The federal elections were held in Brazil in 2018. The ballot resulted in a victory for the far-right candidate, Jair Messias Bolsonaro. The question that arose after the victory of the far-right was: How could this have happened? One of the instruments that undoubtedly contributed to this unexpected victory was a peculiar aspect of his political campaign: memetic communication. Through the use of memes in the social media (above all WhatsApp), Bolsonaro’s project transformed these violent discourses against political opponents, feminism, racialised persons and poverty into a series of discourses legitimised through humour and irony. It was a simplification through the memes affecting the static system of cognitive and metaphorical frameworks. During the pre-election period in 2018, we carried out digital ethnographic research in the WhatsApp groups of supporters of Bolsonaro’s project (“Bolsonarism”). In this period, we collected a sample of 132 memes belonging to WhatsApp groups composed of up to 256 members, who did not know each other and were geographically dispersed. The analysis we carried out demonstrates the trivialisation and legitimisation of violence against political opponents and other social groups. Much of this legitimisation was camouflaged under the mask of supposed humour and irony, which in reality was insulting, prejudicial and dehumanising.

Much scholarship on the far right focuses on Europe and North America, whereas case studies outside of these regions are often neglected or not recognized as constituting the same phenomenon. In this article, we compare two democracies in the Global South—India and Brazil—to showcase far-right movements within these countries. We situate the “postcolonial neoliberal nationalism” that has shaped the basis of far-right claims in India and Brazil. To illuminate this, we explore female social media influencers within these far-right milieus, and their role in the reproduction of gender, class, and racial hierarchies. Combined with this are insights from media studies on influencer culture as a means of analyzing the performativity of far-right women to advance exclusionary agendas. Overall, we highlight the inherent contradictions and complexity of how far-right female influencers in the Global South are promoting local expressions of gendered indigeneity while also contributing to global far-right narratives.

Cet article montre le caractère fondamental du cadre théorique du « régime des schismes » dans l’étude du phénomène de la soi-disant « extrême-droite ». Il repose sur une enquête ethnographique effectuée à l’occasion de la victoire électorale de Jair Bolsonaro, notamment menée devant sa maison, à Rio de Janeiro, au soir du second tour. Ce que nous avons appelé le « régime de schisme », et que nous considérons comme fondateur du « bolsonarisme », y apparaît marqué par l’auto-absorption dans des mondes particuliers, formant une raison illusionniste qui contraste avec la raison des Lumières.