Abstract
Using Brazil as a case study, we examine ways in which radical right activists and leaders actively participate in world politics through religious nationalist narratives which operate on both national and transnational levels. We propose the existence of a particular subcategory of populist radical right (PRR) politics, which we call religious-populist radical right. Our argument is divided into three parts. First, we argue that religion provides ideational and material capabilities that have allowed the PRR to capture state institutions through elections. Second, we claim that once in power, the PRR’s governing strategy is conducted through transnational culture wars with religious overtones. Third, we argue that the PRR establishes novel patterns of international alliances to advance their vision of a new world order based on independent ethno-religious communities. By exploring the entanglements between the PRR and religious nationalism, we conclude that religion provides the radical right with the ideas, means, and social power to transform both state forms and world orders.
Introduction
Contemporary national and international politics are marked by the rise of the far-right. Scholars across disciplines have sought to describe this phenomenon through terms like authoritarian populism 1 and radical right. 2 In this article, we analyse a specific subset of the far-right: the populist radical right. 3 The populist radical right is defined as an ideological group characterised by values such as nationalism, racism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism. Unlike the extreme right, they do not reject democracy outright and usually participate in electoral processes. 4
As populist radical right activists, ideologues, and politicians organised and mobilised, their ideologies quickly spread across the globe and their leaders attained positions of power through elections. 5 Otherwise confined to the Western European political landscape, 6 since the early 2010s we have witnessed the radical right’s rise to public office in countries as diverse as the United States (US), Brazil, India, Hungary, Israel, Poland, and Italy. These various examples share common structural factors, notably the contradictions and resulting crises of neoliberal capitalism, 7 the emergence of new communication technologies, 8 and increasing polarisation around identity politics. 9 Hence, the current political polarisation is not a mere outcome of disputes between left and right. Strongmen and businessmen, posing as political outsiders and vowing to fight the political establishment, have been elected by those dissatisfied with the ways in which politically correct rhetoric and economic globalisation have affected their lives. 10 Although such leaders have constructed their platforms upon a fiercely nationalist rhetoric, there is evidence of cross-national diffusion 11 and even international cooperation. 12 Such tensions have resulted in new transnational right-wing activists and leaders being described as ‘globalised anti-globalists’ 13 or ‘reactionary internationalists’. 14
Though not all radical right movements are religious in essence, many tap into religion to construct a nationalist and conservative political platform, and, as we argue here, to strengthen ties with each other globally. Radical right populists like Modi in India, Orbán in Hungary, and Trump in the US have transformed policy-making into ‘culture war’, with religious overtones not only in terms of values but also through good-vs-evil, ‘us’-vs-’them’, or saved-vs-damned dualisms. 15 , 16 Such leaders deliberately advance a political platform based on ‘religious nationalism’, 17 which runs counter to the democratic logic of pluralism and compromise, undermines the secular elements of the modern state, and seeks to subvert the underlying dynamics of the international order, such as multilateralism and globalisation. 18 , 19 To shed light on key elements of the entanglement between the populist radical right and religious nationalism, we focus on Jair Bolsonaro’s rise to power, his governing strategies, and international alignments that have allowed Brazil to “suddenly redefine itself as a conservative, anti-globalist, nationalist country” as (now former) Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo 20 claimed. Specifically, we identify and discuss the role of transnational actors that helped shape Brazil’s religious nationalist platform under Bolsonaro, and how the Bolsonaro administration has emboldened and potentialised the transnational reach of organised religious groups. 21
Research Questions and Design, Methods, and Contribution
We designed our research to analyse the national and transnational connections between the populist radical right and religious nationalism, and how they help shape new patterns of state-society relations as well as new dynamics of the world order.
22
We ask the following questions:
(1) How does the populist radical right benefit from religious narratives, including an appeal to religious nationalism, to win elections? (2) How does the populist radical right, once in power, use religion as an element of its governing strategies? (3) How does religion relate to the populist radical right’s vision of world order and explain the patterns of cooperation between radical right governments worldwide?
We adopt an International Political Sociology approach 23 since it allows us to fracture – and therefore disentangle – the perceived totality or homogeneity of the global far-right and how the political project represented by Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro might contribute to such understanding. 24 In this way, we are better able to make sense of the entanglements between Brazil’s populist radical right movement and the Christian nationalist project, which is built upon transnational networks with relevant local hubs. We seek to demonstrate that Christian nationalism in Brazil is a two-way phenomenon, as it benefits from ideas, agendas, and resources coming from far-right religious movements abroad, notably the United States, but is also responsible for exporting ideas, agendas, and resources to neighbouring countries and overseas religious organisations.
In this article, we present a hypothesis-generating case study, 25 drawing on both digital and discursive primary sources, which allows us to bring religion into the existing debates of radical right politics globally. We therefore propose a new category of political analysis that merges religious nationalism and the populist radical right, which we call religious-populist radical right. To this end, we draw on Cox’s 26 critical theory assumptions on how social forces – ideas, institutions, and material capabilities – interact within a historical structure. By zeroing in on religious nationalist movements as relevant social forces with potential transnational reach, we seek to solve one of the most discussed issues around the rise of the radical right: who do populist radical right leaders represent, beyond the typical claims of speaking on behalf of ‘the people’?
In the growing body of literature on populism and populist radical right movements, religion remains an underappreciated element. 27 The heavily scrutinised (Western) European far-right movements have been predominantly secular, tapping into generic religious symbolism as part of a broader civilisational argument that has allowed them to oppose the increasing flow of migration from Muslim countries. However, the recent rise of populist radical right governments in other democratic contexts such as the ones of the US, Brazil, Israel, Poland, and India has showcased religion as a central element whereby several populist politicians mobilised the ideas (of nativism and authoritarianism) and material capabilities (in terms of voters, infrastructure, and funding) to successfully bid for power. In exchange, those populists vowed to give religious leaders unprecedented institutional participation in a radical right government. Once in charge of the state, religious groups become able to mobilise and organise vast numbers of people so that they become dominant social forces and seek to restructure state-society relations away from secularism and liberalism. Such interaction has not only domestic, but international implications 28 : those religious forces create or strengthen transnational networks whose main goal is to work towards a new (and rather reactionary) world order, one composed of independent ethno-religious communities that help one another defend their culture and values from external influence.
Our research therefore contributes to a long scholarly tradition on the international and transnational politics of religion. 29 The case of Brazil provides meaningful historical insights on cross-border religious activism and its impacts on national policies and political dynamics, in which local religious groups have served both as disseminators of specific values and causes (such as anti-Communism across South America) and as agents of international religious organisations (who advocate pro-life positions in the Brazilian Congress). We therefore seek to appraise the growing influence of domestic and transnational religious leaders, actors, and institutions on national political transformations. 30
The Jair Bolsonaro administration in Brazil represents a noteworthy illustration of how religion and the radical right ideology fuse into a novel analytical category – the religious-populist radical right –for the following reasons: (1) Bolsonaro’s radical right platform has been primarily constructed around religious values and issues duly supported by transnational religious networks, which gave meaning and consistency to a discourse that appealed to several different political forces that ended up supporting his presidential candidacy in 2018; (2) once in office, Bolsonaro yielded unprecedented political power to religious groups, whose transnational alliances have been key to advancing their agenda at home and abroad through culture war; (3) Brazil’s new foreign policy has taken culture war to the international stage, where it actively pursues a counter-hegemonic platform not only to strengthen their proposed form of state, but also to advance a new international order based on independent ethno-religious communities.
