Why Do Some Bolsonaro Supporters Wave the American Flag?
Why Do Some Bolsonaro Supporters Wave the American Flag?
"The right openly professes its adulation of the Republican ideal and what Brazil should look like," said AS/COA's Brian Winter to The Washington Post.
On the day when Brazilians celebrated the nation’s independence, when thousands of protesters this month called on President Jair Bolsonaro to lead a military takeover of the country, a middle-aged man set out onto the streets of Brazil’s largest city, cloaked in the flag.
The American flag...
Brian Winter, vice president for policy at Americas Society/Council of the Americas, said he was unsurprised by how much attention American conservatives have given Brazil.
“It’s a country where the right openly professes its adulation of the Republican ideal and what Brazil should look like,” he said.
But for Bolsonaro, Winter warned, modeling his movement on Trumpism carries political risks. Brazil is not the United States. Many of the most combustible cultural clashes there — gun rights, abortion, racism — don’t resonate with the same force here. What Winter described as the “transmission of the Fox News agenda into Brazil” doesn’t make much sense in a country where nearly 20 million people have recently gone hungry, the unemployment rate is at a record high and polls show a majority of Brazilians want Bolsonaro to be impeached.
“He needs to stop cloaking himself in the American flag and start cloaking himself in the Brazilian one if he wants to get reelected,” Winter said...
