Agustín Laje
Agustín Laje Arrigoni is an Argentine conservative writer, political commentator, and lecturer. He is the founder and president of the conservative think-tank Fundación Libre.
Early life and education
He began his systems engineering career at the. While studying there, he published his first work, Los mitos setentistas: Mentiras fundamentales sobre la década del 70. This book allowed him to obtain a scholarship to study counterterrorism at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University, in Washington, D. C., an institution of the United States Department of Defense. When he returned to Argentina in 2011, he abandoned his engineering career. He holds a Licentiate Degree on Politics Sciences from National University of Córdoba and a master's degree in Philosophy from University of Navarra, Spain.Career
In 2013, Laje published Cuando el relato es una farsa: la respuesta al relato kirchnerista with the writer Nicolás Márquez, where he criticizes Kirchnerism's position on the 1976–1983 dictatorship in Argentina. The book was rejected by local human rights organizations and organizations supporting trials for crimes against humanity, which repudiated it and managed to cancel its presentation in Bahía Blanca.In 2016, also together with Márquez, they published El libro negro de la nueva izquierda: Ideología de género o subversión cultural. In it they criticize third-wave feminism and what they call "gender ideology", which are elements they consider to be tools of Cultural Marxism. This book generated a controversy in stating that a feminist supposedly supported the pedophile activist movement. Subsequently, the actress and host Malena Pichot interviewed Laje on a radio program, generating a debate which later went viral on social networks. Laje also participated in a debate with the presenter Patricia del Río, on the Peruvian radio station RPP.
In 2018, the book was presented at the 44th edition of the Buenos Aires Book Fair where it provoked rejection from human rights organizations, social and political organizations. They responded with "songs and slogans referring to denialism, hatred and discrimination that these authors promote".
Political positions
Laje calls himself a paleolibertarian, minarchist, and anti-feminist. He is a strong opponent of abortion, even in cases of rape, making him a pro-life activist. He opposes euthanasia. His ideas have been considered ultra-conservative and far-right by different media outlets. On numerous occasions, Laje has been called sexist, transphobic, and homophobic, but according to him, "he hates no one".Laje defines gender ideology as a set of anti-scientific ideas that, for authoritarian political purposes, uproots its nature from human sexuality, and tends to explain it exclusively from culture. Thus, our sexual reality, as men or women, would be a mere social construction, nullifying our natural determinations.