Javier Milei, the Free Speech Champion Who Takes His Critics to Court
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The December 2026 issue of Reason explores Argentine President Javier Milei's accomplishments and what is yet to be done.
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ReasonPresident Javier Milei had watched all seven of Argentina's World Cup games from his official residence wearing the same jacket for good luck. But when fortune deserted Lionel Messi and his team's conduct set tongues wagging internationally, Milei saw red.
In a radio interview, the president claimed that the U.S. Democratic Party and the governments of Brazil and Mexico had financed an "anti-Argentina" campaign during the World Cup. Apparently, nothing less than state power would suffice to avenge the defiled honor of the nation. On the evening of July 29, Milei signed an emergency decree—thus bypassing Congress—that empowers the government to deport or ban the entry of foreigners who have "directed hate messages, orally or in writing, or incited violence against the Argentine people as a whole, or against an Argentine citizen, motivated by that person's nationality," plus anyone who has "desecrated national symbols or incited others to do so." The decree said there would be exceptions for "legitimate" political, ideological, and academic criticism, but it provided no guidance for how to distinguish legitimate criticism from "hate messages."
An official statement signed by Milei declared that "in light of recent displays of hostility toward the Argentine Republic and Argentines, the national government reaffirms that the defense of the nation, its citizens and its symbols is non-negotiable. Anyone who attacks the Argentine Republic is not welcome in our country."
Unfortunately, that wasn't a one-off impulsive reaction by a sports fan momentarily forgetting his principles. While Milei may love the maxim "as the state gets smaller, liberty grows larger," he also seems to believe people who disagree with his views are legitimate targets of state power.
In a much-heralded speech to the U.N. General Assembly in 2024, Milei made a defiant case for freedom against collectivism and declared that "we believe in freedom of speech for all." Yet he has subsequently launched several criminal complaints against critics, seeking to have them punished for their speech. He has done this by trying to weaponize articles 109 and 110 of Argentina's penal code, which criminalize "slander or false accusation" and "intentionally dishonor[ing] or discredit[ing]" a specific individual.
The first wave of criminal defamation complaints was launched in May 2025 against three journalists and commentators, including the prominent Argentine historian and journalist Carlos Pagni. According to Milei's complaint, Pagni damaged his "honor and reputation" through statements that "attributed to me having carried out the same conduct as that carried out by the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler to come to power." In fact, Pagni did not compare Milei's rise to power with Hitler's; he made a broader point about the current global instability, and he referred to Henry Ashby Turner's book Hitler's Thirty Days to Power to illustrate the dangers when world leaders fail to communicate and listen. Milei's insistence that these comments constituted a direct comparison between himself and Hitler suggests traits ill-suited for a politician intent on restraining rather than expanding state power.
The journalists named in the two other complaints had made comments that were more directly on the nose. One was the conservative TV and radio host Viviana Canosa—formerly a Milei supporter, now a vocal critic—who had used her platform to attack the president as "authoritarian and despotic," comparing him to "dictatorial leaders" and saying Milei wanted Argentines "enslaved and subjugated." The other was Ari Lijalad, who had written a lengthy piece on Milei's outbursts against journalists and accused him of treating "anyone who thinks differently as a virus to be eradicated from society—the same discourse the Nazis used to justify the murder of millions of Jews."
Milei has long regarded journalism as corrupt, "depraved, and violent." He frequently launches long tirades using the phrase "WE DON'T HATE JOURNALISTS ENOUGH," with the corresponding hashtag #NOLSALP (the Spanish acronym for the phrase). In remarks to a September conference co-sponsored by Reason Foundation, Milei called journalists "scumbags with microphones" and "hit men." In other words, those journalists were reciprocating in a mudslinging contest where Milei himself is an active and enthusiastic belligerent. But while the Argentine media are fighting with words, Milei has reinforced his bully pulpit with the coercive machine of state sanctions.
The complaints against Pagni and Lijalad were ultimately dismissed, with judges finding that the statements in question were opinions or related to public officials. (As of late September, Canosa's case remains unresolved.) Such speech enjoys heightened protection under the right to freedom of expression protected by Argentina's constitution and Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights. To be actionable, it must reach the threshold of "actual malice," a concept directly imported from America's First Amendment jurisprudence.
