Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right former army captain, has been Brazil’s president for almost one year, having ridden the wave of the far-right movement worldwide to power in the largest economy in Latin America with a strong political influence in the region and some of the most important natural resources of the planet. The impact of Bolsonaro’s policies since taking office goes well beyond Brazilian borders: he has supported Juan Guaidó’s attempted coup in Venezuela and Jeanine Áñez’s successful coup in Bolivia, as well as overseen new deforestation records in the Amazon rainforest.

Since Brazil was one of the leading countries of the Pink Tide and lifted millions out of poverty in the first decade of the 2000s, the rise of the Brazilian far right is important symbolically. Over the first year of the Bolsonaro government, it’s become clear that the “antiglobalist” agenda of Bolsonaro and other similar figures like Donald Trump is actually an elitist, neoliberal agenda. Twenty-first-century neoliberalism is using the idea of “antiglobalism,” the claims of the alleged leftist control of the global economy, to establish a new round of attacks on the Left. Assessing the logic of Bolsonaro’s governance is crucial to figure out effective long-term alternatives to this project.

Like the other authoritarian leaders who have risen to power in recent years, Bolsonaro claims to stand for the common man and woman. According to Bolsonaro, the Left has dominated world politics over the last three decades in order to destroy the traditional social fabric based on nationalism, family values, and work ethics. Bolsonaro branded himself as an outsider throughout his presidential campaign, despite his almost thirty years as a congressman.