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andrew kennis
Argentina General Strike Demands End to Milei's 'Chainsaw' Austerity Policies
"The Milei government has picked a fight with workers and pensioners, and now they will feel the full force of organized labor," said one union leader.
Apr 10, 2025
Increasingly fed up with economic policies under which poverty and inflation have soared while vital social services, wages, and the peso have taken huge hits, disaffected Argentinians took to the streets of cities across the South American nation Wednesday for the third general strike of right-wing President Javier Milei's tumultuous 16-month presidency.
Led by the General Confederation of Labor (CGT)—an umbrella group of Argentinian unions—the "paro general," or general stoppage, drew workers, the unemployed, pensioners, educators, students, and others affected by Milei's severe austerity measures and his administration's plans for more deep cuts. Demonstrations continued throughout Thursday.
"In the face of intolerable social inequality and a government that ignores calls for better wages and a dignified standard of living for all, the workers are going on strike," CGT explained ahead of the action.
Airlines canceled hundreds of flights as air traffic controllers and other airport workers joined the strike; many schools, banks, and other offices shut down; and ports, some public transport, and other services ground to a halt.
"The only thing the administration has brought is a wave of layoffs across state agencies, higher poverty rates, and international debts, which are the biggest scam in Argentina's history," the Association of Airline Pilots (APA) said.
Rodolfo Aguiar, secretary general of the Association of State Workers (ATE), said Wednesday that "after this strike, they have to turn off the chainsaw; there's no room for more cuts," a reference to both Milei's ubiquitous campaign prop and his gutting of public programs upon which millions of Argentinians rely.
"Right now, the crisis Argentina is facing is worsening," Aguiar added, warning about government talks with the International Monetary Fund. "The rise in the dollar will quickly translate into food prices, and the new deal with the IMF is nothing more than more debt and more austerity measures."
Milei's government is nearing agreement on a $20 million IMF bailout, a deeply unpopular proposition in a country left reeling by the U.S.-dominated institution's missteps and intentional policies that benefit foreign investors while causing acute suffering for millions of everyday Argentinians. Argentina already owes $44 billion to the IMF.
"We already have experience as Argentinians that no agreement has been beneficial for the people," retiree and striker Rezo Mossetti told Agence France-Press in Buenos Aires Thursday, lamenting that his country keeps getting into "worse and worse" debt.
CGT decided to launch the general strike during a March 20 meeting that followed a pensioner-led March 12 protest outside the National Congress in Buenos Aires. After fringe elements including rowdy soccer fans known as "barrabravas" joined the protests and committed acts of violence and vandalism, police responded by attacking demonstrators with "less-lethal" weapons including water cannons and tear gas. A gas canister struck freelance photojournalist Pablo Grillo in the head, causing a severe brain injury that required urgent surgery.
This, after Argentinian Security Minister Patricia Bullrich invoked controversial measure empowering more aggressive use of force against protesters and rescinding a ban on police use of tear gas canisters. The Security Ministry also filed a criminal complaint dubiously accusing organizers of the March 12 protest of sedition.
Milei and his supporters have portrayed the general strike as a treasonous assault on the fragile Argentinian economy and those taking part in the day of action as lazy and jobless.
When Clarín, the country's largest newspaper, cited a study by the Argentine University of Enterprise claiming that the general strike would cost the national economy around $185 million per day, University of Buenos Aires professor Sergio Wischñevsky retorted: "Very revealing. It means that's the magnitude of the wealth workers produce every day. It's the best argument to stop ignoring workers."
As he has done with past protests against his rule, Milei has also framed the general strike as "an attack against the republic" and repeated his threat that police would "crack down" on demonstrators.
Orwellian use of state infrastructure by Milei's "anarcho-capitalist" gvmnt. in Argentina. As the 36 hr. general strike begins, signs & loudspeakers at train stations across Buenos Aires read: "Attack against the republic! The syndicalist caste punishes millions of Argentines who want to work."
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— Batallon Bakunin ( @batallonbakunin.bsky.social) April 10, 2025 at 4:11 AM
General strikers largely shrugged off the threats of police violence and state repression.
"The right to strike is a worker right and I think there has to be more strikes because the situation with this government is unsustainable," Hugo Velazuez, a 62-year-old worker striking in Buenos Aires, toldReuters.
While the Argentinian mainstream media's coverage of the general strike was largely muted, images posted by independent progressive media showed parts of central Buenos Aires appearing practically empty.
Workers around the world showed solidarity with striking Argentinians.
"The Milei government has picked a fight with workers and pensioners, and now they will feel the full force of organized labor," said Paddy Crumlin, president of the London-based International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), which boasts nearly 20 million members in 677 unions in 149 nations. "The international trade union movement stands ready to fight back with our Argentine comrades. We will not rest until these attacks on workers' rights are defeated."
ITF noted that various sectors of Argentina's transportation sector "are under direct threat of privatization," including the national commercial airline, Aerolíneas Argentinas, the National Highway Board, and the Argentinian Merchant Marine.
