QAA Podcast - Rise of the Ancap President in Argentina feat Caio Almendra (Premium E268) Sample

Episode Date: November 24, 2024

Being told to run for president by his dead dog. Cosplaying as a superhero called “General Ancap”. Beating up a piñata of Argentina’s central bank on television. Sleeping in a bed with his sister and their dogs. Javier Milei is Donald Trump’s “favorite president” of Argentina and has a lifestyle verging on parody. He’s also been screwing up the country in short order. Our guest writer is Caio Almendra, editor at The Intercept Brasil. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/qaa Caio Almendra: https://x.com/CaioAlmendra / https://www.intercept.com.br Editing by Corey Klotz. Copy Editing by Whitney Mower. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com) https://qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

Thank you. If you're hearing this, well done, you've found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast, Premium Episode 268, rise of the ANCAP president in Argentina. As always, we are your host, Jake Rakitansky, Kiowa Mandrum, Julian Fields, and Travis Vue. Well, well, well, folks, it turns out that Trump is back, as you know, and we thought this would be a great opportunity to explore another buffoonish, president elected in the country in what some Americans refer to as the global south, who for some reason, you know, they kind of still have a little bit of a grudge against the

global north. We don't know why. We're not going to be exploring any of that history, hopefully, and there were no interventions. But Argentina is up on the board today. We're looking at it. We're pointing at it. We have little dots all over it. Jake doesn't understand what they mean, and all of them are little bombs. It's a country you think about so little that you can't probably even remember John Oliver's joke about finding Argentina on a map. Nor should you be listening to John Oliver. I'm going to get shit for that. Well, this has been on our to-do list for a little while now,

and there's been some recent development, so it's perfect to have it come to fruition now. And, of course, our guest writer, who you may remember from our previous episode about Bolsonaro's failed sons and weird dynasty and potential whale malle station, Kayu Almendra from the Intercept Brazil. How you doing, Kayu? I'm doing fine.

Well, very recently, Javier Milley, who is the topic of this episode, called Trump to, you know, tell him, happy birthday, sir, happy election, sir, and I hope we can eat McDonald's together soon. But Trump has referred to Millet as my favorite president, which is very funny. And Millay, before him, appointed one or two government efficiency czars, so they've had their version of Doge for a little while. He immediately claimed that every public servant should be fired. Every agency should be closed and every government service should be replaced by an app. He also recently plagiarized the West Wing during his UN speech.

And I don't know, I guess if you're a listener, probably a percent of you that love the West Wing and the other part of the listenership knows better. So one reason to talk about Malay is because it's just plain fun. I mean, the dude looks insane. He looks like one of those like action heroes from the 70s back when they still let you have like a hairy chest and look kind of like ugly, ugly cool, you know. But he's basically like if Marjorie Taylor Green was a bit more of an ANCAP teenager and had a very, a series of very bad hair days. Yeah, he's got kind of a Wolverine thing going on. He does. Minus the, you know, the horns.

He does have insane chops. Yeah, he really does insane. It's kind of like Wolverine means one of the Oasis brothers. I'm sure he sings beautifully, too. And, you know, it's especially funny to make. very dark jokes about this because it turns out Javier Mule has basically completely destroyed Argentina

in a very short time and you know, we look forward to our next four years that surely will go better. Yeah, he looks like the Harry Potter boys like in the second and third movie is when they stopped cutting their hair. There were

still ballots to be opened and counted on the night of November 19th, 2022, when Cecilia Gonzalez opened her window to a voice shouting, Run, you leftist scum. A Mexican journalist based in Buenos Aires, Gonzalez lived in the working-class neighborhood known as Baracas. She quickly reported the incident on Twitter, only to receive more threatening messages,

such as, be afraid, and you won't be able to walk in the streets, which is straight up out of QAnon. Like, we're going to make them afraid to walk the streets. Yeah, that's pretty straightforward cue stuff. A few days later, Javier Millet would be elected the 52nd president. of the Argentine Republic, a country deeply divided and plagued by political, economic, and social crises. So who is this short man with disheveled hair that got into politics because his dead dog told him to? And who are his violent supporters? And how did extremist rhetoric become so pervasive in a country that had held such a strong tradition of defending human rights? I mean, other than,

