The rupture ended up going viral shortly before the elections in which Milei's party, La Libertad Avanza (LLA), was vying for control of both chambers of Congress. Such was the anger and virulence of the woke right against Milei that they even called for voting against him. The result of those elections (successful for the libertarian) showed that at least in Argentina, the woke right is not only marginal but pathetically ridiculous. However, the underlying discussion is another.
The struggle between the woke right and Mileism is taking place at a time of reconfiguration of political forces in the region. In this context, Agustín Laje, an intellectual who has largely shaped the narrative of the emerging Hispanic right, intervened in the fight defending Javier Milei. This drove the Hispanic woke right, which had appropriated Laje, crazy.
In the context of a heated debate on X, Laje argued that it was not true that the Argentine president had not waged the "cultural battle" he had promised, and posted a list of actions that the Milei Administration had carried out in pursuit of that battle.
Therefore, Laje concluded that the reason for the virulence of the woke right against the president was actually another: "what really bothers them is something that was absent back then, or that they kept well hidden: an open hatred of Judaism, as an essential articulator of all political discourse."
"This never existed between 2018 and 2024, not even remotely. Life, family, freedom, property, national sovereignty: none of all the immense advances in these areas (for which we had been fighting for years) seems to attract them in the least, faced with a Milei who openly sympathizes with Judaism. This, then, is the core of the matter," he added.
III. The philosophical root: The woke right and post-liberalism
This hostility is framed within a philosophical debate that has gained traction in the last decade: post-liberalism. This movement, which attacks the foundations of classical liberalism, constitutes an umbrella for the emergence of a "woke right": a faction obsessed with identity, state collectivism, and imposed morality.
Although the movement goes back a long way, it is true that in 2018 it was a specific debate among a few eccentrics. But now it is on the agenda. Post-liberals oppose classical liberalism as a theoretical framework that prioritizes individual rights as the source of political authority and human development.
Post-liberals consider that this liberalism is a secularizing force (they even use the description "satanic" in a non-ironic way) that uses the language of freedom to hide the real objective: to deny the higher authority of the "common good." In this sense, they are critical of conservatives such as William F. Buckley Jr., Milton Friedman, or Ronald Reagan.
Hence the idea of "post-liberalism." They consider that current political and economic problems are consequences of adopting liberal principles in law, culture, and the economy. Liberalism becomes "structural" for post-liberals in the same way that racism is for critical race theorists: the system itself is the source of the problem. In this sense, their philosophy could be framed as just another critical theory, like any of those proposed by the woke left.
Post-liberalism holds that the cultural battle was lost because the limits of liberalism were accepted, both in its economic and political versions, preventing the use of state power to promote its ideology, also arguing that individual autonomy eroded the moral foundations of the West. Some authors claim that conceiving the State solely as a guarantor of individual freedoms is insufficient to face the "cultural battle." This is a stance almost identical to old constructivism.
Post-liberalism rejects the idea of a limited state and "fusionism," the doctrine that united liberalism and traditionalism, and which deeply influenced Reagan. They consider that this alliance no longer responds to contemporary social reality and that today it acts as a brake on any attempt at moral reconstruction.
Like all ideological movements, post-liberalism is a kind of large set divided into sub-factions that may disagree with each other. That said, one of the factions is this woke right that is hostile toward free markets, free trade, state impartiality, and foreign military interventions.
In contrast, they are more favorable to state intervention, progressive redistributionist consensus, the welfare state, and social justice. Many sub-factions of the woke right are associated with Catholic integralism and with anti-capitalism.
Much of the woke right saw in the post-woke era and the rise of figures who came to power such as Trump or Milei, an opportunity to redefine the right in a way that favored them. Although they supported these politicians electorally, philosophically they subscribe to ideologues such as Alexander Dugin or Pat Buchanan. In many ways, they parasitized the leaders of the alternative rights to grow in the heat of their successes, and now feel the frustration of remaining in electoral marginality.
IV. The battle for the right's identity:
Post-liberalism as an ideological/philosophical framework is not synonymous with the woke right. It is rather that umbrella where these factions and others accommodate and mutate. In itself, the woke right as a reactionary phenomenon possesses the same unviable ideological conditions as its left-wing twin.
It is whiny, contradictory, false, and endogamous. It inevitably "empowers" those who define their identity only through the victimized collective. Liberalism was kryptonite for this phenomenon; illiberalism wants to essentialize it.
Recent history shows that, once these types of movements are built, totalitarians end up running them. The illiberal messianism of the woke right believes it has found its moment and will not stop its attacks, even if it must blow up the leaders it once used as tactical vehicles. For now, at least in Argentina, its destructive drive has a limit: electoral reality.
Nevertheless, it is important to take note and review how these figures infiltrated political parties and foundations in the period Laje mentions, between 2018 and 2024, engaging in self-criticism about how we let ourselves be deceived and how many red flags we overlooked. The current conflict is not a passing internal dispute, but a decisive struggle for the moral and intellectual identity of the right for the coming decades. This battle is just beginning.