Milei—a self-described anarcho-capitalist who was elected in November 2023 on a wave of populist revulsion at the status quo—campaigned on a platform of repairing the moribund economy, tackling inflation, reducing poverty, and dismantling the state. He made wild promises including dollarizing Argentina's economy and abolishing the central bank.
However, the realities of leading South America's second-largest economy have forced Milei's administration to abandon or significantly curtail key agenda items, leading to accusations of neoliberalism and betrayal from the right and hypocrisy and rank incompetence from the left. According to most polling, Milei's approval rating has fallen from net positive to negative in just a few months.
Particularly galling to many left-of-center Argentinians is Milei's cozying up to far-right figures around the world, especially U.S. President Donald Trump.
Andrew Kennis, a Rutgers University media studies professor specializing in Latin America, noted similarities between the protests in Argentina and anti-Trump demonstrations in the United States.
"It's no coincidence that 5.2 million people were in the streets in all 50 states just this past Saturday and that the U.S. is now catching up with the mass resistance that's long been going on in Argentina," Kennis told Common Dreams Thursday.
Kennis—who this week published a deep dive on Milei's "destructive chainsaw theory" in Common Dreams—added that in the cases of both Milei and Trump, "there was no real honeymoon period, as there almost always is" for most new presidencies.
"In both countries, people were in the streets pretty damned fast and furiously," he added.
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Progressive Movement Mourns Loss of Beloved Media Scholar Robert McChesney
"The world of media scholarship, journalists far and wide, and anyone who cares about a free press, a functioning democracy, and a better world has suffered a tremendous loss," said Common Dreams' managing editor.
Mar 27, 2025
Robert McChesney—prominent media scholar, Free Press co-founder, dogged defender of democracy, and friend of Common Dreams—died Tuesday at the age of 72.
McChesney's many books, nearly three dozen in total which he either wrote or edited, include: Rich Media, Poor Democracy (2000); The Problem With the Media (2004); The Death and Life of American Journalism (2010, co-authored with John Nichols); Dollarocracy (2012, also with Nichols);Digital Disconnect (2013); and Digital Democracy (2014).
He was the Gutgsell endowed professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, and also co-founded the Illinois Initiative on Global Information and Communication Policy with Dan Schiller.
"Bob McChesney was a brilliant scholar whose ideas and insights reached far beyond the classroom. He opened the eyes of a generation of academics, journalists, politicians and activists—including me—to how media structures and policies shape our broader politics and possibilities," said Free Press president and co-CEO Craig Aaron.
Free Press mourns the passing of co-founder Robert W. McChesney, a brilliant scholar & generous mentor who captured corporate media's profound influence on the health of our democracy. https://www.freepress.net/news/press-releases/free-press-mourns-death-co-founder-and-scholar-robert-w-mcchesney
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— Free Press (@freepress.bsky.social) March 27, 2025 at 8:08 AM
"While McChesney spent much of his career charting the problems of the media and the critical junctures that created our current crises, he believed fundamentally in the public's ability to solve those problems and build a media system that serves people's needs and sustains democracy," Aaron continued.
"His ideas were bold and transformative, and he had little patience for tinkering around the edges," he added. "Rather than fighting over Washington's narrow vision of what was possible, he always said—and Bob loved a good sports metaphor—that we needed to throw the puck down to the other end of the ice."
A Common Dreams reader, contributor, promoter, and supporter for over 25 years, McChesney will be deeply missed by all those associated with the independent, nonprofit news organization.
"Both in my personal political development earlier in life and as a working journalist in the profession," said Common Dreams managing editor Jon Queally, "McChesney had a profound influence on how I came to understand media systems and the political economy overall."
"Rich Media, Poor Democracy pretty much changed my life, a book that I once taught to high school students—which they loved, by the way—as it explains, in an accessible but penetrating fashion, just how corrupting the news and information landscape can be when it is controlled wholesale by corporate interests," Queally continued.
"The world of media scholarship, journalists far and wide, and anyone who cares about a free press, a functioning democracy, and a better world has suffered a tremendous loss with the passing of Bob McChesney," he added. "Our hearts go out to his family and many friends."
Rutgers University communications professor Andrew Kennis also highlighted the importance of Rich Media, Poor Democracy. He told Common Dreams that McChesney—who along with Noam Chomsky wrote openers to his 2022 book Digital-Age Resistance: Journalism, Social Movements, and the Media Dependence Model—influenced his own work.
"Bob McChesney's impact on media was immeasurable," Kennis said in a phone interview. "He was a steadfast public intellectual who inspired millions with accessible critiques of capitalism and its corrosive effects on democracy. He argued that the United States' descent into neoliberalism came at the expense of popular sovereignty."
Kennis said he got to know McChesney through Chomsky, adding that "Noam called Bob 'pretty much the best political economist' in the country, and practically the world."
"Bob very much self-identified as a political economist in general, but especially about communications," he explained.
In a 2013 appearance on "Moyers & Company," hosted by Bill Moyers on PBS, McChesney joined with friend and frequent co-author Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, to discuss their book, Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex Is Destroying America.
