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.

  • @[email protected]English
    0•3 months ago

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

    • @MaggotyEnglish
      1•3 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.

        • @MaggotyEnglish
          1•3 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.