you know, some uncomfortable moments under the junta. And some mazi string to Argentina also. Yeah, there are some blonde-blue-eyed Argentines that we're not going to be talking about because my mom is blonde and blue-eyed and was born in Argentina. I do want to say, I do want to say that her mom and her mom, so two generations back from my mother were born in Argentina, so they go back further than, you know, the Nazi escape. I thought you were like half Jewish. No, on my mom's side, I do have, yeah, Jewish great-grandmother. That's all that matters. The mother's on the mother's side of the blood, you know, that's you are. Okay.

Well, as we know today, Jewish people can do no wrong, and they never participated in any genocides. Well, Jewish people, not in Jewish government, you know, mostly probably all right. Yeah, I don't know. We're not making a generalization about all Jewish people here, Jake. We're just saying that all religious backgrounds have probably participated in genocides. Is that acceptable? Well, yeah.

Can we move the fuck on, Jake? It is not about you. I haven't eaten kosher. ever in my life. So, you know, I'm not a very religious person, faithful person. Go back to advertising the McRib. Okay. Yeah, although I did hear a story by my grandmother who was like, oh, you know, like, one of your great uncles, like, participated in a plot to bomb Peron, which made me think, oh, man, what era of Peron?

Because I think we might be the bad guys, I don't know. Or maybe the good guys, because, you know, Perron had a very strong militant left-wing opposition that claimed he was a fascist. That's the faniest thing about it. Yeah, so we don't know. My grandmother is not political enough to really explain it to me, and I will not be looking into it. I just have to say that we're not Nazi escapees, and that's good enough for me. So you didn't hear that wrong when I said earlier that Millet claimed his dead dog

is a reincarnation of a lion that existed during the early medieval age. According to Malay, this lion once refused to devour a Christian gladiator at the Coliseum, and that Christian gladiator happened to be a previous incarnation of Malay himself. So a dog that had once been a living reincarnation of a Roman lion was now dead and speaking from its grave, instructing Malay to run for president. Malay told this story on live television, and he was still elected to lead a country of 46 million people. So I think as Americans, we recognize that cognitive dissonance that sets in when a guy says some wild shit, and then people still go, yeah, I think he's probably the best candidate.

To understand how this happened, we have to contextualize Argentina's political landscape a little bit. Between 1976 and 1983, the nation experienced a violent military dictatorship that eliminated press freedoms and made torture a common practice, among other horrors. During this time, children of imprisoned activists were often kidnapped, and according to official sources, 30,000 opponents were killed. This dictatorship devastated the Argentine economy, quadrupling, public debt and dismantling the industrial sector, which was at the time one of the most robust in Latin America. Then one day in 1982, which many people know as the year before I was born, General Leopoldo Galtieri, four months into office, finished his daily bottle of whiskey and decided

to invade the Falkland Islands, basing his decision on an old claim that the territory belonged to Argentina, even though it had been a British colony since 1841. After 74 days of mismanaged conflict, the Argentine military was forced to surrender. Galtieri was, was later sentenced to 12 years in prison for a variety of infractions, and eventually the increasingly vigorous dissent movement led to a restoration of democracy, albeit a tumultuous one, as we'll see. Also, I believe Galtieri is the last name of Polly from the Sopranos. Side note. You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA podcast. For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to

patreon.com slash QAA. Travis, why is that such a good deal? Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month. For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes plus all of our miniseries. That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian and Annie, 10 episodes of Pervers with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of the Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis. It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting. Travis, for once, I agree with you. And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QAA.

Well, that's not an opinion. It's a fact. You're so right, Jake. We love and appreciate all of our listeners. Yes, we do. And Travis is actually crying right now, I think, out of gratitude maybe? That's not true. The part about be crying, not me being grateful.

I'm very grateful. Oh