From the Defense of Human Rights to the Fight against International Terrorism: The Uses of the Holocaust in the Speech of Javier Milei and the Liberal-Libertarians

• In Event: New Generations of Holocaust Memory in Latin America

Abstract

On January 27, 2024, the first commemoration of the Shoah took place since the inauguration of Javier Milei. Held at the Holocaust Museum in the city of Buenos Aires, it included the participation of the nation's president himself, who read a speech in which he related the extermination of the Jews of Europe during the years of Nazism with a (re) agenda. updated on contemporary problems: international terrorism and threats to the "West". Although this was his first public demonstration on the subject since his arrival at the Casa Rosada, it was accompanied by an identification with Judaism and the State of Israel that was not exempt from controversy. In this work we are interested in problematizing what the interpretive horizons are in the liberal-libertarian narrative around that historical event, trying to understand what would be its main innovations with respect to similar articulations in the past; what distance does it operationalize with respect to previous identifications that the memory of the Holocaust established in relation to the Human Rights agenda in the country; and, finally, how these new - and not so new - representations are put into play when relating to other actors, both institutional and individual.

Author

• Emmanuel Kahan, National University of La Plata