On Guard Against the Red Menace: Anti-Communism in Brazil, 1917-1964

This book focuses on the values, beliefs, fears and actions of Brazilian groups that throughout the twentieth century fought the red menace. It is based on broad and diversified documentary sources, including police files, archives of political leaders, traditional press periodicals, newspapers and brochures of right-wing organizations, monuments, caricatures, and photographs. The work is a major contribution to better understanding the political impact of right-wing movements in Brazil and the justifications made for the authoritarian coups of 1937 and 1964. The author explains the intricacy of the political movements, leaderships and organizations that gathered around the fight against communism, as well as the ideas and images used to disseminate their arguments, including international sources of inspiration. The argument presented is not one of mere condemnation, but as dictatorship has reared its head post-1964 an assessment is long overdue in order to understand the political impact of anti-communist movements which have contributed to enable the longstanding police-military repressive machine of the Brazilian State. The current return of anti-communism to the Brazilian political scene is evidence of the book’s thesis that this phenomenon took root in Brazilian society during the first decades of the twentieth century. On Guard Against the Red Menace helps to understand why a candidate of military origin who promises to rid the country of the reds won the October 2018 elections in Brazil, by adopting a discursive strategy that represents the appropriation of the anti-communist tradition analyzed in this book.