The right-wing populist movement has experienced a second major blow in as many years following Jair Bolsonaro's recent presidential defeat in Brazil to left-wing candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro became the first Brazilian president to lose a re-election campaign in the country's history after being beaten by former leader Lula on Sunday.
In an almost direct comparison to Donald Trump's 2020 election defeat—arguably the archetypal populist leader of the 21st century—Bolsonaro's loss arrived after his country experienced one of the highest coronavirus death rates anywhere in the world.
Bolsonaro, a strong ally of Trump, also presided over Brazil under a strict populist regime that helped propel the former U.S. president into power.
Federico Finchelstein, professor of history at The New School in New York, suggested that in both cases, Trump and Bolsonaro's reliance on "propaganda and lies" resulted in their downfall.
"When their policies fail, or they are not as they claim, they insist on this propaganda," Finchelstein told Newsweek.
"It's not a coincidence that Brazil has been a leader in the number of deaths with coronavirus. This is a leader that denied the vaccine, denied the virus. That coupled with terrible policies eventually provided a kind of contrast with the propaganda that Bolsonaro was spreading."
With both populist leaders now handed election defeats in two years, could there be signs that the populist movement is starting to falter?
One person who is almost guaranteed not to be concerned about Bolsonaro's election defeat is Trump himself, amid speculation of a potential presidential run in 2024 using his own MAGA-branded style of populism regardless of any world or domestic event.
Every few years, there are concerns about an apparent rise in far-right populism—a movement defined by its divisive firebrand leaders using charged rhetoric to target political elites as well as minority groups—especially in Europe.
Such concerns were raised once in 2022 after Marine Le Pen achieved the far-right's highest-ever share of votes in her defeat to Emmanuel Macron in France's presidential election.
Elsewhere, Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy, a party with neo-fascist roots, became Italy's first far-right leader since the end of World War II while propping up a coalition government along with right-wing allies Matteo Salvini and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The populist party Sweden Democrats will help shape policies in the Scandinavian country after a three-party center-right coalition formed a government following the September election, which will depend on parliamentary support from the far-right group.
In April, Hungary's authoritarian far-right leader Victor Orban also won a fourth consecutive term in power following the eastern European country's election.
Finchelstein said the ongoing threat of populism is still a "legitimate concern" across the world.
"What we are seeing despite the resounding defeat of both Trump and Bolsonaro is that Trumpism is not gone and Bolsonaroism will not be gone," Finchelstein explained.
"These kinds of anti-politics, this claim of being different and not doing what typical politicians do, sadly is successful and sadly I don't think there's a reason to think that this will decrease in the next few years."
Brett Meyer, a research fellow at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, pushed back on the idea that there is a renewed surge in populism in Europe to suggest there is a growing appetite for the far-right movement.
Meyer noted that the Swedish Democrats may not ultimately have too much power in Sweden under the moderate right coalition, and Meloni got into power as a "fresh face" while the overall vote share of right-wing parties in Italy did not increase.
"If you look at the AfD in Germany or Vox in Spain, they're not down but they're not really up, they're just kind of stable," Meyer told Newsweek.
"What happens in Western Europe is these right-wing populist parties are really focused on two things: one, immigration and two, anything related to the European Union and anything bothersome thing about the EU.
"They do well when those issues are salient, and they haven't been salient in most European countries the last few years."
Meyer added that the Sweden Democrats were able to capitalize on huge anti-immigration sentiment in the county following a surge of violent crime in recent years.
Discussing the future of populism across the world, Finchelstein added that the movement will continue to move away from its 20th-century roots of "democracy in authoritarian terms" and into a "new form of fascism" focusing on extreme xenophobia and dictatorship.
"They [populist leaders] will return to violence and the militarization and glorification of politics. They return to fascist ways of life. They return to the politics of the xenophobia the morning, extreme demonization," Finchelstein told Newsweek, noting Trump's actions on January 6, 2021, and Bolsonaro also pushing unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in Brazil proved showed their efforts to stay in power.
"You can have dictators without fascism, but there is no fascism without dictatorship," Finchelstein said.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy ... Read more
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