The New Dark Age

Thursday, 27 March 2025 — The Tricontinental

Demetrio Urruchúa (Argentina), Nuevo orden (The New Order), 1939.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

On an evening in September 2024, Argentina’s President Javier Milei stood before a large crowd in Parque Lezama in Buenos Aires. He wore his signature dark leather jacket and barked out his speech, the crowd devouring every word. ‘Here you have the trolls’, he said, ‘corrupt journalists, shady characters. These are the trolls’. Then, he pointed at the people in the crowd and said that they were invisible because the journalists had ‘the monopoly on microphones’. It was harsh language, a replica of Donald Trump’s statement that journalists are the ‘enemy of the people’ (which is itself an echo of US President Richard Nixon’s statement to his advisor Henry Kissinger in 1972: ‘The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Professors are the enemy. Write that on the blackboard 100 times and never forget it’). These statements do not come without cost. Since Milei came to office in December 2023, attacks on journalists have increased.

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