“With certain cultures, we cannot coexist”: Javier Milei’s appalling remarks at the ceremony for his honorary doctorate from Bar-Ilan University
After crying at the Wailing Wall, the libertarian delivered a speech laden with violence. He attacked “social justice,” diverse cultures, and defined Marxism as “satanic.” Reactions from Argentine intellectuals to the speech
“With certain cultures, we cannot coexist,” said President Javier Milei, in the midst of war. He did not utter these words just anywhere; he did so from a stage set up at Bar-Ilan University, one of the most important in Israel. Politicians and academics warned Página|12 about the seriousness of the president’s statements and the danger posed by such a radicalized position by the Argentine government in favor of one of the two parties in conflict. “In his words, Milei endorses genocide and the destruction of all kinds of political and diplomatic agreements aimed at building peace and democratic coexistence among states,” assured former Peronist Foreign minister Jorge Taiana [imprisoned by the military dictatorship from 1975 to 1982, Transl. N.].
The president arrived in Israel on Sunday and after visiting the Wailing Wall, he met with the country’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. In addition, Milei received an Honorary Doctorate from Bar-Ilan University, the institution that counts among its alumni the right-wing extremist who killed former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995, when there were still hopes for peace in Israel. During the day, he was accompanied by his sister Karina, Foreign minister Pablo Quirno, his Minister of Justice, Juan Bautista Mahiques, and the Argentine ambassador to Israel, Axel Wahnish.
“With certain cultures we will not be able to coexist, because we defend life and they will want to kill us,” was the full sentence of the Argentine president, for which the audience, composed of academics and cultural figures who support the war against Iran, stood up to applaud.
In another part of his speech, Milei argued that the Torah was the antidote to left-wing ideas, called Marxism “satanic and opposed to God’s program,” said that Marx “was a Satanist because his own youthful texts reveal it since they are a hymn to destruction and hatred of the creator.” And he again attacked “social justice,” calling it a “deeply unjust outlook that always ends in disaster.”
“We have been expelled from paradise, but if we act according to the laws, paradise will come to us. When one designs policies in line with ethical and moral values, one designs just policies and those are efficient,” added Milei.
He also met with Isaac Herzog, who awarded him the “Presidential Medal of Honor” in recognition of his “commitment to the State of Israel.” He will conclude his activities in the country by participating in the ceremony for the 78th Independence Day of that country. There he will light one of the torches of the traditional event, being “the first foreign leader to have that honor.”
Former Foreign minister and MP Jorge Taiana stated that “Milei, once again, recklessly and rashly involves our country in someone else’s war, contrary to the peace vocation of the majority of the Argentine people.”
He also referred to Milei’s phrase in which he said that “you cannot live with certain cultures” and opined: “it does not represent our history or our idiosyncrasy, characterized by the intercultural and religious coexistence of our people. Argentina is recognized worldwide for having a society that stands out for its respect and tolerance of others.”[except if they are Indios or Blacks, Transl. N.]
For his part, philosopher Ricardo Forster added that Milei “is a very low-level copy of another horrible character of this era, Donald Trump.” He said his statements “have nothing to do with the tradition of Jewish humanism,” and recalled that Trump had already uttered that “chilling” phrase when he warned that he was going to “destroy a civilization,” referring to Iran. “Milei, who copies him in everything and does it badly because he’s a brute, because he’s low-class, repeated the same thing in Israel,” Forster said. The philosopher also reflected: “Milei pronounces that phrase alongside someone like Netanyahu, who is exercising a type of almost exterminating violence against another people, the Palestinians.” And he emphasized: “Milei is thinking, in some way, that it is right to exercise that type of violence under the paradigm of ‘it’s them or us.’ The question we must ask ourselves is: who are ‘them’ in the case of Argentina? Would they be those who think differently? Those on the left? Those who defend a present State? Perhaps for Milei, all those who are part of the aberration should not be in this world.”
The academic pointed out: “Milei goes to Israel, pays homage to Netanyahu and practically turns him into a great world leader when the rest of the countries of the world, except the US, are moving away.” And he noted: “we are facing an apocalyptic and messianic vision, but in a very perverse sense of the term because it is not messianism as a promise of redemption or liberation, but a vicious, violent messianism that would wish to eliminate all those who do not think like him.”
Sociologist specialized in international politics, Gabriel Puricelli, criticized Milei’s speech for being “vague and conceptually imprecise.” “As usual, it is clear that he is trying to curry favor with his audience, using a ‘we’ that is not the Argentine Republic, but himself and those who decide to celebrate him with recognition,’ he stated.
Furthermore, he opined that ‘his denial is problematic, surely informed by a hasty reading of the cover of Samuel Huntington’s ‘The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.’ And it is contrary to the Argentine experience of absolutely harmonious coexistence of those cultures that he goes to Israel to denounce as incompatible.”
Puricelli added that the other “problematic” concept used repeatedly by the President is the adjective “Judeo-Christian.” “This pretends to the historical erasure of Western anti-Semitism, a history that ranges from the expulsion and forced conversion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula under the Catholic Monarchs, to, of course, the Holocaust. The superficiality, in this case, is atrociously insulting to Jews,” he said.
Anthropologist and communication scholar Gerardo Halpern also gave his opinion on the matter. “It is an absurdity typical of colonial, even racialist reasoning,” he noted. He also criticized Milei for “claiming the power of life and death, for pointing to the other as a threat to be eliminated.” He also indicated that “determining that there are cultures with which one cannot coexist is to turn otherness into a thing and, that thing into an object that must be discarded, expelled, excluded.”
“The far-right always leans on the construction of an abject other. Milei is walking a terrible path, because he defines that, under his supposed protection, he must eliminate his threat,” he explained and reminded that, “except for the messianisms of the 20th century, one must go back to the 19th century to find the biologistic foundations in the president’s reprehensible words.” [Well, Polanyi, Spencer, and Konrad Lorenz were, after all, 20th-century figures, Translator’s note]
