Fascism in Brazil

From Integralism to Bolsonarism

Leandro Pereira Gonçalves, Odilon Caldeira Neto

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000581980
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Fascism in Brazil analyzes the long and varied history of the Brazilian extreme right.

The book examines integralism, the main historical Brazilian fascist ideology represented by Brazilian integralist Action, the largest fascist movement outside Europe. It analyzes the Integralist tradition from its founding in 1932 to the present day. It examines how Brazilian integralist Action began with its leader Plínio Salgado's trip to Fascist Italy, and how the Popular Representation Party developed integralism in the postwar era. The book also explores the support of integralists for the 1964 military coup and the role of integralists in the dictatorship. The contemporary extreme right in Brazil is still inspired by the integralist slogans of the 1930s as they seek to find political space and to demonstrate their strength. Contemporary turning points in neo-integralism were the involvement of neo-fascist groups, including neo-integralists, in the upheavals that culminated in the election of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, as well as in the attack on the headquarters of comedy group Porta dos Fundos in Rio de Janeiro in 2019.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars researching comparative fascist studies, the history of the far right, and Brazilian and Latin American history and politics.

1The Formation of the SigmaThe Brazilian Integralist Action

DOI: 10.4324/9781003224570-1

Plínio Salgado, fascist Italy, and the formation of integralism

In 1930, Pallazo Venezia, Roma, at 6 PM of a summer afternoon, on June 14, after spending the day getting his bearings around the Italian capital, Plínio Salgado, the future leader of the green-shirts, found himself before Benito Mussolini, the leader of Italian fascists. He excitedly described this moment as being face-to-face with the genius behind the future of politics, the prophet of the contemporary world.

Plínio, then a thin 35-year-old man, son of a colonel/pharmacist and a primary teacher, was born in São Bento do Sapucaí, a city in the state of São Paulo, on January 22, 1895. He was a self-taught journalist and writer from São Paulo who was immediately seduced by the person standing before him. He faced a blue-eyed man of medium height with confident gestures and a firm voice, movements that seemed to express a proper perspective on life.

As part of a euphoria-ridden entourage of Brazilian intellectuals that managed to book a 15-minute appointment in the Italian leader’s schedule thanks to some journalists in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Plínio Salgado consolidated his idealization of integralism, the largest extreme-right movement in Brazilian history. Salgado and Mussolini’s meeting was marked by mutual praise. The Italian leader welcomed the Brazilian entourage and presented the glorious spectacle that had overtaken Italy. It was a moment of collaboration and support from the Duce, who advised Salgado to develop an initial set of ideas to guide society in alignment with a new conscience, to later act as the basis for a political party.

Plínio Salgado also offered some advice and, from then on, established a relationship of mutual support. This meeting profoundly affected Salgado, who vehemently believed to be the Brazilian version of that Italian man he so profoundly admired. With this in mind, he decided to develop a plan to achieve realize his vision. Meeting with Mussolini was significant because it enabled Salgado to consolidate political and intellectual elements that were taking form in the previous decades.

Amidst the transformation caused by the Revolution of 1930 in Brazil, Plínio Salgado, who had agreed to act as the Director of Propaganda for the Júlio Prestes-Vital Soares campaign (against Getúlio Vargas’ Liberal Alliance), left Brazil for a nearly four-month-long trip to the Old World. During this electoral process, a friend invited Plínio Salgado to travel to Europe with his brother-in-law, Joaquim Carlos, or Calu, who had just gone through a sad love experience.

This was a very expensive trip for Plínio Salgado and was only possible because he had a good patron: São Paulo banker Alfredo Egídio de Souza Aranha, ascendant of the first Viscountess of Campinas, cousin of Getúlio Vargas’s Minister Osvaldo de Sousa Aranha and founder of Banco Central de Crédito (which over the 20th century would come to be known as Banco Itaú after some mergers).

He was also the most prominent supporter of Plínio Salgado’s political endeavors. The trip cost approximately 1000 pounds sterling. Plínio visited several countries: Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, England, several countries in the Middle East, and, of course, the main destination, Italy, during the time of the black-shirts.

From his youth, Plínio Salgado had always been involved in journalistic activities and followed an intellectual path. He soon started attending the places that would be central to the Brazilian modernist movement. It was in fact due to a group that emerged in the 1920s, the verde-amarelismo, that Plínio Salgado consolidated some elements of his political actions. This group represented the idea of nationalism, as did the Anta, a group that adopted a more radical thought and which he curiously defined as the left-wing part of this movement.

Plínio was always a socially captivating actor in intellectual circles. One of the names that constantly appeared alongside him was writer Ribeiro Couto, author of the famous novel Cabocla, later adapted to two telenovelas by Brazilian national broadcaster Rede Globo. While Plínio traveled around Europe, he sent Couto, chair number 26 at the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL), an emotional letter expressing his fascination with Italian politics. He stated his admiration for Italy, a place where the streets exuded enthusiasm and which he believed had some similarities to Brazil: a country of people who know how to place the nation’s interests above those of the classes.

The Brazilian version of Mussolini would certainly be Plínio Salgado, a self-proclaimed genius who assigned intellectuals a prominent role in this new Brazil: “We, the intellectuals, need to take control of Brazil. Definitely. We have to break from the mediocre tradition of politics. We, the intellectuals, are tired of living under the shadow of the powerful. We want to rule.”

