How Brazil is becoming a key battleground for the global far-right

Brazil’s second edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which took place between Friday and Saturday in Brasília, was seen as a chance for a locker room pep talk ahead of September 7, when supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro will hold protests around the country on Brazil’s Independence Day. People from all over Brazil attended the event and there was even a surprise appearance by the president himself, who urged his followers to take to the streets on Tuesday and stand their ground against the other branches of government.

But there was more than mere cheerleading at the 2021 CPAC.

After Donald Trump lost the 2020 U.S. presidential election and plans of a global ultra-conservative movement led by his former strategist Steve Bannon did not pan out, Brazil has become a key battleground for American alt-right values.

As our columnist André Pagliarini pointed out in a piece for The New Republic, Messrs. Bannon and Trump found in Jair Bolsonaro and his clan “a foreign far-right movement thoroughly interested in their Washington-centric approach.” 

In fairness, Mr. Bolsonaro isn’t the only one seeking to transplant U.S. culture wars in Brazil. As columnist Benjamin Fogel pointed out on The Brazilian Report last year, Brazil has, for decades, absorbed U.S. culture as a sign of progress and looked at U.S. values as something to be emulated. From gun control debates and anti-vaccine movements to identity politics, Brazilian movements on the left and right have been replicating codes and arguments used in the U.S.

Mr. Bolsonaro, of course, has taken that up many notches. From his Reaganite electoral rhetoric that the state is the problem, rather than a means to a solution, to his Trumpesque strategy to win the 2022 election. 

CPAC Brazil had something of a festival atmosphere, with thousands of right-wing Brazilians almost packing out the Ulysses Guimarães Event Center in Brasília. Many of them made sure their ideologies were on show, spending the two days draped in Brazil flags and wearing green, yellow, and blue. For those who hadn’t received the dress code memo, improvised stalls were...