The article’s conceptual contribution lies, first, in drawing attention to the formation of transnational political arrangements and global alliances that seek to create an illiberal and religious-infused new world order and, second, in unpacking the factors that allow such arrangements to take place by applying the concept of religious nationalism to Brazil. These contributions lead us to propose a new category within the far-right political family: the religious-populist radical right. Finally, it is worth noting that this article reflects the two authors’ desire not just to understand the means through which the populist radical right operates globally, but also to engage with and counter what we believe to be an exclusionary political project. 31
The Populist Radical Right, Culture Wars, and Religious Nationalism as Driving Forces of a Global Counter-hegemonic Order
The global rise of the far-right has been a key feature of world politics in the last decade, with significant political, social, and economic implications. 32 Far-right is an overarching term characterised by varying degrees of nativism and authoritarianism. Nativism entails a combination of nationalism and xenophobia, pinning members of the native group – the only ones who deserve to live in the state – against non-natives, who are supposedly threatening the very essence of the nation. Authoritarianism refers to belief in a strictly ordered society, manifested in the use of state and non-state institutions to discipline and punish individuals who threaten the legal and moral values of a given community. 33
The contemporary far-right has two basic subsets: the radical right, which challenges some key values of liberal democracy (e.g. secularism, individualism, freedom of speech), and the extreme right, which opposes democracy altogether (e.g. the fascist parties of the 1930s). 34 Most countries that are part of today’s illiberal wave are currently governed by radical right leaders, who have risen to power through authoritarian populist strategies. 35 Therefore contemporary scholarship has revolved around the populist radical right phenomenon – arguably one of the most studied political issues of the post-war Western world. 36 Besides nativism and authoritarianism, this specific branch of the radical right merges elements of populism, loosely defined as a ‘thin ideology’ that considers society to be divided into two antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ and ‘the corrupt elite’, being the people a monist construct, both ethnically and morally homogeneous. 37
These three pillars of the populist radical right – nativism, authoritarianism, and populism – shed light on how such parties and leaders behave once in power. More than just reaffirming nationalist and xenophobic sentiments, nativism involves a permanent attempt to create a dichotomy between who belongs to the nation and who does not through selective narratives of inclusion/exclusion. Therefore, radical right populists often use speeches and policy to construct a convenient idea of ‘the nation’. Authoritarianism involves forging narratives of law and order, which also draw a line between right-doers and wrong-doers not only from a legal-criminal perspective but also from a moral one. Of course, the varying degrees of punishment to whoever does not abide by society’s collective code of morality will tell the difference between authoritarian leaders (who still play by the rules of liberal democracy) and fully-fledged dictatorial governments. 38 Populism, as discussed, entails pitting the people against the elite as part of governing strategies. Governments led by radical right populists will often spend considerable time stirring such divisions to secure popular support, strengthen their hold of power, and occasionally weaken state institutions. 39
Narratives of the three pillars are forged through culture wars. They can be defined as a fundamental split between orthodox and progressive views of morality, which cuts across class, religious, racial, ethnic, political, and sexual lines. 40 While such cleavages across societies are much less clear-cut in real life and largely exaggerated in media and political accounts, 41 radical right populists seek to shape the public discourse through culture wars, whose goal is to establish new patterns of societal relations that might lead to desired political and policy outcomes. A more technical term used by radical right ideologues – from Alain de Benoist’s French New Right to Richard Spencer’s Alt-Right in the US – to describe the same culture war strategy is metapolitics. Borrowing from Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s idea that ideological hegemony is a precondition for political victory, metapolitics involves reclaiming the cultural foundations of a society according to what the populist radical right believes is the ‘true essence’ of the people. 42 In other words, it is about “disseminating and anchoring a particular set of cultural ideas, attitudes, and values in a society,” thus laying the groundwork for “deeper political change”. 43
But what are the populist radical right’s core beliefs? Adherents hold strong views about both state-society relations 44 and the international order 45 that represent a break with the political structures of the modern world. As for the domestic order, they believe that rights – and ultimately power – must be granted to those who belong to the radical right’s idea of nation, thus rejecting multiculturalism and equity as the basis of fundamental rights. On the global level, they envision a world of independent, sovereign nations whose primary identity is ethnonationalist and that interact with one another guided by the respect to cultural particularism and traditionalism, which often materialises into the idea of civilisation 46 and empire. 47 Radical right populists, therefore, dismiss universalist aspirations and multilateral cooperation as part of their idea of international order, often portraying them as part of a ‘globalist’ conspiracy to destroy traditional values related to the family, the nation, and God. 48
It is important to note, however, that the radical right does not necessarily go against economic globalisation – or, in other words, the neoliberal model of economic relations. Mudde 49 argues that economics is a secondary concern and that, in practice, most populist radical right parties support a hybrid socio-economic agenda, combining deregulation and lower taxes with economic nationalism and welfare chauvinism. Worth 50 claims that the radical right’s attack on the fabric of the current world order is only selective and does not pose a significant threat to neoliberalism. Other authors take the argument a step further. While De Orellana and Michelsen 51 argue that the radical right draw on neoliberalism’s core logic of ‘creative destruction’ to undermine global normative structures and institutions once in charge of the state, Stewart 52 posits that the radical right’s vision of the world order – which he calls ‘far-right civilisationism’ – represents an alternative elite strategy to refurbish the ideological superstructure that legitimises the global capitalist system.
The populist radical right depends on multiple channels of cooperation among governments, parties, and transnational actors to achieve its international order. Counterintuitively, there is no incompatibility between the radical right’s wholesale repudiation of multilateralism and the establishment of a united global radical right front to advance their worldviews. Grumke 53 has labelled this trend as the rise of ‘globalised anti-globalists’, which is marked by the growing organisational and ideological interconnection between radical right movements worldwide. 54 De Orellana and Michelsen 55 terms ‘reactionary internationalism’ as the “concerted project to replace rights-based internationalist norms with freedom of competition between birth-cultures”. 56 As Donald Trump’s former Chief Political Strategist Steve Bannon and his ‘Movement’ show, cooperation is not just possible, but also desirable in pushing the radical right’s agenda forward.
Whereas the populist radical right’s traditional ideas about culture, which oppose progressive or cosmopolitan values typically associated with the left, are usually depicted as ‘conservative’ or ‘nationalist’, they tend to be religious in essence. Religion, to be sure, is not a defining character of the populist radical right. 57 It nevertheless serves as the mortar for politicians, parties and groups to express their nativist, authoritarian, and populist platforms, mostly through religious nationalism. 58 According to Minkenberg, 59 “the ethnopluralist argument has turned religion into a master frame that is meant to provide a direct link between these groups and the political mainstream, thereby bypassing all parties and partisan discourse.” The case of Christianity is particularly interesting: not being circumscribed by territorial or national boundaries, it provides some degree of discourse consistency on a transnational level. The Christian faith has allowed populist radical right leaders to cooperate and converge in several issues, from human rights to religious freedom.
Since the scholarship on the populist radical right has drawn mostly on the experience of Western European parties 60 and the US’s Alt-Right offshoot, 61 which is predominantly secular, little has so far been said about the role of religion in shaping contemporary populist radical right politics. Yet, recent experiences of Brazil, Poland, Hungary, India, and Turkey are revealing of the often-symbiotic relationship between religion and the radical right in some parts of the world, and how they could undermine democracy from within. 62 We believe it is possible to bridge the gap in the current scholarship on the rise of the radical right by operationalising the concept of religious nationalism. Gorski and Türkmen-Dervişoğlu 63 define religious nationalism “as a social movement that claims to speak in the name of the nation and that defines the nation in terms of religion” and occurs when people assert that “their nation is religiously based” and when religion is key “to conceptions of what it means to belong to the given nation.”
