This volume delivers a praiseworthy attempt to bring order to recent scholarship on the right in Brazil, specifying its nature and what differentiates it from the traditional, conventional right. The collection of chapters does an admirable job of highlighting the distinctly anti-establishment, anti-party, nativist, and authoritarian dimensions of the new right in Brazil. Bolsonarismo and its associations compose a form of “radical populist right” to be differentiated not only from the traditional right of the Centrão parties (e.g., DEM, PR, etc.) but from populist right-wing actors that have periodically appeared in the past (e.g., Enéas Carneiro). These forces weaponize cultural issues to animate a base of supporters in backlash against protections of minorities based on sexual orientation, gender identity, race, and indigeneity. They embrace hardline approaches to crime mitigation and they oppose the legalization of abortion and gay marriage. Given the moral dimensions of some of these issues, evangelicals have emerged as a critical part of the new Brazilian right’s electoral base. Young activists involved in the movement to impeach Dilma Rousseff and motivated by the anti-corruption investigations of the Lava Jato investigations have become another pillar of the conservative base. New right-wing parties such as Novo and PRB and Bolsonaro’s own PSL rode the wave of these anti-establishment sentiments. Their voters express distinctly “authoritarian” perspectives that are anti-system. Many target the Workers Party (PT) as the centerpiece of what they regard as an incorrigibly corrupt political system.
The editors draw from these observations four central questions that organize the volume: 1) Who are the members of the new right’s electoral base? 2) To what extent can polarization at both the elite and mass levels provide an understanding of the new political landscape? 3) How are new right-wing actors mobilizing and communicating with citizens? And 4) to what degree has the main axis of politics shifted away from economic issues to moral and cultural ones? All of these questions are addressed in the first section of the book which is dedicated to understanding the electoral dimensions of the rise of the Brazilian right during the 2018 and 2022 presidential contests. Victor Araújo’s chapter answers all four questions. He shows how Pentecostal evangelicals, who have become a larger part of the electorate as well as the right-wing base, have been polarized against the PT and the left more generally in a backlash against the expansion of LGBTQ+ rights, including gay marriage. Other right-wing voters with authoritarian values that embrace obedience and societal conformity compose part of the new right’s electoral base. Robert Vidigal argues in his chapter that groups espousing these values emerged from the anti-political, anti-corruption movements that energized the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, supported the Lava Jato investigations, and opposed Michel Temer’s demonstrably corrupt post-Dilma presidency. Bolsonarismo, as a political movement based on societal authoritarianism, a defense of traditional values, and an anti-establishment populism, encompasses all of these changes in Brazilian politics. Lucio Rennó finds that upwards of 20 percent of Brazilian voters compose the solid electoral base of Bolsonarismo; a base that the author claims is the result of a right-wing realignment in Brazil that is without precedent in scope even as it includes aspects of conservative orientations from the past.
None of these shifts has brought greater order to the notoriously fragmented, inchoate Brazilian party system. The evangelical bancada in Congress includes dozens of partisan affiliations, with none dominating (though the PRB’s affiliation with the Assembleia de Deus is significant as an example of a party with grassroots linkages). Anti-establishment new right groups breathed life into radical right parties such as Bolsonaro’s PSL, but these soon split to the PL and União Brasil. Both the fragmentation and the fluidity of the party system have continued as the new right has emerged in Brazilian politics. Parties that were once in the pragmatic, conservative Centrão, have formed alliances with new extreme right organizations. But again, there is much movement across affiliations with little consolidation.
