When President Donald Trump announced a 50 percent tariff on imports from Brazil due to political persecutions against his former ally, ex-President Jair Messias Bolsonaro—who is currently ineligible to run for office and facing potential imprisonment—the current Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, sought to quell the ensuing political chaos and capitalize on the situation to restore his image, tarnished by corruption scandals and economic crises. To achieve this, he quickly employed a tool that has proven effective over the past two decades: patriotic nationalism.
The phrase “Brazil is sovereign” became a hallmark of a recent speech by President Lula, accompanied by a promise to “oppose American imperialism.” This rhetoric has often proven effective in rallying support for the government during times of crisis and has been used as a mask to conceal the government’s inability to address the root causes of the crises it has itself created.
The use of nationalism as a smokescreen diverts attention from poorly planned economic policies and a lack of transparency in public administration, aiming to promote unity and even shift the responsibility for resolving the economic crisis onto the people. Although more consistent on the left, nationalism in Brazil has been employed in such varied ways during periods of economic crisis that its essence is difficult to define precisely.
This flexibility, however, reveals a problematic facet: nationalism/patriotism is frequently instrumentalized to shift focus from governmental failures due to its ambiguity and lack of clear structure. Instead of addressing structural issues, such as fiscal mismanagement or systemic corruption, leaders resort to “symbols” to create a narrative of national unity, obscuring the complexity of real problems for the masses.
It is worth noting that—unlike American patriotism—Brazilian patriotism draws its foundation from modern sentiments in opposition to patriotism rooted in national history. This stems from a long-standing process by intellectuals who seek to distort Brazilian history. Historical figures undergo revisionism that attributes negative characteristics to them, while elements like “slum culture” and funk music (which in many ways resembles American rap) are exalted.
When Dilma Rousseff’s government triggered the economic crisis in Brazil in 2014, the federal government quickly flooded free-to-air TV channels with patriotic messages, urging the population to “do their best to overcome the crisis together.” In this context, patriotism served as an attempt to transfer the responsibility for the crisis onto the population, while the government avoided confronting its own failures, such as uncontrolled public spending and a lack of economic planning. With Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016 and Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 US elections, the Brazilian right, then led by Jair Bolsonaro, quickly adopted a Trump-style patriotism as a tool for political propaganda. Gradually, Bolsonaro’s patriotic ideal—influenced by American culture—led to marches in his name with American, Israeli, and Brazilian flags displayed side-by-side. This mixed patriotism, however, was criticized for its ideological inconsistency by more traditional nationalist groups, as it promoted supposed national sovereignty while adopting foreign symbols and rhetoric. Moreover, the emphasis on patriotic gestures, such as the ostentatious use of the Brazilian national football team’s jersey, polarized the “football nation” to such an extent that there was even talk of creating an alternative jersey in red (the same color as the Workers’ Party, to which Lula belongs).
In both cases, the use of nationalism and patriotism by Brazilian governments reveals a recurring strategy: appealing to national pride to divert attention from self-inflicted crises. The consequence has been a country that, with each election, sees its nature and culture surrender to the whims of its leaders, with submission to politicians becoming a recurring theme.
