{"id":103248,"date":"2017-12-11T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=103248"},"modified":"2017-12-10T16:12:16","modified_gmt":"2017-12-10T16:12:16","slug":"how-the-radical-right-takeover-in-brazil-has-parallels-with-trumpism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/12\/how-the-radical-right-takeover-in-brazil-has-parallels-with-trumpism\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Radical Right Takeover in Brazil Has Parallels with Trumpism"},"content":{"rendered":"

The hard right is running the country without being elected after Dilma Rousseff\u2019s impeachment last year. It has surprising support among the new lower-middle class.<\/em> There has never been a time when those defending the interests of the big landowners, evangelical Christians and the army have been so strongly represented in the National Congress.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Photo Credit: Rodnei Reis \/ Flickr Creative Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

7 Dec 2017 – <\/em>There was victory in the air at the opening of the Liberty Forum in Porto Alegre this April. The city is known outside Brazil as the first municipality to come under the control of the leftwing Workers\u2019 Party (PT) in 1998 and as birthplace of the World Social Forum, but has also hosted this annual meeting of Brazil\u2019s ultra-liberal right for 30 years; the forum used to be restricted to insiders, but has now turned into a jamboree.<\/p>\n

With the 2,600-seat auditorium full throughout the event, the speakers were happy: \u2018Neoliberal thought has never figured so prominently in public debate,\u2019 said Helio Beltr\u00e3o, president of the Mises Institute Brazil, a thinktank that is officially apolitical but follows economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), a major figure in the Austrian School. \u2018We got thousands of young people out into the streets to demonstrate against the PT, and drove the left out of power. For the first time, I feel we can win the 2018 presidential election.\u2019<\/p>\n

This may not be an idle boast. After 13 years of PT hegemony, a hard right is governing Brazil without being elected. Former vice-president Michel Temer, who became president after Dilma Rousseff was impeached last August, is following the forum\u2019s neoliberal map, with an amendment to the constitution that limits public spending growth to the rate of inflation in the previous year; privatisations; greater flexibility in labour legislation; plans to reform pensions that will deprive many of a pension; and a narrower definition of slave labour, still widespread in Brazil.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s forum was opened by the new mayor of S\u00e3o Paulo, businessman Jo\u00e3o Doria of the rightwing Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB). Doria presented himself as an entrepreneur who works 15 hours a day. His plans included \u2018lower taxes, less market regulation and zero restrictions on free enterprise.\u2019 He also promised to privatise as soon as possible those areas of public services still under public management (including parks and sports stadiums), so as to eliminate \u2018slowness and bureaucracy in public administration \u2026 I am changing the habits of the political world by using Uber instead of official cars,\u2019 he declared to loud applause.<\/p>\n

Doria is a favourite of Brazil\u2019s new right, which sociologist Laurent Delcourt calls a \u2018tropical Tea Party\u2019, after the anti-tax movement in the US. He embodies the myth of the self-made man from a humble background, and has won support from the working class in S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s suburbs and privileged residents of its smarter neighbourhoods by describing himself as an \u2018honest worker\u2019. Doria ended every rally of his 2016 election campaign with a message to his PT opponent, Fernando Haddad: \u2018Let him go and show himself in Cuba.\u2019<\/p>\n

Cold War Rhetoric<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rhetoric that recalls the cold war is characteristic of this new right. As in the past, the enemy is communism, trying to take control of Brazil through the PT. Rodrigo Tellechea Silva, a former director of the Entrepreneurial Studies Institute (IEE) said, quite seriously: \u2018The Bolivarian ideology of the PT has infiltrated culture, education, NGOs and a large section of our youth. If we had not managed to impeach President Rousseff, Brazil would be communist today.\u2019 He seems to have forgotten that former PT leader Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva (\u2018Lula\u2019, president 2003-10) charmed both the stock market and the favelas.<\/p>\n