"Democracy means rule of the people: one person, one vote," McChesney explained to Moyers during the interview. "Dollarocracy means the rule of the dollars: one dollar, one vote. Those with lots of dollars have lots of power. Those with no dollars have no power."
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote the introduction to Dollarocracy. Jeff Cohen, founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR) and founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, called his friend McChesney a "proud socialist" who "told me how glad he was to go door to door" canvassing for Sanders when he ran for president in 2016 and 2020.
Writing for FAIR, Cohen said that "no one did more to analyze the negative and censorial impacts of our media and information systems being controlled by giant, amoral corporations."
"Particularly enlightening was his 2014 book, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy," Cohen continued, "in which McChesney explained in step-by-step detail how the internet that held so much promise for journalism and democracy was being strangled by corporate greed, and by government policy that put greed in the driver's seat."
"That was a key point for Bob in all his work: He detested the easy phrase 'media deregulation,' when in fact government policy was actively and heavily regulating the media system (and so many other systems) toward corporate control," Cohen added.
In 2015, at the National Conference for Media Reform in Denver hosted by Free Press, McChesney sat down with Common Dreams to discuss the importance of independent outlets as well as the inspiring promise of journalism that can "change the world" by exposing one person at a time to news or information they might not otherwise ever learn or come by:
Robert McChesney on Common Dreams
Nichols wrote for The Nation Thursday that while McChesney was a "globally respected communications scholar who was wholly welcome in the halls of academia," he "was never satisfied working within an ivory tower."
Indeed, a lesser-known aspect of McChesney's work was his immersion in one of the late 20th century's emerging music scenes.
"One of the first things that Bob did to have an impact on society was with the grunge movement in Seattle," Kennis told Common Dreams. "That was kind of his street cred before he went full nerd."
"Bob was doing some independent journalism and was studying in Seattle and was closely covering the emergence of Nirvana and other garage bands back then; that's how he got his first big dip into journalism," he said. "And he was a big fan, and part of the fabric of indie rock."
McChesney—who studied history and political economy at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and earned a Ph.D. in communications from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1989—co-founded the The Rocket, an alternative weekly newspaper that highlighted groups such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Screaming Trees, Sleater-Kinney, and Mudhoney as they rose to prominence. Ironically, The Rocket was sold to a big San Francisco publisher whose financial mismanagement killed the once-independent paper.
"Bob was a towering character," Kennis said, "always dedicated from the beginning to the end to the good fight."
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'Manufacturing Obituaries': Media Falsely Reports Noam Chomsky's Death
"Shameful and sad that Valéria Chomsky had to deny news of Noam Chomsky's death," said one Brazilian academic who spoke to the renowned leftist's wife.
Jun 18, 2024
Some popular media outlets and international political figures came under fire Tuesday for falsely reporting the death of U.S. academic and social critic Noam Chomsky, who is fighting to recover in Brazil after suffering a massive stroke last year.
"Chomsky did not die. I just spoke to Valéria, his wife," said Brazilian journalist Cauê Seigner Ameni.
"He is well," Valéria Chomsky confirmed to ABC's Chris Looft.
Beneficência Portuguesa de São Paulo, a hospital in Brazil's largest city, said in a statement that Chomsky was discharged on Tuesday to continue his treatment at home, according toThe Associated Press.
The New Statesman ran—and subsequently deleted—a Chomsky obituary Tuesday following rumors of the 95-year-old's passing. Other outlets including Jacobin kept or tweaked Chomsky obits, with telltale signs like the word "obituary" in their URLs belying their inaccuracy.
Commentators from across the political spectrum also posted reaction—from mournful on the progressive left to gleeful among liberals and right-wingers—to false reports of Chomsky's death.
"Shameful and sad that Valéria Chomsky had to deny news of Noam Chomsky's death over the phone here in Brazil, because a bunch of places decided to publish pre-written obituaries and posts at the first online rumor," Brazilian academic Sabrina Fernandes said on social media.
"Since no outlet that reported the death decided to post an errata, it only got worse," she added, condemning "the online scoop and attention industry... waiting... like vultures."
Responding to numerous reports of Chomsky's death in the Latin American corporate media, Andrew Kennis—a journalism and social media professor at Rutgers University whose book Digital Age Resistance contains a foreword co-authored by Chomsky—told Common Dreams that "it is both a fitting and cruel irony that the fundamentally flawed, trillion-dollar-valued, conglomerate-owned, mainstream news media system has once again erred in its ways."
"No, Noam is not dead. Instead, he's struggling to recover with the unflagging dedication of his partner, who transported him the first chance Noam's health permitted her to do so to receive top-rate medical care in Brazil," Kennis added.
Some observers worked the title of one of Chomsky's more than 100 books—Manufacturing Consent, which he wrote with Edward Herman—into their commentary on the false reports.
"Chomsky is NOT dead. If Chomsky was dead, he would be turning in his grave to see how quickly rumors spread and how social media functions," said Croatian philosopher and Chomsky collaborator Srećko Horvat. "He might as well still call it: 'manufacturing obituaries'."
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