On Guard Against the Red Menace Anti-Communism in Brazil, 1917-1964

by Motta, Rodrigo Patto Sá

• ISBN13: 9781789760002
• ISBN10: 1789760003
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2020-02-01
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Summary

This book focuses on the values, beliefs, fears, and actions of Brazilian groups that throughout the twentieth century fought the “red menace.” It is based on broad and diversified documentary sources, including police files, archives of political leaders, traditional press periodicals, newspapers, and brochures of right-wing organizations, monuments, caricatures, and photographs. The work is a major contribution to better understanding the political impact of right-wing movements in Brazil and the justifications made for the authoritarian coups of 1937 and 1964. The author explains the intricacy of the political movements, leaderships and organizations that gathered around the fight against communism, as well as the ideas and images used to disseminate their arguments, including international sources of inspiration. On Guard Against the Red Menace helps to understand why a candidate of military origin who promises to rid the country of the reds won the October 2018 elections in Brazil, by adopting a discursive strategy that represents the appropriation of the anti-communist tradition analyzed in this book.

Author Biography

Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta is Titular Professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais.

Table of Contents

Contents
 
Acknowledgments
 
Introduction
 
Chapter 1. Anti-communism’s beginnings in Brazil: 1917–1935
 
Chapter 2. Anti-communist matrices      
                2.1. Catholicism
                2.2. Nationalism
                2.3. Liberalism
 
Chapter 3. The anti-communist imaginary
                3.1. Demons
                3.2. Pathological agents
                3.3. Foreign menace
                3.4. Moral challenge
                3.5. Soviet inferno
                3.6. The Communist Intentona
                3.7. The ‘Knight of Hopelessness’
 
Chapter 4. Anti-communist iconography
                4.1. Diabolic communism
                4.2. Communism and religion
                4.3. Violence, slavery and disease
                4.4. International communism
                4.5. The 1935 Insurrection
                4.6. Prestes
                4.7. Electoral disputes
                4.8. Infiltration in Goulart’s government
 
Chapter 5. Anti-communist organizations
                5.1. The Brazilian Anti-Communist Crusade
                5.2. Brazilian Society for the Defence of Tradition, Family and Property
                5.3. Terrorist organizations
 
Chapter 6. The anti-communist industry
 
Chapter 7. The first major anti-communist wave: 1935–1937
                7.1. The uprising
                7.2. The reaction
                7.3. The great ruse
 
Chapter 8. The second major anti-communist wave: 1961–1964
 
                8.1. Goulart’s rise to power
                8.2. Anti-communists organize
                8.3. Representations
                8.4. War of position
                8.5. The crisis worsens
                8.6. Denouement
 
Conclusion
Afterword
 
References
Index