Does the Brazilian Far-right Have a Future without Bolsonaro?
David Magalhães, professor of International Relations at PUC-SP and coordinator of the Extreme Right Observatory. This text was originally written for issue 52 of the WBO Newsletter, published on February 3, 2023. Fill in the form at the bottom of the text to access and subscribe to the WBO weekly newsletter in English.
Political scientists have given us sage advice: electoral defeats do not necessarily mean political defeats. Bolsonaro lost at the polls, which does not mean that the Brazilian ultra-right has been defeated politically. After four years of the Bolsonaro government, the far-right is actually stronger than it was in 2018.
Something not very different was said by US analysts when a mob of fanatics tried to take the Capitol by storm on January 6, 2021. It was clear that Trump had been defeated in the elections, but Trumpism remained the main organized political force in the United States.
The emergence of Bolsonarism as a social movement undoubtedly represented a watershed in Brazilian political life. Unlike what has happened with other important solid democracies around the world, there is no party in Brazil that ideologically represents conservative sectors of Brazilian society, which different opinion polls reveal are not small in numbers. Rather, what exists in Brazil are parties that survive on clientelistic practices, that is, the exchange of goods and services for political support.
Until the emergence of Bolsonarism, the Brazilian right was fragmented. Bolsonaro has become a unifying force for numerous trends on the Brazilian right: religious conservatives, military nationalists, reactionaries nostalgic for the dictatorship and even the monarchy, and pro-market liberals. The large demonstrations on the streets of Brazil in June 2013, the attacks on traditional political elites launched by the Car Wash Operation (Lava Jato), and a broad anti-PT sentiment all produced an anti-establishment energy that Bolsonaro’s populist rhetoric captured. In the absence of a party to shape and represent the Brazilian right, there emerged a movement leader who managed to articulate a major demand of Brazilian society. The fact that Bolsonaro arbitrarily chose a party to contest the elections, which he subsequently left during his government, proves that Bolsonarism is a political force that escapes the institutional structures of the Brazilian party system.
“Even though the far-right was defeated in the presidential election, it has expanded its base in Congress, and it will create obstacles for Lula’s third term. But it is important to emphasize that the strength and cohesion of the ultra-right in Brazil depends on Bolsonaro’s role as leader of the opposition”
It turns out that Bolsonaro is not just a charismatic leader with conservative views, as Ronald Reagan was in the United States. His ideas have always defied liberal democracy. Bolsonaro became known nationally for defending torture and the maxim of penal populism, namely, that “a good bandit is a dead bandit.” He became a phenomenon on social networks with his homophobic, misogynistic, and racist positions. On several occasions, he attacked the rule of law, arguing that minorities should submit to the majority.
Cas Mudde, one of the great scholars of the ultra-right, argues that we must analytically separate the populist radical right from the extreme right. The radical right accepts the essence of democracy based on popular sovereignty, but opposes the elements of liberal democracy, that is: minority rights, the separation of powers, and the rule of law. The extreme right, on the other hand, is at the same time illiberal and anti-democratic, in addition to being animated by a revolutionary impetus and desiring a violent rupture with the prevailing social order in order to recreate an idealized past. Thus, as much as Bolsonaro can be classified as an extreme right-wing leader, his government had characteristics typical of the populist radical right, such as that of Viktor Orban in Hungary and Donald Trump in the USA. Bolsonaro's far-right agenda was not taken to the extreme only because of a series of institutional, political, and social constraints, which revealed the surprising resilience of Brazilian democracy.
However, governments of the populist radical right encourage far-right groups to come out of anonymity by legitimizing their actions. In the United States, the Trump administration created a favorable environment for strengthening the alt-right, expanding the influence of neo-fascist groups, such as the Proud Boys, and leveraging white supremacist terrorism. In Brazil, the radical right in government also honored various organizations and actors of the extreme right. The paramilitary group called “300 from Brazil” even performed an act with torches in the image and likeness of Nazi ceremonies and the alt-right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia. A report produced by the Brazilian transitional government revealed that a process of radicalization based on far-right doctrines (i.e., Nazism, Italian fascism and Integralism) is underway within Brazilian schools. No less extremist are the militants who were camped in front of barracks begging for a coup d’état to prevent Lula's inauguration.
In addition to these groups that are embedded in Brazilian society, the Lula government will face a vociferous conservative opposition in the National Congress. Even though the far-right was defeated in the presidential election, it has expanded its base in Congress, and it will create obstacles for Lula's third term. But it is important to emphasize that the strength and cohesion of the ultra-right in Brazil depends on Bolsonaro's role as leader of the opposition. This means that he will have to overcome his depression and withdrawal from politics that took place after his electoral defeat. Since the Brazilian right does not have a historic party that defends a conservative agenda, it is dependent on a strong and charismatic leadership in order to avoid returning to the state of fragmentation in which it found itself before Bolsonaro's presidency. Without this powerful unifying force, the Brazilian ultra-right could have the same outcome as Trumpism, which was being roundly defeated in the midterms of 2022.
