Argentine President Javier Milei filed libel and slander complaints against three journalists at a time when international concern is growing over press freedom in the country. The journalists targeted are columnists Ari Lijalad and Carlos Pagni, as well as TV host Viviana Canosa. Canosa was a staunch Milei supporter until two years ago.

“Yesterday, I signed three complaints against different journalists for lies. One is for calling me a Nazi. The president of Israel [Isaac Herzog] came out to support me. It is the trivialization of the Holocaust,” Milei said during an interview on a streaming channel on Thursday. 

The president was referring to the complaint he made against Pagni, a political analyst for La Nación newspaper, who wrote a column comparing the current context of global polarization with the political situation before the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. Herzog made an X post voicing support for Milei last week. 

“I take this opportunity to strongly condemn the use of Nazi imagery by an Argentinian journalist against you,” Herzog wrote. “It’s an absurd and offensive comparison — a distortion of history and a dangerous trivialization of Nazi crimes.”

La Nación denied that the journalist had “linked Milei’s rise to power with the process that led to Hitler’s ascension.” 

“Instead, he highlighted the risks the world is facing, based on the lack of communication that characterizes the current moment of global politics,” an editorial published last week said.

Lijalad, who works for the center-left news site El Destape, called the complaint “another chapter of [the government’s] incitement of hatred” and “another step in their crusade to impose their opinions as fact.” Milei filed a complaint against him for a column in which he wrote that the president “rules by inciting violence and hatred against those who think differently.”

In mid-April, Lijalad’s colleague at El Destape, Roberto Navarro, was attacked at a hotel in Buenos Aires by men who allegedly shouted comments similar to Milei’s discourse. The assault, which left Navarro hospitalized, came just days after Milei posted on X that people “don’t hate” the press enough.

Canosa worked most of her career as a showbiz reporter. During the 2023 presidential campaign, she interviewed Milei several times, effusively voicing her support for him, before abruptly withdrawing her support ahead of the election. After Milei won, she was fired from América, the TV channel where she worked. She returned to television this year, hosting a show on Canal 13.

According to the lawsuit, Milei sued Canosa because she called him “authoritarian” and a “despot,”comparing him to dictators.

“Last night the President spent six hours on a streaming channel, imagine what time he went to bed…. But he never stopped talking about the press, about journalists [on the stream],” Canosa said in her show. “Today I’m going to answer to the President of the Nation. I’m very amused by all this; it’s clear that they hate freedom of speech,” she added.

Argentina fell 21 places in the 2025 Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, which was released last week. The steep fall was due to the “insults, defamation, and threats” that Milei and his senior government officials have slung at journalists and media outlets “critical of his regime.”

The country is now 87th on a list of 180, between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Malaysia, and its situation is considered “problematic.” “Javier Milei, the far-right candidate elected president in 2023, is encouraging hostility towards journalists and delivering attacks aimed at discrediting the media and journalists critical of his policies — attacks that are widely echoed by his supporters,” the report said.