Mow musk and milei with pimped motor saws, she made this Argentinian

In the midst of all the striking things that Elon Musk is doing and calls these weeks, he made the news worldwide this year with one performance this year. At the conservative annual fair CPAC in Washington, the tech billionaire held a shiny chain saw last month and shouted: « Arrhh! This is the chainsaw for the bureaucracy! Kettingzaaaaag! » In addition to him, the man who gave him this with aluminum and bronze pimped tool as a gift: the Argentinian President Javier Milei.

Milei’s gift to Donald Trumps informal ‘austerity minister’ was for Mariano ‘Tute’ di Tella, maker of the shiny machine, a new personal artistic highlight. « I have been obsessed with this kind of machinery since I was thirteen, » says the 45-year-old artist on the phone from the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires. « I gather them, get them up and started to decorate them for the years. It is taking an increasingly higher flight. »

Musks performance on CPAC was the final international breakthrough of the chainsaw as a right-wing libertary power symbol. At the end of 2023, the self-proclaimed anarcho capitalist Milei won the presidency with a campaign in which he frequently waved a chain saw. Murw beaten after two decades of chronic crisis, saw a large majority of the Argentines somewhat in the ‘shock therapy’ with which the eccentric outsider promised to finally put state finances in order.

They knew that. With radical cuts on pensions, subsidies and civil servants, among other things, Argentina reached a budget surplus for the first time this century last year. The towering inflation has come to calm, the course of the peso is stuck and the economy is picking up again. The Argentines are impoverished, but Milei remains more popular than the opposition in polls.

Destiny

Di Tella was also charmed by the eccentric libertary candidate when he started campaign with a chainsaw in 2022. « I saw Milei standing on a truck and cranking a chamber saw. But I also thought the thing had no identity. It was a normal machine. » So once he was chosen, he decided to make a special copy for the president.

He worked on it for six weeks. It became a copy with a golden saw blade, in which he engraved the text ‘The Forces of Heaven’ in Spanish. After waiting for a few months, he was welcome at the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace. « I took the metro, together with my son, ten stops and then five more blocks. I gave him the agents at the entrance, who took him through the scanner. When I took him out of the cover, they were very surprised how beautiful he was. »

Di Tella did not meet Milei, but once he got home, he already received photos. « The saw was in the middle of the meeting table, with the government program. » His artwork was only in place for him, he says lightly emotionally. « This was the destiny of this machine. The picture was complete. I was on the right track, the goal was achieved. I could finally give an identity to this symbol. »

The spokesperson for Milei approached Di Tella at the beginning of this year to also make a copy for Musk. And in the meantime he has already announced that he is also going to manufacture a saw for Musks political boss and Milei’s kindred spirit, President Donald Trump. « I can’t let go of anything about that, but he is going to be very special. »

Contemporary Hooifork

Although Di Tella is in full swing in Trumps and Musks demolition of the American government apparatus, he would find it a shame if the chainsaw is associated with austerity. « The saw stands for many different things. For me he learns the world that we can stop the omnipresent decadence. You now see him where people are fed up with all sins and their politicians. »

In his own country, Di Tella is not so worried about the economy: the single father with a son of ten has two jobs that he can just live around. « We do nothing spectacular. We can sometimes eat out and go on vacation once a year. But those who want to work can survive in Argentina. »

A chamber saw sows fear and a little respect, because it is powerful, shocks and is a bit dangerous

He himself is much more concerned with the insecurity on the street, the lack of mutual well -being or the worthless contemporary music. « You only have to watch videos on Tiktok for two minutes and you see where we have reached humanity. » For Di Tella, his sawing « the hope that humanity can still be saved. »

The chainsaw is a kind of contemporary pitchfork, he agrees. « Indeed. It is a symbol of being tired of being tired of real protest. This is not possible: this is not possible. A chain saw sows fear and a little respect, because it is powerful, shocked and is a bit dangerous, but that also means that you have to take him seriously, not? »

Before starting the saw for Trump, he puts the finishing touches to a copy that he Excalibur baptized. He will also sell this for the first time. He wants to get at least a million dollars that he will fully donate to education and care in Argentina, he says. « Because the saw can also make us better. He can lead to domestic improvement. We cannot always continue to blame politicians. The debt must be divided. We are also responsible. »

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