"Popular" neoliberalism and the far-right. A view from the Global South

Far-right groups and parties have multiplied globally in recent decades, emerging as a defining feature of 21st-century politics. While this resurgence appears novel, far-right ideologies have deep historical roots, with waves of growth and decline throughout the 20th century. Consequently, scholars have sought to disentangle the movement’s contemporary manifestations from its longstanding traditions. Within these debates, economic factors have taken on heightened significance (Mudde 2016, quoted in Otjes, et al, 2018, 270), as the far-right’s economic stance has proven fluid, malleable, and even contradictory (Forti 2023, 45-47), varying across time and geography. A broad trend reveals a divergence between the Global North and Latin America: while many far-right movements in wealthy nations have embraced protectionism, nationalism, welfare chauvinism, and anti-globalization rhetoric, their Latin American counterparts—particularly in recent years—have increasingly championed economic openness and neoliberalism. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, the country’s foremost far-right figure, has similarly shifted toward neoliberalism, distancing himself from his earlier protectionist and nationalist rhetoric, which once included vehement critiques of neoliberal policies in the late 20th century. Scholars generally agree that Brazilian far-right ideology blends neoliberalism, conservatism, and authoritarianism (Wink 2021). Yet many argue that neoliberal policies remain unpopular in Brazil (Ortellado et al. 2017; Almeida 2018; Wink 2021; Kalil 2023), contending that Bolsonarism’s appeal to low-income voters stems primarily from its moral and cultural positions rather than its economic agenda. From this perspective, the far-right’s neoliberal turn was a strategic maneuver to attract middle- and upper-class voters, as well as actors within the financial system, rather than a genuine outreach to poorer constituencies. While there is merit to this claim, we argue that neoliberalism, as an ideology and, therefore, something that comprises more than economic policies, have also gained traction among Brazil’s lower-income strata and it is also an important element for Bolsonaro popularity among lower-class voters. Indeed, neoliberalism has a popular dimension, most of the time denied by scholars on the theme (Soren 2019). First, the present chapter analyses how neoliberal ideas can be popular and why it become so in Brazil. Second, in order to understand how far-right neoliberal ideas matches low-income voters believes, we analyse the Brazilian context and combine discourse analysis of Bolsonaro’s public statements on entrepreneurship, market freedom, and the state with ethnographic fieldwork, including interviews with residents of São Paulo’s underserved communities. By doing so, we challenge the assumption that neoliberalism’s appeal in Brazil is confined to elites and interrogate its resonance across class lines.