Many of the young who attended the forum were wearing clothes from Vista Direita (Look Right), a brand that offers an anti-communist range, including t-shirts with slogans such as \u2018Be cool, not communist\u2019 and \u2018Communism has been killing since 1917\u2019. Most were members of the Brazilian branch of Students for Liberty, a global neoliberal organisation present in Brazilian universities since 2010. In 2014 it gave rise to the Free Brazil Movement (MBL), which led the calls for Rousseff\u2019s impeachment from the moment she was re-elected that year. The MBL\u2019s young leaders are setting a new trend in Brazilian politics. They are known for sarcasm, insulting their opponents and violent rhetoric. In April 2015 a key figure, Kim Kataguiri, said: \u2018We must not stop at wounding the PT, we need to put a bullet through its head.\u2019<\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s radical right is surfing a wave of polarisation and anti-PT sentiment that has been growing since June 2013. That year saw the biggest demonstrations since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985. The demands were initially for greater investment in public transport, healthcare and education. Delcourt said: \u2018Unexpectedly, the right demonstrating at the time brought together two major currents: one extreme, in other words identitarian and racist, the other neoliberal. Together they managed to take over the protest movement, and turn it into opposition to the PT, especially by harnessing the theme of the fight against corruption.\u2019 Just 10 days after the movement was launched, the demonstrators\u2019 targets were no longer just budget cuts and the lack of public services, but also public buildings in Bras\u00edlia (the seat of the federal government) and any symbol of the PT or of a political world they denounced as corrupt.<\/p>\n

In 2015 the inquiry into corruption at the state oil company, Petrobras, revealed a system of illegal financing of political parties that involved major construction and public works enterprises. Every party in Brazil was mentioned as Petrobras senior executives began their testimony, but media and the prosecutors conducting the inquiry initially focused only on the accusations concerning the PT, which had been in government since 2003; they claimed it had invented the system.<\/p>\n

Privileged and White<\/strong><\/p>\n

The demonstrators were less and less representative of the average Brazilian: according to surveys by sociologists from the Federal University S\u00e3o Paulo (Unifesp), they were white, urban and from privileged backgrounds. Esther Solano, in charge of the surveys, said: \u2018The aim for 90% of these demonstrators was to bring down the PT. They were opposed to its social programmes: the flagship family allowance, the reservation of university places for black, Amerindian or mixed-race Brazilians, and even the More Doctors programme, which recruited medical practitioners from Cuba. Their rhetoric called for meritocracy rather than welfare dependency, which they said was the mark of the PT.\u2019<\/p>\n

Hatred of the PT and what it represents can be seen on social networks in the mockery of people from Brazil\u2019s Northeast region. They are portrayed as retarded, lazy or scroungers, in a mix of racism (northern Brazil is blacker than the south) and classism that is sometimes expressed openly. In the eyes of its well-born detractors, the PT is guilty of having given certain rights to people historically discriminated against, and so eroding the privileges of the more affluent.<\/p>\n

Besides allowing these former social outcasts to travel by air (many of Brazil\u2019s wealthy did not like sharing the same plane), the PT made an irreparable error in 2015 when it got legislation passed requiring employers to declare their domestic employees, pay them a minimum wage and observe legal limits on their hours. Delcourt said that anti-PT feeling binds the privileged together \u2018like cement, just as anti-communism was the uniting factor for opposition to the leftwing government of President Jo\u00e3o Goulart, deposed by the military coup of 1964. It\u2019s the same social class, white and privileged, who demonstrated against Goulart in the 60s and more recently against Rousseff.\u2019<\/p>\n

Though far-right activists calling for the military to return to power were a minority in 2015, most demonstrators favoured a more repressive policy. According to Solano, \u201870-80% of survey respondents supported harsher sentences for criminal offences, and a reduction of the age of criminal responsibility to 16. They also expressed great admiration for prominent figures in the justice system, and for the federal police, who were leading an inquiry into corruption that seemed to be focused on the PT alone.\u2019<\/p>\n

Camozzato \u2018Knew Nothing about Politics\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

The data confirmed the results of polls conducted between 2010 and 2016 by Ibope (Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics), to measure conservative values in Brazilian society. Support for lowering the age of criminal responsibility rose from 63% to 78%; support for the death penalty from 31% to 49%; and the ratio of respondents who considered themselves strongly conservative from 49% to 59%. Political scientist Maur\u00edcio Santoro of Rio de Janeiro State University said: \u2018Under these conditions, it was to be expected. Since the end of the dictatorship, there has never been a time when conservative parliamentary groups, those defending the interests of the big landowners, evangelical Christians and the army have been so strongly represented in the National Congress.\u2019<\/p>\n

