Panel in Georgetown Brings Together Experts on the Far Right
WBO Press Release
September 25 2024
The Washington Brazil Office (WBO) and Georgetown University held the “2024 Washington Brazil Conference” on Tuesday, September 24, 2024 with the panel “The Rise of the Far Right: Challenges to Democracy in Brazil and Abroad” in the Arrupe Multipurpose Room at Georgetown, Washington.
The initiative was a way to contribute to a “robust and articulate” international response to the rise of the far right, according to the ideas presented by WBO Executive Director Paulo Abrão and Georgetown University Professor of History Bryan MCCann in an article in which they summarized the spirit of the event.
The first speaker at the panel was Guilherme Casarões, professor of International Relations at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) in São Paulo. He has been researching the Brazilian far right for five years and has sought to establish connections between the processes that occur in this sector in Brazil and the United States. Casarões discussed the “Americanization of Brazilian politics as a setback,” highlighting factors such as the importation of a cultural war and the fabrication of the idea that the Christianity of white European colonizers would be the dominant culture in a multicultural country. For him, “the goal of these groups has been to transform Brazil into a laboratory for a certain kind of America,” referring to the United States.
The second speaker was Flávia Pellegrino from the Pact for Democracy. She emphasized that “the far right in Brazil tried to overthrow a president who was legitimately and democratically elected,” referring to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. According to her, “this sector is constantly seeking to reverse the narrative about the defense of democracy in Brazil. This is one of the main aspects that we have to understand and find ways to confront this narrative because they are trying to reverse the very meaning of democracy.”
The third speaker was Professor Elcior Santana from Georgetown University. He highlighted the manipulation by the far right of the feelings of frustration among segments of the population who feel excluded. For him, “The far right has been very skillful in channeling these feelings (of frustration) by discrediting some institutions and trying to rewrite some rules of the game, including the rules of the democratic process; trying to capture the imagination of some groups in order to position themselves as disruptive and providing an alternative to fix, in quotation marks, what doesn’t work. They do this by evoking a mythical past that, in fact, never existed.”
The event was attended by approximately 40 people, was broadcast live on the WBO YouTube channel, and is available at this link.
