Democracy under pressure: reflections on the far right through the lenses of past, present and future
Authors: Odilon Caldeira Neto, Andrea Dip, Joana Varon, Fabiano Garrido, Tatiana Dourado, Agnes Franco, Ana Julia Bernardi, Caroline Pecoraro, Letícia Capone
Editors: Marilene de Paula and Manoela Vianna
In March 2025, we were invited to take part in the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s partners’ meeting in Rio de Janeiro, joining the panel “The rise of the far right in three tenses.” Joana Varon, founder and executive directress of Coding Rights, investigative journalist Andrea Dip, of Research Against Global Authoritarianism, and historian Odilon Caldeira, of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), discussed the uses and abuses of the memories of Brazil’s past, the intentions of Silicon Valley’s “tech bros,” and the ways in which the far right is increasingly connecting across borders.
The conversation gave rise to this publication, released in Portuguese as Democracia sob pressão: reflexões sobre a extrema direita com as chaves do passado, presente e futuro, in which the authors assemble a political picture of how the ultraconservative wave is battering through country after country. This scenario demands both deep diagnoses and the development of new strategies and tactics to strengthen dialogue and effective action in defense of human rights and democracy.
Updated for COP30, the edition includes a new chapter on environmental and climate disinformation, framing as a strategy the need for a coordinated and effective response to the climate crisis, and placing gender equity at the center of the debate.
In the essay “Bilhões de motivos: a convergência das ideologias e imaginários de futuro das tecno-oligarquias do Vale do Silício com o governo Trump” (“Billions of reasons: the convergence of the ideologies and future imaginaries of Silicon Valley’s techno-oligarchies with the Trump administration”), Joana Varon “calls us to action in the face of the ‘tech bros’ narrative, stressing that this moment demands collective strategies of confrontation. It is essential that the intersections between human, environmental and digital rights become more visible in the work of organized civil society, since a geopolitics dominated by techno-oligarchy affects every sector of society.”
Read the full publication: https://br.boell.org/pt-br/2025/08/18/democracia-sob-pressao