Argentine President Javier Milei capped a fiery defense of free-market capitalism at the World Economic Forum on Thursday with an unexpected turn to the Torah, invoking this week’s parshah to describe a civilizational struggle between freedom and state power.

In a clip shared by his office, Milei concluded his remarks by referencing Parshas Bo, which recounts Moshe’s confrontation with Pharaoh and the final plagues that preceded Yetzias Mitzrayim. Milei cast Pharaoh as a stand-in for what he called the oppressive reach of the modern state.

“Parashat Bo describes the moment when Moses confronts Pharaoh, a symbol of the oppressive power of the state,” Milei said, after hailing the United States as a “beacon of light” for the West and praising free-market capitalism as a moral and economic imperative.

The libertarian-minded president then walked through the sequence of plagues as a political allegory. When Pharaoh refused to free the Hebrew people, Milei said, the plague of locusts arrived, representing famine. The plague of darkness, he continued, signified a loss of clarity in decision-making. And the death of the firstborn, he said, exposed “the fate of a society that denies freedom.”

“The analogy to what is happening today in the West is strikingly clear,” Milei added.

The remarks underscored Milei’s increasingly prominent role on the global conservative and pro-market circuit, as well as his vocal alignment with Israel and Jewish themes. A self-described Judeophile, Milei has repeatedly referenced Jewish texts and traditions in public speeches and has positioned himself as one of Israel’s most outspoken supporters in Latin America.

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