Until a few decades ago, there was still widespread agreement that modern nationalism was an inherently secular phenomenon, having successfully replaced ethnic and religious identity with national identity based on civic and secular norms. 64 Scholars now recognise that modern nationalism may have a religious lineage; national identities have often formed along religious cleavages; nationalist rhetoric and ritual often borrow from religion; and religious nationalism may be a distinctly modern type of nationalism. 65 The manifestation of religious nationalism became particularly intense in response to modern developments such as globalisation, privatisation, consumerism, and the spread of Western liberal ideas and practices. To many, religion became the only answer to allay feelings of existential anxiety and ontological insecurity that have marked the transition to what some call post-modernity. 66
Nevertheless, the relationship between the populist radical right, culture wars, and religious nationalism is not linear nor straightforward, but rather entangled. 67 First, while it seems clear that the resurgence of faith in politics has benefitted from the forces of democracy, technological modernisation, and globalisation, religious movements are not equally (or at all) committed to such forces. The politics of religious actors across the world are influenced by their political theology and by the degree of independence between religious authority and political authority. 68 Second, the political capacity of religious groups largely depends on pre-existing political and social dynamics in each state. Soper and Fetzer 69 identify three models of nationalism in which religion plays different roles: (i) secular nationalism, in which ideological links between religion and state are weak to non-existent and they are institutionally separated; (ii) religious nationalism, which displays a strong connection between one particular religion and the state ideology, and in which religious groups are closely tied to state institutions; (iii) civil-religious nationalism, in which the state supports religious ideology and advocates for an accommodation between religious and secular forces.
Using Cox’s 70 model of historical structures, we argue that, regardless of the prevailing model of nationalism in a given society, radical right populists may use religion to leverage their power by bringing new ideas into state institutions. These leaders, to be sure, tap not only into religion’s ideational clout and reach but also into its material capabilities, which are provided through churches’ structure and revenue as well as transnational religious funding organisations. Minkenberg 71 is right to claim that religion is the bridge between radical ideologies and the political mainstream, which means populists can mobilise religion to frame, shape, and direct social forces towards their political goals. International cooperation between radical right populists allows them to create new forms of statecraft within an alternative world order – which, in the case of the radical right, does not contradict the underlying neoliberal dynamics but still challenges contemporary notions of secularism, cosmopolitanism, and multilateralism. By looking at the rise of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazilian politics all the way through being elected president in 2018, as well as examining his two first years in office, we make the case for the existence of a particular subset of the populist radical right, which we call religious-populist radical right.
Entanglements between the Populist Radical Right and Christian Nationalism in Brazil
Rise to Power: “Brazil above everything, God above everyone”
How does the populist radical right benefit from religious narratives, including an appeal to religious nationalism, to win elections? We argue Bolsonaro’s political moves prior to the 2018 elections reveal that he attempted to construct an ambitious religious nationalist platform that is overlooked in existing hypotheses for Jair Bolsonaro’s rise to power. Among the common explanations to the ‘conservative wave’ that led the former Army captain to the presidency in Brazil are the repudiation to the Workers’ Party (a political movement called anti-petismo in Brazil) 72 ; the growing dissatisfaction with the political establishment, which demonised experienced politicians and traditional political parties to the benefit of outsiders 73 ; and the increasing influence of Evangelical leaders and voters in Brazilian politics. 74 None of these explanations, however, seem sufficient to explain not only why Bolsonaro got elected, but how he has been able to secure popular approval. As we will demonstrate next, Christian nationalism lies on the basis of Bolsonaro’s political project, therefore transforming his platform into a religious-populist radical right one.
Bolsonaro’s campaign slogan – “Brazil above everything, God above everyone” – merges the elements of religious supremacy and populist nationalism. It was not coined exclusively for the 2018 presidential race but has been long nurtured as part of the construction of Bolsonaro’s political persona. Those were the much-applauded words uttered by then lawmaker Jair Bolsonaro before casting a vote to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, in April 2016. 75 As part of the religious-populist project, a few weeks after Rousseff’s impeachment, Bolsonaro flew to Israel with three of his sons, who are also politicians, together with some fellow colleagues of his party at the time, the Social Christian Party (PSC). By the hands of Assembly of God pastor and head of the PSC, Everaldo Pereira, Bolsonaro was baptised in the Jordan River. 76 The image of his conversion into Protestantism went viral on social media and was framed as a sort of transcendental revelation of a politician who, until then, did not appear to care strongly for religion. On that same trip, he made one of his first public announcements that he would run for president in the 2018 elections. 77
Although Bolsonaro’s political trajectory was not one of a man of faith, his pious side seemed to be carefully crafted to resonate with Brazil’s blossoming Evangelical community, one of the most prominent political forces in 21st century Brazil. 78 Along their path into politics, Evangelical leaders and politicians had been extremely pragmatic in their mundane alliances. They even backed left-wing Presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, as their social policies benefitted the lower classes, where Evangelism was expanding rapidly. However, as the economy went astray in the late Rousseff years and the Workers’ Party started to introduce identity politics to the centre of their concerns, Evangelical politicians quickly jumped into the opposition’s bandwagon. 79 They strongly supported the President’s impeachment describing her gender and LGBT-oriented policies as turning Brazil into a ‘gay dictatorship’. 80
An early critic of President Rousseff and a well-known homophobe in his own right – a position he has made explicit in his social media and on tabloid talk shows that appreciated his eccentric and divisive positions – Bolsonaro began signalling towards Evangelical audiences as early as 2014, when Rousseff was re-elected by a razor-thin margin. 81 In Congress, the former Army captain began working hand in hand with Evangelical lawmakers to block legislation seen as threatening to conservative values. Together with his occasional defence of the Brazilian military dictatorship and its torture techniques to fight communism, Bolsonaro embraced God and the family into his talking points. His move to the Evangelical PSC party and his baptism in Israel were the logical conclusion of Bolsonaro’s renewed political character, with an eye on the 2018 presidential race.
Yet, in a Catholic-majority country like Brazil, reaching out to Evangelicals was not enough to win the presidency. Assembly of God’s Pastor Everaldo – who baptised Bolsonaro in the Jordan’s waters – ran on a single issue, religious platform and had less than 1 percent of the national vote in the 2014 presidential elections. To overcome Brazil’s religious sectarianism, Bolsonaro adopted a two-pronged strategy. First, he has maintained a careful and deliberate ambiguity about his religious affiliation, which prevented him from alienating conservative Catholic voters. This is the reason why Bolsonaro maintained his public Catholic identity when addressing specific audiences, kept attending masses, and formed alliances with traditional Catholic groups. Second, he bridged the gap between rival churches and denominations within the Evangelical camp, finding a middle ground between traditional, Pentecostal, and neo-Pentecostal aspirations. That partially explains Bolsonaro’s decision to leave PSC, after less than two years, and join the unknown Social Liberal Party (PSL), where he could freely advance an ‘ecumenical’ platform, with different religious groups gathered around one single Christian nationalist project. 82 Seeking to “fuse nationalism and religious faith”, 83 Bolsonaro toured across the country promising to bring back and regenerate Brazil’s traditional values, which revolved around the triad: God, nation, and family.
It is possible to relate Bolsonaro’s strategy of ‘rallying around the cross’ with Mudde’s 84 conceptualisation of the populist radical right. His God-talk conveys a sense of nativism, as Christianity is pictured as part of a generally positive Portuguese/European legacy, 85 as opposed to populations of Indigenous or African descent, who, in their view, had offered no real contribution to the Brazilian society. As a lawmaker, Bolsonaro often bashed ‘Brazilian Indians’ for hampering the country’s development by controlling resource-rich reserves, preventing the expansion of farming land, and plotting with foreign powers to steal the nation’s underground wealth. 86 Afro-Brazilians were also targeted, in declarations that ranged from veiled to explicit racism. 87 At his rallies, Bolsonaro accused Afro-Brazilians living in quilombos 88 of being lazy and worthless and even blamed Africans for slave trafficking. 89 In a tweet the day after inauguration, Bolsonaro 90 suggested Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian communities did not belong to the ‘real Brazil’. While we acknowledge that, unlike the US white supremacist/nationalist movement, Bolsonaro’s nativist discourse is not built exclusively (or even primarily) along racial lines, it does contain underlying element of Christian supremacy, which transforms faith into the only path of assimilation for non-whites. 91
Religion has also served to reaffirm Bolsonaro’s authoritarian character. 92 Levitsky and Ziblatt 93 have developed a set of indicators to identify authoritarians, composed by four behavioural signs: (i) the discursive and/or practical rejection of the democratic rules of the game; (ii) a systematic denial of the legitimacy of opponents; (iii) tolerance for, or encouragement of, violence; (iv) willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media. As a politician who always expressed his fondness for the military dictatorship and praised torture and violence against so-called ‘communists’, Bolsonaro would not need religion for people to acknowledge his contempt for democracy. 94
However, the then-candidate recurringly used religion in at least three of the four indicators above. As for the first, Bolsonaro often argued, against the Constitution, that Brazil should be governed by Christian beliefs and that secularism was a deliberate left-wing plan to destroy Brazil’s Judeo-Christian traditions and to brainwash students into believing in progressive values. 95 As for the second, Bolsonaro frequently promoted himself as an ‘ordinary’ and ‘patriotic’ Brazilian, ‘with God in his heart’ and who ‘is not ashamed to say we must protect the innocence of our children against gender ideology taught at school’. 96 As for the fourth, the retired captain resorted to a biblical verse to claim monopoly on truth: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32; King James’ Version), such passage was used in several of his attacks on political opponents, as well as on the media.
