In the most bleak folds of Argentine politics, Language has ceased to be a vehicle of ideas to become an emotional demolition weapon. Linguistic violence is no longer a rhetorical accident; It is, more and more, a Premeditated strategy to inflame the masses, legitimize hostility and corroer, in silence, the foundations of democratic coexistence.
It is no accident that they resurface with Force images Animals as instruments of symbolic aggression. In April 2025, the President Javier Milei intensified his derogatory rhetoric towards his opponents, referring to them as “unclean mandrels” In social networks after the flexibility of exchange rate and its inclusion among the 100 most influential people in the world according to Time magazine. In addition, he shared a video entitled “Mandrilandia is over”where by artificial intelligence it recreates a society of primates identified with Peronism and the left, celebrating the exchange rate until they are “released” by Milei himself.
The phrase, in addition to its crudeness, exhibits a pattern: reduce the other to a primitive being, lacking rationality and dignity. Something that does not deserve to be refuted, but barely crushed. It is not an isolated outburst: it is the continuity of a long Argentine political tradition that, in its eagerness to differentiate friends from enemies, did not hesitate to encourage the adversary.
The word “gorilla”, Loaded decades of history, it works in national political culture such as stigma, a shortcut to close any dialogue. Born in a humorous 1955 sketch of the radio program “Dyslocada magazine”, The expression “They must be the gorillas!” He quickly muttered in a symbol: being “gorilla” is, for many sectors, being intrinsically antiperonist, antipopular, insensitive. The funny thing is that the term was adopted by both opponents and Peronists to identify their adversaries. Thus, the animal metaphor crystallized not a legitimate political difference, but an impassable moral border.
The dehumanization of the adversary, as explained Martha C. Nussbaum in “The concealment of the human” (2006), constitutes an essential previous step to justify violence. Nussbaum argues that seeing other human beings like “pollutants” or “disgusting” facilitates its exclusion and abuse. It is not just about insulting: it is about corroding empathy, of breaking the bridges that prevent the exercise of cruelty.
Judith Butler, in “Excitable Speech” (1997), warns that the injurious discourse seeks to confer the recipient a subordinate position, denying his status of legitimate interlocutor. Verbal violence not only hurts: it also institutes hierarchies of power that cancel the very possibility of civilized debate.
Current Argentina seems to tour that path with a dangerous familiarity. Words like “Mandril”, “Gorilla”, “Rats” or “Parasites”indiscriminately used by various political actors, show that public language has been degraded until it becomes a resentment machine. Each insult vehicle from power or opposition not only injures who receives it; It also hurts, almost imperceptibly but persistent, the institutional fabric that democracy supports.
Pierre Bourdieu, In “language and symbolic power” (2001), he said The speech not only describes reality, but produces it. Language, as an instrument of symbolic action, molds the social world. If political reality is permanently narrated in a key to animalization and violence, it is not surprising that social practices end up reflecting that brutality.
Animate the other is a dangerous act because it is not in the symbolic plane: Open the door to naturalize exclusion, humiliation and aggression. It is no accident that in the historical episodes of mass violence, such as the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, the previous propaganda has systematically appealed to the animalization of the victims. Before killing, you have to turn the other something less than human.
Politics, which should be the art of building consensus based on differences, becomes in these cases The art of manufacturing enemies. And when politicians leave, when campaigns end, when microphones go out, what remains is a town Torn, faced, resentful. A people who, having internalized violence as a legitimate language, can hardly be recognized again in the other as an equal.
History teaches that politicians pass, but Wounds sowing in collective consciousness may take generations to heal. Between mandriles and gorillas, between sarcastic laughter and fierce insult, what is lost is much more than an choice: it is the very possibility of a common future.
Analyst and director of mentorpublico.com
Source: Ambito
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