While the international community repudiates the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) hesitates and his government does not present a uniform response.
For David Magalhães, coordinator of the Observatório da Extrema Direita, one of the factors that explain this attitude is the split within the Bolsonarist ideological base.
According to him, there are, on the one hand, groups inspired by organizations that emerged in Ukraine almost ten years ago in the context of an anti-Russian reaction. He cites as an example the radical activist Sara Winter, who led attacks on the Federal Supreme Court (STF).
On the other hand, Steve Bannon, strategist for Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign and close to the Bolsonaros, defends Russian President Vladimir Putin as one of the main leaders of a movement against modern institutions.
Faced with this impasse, says Magalhães, Bolsonaro does not move. “He was always careful to keep his ideological base incandescent. For that, it’s not good for the militancy to be fragmented. A position of certain neutrality maintains this ideological unity, it doesn’t create friction.”
In addition to this, other factors weigh, such as the fact that Bolsonaro has just returned from a trip to Russia and the interests of the agro-export sector.
The Brazilian left, for other reasons, is also not uniform in the European crisis, says Magalhães. “There is a left that understands that, regardless of the nature of the regime, any kind of resistance to imperialism and the US is valid.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine split the spectrum to the far right of Brazilian politics, even within the Bolsonarist base. Because? The Bolsonarist right is anything but a uniform mass. It has always been like that. There are some groups. There is a group within the Bolsonarista base, which I would easily call the extreme right, which was greatly inspired by two anti-Russia organizations that were born in Ukraine at the time of Euromaidan. [protestos de novembro de 2013 a fevereiro de 2014 a favor de maior integração com a Europa]the Azov Battalion and the Pravy Sektor.
These organizations perpetrated various types of violence against the political class, preaching an idea of civil disobedience. Not like Gandhi’s, which was peaceful, but violent civil disobedience. Viral images of these groups taking members of the Ukrainian political class and throwing them in the trash can, for example.
This somehow made the eyes of certain sectors of the Brazilian extreme right shine. For example, Sara Winter, who claims to have been trained in Ukraine, although I’ve never found proof of that. But whether she has been trained or not, the movement she creates here, the 300, is very much inspired by the Azov Battalion.
In 2015, 2016 and 2018, the expression “Ukrainize Brazil” circulated a lot, which was to reproduce what the extreme right had done there, this kind of revolt, this anarchy to create an environment conducive to violence, to attack the old political classes . It is the defense of an armed resistance in the name of a national identity, a certain super-exclusive nationalism, which excludes minorities.
And those who are pro-Russia? They came through Steve Bannon, who organized a movement that aimed to articulate leaders against liberal modernity. He meets with Eduardo Bolsonaro and makes him the representative of this movement in South America. But there is also Marine Le Pen [França]Matteo Salvini [Itália] and Putin.
Putin has always been for Bannon one of the figures who would best embody this anti-modern vision against a liberal order. Bannon said this before, and now in the crisis he has returned to defend Putin in these terms.
And there is another aspect that is worth mentioning. This exaltation of a strong, virile, masculine, not to say testosterone, leadership, which in a certain way pleases the electorate that likes the patriarchy that exists in Brazil and Russia. It is common to see Bolsonaro praising Putin, and Putin has already extolled Bolsonaro’s masculinity.
And in addition, they have a religious morality, a conservative agenda and they live attacking the rights of LGBTQIA+ minorities, feminist movements. So, from the point of view of a right that defends religious and Christian nationalism, there is compatibility there.
Is there not a contradiction in that? There are some dilemmas in this matter. For example, how can someone who claims to be conservative support a leader, in this case Putin, who has the international support of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and China? Against China, by the way, there was unity within Bolsonarism. So many bolsonaristas do not understand how this conservative Christian leader supports the regimes of the Latin American Bolivarian left.
But there is the same embarrassment on the part of those who see Ukraine as a reference. They welcome Ukraine but don’t want to be in the same photo as Justin Trudeau [Canadá]Joe Biden [EUA]Emmanuel Macron [França] and Olaf Scholz [Alemanha]which they repudiate as the globalist cream.
So, on the one hand, Putin is allied with what the Brazilian right hates the most, which is the Bolivarian left, and on the other hand, Ukraine is internationally supported by what they call the globalist elite. This generates a paralysis, a great confusion.
