Ben Pawlowski
THE Madrid-based actor Viggo Mortensen has slammed Argentina’s leader Javier Milei as a ‘clown’ and a ‘right-wing puppet manipulated by others’ as he criticised the rise of the far-right in Spain and across the world.
In an interview with RNE as he promoted his new film, The Dead Don’t Hurt, Mortensen labelled the far-right Milei, who became President of Argentina following an election last year, as a ‘disaster’.
Mortensen, 65, who was raised in Argentina and speaks fluent Spanish, said: “For a small percentage it is convenient to have this clown, a right-wing puppet manipulated by others. It suits them economically, but for everyone else he is a total disaster”.
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The Lord of the Rings star added that Milei is a ‘disaster for the arts and cinema, but also for ordinary people, normal people, what we call the people of the interior, outside the province of Buenos Aires’.
He said: “The situation is f***ed up. Argentina is historically a people with a lot of endurance, they are used to continually bouncing back and to being in horrible situations, and they are going to have to bounce back one day when this clown disappears”.
Mortensen, who lives in Madrid with his Spanish partner Ariadna Gil, also blasted the rise of far-right forces in Spain and elsewhere.
He said: “Many people are interested in what Trump is doing because they benefit economically, and there are many external forces that benefit, such as Russia and China, and these external forces have long been involved in Spanish, French, European and Latin American politics”.
“This happens because they see it works to create tension, division and unrest in society, to plunge everyone into crisis. There are people here who repeat the same lies”, the American-born actor and director added.
It is not the first time that Mortensen has had his say on Spanish politics – in 2019, he attacked Vox as ‘neo-fascist’ after the far-right party used his Aragorn character from the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a Twitter message aimed at winning over voters in that year’s general election.
Mortensen and his partner, who was born in Barcelona, also expressed support for the 2017 Catalan independence referendum, which was deemed unlawful and plunged Spain into its worst political crisis in decades.