The new right’s lack of a clear organizational order maps onto nuanced orientations at the level of the electorate. The second section of the book dives more deeply into patterns of public opinion that demonstrate shifts in ideology, polarization, personal risk-taking, and attitudes about social issues such as minority rights. Each of these chapters underscores the complexity and multifaceted dimensions of the right-wing electorate. André Bello’s chapter tempers expectations that ideological polarization is behind the rise of the new right. His study shows that self-identified moderates have grown in greater proportion than voters identifying with extreme right and left. In contrast to some of the other chapters, Bello’s study leaves open the question of whether affective, anti-PT or anti-partisan orientations are at play. The chapter by Borba, Okado, and Ribeiro find more consistent patterns of anti-petismo and affective polarization. Using respondents’ orientations toward COVID-control policies, Calvo and Ventura find significant differences in the assessment of personal risk between pro- and anti-government groups. But their findings for positive and negative social media messaging demonstrates nuanced patterns that are not easily understood in terms of polarization. Regarding social identities, the chapter by Abreu Maia and Falabella fails to find consistent patterns of right-wing backlash against the expansion of LGBTQ+ rights. Clearly, many respondents with authoritarian orientations are untroubled by the expansion of social rights, even as some bristle at the emphasis given in recent years on minorities and social inequality.
Without the guidance of institutional, organizational, and behavioral patterns that consistently coordinate the new right at the elite and the mass levels, one is left to explore and appreciate the full diversity of what constitutes the new right in Brazil. That is the purpose of the third section of the volume, which includes well-executed studies of populist narratives and frames, social media-based activism, and comparative insights. The study by Dias, von Bülow, and Gobbi analyzes 40,000 Facebook posts by right-wing activist organizations to demonstrate the different dimensions that have made these actors a “new” right. Anti-corruption frames emerge most consistently, though one might add so dependably that the dominant orientation verges on being anti-establishment. Abelin’s study also analyzes Facebook posts, but it focuses on two organizations from different ends of the spectrum to capture the populist dimensions of their communications. The study by Casalecchi and Vieira uses social media data to demonstrate that Bolsonaristas who use social media heavily become less politically tolerant, though the results for other dimensions such as tolerance of democracy and social intolerance are less consistent.
The last two chapters try to bring greater conceptual and categorical order to understanding the Brazilian new right. Tanscheit and Zanotti emphasize the triarchy of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism in providing some structure for capturing the new right in Brazil and Chile. Like the final chapter by André Borges, there is an attempt here to differentiate the new right from the conventional right, which is done clearly and persuasively. But there is an additional and more important attempt to draw a distinction between the “ultra/extreme right” and the “radical populist right,” largely following the work of Cas Mudde. Both chapters suggest multiple differences between these categories, but there is much fuzziness within and between the categories. At times it is difficult to follow the orientations of these various right-wing perspectives and especially their implications for democracy. The occasional use of the Linzian analytical categories of semi-loyalty and disloyalty raise more questions than they answer in the cases. The continued use of the term “authoritarian” to mean a preference for an “ordered society” and not the regime type only begs the question whether this is simply a correlate of the political preference that can emerge more clearly once other conditions such as crises of democratic legitimacy and unsolvable problems appear (again, to invoke Juan Linz). As Borges demonstrates in his final chapter, the form that right-wing populism has taken in Brazil is based on clearer elements of anti-petismo, anti-party sentiments, and (as suggested in some of the studies but not all), anti-establishment orientations. That may be the best that can be said to encapsulate what the Brazilian new right is at this point. The overall impression is one of a multifaceted political movement with many internal inconsistencies rather than a coherent actor coordinated and organized by a clear agenda linked to a grassroots base and defined leadership.
Borges and Vidigal have produced a useful and insightful volume that is convincing in demonstrating that right-wing politics in Brazil have undergone deep changes at the level of elites and in the broader electorate and society. These shifts are complex and nuanced and merit further study. At the same time, scholars of Brazilian politics should continue to ask about the extent to which the “new right” has replaced the “old right” with its more secular, clientelistic, and transactional (fisiológico) bases in Brazilian subnational politics and the state. The continued fragmentation of the Brazilian party system, Bolsonaro’s electoral defeat in 2022, and Lula’s return to the use of coalitional presidentialism to pass reforms raises questions about how significant and effective right-wing politics has been (and will be) for transforming Brazilian democracy moving forward. If anything, this volume provides a persuasive case for how the Brazilian right should be understood and how it should be studied in the larger research program.
