Populist leader alleged to have ‘copied word for word’ a monologue by TV show’s fictional president Jed Bartlet

Populist leader alleged to have ‘copied word for word’ a monologue by TV show’s fictional president Jed Bartlet

Argentina’s rightwing populist president, Javier Milei, has been accused of plagiarising a chunk of his recent speech to the United Nations general assembly from the political drama The West Wing.

“It seems like fiction, but it isn’t,” the left-leaning Buenos Aires newspaper Página 12 reported on Friday, claiming Milei had “copied, word for word, a monologue” by the television show’s fictional president, Josiah “Jed” Bartlet.

Suspicions over Milei’s address surfaced this week when the political columnist Carlos Pagni flagged the “extraordinary” similarities between part of the president’s speech and words uttered by Martin Sheen’s Bartlet 21 years earlier. “Didn’t anyone else notice?” Pagni wrote in the newspaper La Nación, before transcribing the words of both men.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
          32·
          2 months ago

          Yup that reads like they let a libertarian write it. But none of those individual freedoms mean a damn when they go after the government protecting them. Ergo, they are either supporters of Corporate Feudalism or useful idiots for the would-be Aristocracy.

          • DragonTypeWyvernEnglish
            11·
            2 months ago

            Guess you couldn’t quite understand the part where it started as a branch of socialism, huh

            • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              2 months ago

              Oh it absolutely did not. That article describes basic communism dead on and then tries to say that it was libertarianism. That’s the most hilarious thing I’ve heard all day.

              And it still doesn’t do anything to disprove my point that they either knew it will end up in Corporate Feudalism or they’re useful idiots. A commune is not resisting the mercenaries employed by Shell inc.

              Edit to add, tracked the sources for that paragraph down. They’re all anarchist. Literally self described anarchist. Except for one about a left version of libertarianism written in… 2012. That Wikipedia article is high on it’s own supply.

                • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  2 months ago

                  I’m not opposed to evidence of a left libertarian movement. But the first source uses the word libertarian once, in relation to the French Liberte, then at the end says if you agree to call yourself a whole ass anarchist, not a half or a quarter anarchist.

                  • DragonTypeWyvernEnglish
                    1·
                    2 months ago

                    Dude, the point is that anarchist and libertarian are the same word, and capitalists stole one and smeared the other.

      • Letsdothis@lemmy.worldEnglish
        18·
        2 months ago

        But… there are libertarians, this is an objective fact… Some folks are so extremely left that any other political opinion is to the right of them. You may need to come back a little towards the center.

        Edit: In contemporary US politics libertarian is usually used to describe a set of political values that advocate liberal social policies with conservative economic policies. This means they don’t fit neatly on a left/right spectrum because they (mostly) align with Democrats on social issues and Republicans on economic issues.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          2 months ago

          Okay? I think you missed what was going on there. I agree there are libertarians, I do not agree that they have any meaningful participation in the left. Their ideas about small (or no) government completely invalidate everything they say about social issues. The corporations will set and enforce the rules if we don’t have a government capable of doing so.