'The playbook is the American alt-right': Bolsonaristas follow familiar extremist tactics

When Jair Bolsonaro’s culture secretary published an official video paraphrasing Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, it wasn’t just Brazilians who were stunned. The video, in which Roberto Alvim called for a “rebirth of art and culture in Brazil” while Adolf Hitler’s favourite Wagner opera played in the background, sent shockwaves around the world.

Alvim was sacked within hours, as Brazilians asked: was this an aberration, a one-off, or even a communist trick? And what did it say about the far right president’s communications masterplan?

Related: Brazil culture secretary fired after echoing words of Nazi Goebbels

Analysts said the use of such extremist tactics is typical of the brinksmanship, trolling and meme tactics used by the US “alt-right” who are often referenced by powerful members of Bolsonaro’s government.

The term “alt-right” was popularised by white supremacist Richard Spencer and has been linked to Stephen Miller, a white nationalist and senior adviser to Donald Trump – who has himself benefited from far-right support and at times nodded to it.

Pushing the limits and goading liberals are classic alt-right tactics, said Rodrigo Nunes, a political philosophy professor at Rio de Janeiro’s Pontifical Catholic University.

“This is done in the US by people on the fringes of the public debate, and here it is done by people in the government,” Nunes said. “Sending messages to people in the most extreme fringes of the far right.”

Alvim denied knowing he had quoted Goebbels. Brazilian media reported that he was well aware that he was echoing Hitler’s propaganda minister and even joked he would be called a Nazi.

“The playbook is the American alt-right,” Nunes said. “In that sense, Brazil is the first alt-right government in the world.”

It’s not hard to find other such rightwing dog-whistle messages around Bolsonaro’s government.

His congressman son, Eduardo, and special adviser of international affairs Felipe Martins both have Twitter profile pictures which use a sci-fi, collage aesthetic called “vaporwave” or “fashwave” associated with the alt-right.

Martins’ profile quotes Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night – the Dylan Thomas poem quoted in the manifesto of far-right terrorist Brenton Tarrant, accused of killing 51 people in the Christchurch mosque attacks.

“These are common tropes,” said Alexandra Minna Stern, a professor in the American Culture department at the University of Michigan and author of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate. In turn, the US alt-right is “interested in Brazil because they like Jair Bolsonaro and the way he and his supporters have used social media”, she said.

Another alt-right favourite is the Latin phrase deus vult (“God wills it”) – a Crusader slogan which has often been used by figures in the alt-right – as well as Alvim and foreign minister Ernesto Araújo.

The Bolsonaros also use offensive statements to distract media attention from damaging scandals. In the past month alone, the president told a reporter he looked “terribly like a homosexual” as explosive details about a money laundering inquiry into his senator son Flávio swirled. Last week, he said on Facebook live that Indigenous people “are increasingly becoming human beings just like us”.

“That’s part of the spectacle, like the shock and awe going on in the US,” said Stern.

Like Trump, leading Bolsonaristas are good at “plausible deniability” – making an extreme comment, then withdrawing it or claiming it was misconstrued.

Eduardo Bolsonaro and finance minister Paulo Guedes have both said Brazil could reintroduce notoriously repressive legislation from Brazil’s military dictatorship if street protests like those in Chile were to erupt. Both later backed off, but the subject had entered the national conversation.

And while Alvim’s conservative art competition has been suspended, many Bolsonaristas still believe that Brazilian culture is decadent, infested with leftist ideals, and in need of a conservative transformation.

“It’s back to Nazi ideas of what is degenerate art, how young families are being corrupted,” Stern said. “[The idea] is out there and it’s entering the discourse.”