The popular demonstrations began to infiltrate Brazil\u2019s institutions. At the municipal elections of October 2016, the MBL, which until then described itself as civic and apolitical, presented 45 candidates on a range of tickets. Ten were elected as municipal councillors, and one as mayor of Monte Si\u00e3o (population 25,000) in Minas Gerais state. At Porto Alegre, Felipe Camozzato was elected councillor for the New Party (PN), which has links to the MBL: \u2018Until 2015 I knew nothing about politics. I had no interest in it,\u2019 he said, laughing. Camozzato joined the opposition to the PT when he and friends formed a\u00a0batucada\u00a0<\/em>band they called The Crazy Liberal Gang. They took the tune from a football chant and gave it new words: \u2018Weep, Bolivarian PT-ist\u2019; it was sung at demonstrations in 2015. Camozzato said: \u2018When [Rousseff] came to Porto Alegre, we used to stand under her window and sing all night to prevent her from sleeping.\u2019<\/p>\n

The notoriety Camozzato gained from this kind of provocation helped his election campaign, which was based on a single issue: to stop public funding for political parties. In 2015 the Supreme Court banned private financing of political organisations after the Petrobras corruption scandal broke. Until then, 70% of funding had come from the private sector; now the amount allocated to a public fund to finance campaigns is decided by the congress before elections. Next year, when Brazil will hold elections for president, state governors and members of national and local assemblies, the fund will be $350m. \u2018It\u2019s not right,\u2019 said Camozzato. \u2018Parties should find their own funding, like businesses.\u2019<\/p>\n

Camozzato, now 29, admits he understands nothing about his city\u2019s problems, but he does claim to have searched the municipal regulations for anything that might hinder free enterprise. He has defended the right of \u2018righteous citizens\u2019 to bear arms, and attacked \u2018judges motivated by Marxist ideology\u2019 for granting bail to defendants. In August he called activists of the Homeless Workers\u2019 Movement (MTST) \u2018bandits\u2019 and \u2018good-for-nothings\u2019. Ra\u00fal Pont, 73, a co-founder of the PT and former mayor of Porto Alegre, said: \u2018MBL supporters are very good at spreading hate. And people follow them. Last year, for the first time in my life, I was attacked by a group of angry youths, who called me a communist and a Bolshevik.\u2019<\/p>\n

Attacks linked to the MBL happen mostly on social networks, where the organisation claims to have more than 2.5 million followers, and where it repeats the propaganda published on its \u2018news\u2019 websites. Brazil is familiar with ideological bias in major media, and has many websites where aggression triumphs over journalistic rigour. Conservative sites outdo the rest. The sociologists from Unifesp found that 71% of respondents believed former president Lula\u2019s eldest son was the owner of JBS-Friboi, one of the biggest meat processing multinationals, while 53% thought that Brazil\u2019s largest criminal gang, First Capital Command (PCC), acted as the armed wing of the PT.<\/p>\n

Attacks on Media<\/strong><\/p>\n

In July Brazil\u2019s investigative journalism association, Abraji, reacted to these sites\u2019 repeated attacks on journalists. For example, the MBL had attacked Ag\u00eancia Publica, an investigative journalism site, because it had exposed the errors in an MBL video on crime, and the MBL had accused Ag\u00eancia P\u00fablica of being \u2018far-left activists disguised as journalists\u2019.<\/p>\n

One of the political leaders most successful with this rhetoric is Federal Deputy Jair Bolsonaro, a major figure of Brazil\u2019s far right who is running second in opinion polls as a presidential candidate, though he has only 16% of voting intentions, according to a September poll. Bolsonaro, a former army captain, has been in public office since 1990. He has yet to distinguish himself in his parliamentary career, but has acquired a high media profile.<\/p>\n

