Late Fascism in Brazil? Theoretical Reflections

Abstract

Serious reflection on the regime of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil requires considering renewed theoretical and historical debates on fascism. This essay explores recent contributions by Perry Anderson, Dylan Riley, Enzo Traverso, Atilio Borón, and Armando Boito Jr., putting each in conversation with present political and socioeconomic dynamics in Brazil and focusing on the state form and the power bloc, with an excursus on the local militia state in Rio de Janeiro. The essay argues that Bolsonaro is unlikely to establish a fascist dictatorship, given the political paralysis of his regime’s first several months and the difficulties of sustaining a political project rooted in a heterogeneous social base within a context of persistent world-market stagnation and ongoing Brazilian economic contraction. Still, the essay insists that the most compelling theoretical, historical, and political work on the prospects of twenty-first-century fascism in Brazil and elsewhere comes from those who do not rule out the possibility of its success.