Therefore, he advocated for the participation of intellectuals in politics, especially those connected to his nationalist project. The appeal of a fascist regime and the criticisms toward democracy—which was associated with liberalism and communism—fueled his euphoria surrounding Italian politics.

Despite his admiration for Italian politics and its evident influence on him, Plínio was in search of a prominent position on the Brazilian political scene. Salgado’s goal was to be a kind of ground-zero, hence the denial of any fascist influence: his ideas were already formed. He considered being influenced by another person a big mistake. Instead, he professed to have his own thoughts, which were original and unrelated to any other politician or writer. However, this proved to be quite the opposite.

Various signs point out the relationship between Plínio, Brazilian integralism, and other conservative and fascist organizations. One of them was Lusitanian integralism, a conservative movement inspired by the Action Française—one of the precursors of organized conservatism. Both were inspired by the social organization model proposed by Pope Leo XIII in the 1891 encyclical, the Rerum Novarum.

Italian fascism was appealing to the integralist leader, and this fascist image moved crowds toward integralism. One of its most prominent activists, Roland Corbisier, clearly stated: “Of course it was fascism!”

Plínio Salgado’s success in the 1920s inside the cultural movement—especially after releasing novels such as O estrangeiro, which was very well received by critics and sold out its first edition in 20 days—was enough to turn him into the leader of a social group thirsty for power. Plínio Salgado presented himself as a modern man. He sought to break with old political traditions by proposing a new policy that employed an authoritarian, anti-liberal, anti-democratic, and anti-communist discourse based on a nationalist, radical, and conservative Christian framework. These elements became even more potent after he saw how this model was practiced in Italy, which enabled him to identify the path toward a new Brazil.

The relationship between Plínio and Mussolini lasted for years, mainly through financial agreements between the Italian fascist government and the Brazilian integralist movement. Mussolini sent him money periodically because he considered the Brazilian movement to spread his politics and doctrine in the Americas. Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law, sent 40 contos every month directly to Salgado. In more strategic moments, the amount was even higher.

Plínio Salgado returned to Brazil on October 4, 1930, on the eve of the movement that overthrew President Washington Luís and prevented the inauguration of Júlio Prestes, who had been elected president and was a former ally of Plínio Salgado. The event that led Getúlio Vargas to power was followed by a series of conflicts in which Vargas undertook various groups frustrated with the oligarchic government of the First Republic. That was when Plínio, who kept his support of Júlio Prestes, returned to Brazil. After the trip, he was eager to put his theory into practice.

Formation and principles of the Brazilian Integralist Action

Plínio Salgado soon started an intellectual project, the newspaper A Razão, funded by banker Alfredo Egídio de Souza Aranha. This newspaper served as a medium to discuss and consolidate the elements that would form a new group, the Society for Political Studies (Sociedade de Estudos Políticos, SEP), which can be characterized as the beginning of integralism.

The goal behind the creation of the SEP was to organize a group to discuss a new political movement based on strong, conservative, and revolutionary nationalism aligned with Mussolini’s model. The SEP was the result of several other preceding Brazilian movements that can be called pre-integralist or proto-fascist.

These organizations characterize the rise of the right in the 1930s and included several fascist-inspired movements: the Brazilian Social Action (Ação Social Brasileira, a national fascist party), the Cearense Labor Legion (Legião Cearense do Trabalho), the National Syndicalist Party (Partido Nacional Sindicalista), and the neo-monarchic movement Brazilian Patriotic Imperial Action (Ação Imperial Patrianovista Brasileira). At that time, Plínio Salgado had consolidated his image as a conservative intellectual.

The place where Plínio Salgado chose to discuss Brazilian politics and that later became the headquarters of the SEP was located in downtown São Paulo, at Vale do Anhangabaú, on the corner of Avenida São João and Avenida Prestes Maia. The Portuguese Club of São Paulo was located at a majestic building that held balls and various cultural activities. Its main goal was to spread Portuguese culture in São Paulo. In addition to libraries, ballrooms, and sports halls, there was also a gallery with gun exhibitions.

The third meeting of the society took place on May 6, 1932. This was when Plínio Salgado suggested creating a new group. Not all intellectuals agreed with this. Cândido Motta Filho, for example, Plínio’s partner in the verde-amarelismo, did not accept the creation of a political entity. Even so, the support of intellectuals and students from the São Paulo Faculty of Law (Faculdade de Direito de São Paulo) for Plínio Salgado’s proposal meant he had the majority of SEP members, thereby making official the Brazilian Integralist Action (AIB, Ação Integralista Brasileira).

Despite being officially formed in May, the movement only gained nationwide notoriety in October. Due to the Constitutionalist Revolution that started on July 9, Plínio Salgado and the other members took the prudent and calculated move to postpone the official event to a more opportune moment. The confrontation between São Paulo and the federal government ended on October 2. The AIB was officially founded five days after.

On October 7, riddled with anxiety and anticipation and supported by a large part of the nationalist intellectuals and admirers of fascism, Plínio Salgado went to the Municipal Theater of São Paulo. There, he read the Manifesto de Outubro, a document he wrote after heated debates at SEP meetings and which defined the ideological guidelines of the movement. Twenty thousand copies of the Manifesto were published and distributed around the capital of São Paulo and in several regions of Brazil.

The document consists of ten chapters and represents the birth of Brazilian integralism. At the Manifesto, the integralists criticized political parties and advocated for the principle of authority. Furthermore, they denounced a conspiracy against Brazil and proposed a social program to defend the conservative family and a fascist state, the Integral State.

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