Why characterize bolsonarism as neofascism

Abstract

Original fascism arose in the twentieth century in the central countries. It was a mass reactionary movement of the petty-bourgeois against the socialist and communist workers’ movement that mobilized a conservative criticism, typical of the small owner, of capitalist economy and of parliamentary politics and came to the government co-opted by monopolist capital. Neo-fascism emerged in the 21st century and, in the Brazilian case, in the semi-periphery of the imperialist system. It is a reactionary mass movement of the upper middle class against a popular-based bourgeois reformism; it mobilizes a conservative middle-class critique of corruption and democratic politics, and has come to the government co-opted by international capital and the fraction of Brazilian bourgeoisie integrated into this capital. Both movements serve fractions of the bourgeoisie, but they are not reduced to passive instruments that these fractions would manipulate at their own pleasure.