Perhaps the most eloquent example of Bolsonaro’s use of religious nationalism as part of his nativist and authoritarian platform took place at a campaign rally in February 2017, when he shouted before a cheering crowd: “We are a Christian country. God is above all! We must end this nonsense of a secular state! It is a Christian state! We will make Brazil for the majority. Minorities must bow to majorities! Either they adapt or they disappear!” [emphasis added]. 97
As the previous statements make clear, the country envisioned by Bolsonaro is one based on Christian nationalist values, where the individual’s collective belonging is ultimately defined by faith, not citizenship established in strictly legal terms. This lies at the core of the monist and moralist ideas of populism. The ‘real Brazilians’ are only those who, besides being born in the nation, believe in the same Christian God, inherited from European culture, and share the same conservative moral code, loosely drawn from the Bible. During the campaign, Bolsonaro was able to capture the grievances and discontent of the average Brazilian – against the Workers’ Party, corruption, so-called ‘gender ideology’, political correctness, women’s empowerment, and so forth 98 – and wrap them up in an anti-elitist and redemptive discourse, 99 with strong religious overtones 100 that spread across social media.
Part of Bolsonaro’s success in the presidential race may be attributed to a transnational aspect of his campaign which is often overlooked: the alt-right political guru Steve Bannon’s influence in shaping Bolsonaro’s religious-populist radical right narratives in the digital realm. Since early 2018, Bolsonaro’s inner circle, which includes Bolsonaro’s third son, Eduardo, and his own campaign strategist, Filipe Martins, has bragged about having a relationship with Bannon and joining forces with him against what they call ‘cultural Marxism’. 101 Despite the former Trump adviser having consistently denied directly participating in the Brazilian elections, in hindsight, it seems clear that Brazil was a key piece in Bannon’s ‘Movement’, a global alliance of populist radical right politicians with religious beliefs. A few weeks after Bolsonaro took office, Bannon named Eduardo Bolsonaro the Latin American representative of his ‘nationalist international’. 102 When President Bolsonaro flew to Washington in his first bilateral visit, the Brazilian embassy hosted a high-profile dinner. Bannon sat on the president’s left and on the president’s right sat Olavo de Carvalho. 103 Self-proclaimed philosopher, teacher, and prominent writer, Carvalho, who passed away in January 2022, is often considered the mastermind of the Brazilian populist radical right and Bolsonaro’s intellectual guru.
Bolsonaro’s assassination attempt on the eve of the first round of the 2018 elections, when he was stabbed in the chest at a street rally, only added to the messianic character of his candidacy. His poll numbers soared as WhatsApp groups were flooded with images and messages attributing his survival to a miracle. One of the messages read, in biblical tones: “Bolsonaro has shed his blood for thee.” Another one underlined that it was no coincidence that his middle name is Messias [Messiah]. 104 The day after winning the election, at a religious ceremony, Bolsonaro said it was God who had put him there. 105
As this evidence shows, religion has supported the political project of Brazil’s radical right on its path to power, with God-talk being a primary means through which Bolsonaro reaches his electorate and constructs a religious nationalist platform. 106 We hold that religion is especially key in countries like Brazil as it helps to foster a sense of belonging and common ground, when lower rates of immigration keep the radical right from exploiting xenophobic tensions, and nativism against Indigenous and black Brazilians may not be enough.
Governing Strategy: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”
How does the populist radical right, once in power, use religion as an element of its governing strategies? We argue that religious nationalism was not just part of Bolsonaro’s electoral strategy, but also an indissociable element of his governing strategy. While it seems clear that not all political forces that closed ranks with the president were attracted by his Christian nationalist discourse, religion was instrumental for his grassroots engagement, based on a divisive style that permanently pits his supporters against political parties and institutions, activists, and the mainstream media. Religion matched well with the two features of populism: anti-elitism and anti-pluralism. 107 As for the former, the ‘elites’ Bolsonaro vows to fight against are often portrayed as secular, progressive, and conspiratorial – and therefore corrupt. As we have mentioned, to delegitimise the mainstream media, the president often quotes the biblical verse John 8:32. When confronting the political establishment, particularly the left, he belittles his adversaries and critics for not having ‘God in their hearts’. 108
Religion is also the centrepiece of Bolsonaro’s anti-pluralist attempt to redefine the nation in monistic terms. As he said at the 2020 United Nations General Assembly, “Brazil is a Christian and conservative country, and has family as its foundation”.
109
Variations of the same theme have become part of the Bolsonaro administration’s official narrative, which claims to speak on behalf of the Brazilian people.
110
Ernesto Araújo
111
has the most eloquent statement in this regard, in an article published a few weeks after Bolsonaro took office he claims:
“I am convinced that President Bolsonaro’s faith is instrumental, not accidental, to his electoral victory and to the wave of change that is washing over Brazil. Brazil is experiencing a political and spiritual rebirth, and the spiritual aspect of this phenomenon is the determinant one. The political aspect is only a consequence. [. . .] God is back, and the nation is back: a nation with God; God through the nation. In Brazil (at least), nationalism became the vehicle of faith, faith became the catalyst for nationalism, and they both have ignited an exhilarating wave of freedom and new possibilities.”
In the far-right parlance, such political and spiritual rebirth must be advanced through a metapolitical strategy, which, in Brazil, has been framed as a religious culture war, waged by the Bolsonaro administration’s officials and key supporters, especially through social media tools. 112 It involves several Evangelical leaders and fringe Catholic groups alike, but in slightly different ways.
The Catholic connection underlying the culture war involves two fundamental branches. The first branch comprises Olavo de Carvalho, his students, and followers. Much like his friend Steve Bannon, Carvalho was a Catholic and a Traditionalist, in the sense that he rejected the materialistic aspects of modernity and ultimately envisioned a golden age of theocratic rule and spiritual regeneration. 113 Carvalho became such an influential figure in the government that he boasted to have appointed several of his students to key government positions, including Ernesto Araújo, political strategist and International Advisor Filipe Martins, former Education Ministers Ricardo Vélez and Abraham Weintraub, as well as many second-tier officials. During their tenure Araújo and Martins were the two most influential Brazilian Traditionalists at the heart of the Bolsonaro administration and often describe their mission in government as a spiritual one.
