Brazil, Bolsonaro, and the Politics of Nostalgia

History Talk, the history podcast from Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective

In October 2018, Brazil elected far-right ideologue Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency. Bolsonaro, a retired military officer often called the "Trump of the Tropics," campaigned on a platform that mixed anti-corruption with open nostalgia for the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. On this month's History Talk podcast, your new hosts Eric Michael Rhodes and Lauren Henry speak with two experts — Jennifer Eaglin and Pedro Cantisano — about the rise of Bolsonaro, his place in the longer history of Brazilian politics, and what his success means for the future of the world's fourth-largest democracy. An in-text version of this article can be found at: https://origins.osu.edu/index.php/historytalk/brazil-election-jair-bolsonaro-politics-nostalgia