Despite these defeats in court, Milei launched a new series of criminal complaints in July 2025, this time targeting five journalists. Two of the complaints have already been dismissed by courts.
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The Milei administration's willingness to weaponize his grievances against the media has gone beyond defamation law. In April 2026, a military security agency filed criminal complaints for illegal disclosure of political and military state secrets against two journalists who had used smart glasses to record inside the public areas of Casa Rosada, the presidential palace. Milei weighed in on the case, calling the two journalists "DISGUSTING TRASH." The government then banned previously accredited journalists from the palace, citing an alleged national security threat.
In May, a prosecutor dropped the case against the journalists, noting that the recordings had not violated any criminal laws or disclosed any government secrets.
Milei's persistent lawfare, despite his losing streak in the courts, might still effectively intimidate his critics into self-censorship. In other words, these frivolous criminal complaints against protected speech bear the hallmarks of being SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation), where the power imbalance is such that the real punishment is the process and any favorable judgment is an unlikely bonus.
Milei's attempts to limit criticism and transparency go beyond the courts. In 2024 his government adopted a decree that broadens exemptions to freedom of information requests and requires that those seeking such requests verify and register their identity. A coalition of civil society organizations has argued that the decree gives public authorities broad and vague powers to exempt information from disclosure and creates a chilling effect due to fear of reprisals. More fundamentally, the decree is difficult to square with the classical liberal principle that openness and transparency are necessary for a government to be accountable to the citizens from whom it derives its powers.
These attempts to silence critics and to limit transparency do not mean Milei has constructed an authoritarian regime comparable to the murderous dictatorship that ruled Argentina in the 1970s and '80s. Previous democratic governments have also weaponized defamation laws to silence dissent and politicized government control of media advertising funds to manufacture consent.
Moreover, prosecuting people for insulting powerful politicians is an all too common feature in other democracies, where ordinary citizens cannot rely on the protections that Argentine courts have provided Milei's critics. In fact, had some of Milei's defamation cases been decided by the European Court of Human Rights, he might have won them: Europe's top human rights court has held that it may be necessary to protect public officials "from offensive and abusive verbal attacks in the course of their duties."
In the United States, President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked journalists and the media and filed billion-dollar civil lawsuits against outlets, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
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Some Milei policies have expanded rather than contracted free expression. His deregulatory push repealed a military dictatorship–era law that controlled the availability of newspapers and a law that prescribed imprisonment for Argentines who criticized domestic human rights violations in international venues. While these laws were largely defunct and unenforceable due to technological and constitutional developments, their repeal made it harder to revive them and sent an important message that such rules are incompatible with freedom.
Milei's most impactful boost to the marketplace of ideas may be his removal of the regulation that prevented satellite internet providers from operating in Argentina, where millions of people live in remote and rural areas with no or very spotty Internet connections, cutting them off from the wider world. Milei thus paved the way for Starlink and other operators to roll out satellite connections to large swaths of Argentines, vastly expanding not only their economic opportunities but their ability to share and access information and ideas.
But a government that expands people's ability to exercise their freedom of expression only to punish those who do so in a way the government disapproves of is distorting rather than deregulating the marketplace of ideas.
This is not the first time the leaders of a society based on individual freedom and limited government have violated its foundational principles. In 1798—a mere seven years after the ratification of the First Amendment—U.S. President John Adams signed the Sedition Act, which punished "false, scandalous, or malicious writing" against the president, his administration, and Congress, branches of government all held or dominated by Adams' Federalist Party. James Madison, architect of the First Amendment, condemned the Sedition Act and its nakedly partisan enforcement. Punishing criticism of public officials, he said, was incompatible with "that right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right."
Fortunately, Argentina's judiciary has taken this Madisonian wisdom to heart by incorporating a central part of First Amendment doctrine. This imported wisdom now serves as a bulwark against the very man who promised the world that "Argentina will not support any policy that implies the restriction of individual freedoms."
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