Bolsonarismo

The Global Origins and Future of Brazil’s Far Right

By Fernando Brancoli

Rutgers University Press

Bolsonarismo: The Global Origins and Future of Brazil’s Far Right documents the rise of the far-right alliance that emerged in Brazil in 2020 around the figure of former president Jair Bolsonaro. Unlike a cohesive organization with uniform practices, Bolsonarismo is marked by fragmentation and a broad variety of ideologies. Fernando Brancoli delves deeply into how Bolsonarismo has developed a specific political orientation through its partnerships with other groups, practices, and subjectivities within Brazil, as well as internationally.

Through interviews, archival research, and newly available public documents, this book presents a comprehensive and compelling portrait of the neo-evangelical pastors, military personnel, and meritocratic ideologues who are the actors behind the far-right movement. Adding to our understanding of Bolsonarismo's growth in Brazilian politics and the contributing factors behind it, the book also sheds light on the impact of Bolsonarismo on world politics. As a prominent leader of the far-right movement, Jair Bolsonaro's political views and policies have reverberated beyond Brazil's borders, influencing the discourse on issues such as climate change, democracy, and human rights around the world.

Brancoli’s thrillingly-original and uniquely-probing analysis will captivate students, scholars, journalists, and activists concerned by the rise of the far right in Latin America. Brancoli provides clarity for a world spellbound by the hypocrisy, sadism, mismanagement, and ecocidal racism of the Bolsonaro administration. Offering a set of global perspectives grounded in local histories and contexts, this book sets Brazil into a dynamic transnational frame, and brings Eurocentric and U.S.-based scholarship on the new right into conversation with Latin American political sociology and interdisciplinary political studies.'
Paul Amar, author of The Security Archipelago: Human-Security States, Sexuality Politics, and the End of Neolib

Brancoli retraces how, in the first decades of the 21st century, Brazil became an ultra-right global hub. It examines how bolsonarismo, albeit not cohesive, constitutes a political constellation that will not vanish with the electoral defeat of its leader. Above all, it charters how the same far-right that repudiates 'globalism' is itself viscerally transnational. Sonia Corrêa, co-editor of The Remaking of Social Contracts: Feminists in a Fierce New World

For anyone willing to understand the rise of authoritarian nationalist leaders and far right ideologies across the world, Bolsonarismo is an enlightening descent into the improbable alliance of moral reaction, religious inspiration, neoliberal policies, populist strategies, and blatant racism. While deeply grounded in the Brazilian context, it also offers a broader reflection on lurking fascist trends in contemporary societies. Didier Fassin, professor at the Collège de France and the Institute for Advanced Study

FERNANDO BRANCOLI is an associate professor of international security and geopolitics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is also a research associate at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His recent books include The Tropical Silk Road: The Future of China in South America (with Paul Amar and Lisa Rofel), Private Security Companies in the Global South, and Arab Spring: Squares, Streets, and Revolts.

Introduction
1 Extreme Right, Bolsonarismo, and the Multiple Bodies of Conservatism in Brazil
2 Bolsonarismo and the Battle against Globalism: Neoconservatism as a Transnational Alliance
3 Moral Geopolitics: Neo-Pentecostalism, Christian Zionism, and the Internationalization of Salvation
4 Domestic and International Pacification: Militarism, Peacekeeping Operations, and Enemy Formation in Brazil
5 Authoritarian Meritocracy: Bolsonarismo, the Establishment of an Entrepreneurial Nation, and the Privatization of the Family
Conclusion: Bolsonarismo after Bolsonaro––From New Institutional Leaders to Evangelical Paramilitary Groups
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index

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