Trump and Bolsonaro: Twins Expressions of the Rise of Neo-Fascism - 5/20/22

Trump and Bolsonaro: Twins Expressions of the Rise of Neo-Fascism

The surprising rise to power of Donald Trump, in the USA, in 2016, and of Jair Bolsonaro, in Brazil, in 2018, represented not only structural problems in the political systems of both countries, but also a broader crisis in the functioning of the logic of Liberal Democracy itself. Tragically, instead of providing effective ways of political representation, the demagogues of today accelerate the ongoing structural crisis itself. Indeed, as renewed iterations of authoritarians of the past, Trump and Bolsonaro deepen the delegitimization of mediated political representation. But instead of providing a more inclusive democracy, they fragment the very the social fabric of their nations by cultivating the image of a savior who will carry the chosen ones to the promise land while the different (minorities of all types) need to be excluded, when not eliminated altogether.

This new type of media-based salvation indeed depends on xenophobia and divisiveness as central instruments. Trump exacerbated the image of the threatening immigrant, while Bolsonaro reactivated, in a narrow but still effective way, the image of the communist threat. But though effectively promoted on digital networks, this rhetorical device would not have been enough to bring them power were not the case of many voters who felt strongly frustrated with the existing political structures, as well as with multiple types of economic, demographic, and cultural changes unfolding in their societies in recent years.

It is also true that Liberalism has historically been more concerned with the question of legal and formal equality than with the achievement of equality in the real conditions of existence. But even so, the liberal notion of an intrinsic human dignity, though not very effective in delivering effective equality, was fundamental to support the very agenda of equality over the last 250 years. And it is precisely the centrality of the notion of formal equality, with its inherent emancipatory potential, albeit historically limited, that has become the target of the global extreme right on the rise in recent years. As we know, leaders such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Recep Erdogan in Turkey, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Donald Trump in the USA and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil have all sought to erode constitutional guarantees from minority groups, destroy the investigative and judicial independence of autonomous organs of the State apparatus, delegitimize opposition voices, suppress freedom of the press, and repress opposing voices who end up being treated as enemies of an alleged homogenous nation under threat. 

As epiphenomena of deeper forces, these experiences tend to occur during national economic crises linked to broader productive restructuring processes and an associated weakening of existing established party systems. Likewise, they tend to present a moralistic discourse that attacks the formal political process, although they participate in it even if often to, once elected, destroy the system from within. There is also a recurrent use of a binary logic opposing the good vs. the bad citizen. And so, as the case of Bolsonaro clearly demonstrates, the appeal of salvation is not linked necessarily to the provision of concrete improvements in life but rather to the constant vilification of the constructed enemy.

Interestingly, more than in the center of capitalism, where economic policies tend to assume a protectionist tone, efforts are being made in peripheral countries, such as Brazil, India, Colombia, etc., to revive the neoliberal agenda of the 1990s, this time around through more authoritarian means. As such, the Neofascism of today emerges as the central instrument in promoting the agenda of big capital in contexts of economic difficulties and a crisis of existing political structures. Its agenda is no longer limited to the structural economic adjustment of the first neoliberal wave but seeks to dismantle central principles of the democratic logic, such as formal equality and access to the formal deliberative process. Therefore, we increasingly see a movement to reverse fundamental achievements of historically marginalized groups through the deterioration of basic public services, elimination of economic matrix rights (labor and social security), and environmental legislation. Minorities of all kinds are being persecuted in all countries where such leaders have come to power, and universal suffrage itself has been redefined not as a civilizing achievement necessary for the functioning of democracy, but as a privilege of some who would be usurping the will of a supposedly oppressed majority.

This has been very much the case in the US over the past few years, although the process goes further afield. Let us remember that the neoconservative movement (Neo-Con), which emerged in the late 1960s, was instrumental in bringing Nixon and Reagan to power through a culturalist discourse that articulated the notion of a majority threatened by ongoing social changes. Competently, Neo-Cons set the tone for the Republican Party to articulate an economic vision with a neoliberal matrix, but which, nevertheless, found strong support among the white, poor, religious, and conservative electorate. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 further exacerbated resentment towards the formal political system, especially among the Republican Party base, which proved very receptive to the appeals of the full-fledged outsider, Donald Trump, in 2016. 

Let us remember that, with an overtly xenophobic and racist rhetoric, in his first campaign speech, Trump demonized the image of the immigrant who would come to the country, especially from the southern border, not only to allegedly take the jobs of white Americans, but also to steal their properties and rape their women. In so doing, Trump managed to activate the frustration of at least two generations of poor and conservative white segments to mobilize them to finally go to the polls to defend their America. For that, an innovative communication strategy anchored in digital media was used. An America that would be reborn from the ashes of the industrial decay of the last decades and the shame of the defeat of military interventions was promised. But of course, it would be an America Great Again only for a few.

In Latin America, in Brazil in particular, the neoliberal authoritarian (Neo-fascist) wave gained momentum in the reaction to the reformist governments of the so-called Pink Tide. Interestingly though, even if critical of the global economic order, these center-left administrations could not (often, did not even try) to escape the dependence of their economies on the export of primary products in high demand in the international market at the beginning of the century, but which from 2010-2012, suffered a sharp drop in prices. In effect, the economic effects of the U.S. real estate market crisis and, in an associated way, the crisis of global liquidity and demand, was experienced in a forceful way across the region in the second decade of the 21st century.

Particularly relevant, workers, the central political base of the Pink Tide governments, were the first to feel the drop in domestic production for export. This frustration and the search for alternatives was not restricted to the sectors though, and often, with the critical work of the oligopolistic and conservative local media, the so-called middle classes were also decisively involved in expressing their discontent. Even groups that had gained a lot from economic growth during the early 20th century bonanza, such as agribusiness elites, quickly became voracious critics of the governments of the time. Such groups even started to lead a veritable crusade for the end of social programs, which thus assumed the metonymic role of representing everything that was going wrong in a context of historically low growth rates. As a result, the region began to experience a series of political crises, where the liberal representative logic itself would be increasingly questioned.

Interestingly, the first right-wing governments (e.g. Mauricio Macri in Argentina) came to power based on the rearticulation of regional conservative forces, attacked the programs implemented by previous administrations, and reestablished the foundations of the neoliberal logic of the 1990s. But this phase was not efficient enough to implement the economic agenda of regional oligarchies linked to increasingly oligopolized global capital. And so, Bolsonaro, in Brazil, but also Nayib Bukele, in El Salvador, and Ivan Duque, in Colombia, deepened the attacks on the logic of representation in liberal molds, guarantor of the existence and manifestation of the opposition and of control over central power bodies in order to promote, in the most authoritarian and effective way, the reforms that big capital was looking for in a global context of deepening economic, geopolitical, and military disputes, each day more fierce and violent.

And even if some of these characters no longer occupy the presidential chair (e.g Trump) and others may be on the way out (e.g. Bolsonaro), the fact is that they are clear expressions of the obsolescence of institutional politics, as well as of the appeal to authoritarian solutions that have been presented in recent years. In this sense, even if out of power but especially when still in control of a country’s government, the Neo-Fascist alternative will likely remain a central factor in defining the directions of democracy, and politics more broadly, in the world in the foreseeable future. Understanding it and resisting it are therefore central tasks for all of those interested in maintaining and improving democratic governance in the upcoming years.

Rafael R. Ioris is Associate Professor of Latin American History at the University of Denver and a WBO Research Fellow. He holds a PhD in Latin American History from Emory University and is the author of Transforming Brazil: A History of National Development in the Cold War Era (Routledge, 2014) among many publications.