NEOLIBERALISM AND AUTHORITARIANISM IN FAR RIGHT

A comparison between Bolsonaro's fascism and Milei's libertarianism

Abstract

Far right has been joining forces and succeding in all the world. However, that does not mean that it is homogeneous. This article compares the cases of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Javier Milei in Argentina. By rejecting a historically restricted definition of fascism, it argues that Bolsonaro has all its traits, highlighting the mobilization through mobilizing passions, centered in nationalistic speech and in the opposition to out-groups and to the left, with striking violence. The reactionary idealization of a past as a model to the future is also in the core for his rupture project. Milei’s case is different: he does have some traits, such as the violent speech and the mobilization, attacking the left, but he lacks some defining traits, like de nation in the core. That is why he is labeled as a protofascist and as an ultra-neoliberal or far right libertarian, sharing Hayek’s ideas of minimum state and Nozik’s ideas of individual freedom.