Bolsonaro engaging in culture wars to curry conservative favor

In a 2017 opinion piece for the New York Times, political analyst Ross Douthat mused that not all culture wars are bad. The good ones, he says, have clear policy implications beneath the posturing and noise, and revolve around a core legal or moral question. “A bad culture war,” Mr. Douthat writes, “is one in which attitudinizing, tribalism, and worst-case fearmongering float around unmoored from any specific legal question.” In his effort to climb the polls and secure the conservative vote ahead of the October election, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is betting on a high dose of the latter.

The administration has recently turned its ranting social media guns toward a movie set to be launched in Brazil today. “Executive Order” depicts a dystopian Brazil in which the government issues a provisional decree ordering all black Brazilians to be sent to Africa — and it has sent the government up in arms.

The plot of “Executive Order,” originally written for a play, at no point references Mr. Bolsonaro — but that hasn’t stopped members of his family and cabinet from lambasting the film. The latest dig came from Sérgio Camargo, who heads Brazil’s anti-racism agency but has used his office to reaffirm racist stereotypes.

In his crusade against the feature film, Mr. Camargo called for a boycott. Indeed, in a sense, the government has already...