During the congress vote on Rousseff\u2019s impeachment in April 2016, broadcast live on television, Bolsonaro justified his vote for impeachment as being a stand \u2018against communism, for the armed forces and for the memory of Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, Dilma Rousseff\u2019s worst nightmare.\u2019 Brilhante Ustra tortured Rousseff (then a member of a far-left organisation) for 22 days in 1970, when she was arrested for her political activities. The courts condemned Bolsonaro for derogatory statements on women, black people and homosexuals, but \u2018today he is the most popular politician on Facebook, with more than 4 million followers,\u2019 said sociologist Pablo Ortellano.<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro welcomed recent statements by General Ant\u00f4nio Hamilton Martins Mour\u00e3o that terrified Brazil\u2019s population, and not just the victims of the military dictatorship (1964-85): \u2018Either the institutions solve the political problem through the courts, removing those elements involved in illegal acts from public life, or we will have to impose the solution.\u2019 He said that all his high command colleagues agreed with him. A few days later, army commander General Eduardo Villas B\u00f4as, claimed that the constitution allowed the military to intervene in the event of chaos.<\/p>\n

Historian Maud Chirio wrote: \u2018Of course the 1988 constitution, drafted after the end of the dictatorship, doesn\u2019t permit the armed forces to intervene in politics autonomously. But President Michel Temer is so weakened by an approval rating near zero that he no longer has the authority to impose his will on the army\u2019.<\/p>\n

Dreams of the New Lower Middle Class<\/strong><\/p>\n

The rightwing movements (far right, neoliberal right, classic right) are fighting over the PT\u2019s traditional voter base, especially in the outskirts of cities, where the standard of living has risen over the past decade \u2014 thanks to the left. Sociologist William Nozaki said: \u2018The new lower middle class dream of being entrepreneurs and consumers.\u2019 He coordinated a study by the Perseu Abramo Foundation (linked to the PT) to understand why the party had lost ground in the S\u00e3o Paulo suburbs when Doria was elected. \u2018They are very sensitive to the meritocracy rhetoric of the right and the evangelical churches, and less affected by the PT message, which is still aimed at the poor.\u2019 A majority in the outer suburbs of Rio de Janeiro voted for Bolsonaro and new mayor Marcelo Crivella (Brazilian Republican Party, right), a bishop in the evangelical Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.<\/p>\n

The evangelical churches are far better established in poor areas than the Catholic Church, and promote a largely conservative and individualist worldview. To win over these voters, the liberal right has widened its targets to include contemporary art. In September the MBL forced the closure of the\u00a0Queermuseu<\/em>exhibition: out of 264 works, three were, according to the young liberals, \u2018apologies for paedophilia, zoophilia and blasphemy against Christian culture.\u2019 The MBL also attacked the S\u00e3o Paulo Museum of Modern Art over a performance featuring male nudity. Ortellano said: \u2018It\u2019s a strategy that looks forward to the coming elections. They have realised that cultural warfare is an excellent vector for mobilisation, and that a rhetoric which is hostile to the feminist, black and LGBT movements can be a way to win conservatives over to the liberal cause.\u2019<\/p>\n

According to the Unifesp sociologists, who repeated their survey during S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s traditional March for Jesus, which attracted nearly a million participants, the evangelicals are not susceptible to liberal ideas. Solano said: \u2018The faithful don\u2019t know where they stand, right or left. Those are concepts that don\u2019t mean anything to them. They describe themselves as conservative, but that doesn\u2019t mean they approve of Michel Temer\u2019s economic programme.\u2019 Yet this may not be peculiar to evangelicals.<\/p>\n

There is no guarantee that the radicalisation of the right will bring electoral success. Opinion polls show that the people of Brazil are opposed to the government\u2019s proposed labour and pension reforms. Solano said: \u2018We also observed this during the demonstrations in favour of Rousseff\u2019s impeachment. The vast majority are not in favour of small government. They want better education and healthcare.\u2019 This should temper the confidence of the Liberty Forum\u2019s ultra-liberals. Though the far right, military and civilian, now speaks its mind freely, though the classic and neoliberal right is in government, and though the right that wants to regenerate the government promises to be even more radical, Lula still leads the polls for the presidential election, with more than 35% of voting intentions.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________<\/p>\n

Anne Vigna is\u00a0a journalist based in Rio de Janeiro.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 alternet.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The hard right is running the country without being elected after Dilma Rousseff\u2019s impeachment last year. It has surprising support among the new lower-middle class. There has never been a time when those defending the interests of the big landowners, evangelical Christians and the army have been so strongly represented in the National Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":103249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}