round vote in November, beating liberal leftist candidates, the latest opinion poll in the country showed. Romania’s Constitutional Court suddenly canceled the election ahead of the second-round vote, citing intelligence documents alleging “irregularities” in Georgescu’s campaign performance. Milei said that while there is no actual censorship in the West, there is the idea that anyone who doesn’t align with a woke ideology must be silenced. In Milei’s view, it is an “ideology that has colonized the West, a single thought regime on feminism, diversity, inclusion, immigration, abortion, environmentalism, gender ideology” representing “an epidemic that must be cured, a cancer we need to get rid of.”
