In the Americas, from Donald Trump in Florida to Javier Milei in the Southern Cone, the new right has a common slogan: the construction of a new ultraconservative coalition involves the defense of the genocide in Gaza.
This explains the visit to Israel this week of the emerging leader of the Brazilian post-Bolsonarist right, Tarcísio de Freitas, the governor of the state of Sao Paulo. Freitas – considered the new Bolsonaro – took a break from the megalopolis of 22 million inhabitants to take a 15-hour flight to Tel Aviv. But his target is the votes of some 30 million Brazilian evangelical Christians whose leaders in the church and Congress are staunch defenders of Israel’s right to become sole owner of the Bible Lands.
De Freitas, who seeks to establish himself as the undisputed leader of the Brazilian hard right, knows that he must mobilize the vote of neo-Pentecostals, neo-Baptists and other evangelical franchises with the same effectiveness as Bolsonaro.
This requires coordinating with the deputies-pastors of the so-called Bible bench in Congress and with celebrity televangelists such as Edir Macedo, Silas Malafaia or the former minister and now senator Damares Alves.
It is a great opportunity for de Freitas since Bolsonaro is currently disqualified from participating in politics, accused of subverting the electoral process in 2022, when he was defeated in the presidential elections by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Hence the governor’s decision to travel to Israel on Tuesday accompanied by another Brazilian conservative leader, Ronaldo Caiado, to meet, first with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and, later, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu had invited Bolsonaro to the meeting as well but the former president has had his passport revoked for his alleged participation in an attempted military coup in early 2023.
The Brazilian conservative leaders thus intend to capitalize on the rejection of evangelical pastors of Lula’s repeated condemnations of the massacre in Gaza. The left-wing president has been one of the most forceful politicians in his criticism of the bombings, allying himself with other Latin American presidents, from Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Luis Arce, Gustavo Petro and Gabriel Boric. The right in all of these countries has defended genocide, in many cases, in order to attract evangelical votes.
Lula came under an avalanche of criticism last month when he compared the massacre in Gaza to the genocidal tactics of the Nazis. In a massive demonstration of the Bolsonaro right in Sao Paulo, Freitas and Bolsonaro marched together surrounded by flags adorned with the stars of David, and yellow canarinho shirts of the Brazilian soccer team. Of course, the integralist followers of the former president – nostalgic for the old, deeply anti-Semitic Brazilian fascism – hid their swastikas.
Even the mainstream media joined the attack against the Brazilian president guilty of only calling a spade a spade. “What Lula said is problematic and could weaken the government,” headlined Folha de São Paulo, which even went so far as to attribute Lula’s decline in popularity – quite normal for presidents in their second year – to the comment about the Holocaust.
But Lula’s condemnation of the bombings may be less problematic for his popularity than it seems. As has happened in the US, biblical support for Israel among evangelical leaders is increasingly distant from public opinion after six months of images of corpses and rubble broadcast from Gaza.
According to a new poll by the aforementioned newspaper, support for Israel in the conflict has fallen from 52% to 39% between October and the beginning of this month. It is likely that many ordinary evangelicals also feel this growing rejection of the genocide.
Incredibly, just like the biblical justification that Israel proposes for its occupation of Palestine – with property rights dating back 2,000 years – the support of evangelical pastors for the massacre in Gaza responds to a literal reading of the Old Testament.
For Malafaia and other evangelical leaders, the day of judgment will occur after an end-of-the-world war – Armageddon – in which converted Christians and Jews must kill all infidels. “For us, the God of Israel is our God,” Malafaia said last year.
Predictably, Brazil follows the United States in this fanatical politicization of the Old Testament in order to guarantee evangelical support for the crimes committed in Gaza. Bolsonaro strengthens relations with the pro-Israel ultra-right in the US. He held a video conference with Donald Trump last month, and both understand the importance of the evangelical electorate in building a winning coalition.
Bolsonaro even became a Christian fundamentalist. He married – the third time – the young evangelical Michelle Bolsonaro, trained in the American neo-Pentecostal church Atitude. He then went to be baptized in Israel, immersing himself in the Jordan River. It remains to be seen how far de Freitas is willing to go to demonstrate his empathy with evangelicals, but yesterday’s flight was the beginning.
To date, only the new Argentine president, Javier Milei, has decided to take the step further and convert directly to Judaism to prove his convictions. President of a country with fewer evangelicals and more Jews, Milei visited Israel earlier this year for a tearful visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Following Trump’s initiative, the Argentine president has moved the Argentine embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, an act of support for Netanyahu’s expansionism. Bolsonaro announced his intention to do the same after assuming the presidency in 2019 but, under pressure from beef exporters to Arab countries, he pragmatically decided to open a representative office in Jerusalem and leave the embassy in Tel Aviv.
The delirious prophecies of the final judgment in biblical lands are heard from the pulpit of thousands of evangelical pastors in white marble churches that grow like foam in Brazil. According to the newspaper O Globo, more than 100 churches open every week, either by independent pastors or franchises of mega denominations that are very active in politics, such as the Assembly of God or the Universal Church, founded by billionaire pastors like Macedo, owner of the evangelical television network Record TV, who has attended evangelical ceremonies dressed in a rabbi’s uniform.
Brazil is the second world market – after the US – for the series of novels Left Behind, by the evangelical Tim LaHaye, which explain with creepy hairs and signals in the style of a Hollywood blockbuster, the outcome towards Armageddon and the final judgment to the end of the world that makes unconditional support for Netanyahu and the genocide in Gaza so necessary.