The second branch has its roots in the fundamentalist Catholic movement Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP), 114 a religious conservative, anti-Communist, and men-only organisation that rose to prominence in the early 1960s by organising the popular demonstrations (known as the March of the Family with God for Liberty) that led to the military coup d’état in 1964 and by backing the military regime that followed suit. 115 Founded in São Paulo by Plínio Corrêa de Oliveira, the TFP remained politically active in fighting Communism and opposing divorce and abortion until the founder’s death, in 1995. Since then, the group was torn apart, dominated by disputes over the spoils of succession, only to be brought back to life as part of the right-wing front behind Rousseff’s impeachment – and behind Bolsonaro’s candidacy. Among the most influential TFP representatives are the members of the Brazilian royal family, Orléans e Bragança, deposed in 1889 but who still advocate for the restoration of the monarchical regime. Besides its anti-Communist and conservative positions, the TFP has become known for its vocal climate change denialism: expressions such as ‘ecoterrorism’ and ‘turning reds into greens’ – in a reference to the leftist roots of the environmental movement – have become an integral part of the government’s rhetoric. 116
Evangelicals, on the other hand, have regarded Bolsonaro not only as an opportunity to advance specific agendas, but also as the recognition of their social and political coming of age. They have diligently dedicated themselves to taking over government positions. Unlike other administrations, which have given room to Evangelical politicians to secure legislative support, 117 Bolsonaro’s rejection of party politics and partisan coalitions have led him to nominate several ministers and public officials on religious grounds. Six out of his 24 cabinet positions have been filled by practicing Evangelicals. Attorney General (and former Justice Minister) André Mendonça, Education Minister Milton Ribeiro, and Women, Family, and Human Rights Minister Damares Alves are pastors – the former two are Presbyterian and the latter is a Baptist. Bolsonaro’s former Chief of Staff and current Secretary-General of the Presidency, Onyx Lorenzoni, who is arguably the government’s most influential minister, is a member of the Lutheran Church and often speaks in religious jargon in his public appearances. But perhaps the most visible sign of the growing Evangelical influence with the president was Bolsonaro’s July 2019 promise to appoint a ‘terribly Evangelical’ Justice for the Supreme Court (which he finally did in mid-2021, when Mendonça was appointed for the role).
Although we understand that neither Evangelicals nor Catholics are ubiquitous in the Bolsonaro administration, mostly dominated by the mundane interests of big landowners, bankers, and arms industry lobbyists, they have successfully dominated key policy areas. Along the same lines as US Christian nationalist’s culture wars, 118 Brazilian culture warriors have sought to move the levers of the state to change legislation and policy on issues like abortion, LGBTQ rights, sexual abstinence, and ‘gender ideology’. 119 They intend to increase religious control over bodies, particularly female ones. Moreover, they want to relocate the public budget in arts, culture, and entertainment to benefit Christian groups and themes. 120 But the internal struggle for power – be it between competing churches, between Evangelicals and Catholics at the heart of the government, or between these and some secular interest groups – slows down the pace of the culture war, which has thus far shown slight tangible results. 121
One of the consequences of the power struggle behind Brazil’s culture wars is the formation of transnational networks. Not only do they alter the correlation of forces among domestic religious groups, those networks also bring specific framings and new issues – and even new theologies such as Christian Zionism 122 – to the Brazilian public debate. The case of Catholic right-wing groups is very distinctive in this regard. Cowan, 123 for one, reveals that Brazil’s TFP has nurtured close ties with US Christian New Right organisations, such as the International Policy Forum and the World Anti-Communist League, for most of the second half of the 20th century. Besides fundamentalist conservatism and anti-Communism, religious nationalism is also a common thread between Brazilian and US Catholics, playing a key role in the way such groups engage in party politics and government. 124 More recently, transnational branches of the TFP have come to light: the organisation operates in countries as diverse as France, Australia, Lithuania, and Ecuador. In Poland, the TFP has funded the establishment of the Ordo Iuris Institute and the Pro-Life Centre for Life and Family, which have channelled some € 500 thousand a year back to the Brazilian headquarters since 2004. 125
Brazilian Evangelicals also have deep-seated transnational roots. Brazil’s largest Pentecostal Church, the Assembly of God, is part of 70 million-member network, World Assemblies of God Fellowship. Traditional protestant denominations also relate transnationally, having the US as the main hub. 126 Even Brazilian-born churches, such as the neo-Pentecostal Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, have developed powerful transnational networks of their own, which span across the US, Latin America, Europe, and Africa. 127 Bolsonaro’s election has set the stage for unprecedented movements of transnational Evangelicals. Even before taking office, he met with representatives of US Christian churches at his house in Rio. 128 A few months later, members of the Evangelical caucus in Congress announced they would launch the Brazilian version of the National Prayer Breakfast, one of the world’s most influential religious gatherings. In yet another example of the transnational links between religious groups and governments, some Brazilian lawmakers and Foreign Minister Araújo participated in the 2020 edition of the traditional US event. 129 And perhaps the strongest religious connection between American and Brazilian evangelicals in power was revealed by Agência Pública in August 2019, who reported the growing influence of the Capitol Ministries church, funded by vice-president Mike Pence and State Secretary Mike Pompeo, among Brazilian congresspeople. 130
We hold that Bolsonaro’s crusade for ‘family values’ at home is part of a religious ‘culture war’ with drastic political consequences in Brazil – and, potentially, to global politics at large. 131 If religion has played a key role in shaping the radical right narratives on its path to power in Brazil, culture war is a means through which the political-religious project is brought about by conjuring a moral imperative that goes beyond the realm of religion, even if it still maintains strong religious overtones. In this regard, Bolsonaro’s recent proposal to establish a new political party, Alliance for Brazil, is quite meaningful. Claiming that “the relationship between this nation and Christ is intrinsic, foundational, and inseparable”, 132 the party platform is no different from those of religious fundamentalist groups. 133 In this section, we have shown how Bolsonaro’s culture war is, at the same time, the manifestation of a religious-populist radical right project whose goal is to change the nature of state-society relations, and the outcome of power struggles within the Christian camp which mobilises national alliances and transnational networks. Next, we look at how Brazil has taken culture war to the global stage, forging international alliances to establish a new world order with religion at its core.
An Ethno-religious International Order: “The world is a spiritual vessel and cannot be controlled”
How does religion relate to the populist radical right’s vision of world order and explain the patterns of cooperation between radical right governments worldwide? We argue religion helps us understand the patterns of cooperation between radical right governments across three dimensions. The first dimension relates to a fundamentally negative idea of common enemies, who are often described as communist/socialist, globalist/cosmopolitan, or even as the combination of both categories. Tensions between religions and communism have been extensively documented, particularly in the case of anti-communist activism of conservative and fundamentalist evangelicals 134 and Catholics. 135
Religious values are also based on the contemporary ‘anti-globalist’ movement. Globalism, as the term has become popular among far-right circles, refers to a master conspiracy theory that suggests capitalist billionaires want to rule the world by disseminating progressive values that go against the traditional ideas of family, the nation, and God.
136
It adds an important layer to the radical right’s antipathy of the left, especially of what is called ‘ideas of 1968’
137
or ‘cultural Marxism’. In his personal blog, launched a few weeks prior to the 2018 elections, Ernesto Araújo,
138
then an obscure ambassador, defined globalism as follows:
“Globalism is the economic globalisation that became driven by Cultural Marxism. It is essentially an anti-human and anti-Christian system. Today, to have faith in Christ means fighting against globalism, whose main goal is to break the bond between God and man, making man a slave and God irrelevant.”
This is the common thread that connects socialism and globalism and allows the radical right to treat them as synonyms: according to the common enemy narrative, the old, socialist left and the new, globalist left are plotting to rule the world through acculturation (ideological domination) and subjugation (physical control).
The only means to fight the globalist-socialist collusion is through culture war, whose aim is to bring religion back to social and national life. In foreign minister Araújo’s 139 words: “the metapolitical project means, essentially, to open ourselves up to God’s presence in politics and in history.” And it must be carried out with the help – and the inspiration – of nations that had successfully merged a love for their own people with a love for God. This has been one of Araújo’s main talking points since he published a controversial article in 2017 in which he claimed Donald Trump was the only man who could save the West by destroying globalism and regenerating the two pillars of the Western civilisation: nationalism and Christianity. 140 To the surprise of many observers, he repeated these very same notions in his inaugural speech. Rather than talk about the strategic priorities of the new administration, Araújo 141 spent most of this time speaking of the need to break with the past to “liberate Brazil’s foreign policy” in the same way that Bolsonaro had liberated the country. In a mixture of nativism and religious nationalism, he praised the effort of countries like the US, Hungary, Poland, Israel and “the new Italy” in the struggle for their homeland and their people. As for the multilateral system, Araújo 142 said Brazil would fight for sovereignty, freedom, and the ‘right to birth’: “We will seek the partnerships and the alliances that allow us to arrive where we want to, we will not ask permission from the global order, whatever it is.”
