Brazil, once governed by the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) , is now under the rule of right-wing populist president Jair Bolsonaro.

For years, neoliberal ideology among the working class and the elite converged to prop up Brazil’s right-wing movement. But prospects seem to be shifting. Bolsonaro can no longer rely on climate denialism or anti-vaccine campaigns to gain working-class support. The Left can win if it opposes the moral vocabulary of neoliberalism and the dystopian future it promises.

In a recent interview on The Dig, a Jacobin Radio podcast, host Daniel Denvir spoke with Rodrigo Nunes, a professor of modern and contemporary philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, PUC-Rio) in Brazil and the author of Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization.