Demagoguery, populism, and foreign policy rhetoric: evidence from Jair Bolsonaro’s tweets

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article investigates whether Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro extended demagoguery and populism into his foreign policy discourse. An analysis of 673 tweets indicates that demagoguery was more common (observed in 94 tweets) than populism (observed in 14 tweets). Bolsonaro adopted a Red Scare tactic, distorted information about the 2019 Amazon wildfires, spread rumours about COVID-19, and portrayed relations with the US during Trump’s administration and Israel during Netanyahu’s as panaceas. Findings suggest that demagoguery can ramify into foreign policy discourse, with a leader fitting distorted interpretations of foreign topics and actors into stories made for domestic consumption. Bolsonaro was cautious concerning relations with China though, indicating that international power politics and expected gains or losses from trade and investment may condition the scope of demagogical discourses. This article shows a conceptual gap in literature on foreign policy discourse, which a framework using the concept of demagoguery can, in part, fill.