The battle against globalism and socialism has paved the way for new international alignments, with a focus on conservative-religious issues. Brazil allied with Poland in negotiations that established the ‘International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief’. A few months later, the Bolsonaro administration wholeheartedly supported the Alliance for Religious Freedom, an initiative spearheaded by President Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. 143 The Bolsonaro administration also promoted the event ‘Rebuilding Communities: ensuring a future for persecuted Christians’ together with Hungary. Once again, Araújo 144 blamed the cultural atmosphere in the West, which “does not care about Christianity”, for the persecutions against Christian populations worldwide. Departing from Brazilian traditionally progressive positions, the new President chastised non-governmental organisations and humanitarian activists, reversed Brazil’s vote on reproductive health rights, gender issues, and Israeli human rights violations against Palestinians. “Our votes at the UN will be in accordance with the Bible”, declared Bolsonaro at a meeting with Evangelical leaders. 145
The second dimension that reveals the importance of religion in emerging populist radical right cooperation refers to their common understanding of how the international order should be organised. The radical right’s focus on nativism has transformed the extreme-right’s vile ideas of biological racism and white supremacism into a more palatable notion of ethnopluralism, which may even be understood as an appropriation of the left’s concept of the ‘right to be different’. 146 As a result, the radical right envisions an alternative to the globalist-driven liberal international order, which should be composed of ethno-political communities better enabled to preserve their national and cultural identities. This new/old world order speaks directly to what De Orellana and Michelsen 147 believe to be the radical right’s “immutable and immanent conceptualisation of culture”, based on the role of birth and history in how identity politics is framed.
Religion plays a two-pronged role in the radical right’s vision of the international order. First, it reinforces the idea of a world of ethno-political units, adding faith as an indissociable part of national self-determination. Even though the radical right does not always define itself on religious grounds (and some groups are indeed secular), religion is at least present in virtually every construction of the idea of culture. Second, and perhaps most importantly, religion can take the otherwise controversial idea of ethnopluralism to a much broader audience, by transforming it into a less contentious platform – the one of preserving a nation’s cultural, national, and religious values.
Along the lines of civilisation proposed by Huntington, 148 Ernesto Araújo has repeatedly posited that Brazil’s new foreign policy aspires to an ethnopluralist international order. In his pro-Trump manifesto, he argues that the ‘spiritual’ West should be a pole of a world marked by ‘civilisational multipolarity’. 149 One year later, right after Bolsonaro’s election, the second-rank ambassador wrote a confidential executive report to the new President’s transition team in which he proposed that Brazil should form a pact of countries – both Western and non-Western – that sought to protect their own civilisations and nations from the ruling globalism. Once again, Donald Trump’s US, Matteo Salvini’s Italy, as well as Hungary and Poland are part of the emerging bloc whose nations “resist to the demonisation of the national sentiment, to the smashing down of faith (especially Christian), reject the hollowing out of the human soul and its replacement for anaemic dogmas that serve only the interests of world domination of certain elites” claims Araújo. 150
A last example of how Brazil’s foreign minister has elaborated on this vision is his master lecture at the Rio Branco Institute – the Brazilian diplomatic academy. As Araújo 151 dwelled on the concept of national independence, which is one of Brazil’s constitutional principles of foreign policy, he tried to convey it a new meaning by going beyond the notion of ‘independence from great powers’: “it must also mean, and increasingly so, independence in the face of a nebula, a diffuse magma of concept, of practices which, increasingly, throughout the world, affect sovereignty, affect, contest nations, the existence of nations, the vitality of nations.” He then goes on to suggest that the underlying logic of the Western civilisation is Christian nationalism.
However, these are not only statements for domestic audiences. Brazil’s attempt to merge religion and radical right nationalism has become the cornerstone of President Bolsonaro’s speeches at the United Nations General Assembly. In 2019, Bolsonaro 152 ended his remarks with a critical message against globalism: “We are not here to erase nationalities and sovereignties in the name of an abstract ‘global interest’. This is not the Global Interest organisation. It is the United Nations organisation. And so, it must remain!”. A year later, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the President once again reaffirmed his view of religious nationalism: “Brazil is a Christian, conservative country, with the family as its basis”. 153
Bolsonaro’s ethno-religious platform has also led to some concrete foreign policy positions. The president’s son, congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, visited Hungary less than five months into the beginning of the Bolsonaro administration to discuss “the dangers of migration and the protection of Christian values” with Prime-Minister Viktor Orbán 154 – one of the few international leaders that had attended Bolsonaro’s inauguration. A few months later, when Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szjjártó visited Brasília, Brazil and Hungary issued a joint communiqué with two important points: (i) that national identity constitutes a fundamental human right (an unprecedented association in light of international law); and (ii) that “global or transnational issues cannot serve as pretext for the imposition of policies detrimental to national institutions or that violate the national identity”. 155 Similar bilateral statements have been issued with Poland 156 and Slovenia. 157
Ethno-religious pluralism also explains the renewed ties between Brazil and India. Although both countries had been building strategic ties since the mid-2000s in issues as diverse as South-South technical cooperation (through IBSA — the India, Brazil, South Africa Forum) and reform of multilateral organisations (through the BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — and the G-4 group), the Bolsonaro administration has decided to give relations a religious flavour, which spoke to Indian prime-minister Narendra Modi’s own Hindu nationalist platform. 158 On an anecdotal note that has received wide attention in India, the Brazilian President wrote a letter of gratitude to the Indian government after the lift on the hydroxychloroquine export ban. The letter invoked religious elements in an unusual comparison between the Hindu epic Ramayana and the Bible: “Just as Lord Hanuman brought the holy medicine from the Himalayas to save the life of Lord Rama’s brother Lakshmana, and Jesus healed those who were sick and restored the sight to Bartimeu, India and Brazil will overcome this global crisis by joining forces and sharing blessings for the sake of all peoples”. 159 In an interview, when asked why Bolsonaro had used this allegory in the letter, the Brazilian ambassador to Delhi responded bluntly: “both Modi and Bolsonaro are true believers and have very strong faith”. 160
Relations between Brazil and Israel also stand out as part of this new religious alignment. As early as 2017, Filipe Martins, 161 who would become Bolsonaro’s campaign strategist and International Advisor, praised Israeli Prime-Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his religious nationalist platform as “the benchmark of anti-globalism, an example to be followed when it comes to defending national sovereignty”. Along the same lines, former Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo 162 has frequently mentioned Israel as part of an emerging group of nations that stood up against the interference of globalist forces. Israel, furthermore, encapsulates another dimension of Brazil’s religious dynamics, which involve the growing role of Evangelical Pentecostals in the government and their vision of closer ties with Israel as part of a biblical prophecy – which has become known as Christian Zionism. 163 The convergence of both anti-globalist and Christian Zionist views, combined with a declared sympathy for Donald Trump, explains why Bolsonaro placed Israel at the forefront of his campaign platform by vowing to move the Brazilian embassy to Jerusalem, much like the US had done a year before. 164
Finally, religion lies at the heart of a third dimension of the radical right project, which refers to the concepts of civilisation and empire. As for the former, Stewart 165 has coined the concept of ‘far-right civilisationism’, an ideology that unites reactionary social forces deeply rooted in the transatlantic bloc of states and who have begun challenging the cosmopolitan, or globalist, version of neoliberalism.