And does this rift explain Jair Bolsonaro’s hesitation in the face of war? Since the beginning of the government, he has always been careful to keep his ideological base incandescent. For this, it is not good that the militancy is fractional. A position of certain neutrality maintains this ideological unity, does not create friction. This is a possible reading of Bolsonaro’s position. But it’s just one.
What other factors are at play? For Bolsonaro, it is certain that Putin is a conservative leader. Furthermore, he recently left Russia and said he was in solidarity with Putin. So he could not immediately condemn Russia’s action vehemently because that would cause a shudder among his supporters, with a very large contradiction, an incoherent position.
And it has other interests at stake, such as the agro-export sector that uses fertilizers that Brazil buys from Russia. Anyway, there is no single explanation.
And the fact that Putin evokes the past of the Soviet Union, doesn’t that weigh on the Brazilian right? This is another contradiction. Many Bolsonarista militants see a continuity between the Soviet period and the restoration that has been promoted by Putin.
There is confusion, because Putin was an agent of the KGB, he asked Bolsonaro to pay tribute to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier [monumento comunista]. This is one of the causes of apprehension as well. Even though the Putin regime is nothing like what the Soviet Union was, except for the intention to restore the area of influence it lost after 1991.
And what about former Chancellor Ernesto Araújo’s criticism of Putin? Olavo de Carvalho, who was for a long time the guru of one of the Bolsanarismo groups, was very critical of Russia. He believed that Russia represented one of the axes of globalist domination along with China. He spoke of the Sino-Russian axis.
Ernesto Araújo basically quotes Olavo de Carvalho’s thesis in the book in which he debates with Alexandr Dugin about this Sino-Russian axis. The former chancellor, perhaps one of Olavo de Carvalho’s most loyal students, criticizes Bolsonaro. Olavo de Carvalho used to say that Putin’s conservatism is mere cynicism and that he just wanted to restore the Soviet empire.
And on the other side of the ideological spectrum there is also a division. How can this split in the Brazilian left be explained? There is a liberal left, which under no circumstances accepts supporting a regime that is illiberal, conservative, reactionary, even if it is a regime that confronts imperialism. It’s a post-68 left position.
But there is a left that understands that, regardless of the nature of the regime, any kind of resistance to imperialism and the US is valid. So if Putin, even though he is reactionary, even though he has an agenda that nothing on the left has, if he is still willing to face the interests of imperialism, which, through NATO, seeks to expand globally, they will support Putin.
It is an old left along with a neo-Stalinist left. There is a whole process of trying to re-oxygenate Stalin’s legacy. He was a nationalist, and this in a way articulates with Putin’s nationalist agenda against the US.
In 1979, part of the Brazilian left supported the Iranian revolution because there was a strong imperialist and anti-American feeling. It didn’t matter the nature of the regime that came to be formed, but that they were against the US and against imperialism. So I see a resemblance. Of course, it is difficult to make a comparison, because they are very different historical moments. But the rift is there.
The liberal, modern left, which has done the same reading that a good part of the European left has done, which accepts liberal democracy, this left does not accept what Putin has done with feminist movements, rights of the LGBTQIA+ community, how it has eliminated opposition, as has walled up the press.
Russia is not dictatorial, but it is a hybrid authoritarian regime. There is an election, but it is not a competitive election. Part of the left does not agree with this agenda.
Can the war in Ukraine, with this divisive character, have electoral echoes in Brazil? It doesn’t get to that point. The concern here is much greater with the domestic agenda.
Foreign policy, in our history, has never generated or taken away votes. This is part of the way foreign policy has been managed in Brazil, with little social participation.
Foreign policy issues are debated during election periods. In the 2018 election, a little bit of Venezuela entered. It is possible that now a little bit of China will enter, but it is not a topic that moves the electorate. And this is explained by the Brazilian reality, a country that has not yet solved civilizational problems, such as running water, education, health. What is Ukraine within this reality?
Not even within the Bolsonarista base itself? I don’t think it’s such a divisive issue, with such importance for this group that supports Bolsonaro. If he put in the government a person who defends abortion, or praises Minister Alexandre de Moraes, then yes. Foreign policy issues can produce a division, but not to the point of generating a rupture.
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David Magalhães, 39, PhD in international relations, is coordinator of the Observatório da Extrema Direita and professor of international relations at PUC-SP (Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo) and FAAP (Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado). He is the author of the book “The Brazilian Arms Export Policy” (UNESP, 2018).
