Cultural Marxism made its debut in Brazilian politics in early 2019, when Bolsonaro’s then-minister of education, Abraham Weintraub, announced his commitment to removing such thinking from Brazil’s universities. If in the US, Jewish intellectuals are frequently blamed for introducing progressive ideas about race, gender and equality, in Brazil the blame has been primarily directed towards the Left-leaning movements, which have allegedly infiltrated universities. The personification of the enemy may be slightly different, but, in the end, it remains the same: the Left.
Conspiracy theories such as Cultural Marxism have become key components of contemporary radical right-wing populist phenomena. In this context, Cultural Marxism is used by the alt-Right to encourage ‘active knowledge’, urging the public to question the education offered by universities. It is in turn used to justify the need for a new educational agenda – one free from the illusion that individuals have equal rights. In Brazil, rather than starting from the grassroots and slowly spreading to the centre of power, the efforts to use conspiracy theories to delegitimise years of studies about race, equality, and gender came from above. This was illustrated by the recent move by the president’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, to establish the Instituto Liberal-Conservador (Liberal-Conservative Institute), which promotes values such as the preservation of the traditional family, faith, right to self-defence and sovereignty.
The far-Right knowledge industry around Jair Bolsonaro
The Instituto Liberal-Conservador is one of many organisations that have emerged in Brazil to support President Bolsonaro’s mission to take back the country from the perverted Left. While these groups are not directly associated with the president, in that they do not receive funding from him, their agendas are clearly aligned with his, and are being spread through online courses and independently founded institutions. In other words, these institutions are spouting conspiracy theories, such as Cultural Marxism, as scientific knowledge.
A search for the term ‘Cultural Marxism’, written in Portuguese, on CrowdTangle (a tool designed by Facebook that allows analysis of content available on the platform) over the 12 months to 17 February 2021 resulted in 2,153 posts on public pages with more than 100,000 likes. Many of these pages belonged to public figures, politicians, political parties and alternative media sites not only from Brazil, but also from Portugal, Spain and other Latin American countries.
At least 61 posts were made by 24 institutions and two study groups with a clearly defined far-Right educational purpose. Of these, it was possible to identify 12 Brazil-based far-Right institutions and two study groups with the potential to reach more than one million people. The other 12 institutions were located in Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Spain, and the United States (one American organisation had a Spanish website and the other included a Facebook page in Spanish to target a Latin American audience).
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Beatriz Buarque | Radio Free (2021-03-10T10:48:54+00:00) How Brazil’s far-Right ‘active knowledge’ industry supports Jair Bolsonaro. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2021/03/10/how-brazils-far-right-active-knowledge-industry-supports-jair-bolsonaro-2/
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