“Its model for world order has been articulated by far-right elite intellectuals from above, as well as an online vanguard, regarded sometimes as the new ‘Gramscians of the Right’,
166
who are currently on ‘the long-march through the institutions’ and seek to replace the veil of cultural cosmopolitanism and liberal internationalism (which they often refer to as ‘Cultural Marxism’) with a celebration of jingoism and explicit western chauvinism”.
167
On the surface, there is no meaningful difference between the Huntingtonian concept of civilisation, which somehow equates religion to identity and culture, 168 and Stewart’s 169 ‘far-right civilisationism’ formulation. Furthermore, they are both like the radical right’s notion of empire. Unlike the derogatory use of the term by both Liberals and Marxists to describe expansionist economic or political behaviour, in the radical right philosophy – following De Benoist’s formulation, largely drawn from Julius Evola’s – empire is the result of a wider group of nations bound together by shared cultural (and spiritual) foundations 170 , 171 As a result, the ‘clash of civilisations’ argument has often been invoked by populist radical right leaders such as Steve Bannon, who underscored the fault lines between a ‘Judeo-Christian West’ and both the Islamic civilisation and a rising China, 172 with their own globalist agendas – the former relying on Islam’s universalist claims and the latter on atheist Communism. 173
Religion, in this sense, explains not only the bonds between particularistic nations that come from the same cultural-religious foundations, but also the multiple hierarchies and connections between units and actors within a civilisational bloc. In the new Brazilian foreign policy, the entanglements between religion and radical right worldview become clear when foreign minister Araújo 174 suggests that the first step towards Brazil’s ‘spiritual rebirth’ involves forging an unlikely pact with the world’s major Christian powers – the US and Russia – so that they could fight the hatred of God, or ‘theophobia’ in Western societies. 175 More recently, Araújo 176 even used a Chinese philosophical quote from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, which some consider a religious text, to send a veiled message to China, with whom the Bolsonaro administration has gone head-to-head in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: “Trying to control the world? I see you won’t succeed. The world is a spiritual vessel and cannot be controlled”. Bolsonaro and his aides faithfully believe that China and the globalist elites are using the global health emergency to take over the world. 177
Conclusion
By exploring the recent Brazilian experience under President Jair Bolsonaro, we have been able to shed light on the entanglements between the populist radical right and Christian nationalism. Religion has played a decisive role in informing Bolsonaro’s successful radical right platform in the 2018 presidential race; religion has provided legitimacy to Bolsonaro’s populist style of governing as he took office; finally, religion has shaped Brazil’s views on international relations towards the establishment of a new, religious-driven, ethnopluralist world order. By analysing the all-encompassing religious narrative adopted by the Bolsonaro administration, we have identified several powerful, yet sometimes obscure or even hidden, transnational connections among religious groups globally that have developed interest in nurturing a Christian nationalist project in Brazil.
Based on our findings, we believe there are at least four reasons why religion matters when studying global radical right politics. First, religion reinforces the elements typically identified with the radical right, namely nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. Second, religion has been weaponised by populists like Bolsonaro to sustain their electoral and governing strategies, mainly through culture war with religious overtones and transnational reach. Third, within the boundaries of any civilisation, religious groups become meaningful social forces that operate transnationally to advance shared goals, both domestically and internationally. Fourth, religion – and the phenomenon of religious nationalism – provides a solution to the apparent paradox between particularism and universalism in the world order envisioned by the radical right.
If the idea of nationalism is to ‘turn inward’ and the radical right discourse is eminently anti-globalist, we show that religion allows and stimulates the populist radical right to mobilise across borders through transnational networks and religious nationalist narratives that envision an entirely new illiberal world order against the international liberal establishment. The combination of those four elements have allowed us to propose a new category within the far-right political family: the religious-populist radical right.
Our research into Jair Bolsonaro’s rise to power and governing strategies in Brazil is representative of, and informs further discussion into, a type of populist radical right that is different from the secular radical right that has emerged in Western societies. Although it seems that many people are ‘giving up on God’ 178 as religious affiliation is decreasing globally, our findings challenge the notion that the connection between religion and politics is in a ‘global decline’. Bringing back Juergensmeyer’s 179 seminal work on religious nationalism as a defining element of post-Cold War politics, we have attempted to demonstrate that religion is becoming stronger and more radical as evidenced by its association with the ascending populist radical right. As we show here through the emergence of the radical right in Brazil, religion remains a key mobilising framework and still shapes international politics – one that is all too often overlooked. 180 Future research may explore the entanglements between the radical right and religious nationalists elsewhere, both comparatively and on issue-specific grounds.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by CAPES Academic Excellence Program (PROEX) Graduate Fellowship and the University of Brasília’s International Relations Graduate Program. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2020 Annual Millennium Conference ‘Entanglements and Detachments in Global Politics’ at the London School of Economics, UK. We thank Alexander Stoffel, Millennium’s editors, and the anonymous reviewers; their thoughtful comments greatly strengthened the article. Any shortcomings or mistakes are our own.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
This research received financial support from the Brazilian Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), under Grant number 88882.347370/2019-01.
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Daniel Friberg, The Real Right Returns: A Handbook for the True Opposition (London: Arktos, 2015), 16.
44.
45.
Worth, “Globalisation and the ‘Far-Right’ Turn;” Drolet and Williams, “Radical Conservatism and Global Order.”
46.
Worth, “Globalisation and the ‘Far-Right’ Turn”; Stewart, “The Rise of Far-Right Civilizationism.”
47.
Drolet and Williams, “Radical Conservatism and Global Order”
48.
Guilherme Casarões, “Religião e Poder: A Ascensão de Um Projeto de ‘Nação Evangélica’ No Brasil?,” Interesse Nacional 13, no. 49 (2020): 9–16.
49.
Mudde, “Introduction to the Populist Radical Right.”
50.
Worth, “Globalisation and the ‘Far-Right’ Turn,” 24–25.
51.
De Orellana and Michelsen, “Reactionary Internationalism” 756–57.
52.
Stewart, “The Rise of Far-Right Civilizationism.”
53.
Grumke, “Globalized Anti-Globalists.”
54.
And even extreme right, see Mareš, “Trans-National Cooperation of Right-Wing Extremists in East-Central Europe.”
55.
De Orellana and Michelsen, “Reactionary Internationalism,” 753.
56.
57.
Mudde, “Introduction to the Populist Radical Right.”
58.
For example, the US, India, and Brazil, Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020); Eviane Leidig, “Hindutva as a Variant of Right-Wing Extremism,” Patterns of Prejudice 54, no. 3 (2020): 215–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2020.1759861; Guilherme Casarões and Déborah Barros Leal Farias, “Brazilian Foreign Policy under Jair Bolsonaro: Far-Right Populism and the Rejection of the Liberal International Order,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, (2021): 1–21. .
59.
Jens Rydgren, ed. “Religion and the Radical Right,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 533.
60.
Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe.
61.
Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right (Washington, DC: Zero Books, 2017).
62.
63.
64.
Roger Friedland, “Religious Nationalism and the Problem of Collective Representation,” Annual Review of Sociology 27, no. 1 (2001): 125–52. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.125. Willfried Spohn, “Multiple Modernity, Nationalism and Religion: A Global Perspective,” Current Sociology 51, no. 3–4 (2003): 265–86. .
65.
66.
Catarina Kinnvall, “Globalization and Religious Nationalism: Self, Identity, and the Search for Ontological Security,” Political Psychology 25, no. 5 (2004): 741–67.
67.
Marlène Laruelle, Entangled Far Rights: A Russian-European Intellectual Romance in the Twentieth Century (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018).
68.
Monica Duffy Toft, Daniel Philpott, and Timothy Shah, God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011).
69.
J. Christopher Soper and Joel S. Fetzer, Religion and Nationalism in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
70.
Cox, “Social Forces, States and World Orders.”
71.
Rydgren, “Religion and the Radical Right.”
72.
73.
74.
