The 18th World Congress of Jewish Studies

O Papel de Israel Imaginário na Extrema-Direita Brasileira

author.DisplayName

The 2018 elections led Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency of the Republic in Brazil, with a far-right speech unprecedented in recent Brazilian democracy. He defends torture and the military dictatorship, attacks scientific thought, State secularism and the arts – raising questions about the Brazilian State that seemed to have been overcome a long time ago.

There is a relevant part of the population that converts to this new political movement, denying Human Rights and flirting with fascist symbology. We call this political movement “bolsonarism”. It is important to note that “Bolsonarism” is not a formal ideology and does not necessarily depend on the figure of Jair Bolsonaro, as it is an aggregation of various diffuse resentments against modernity.

“Bolsonarism” acts on multiple fronts, creating new historical narratives and imaginary enemies. The objective of this work is to show how this political movement thinks about the role of Brazil in the scope of international relations, through the defense of the so-called “Jewish-Christian civilization”, in which Brazil would be inserted and protagonist, as maintainer of Western values. In this sense, Israel assumes a central role.

State of Israel takes the form of an “Imaginary Israel”, which is interpreted as a sacred place for Western culture, but also a paradise of economic liberalism, militarism, capitalism, conservatism and the first frontier of the West against the constant threat of East. This Imaginary Israel does not contradict a far-right fascist discourse. And this perception makes Israel a central theme in bolsonarism, because it changes in practice the conduct of Brazilian foreign policy, discontinuing Brazil`s consolidated pragmatic tradition.