Chayenne Polimédio, “How Evangelical Conservatives Are Gaining Power in Brazil,” Foreign Policy, 7 March 2019. Available at: www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/brazil/2019-03-07/how-evangelical-conservatives-are-gaining-power-brazil. Last accessed December 01, 2020; Ronaldo de Almeida, “The Broken Wave: Evangelicals and Conservatism in the Brazilian Crisis,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 10, no. 1 (2020): 32–40. .
75.
76.
77.
P S C Nacional, “Deputado Jair Bolsonaro é Reconhecido Nas Ruas de Israel,” Youtube, 16 May 2016. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=ruEPllEGYrU.
78.
Andrea Dip, Em Nome de Quem: A Bancada Evangélica e Seu Projeto de Poder (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2018); Amy Erica Smith, Religion and Brazilian Democracy: Mobilizing the People of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
79.
Benjamin Arthur Cowan, “‘Nosso Terreno’: Crise Moral, Política Evangélica e a Formação Da ‘Nova Direita’ Brasileira,” Varia Historia 30, no. 52 (2014): 101–25; Benjamin Arthur Cowan, “Holy Ghosts of Brazil’s Past: The New and Not-so-New in Brazil’s Right,” NACLA Report on the Americas 48, no. 4 (2016): 346–52.
80.
81.
82.
Polimédio, “How Evangelical Conservatives Are Gaining Power in Brazil.”
83.
Abigail George, “Hell, or Salvation? Understanding the Rise of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro,” Hemispheres: The Tufts University Undergraduate Journal of International Affairs 42, (2019): 83–105.
84.
Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist.”
85.
Grin, Gherman, and Caraciki, “Beyond Jordan River’s Waters.”
86.
Survival Brasil, “O Que Jair Bolsonaro, Presidente-Eleito, Disse Sobre Os Povos Indígenas Do Brasil,” Survival Brasil, 2020. Available at: survivalbrasil.org/artigos/3543-Bolsonaro. See also Roberto Goulart Menezes and Ricardo Barbosa Jr, “Environmental Governance under Bolsonaro: Dismantling Institutions, Curtailing Participation, Delegitimising Opposition,” Zeitschrift Für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft 15, no. 2 (2021): 229–247.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (New York: Crown Publishing, 2018).
94.
For a more nuanced definition of authoritarian that distinguishes it from illiberal practices see Glasius “What Authoritarianism Is . . . and Is Not: A Practice Perspective.”
95.
96.
97.
Diário do Centro do Mundo, “‘Não Tem Essa Historinha de Estado Laico. É Estado Cristão’, Disse Bolsonaro Em Comício.” Youtube, 19 September 2018. Available at: amp;">www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6kXlG_NrpQ&. Last accessed December 01, 2020.
98.
Rangel and Vinhaes Dultra, “Elections in Times of Neo-Coupism and Populism.”
99.
Hunter and Power, “Bolsonaro and Brazil’s Illiberal Backlash”; George, “Hell, or Salvation?”
100.
Smith, Religion and Brazilian Democracy; Almeida, “The Broken Wave.”
101.
102.
103.
104.
See also Brian Winter, “Messiah Complex: How Brazil Made Bolsonaro,” Foreign Affairs 99, no. 5 (2020): 119–31.
105.
106.
see Minkenberg, “Religion and the Radical Right.”
107.
Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe.
108.
109.
110.
111.
Ernesto Araújo, “Now We Do.”
112.
113.
Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, War for Eternity: Inside Bannon’s Far-Right Circle of Global Power Brokers (New York: Dey Street Books, 2020).
114.
Margaret Power, “Transnational, Conservative, Catholic, and Anti-Communist: Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP),” in New Perspectives on the Transnational Right, ed. Martin Durham and Margaret Power (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 85–105.
115.
Cowan, “A Hemispheric Moral Majority.”
116.
117.
Dip, Em Nome de Quem.
118.
Hunter, Culture Wars; Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007).
119.
Cowan, “‘Nosso Terreno’”; Rangel and Vinhaes Dultra, “Elections in Times of Neo-Coupism and Populism.”
120.
Dip, Em Nome de Quem.
121.
122.
Grin et al., “Beyond Jordan River’s Waters.”
123.
Cowan, “A Hemispheric Moral Majority.”
124.
See also Betty Clermont, The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2009).
125.
126.
127.
Paul Freston, “The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God: A Brazilian Church Finds Success in Southern Africa,” Journal of Religion in Africa 35, no. 1 (2005): 33–65. https://doi.org/10.1163/1570066052995816. Ilana van Wyk, The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in South Africa: A Church of Strangers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). .
128.
129.
130.
131.
132.
133.
134.
Markku Ruotsila, “Transnational Fundamentalist Anti-Communism: The International Council of Christian Churches,” in Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War: Agents, Activities, and Networks, ed. Luc van Dongen, Stéphanie Roulin, and Giles Scott-Smith (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2014), 235–50. .
135.
Carla Simone Rodeghero, “Religião e Patriotismo: O Anticomunismo Católico Nos Estados Unidos e No Brasil Nos Anos Da Guerra Fria,” Revista Brasileira de História 22, no. 44 (2002): 463–88. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-01882002000200010. Ana Maria Koch, “Crusade for Democracy: Catholic Activists in Republican Brazil,” Revista Brasileira de História 33, no. 66 (2013): 243–64. . Cowan, “A Hemispheric Moral Majority.”
136.
Casarões, “Religião e Poder.”
137.
Caiani, “Radical Right Cross-National Links and International Cooperation.”
138.
139.
Ibid.
140.
Ernesto Araújo, “Trump e o Ocidente,” Cadernos de Política Exterior 2, no. 6 (2017): 323–57.
141.
142.
Ibid.
143.
144.
Ernesto Araújo, “Speech by Ambassador Ernesto Araújo at the Inauguration.”
145.
146.
Caiani, “Radical Right Cross-National Links and International Cooperation,” 533.
147.
De Orellana and Michelsen, “Reactionary Internationalism,” 755.
149.
Araújo, “Trump e o Ocidente,” 352.
150.
151.
152.
153.
Bolsonaro, “Speech by the President of the Republic of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro.”
154.
155.
156.
157.
158.
Achin Vanaik, The Rise of Hindu Authoritarianism: Secular Claims, Communal Realities (London: Verso, 2017).
159.
160.
161.
162.
Ernesto Araújo, “Speech by Ambassador Ernesto Araújo at the Inauguration.”
163.
Grin, Gherman, and Caraciki, “Beyond Jordan River’s Waters.”
164.
Casarões, “Religião e Poder?”
165.
“The Rise of Far-Right Civilizationism.”
166.
Nagle, Kill All Normies.
167.
Stewart, “The Rise of Far-Right Civilizationism,” 1213.
168.
De Orellana and Michelsen, “Reactionary Internationalism.”
169.
“The Rise of Far-Right Civilizationism.”
170.
Drolet and Williams, “Radical Conservatism and Global Order,” 303.
171.
De Orellana and Michelsen, “Reactionary Internationalism,” 758, beg to differ, to them: “Huntington reduces identity, culture, and their attendant norms to religion, rather than the above-analysed birth-culture axiom. Huntington’s clash pits evangelical Christianity against millennial Islamic extremism because of their competing universalisms, which is anathema to New Right national particularism.”
172.
Stewart, “The Rise of Far-Right Civilizationism,” 1214.
173.
Olavo de Carvalho, O Mínimo Que Você Precisa Saber Para Não Ser Um Idiota (Rio de Janeiro/São Paulo: Editora Record, 2013).
174.
Ernesto Araújo, “Speech by Ambassador Ernesto Araújo at the Inauguration.”
175.
See also Araújo, “Trump e o Ocidente.”
176.
177.
178.
Ronald F. Inglehart, “Giving Up on God: The Global Decline of Religion,” Foreign Affairs 99, no. 5 (2020): 110–18.
179.
Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War?