The far-right candidate has sought, with little evidence, to link his Worker’s party opponent to Brazil’s neighbour’s troubles

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Before he was frontrunner to become Brazil’s next president, Jair Bolsonaro tried his hand at film-making.

The picture? A 26-minute polemic posted on YouTube called Venezuela: An Alert for Brazil.

The plot? A dastardly communist conspiracy to seize control of Latin America’s largest democracy and turn it into a Bolivarian inferno of savagery and destitution.

“IS BRAZIL FREE FROM BECOMING THE VENEZUELA OF TOMORROW?” the far-right populist tweeted alongside a link to his politically charged flick, produced in partnership with his politician son Eduardo Bolsonaro.

Jair Bolsonaro’s push for power has been turbocharged by a duo of contemporary Brazilian bugbears: fear of an intensifying murder crisis that last year claimed nearly 64,000 lives and fury at extreme levels of corruption.

But a third, increasingly dominant, theme has also emerged in his fight for the presidency: the crisis in Venezuela and Bolsonaro’s oft-repeated allegation that his Workers’ party (PT) opponent, Fernando Haddad, will inflict similar pain on Brazil.

I hope my fellow Brazilians see through Bolsonaro before it’s too late | Luiza Sauma Read more

Hardly an interview or public declaration now goes by without Bolsonaro name-dropping Brazil’s crisis-stricken South American neighbour.

In his first comments since Sunday’s emphatic first-round win, Bolsonaro warned only two paths were now available to Brazilian voters – his path of prosperity, freedom and godliness or Haddad’s: “The path of Venezuela.”

The next morning another of Bolsonaro’s sons, Carlos, echoed the message on Instagram. “Together let’s stop Brazil becoming a Cuba or a Venezuela,” he wrote.

Harold Trinkunas, a Stanford University Latin America expert, said Venezuela’s problems, which has caused the most severe migration crisis in modern Latin American history, had become “a really powerful tool for Bolsonaro to attack the PT and Haddad”.

Similar claims were used against Colombia’s defeated leftwing presidential hopeful Gustavo Petro, who was routinely – and inaccurately – described as an agent of “castrochavismo”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A supporter of Jair Bolsonaroshows a T-shirt depicting him in front of the Bolsonaro’s condominium in Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro. Photograph: Sergio Moraes/Reuters

Bolsonaro’s charge was fanciful, said Trinkunas. “When the PT was in government, under Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, Brazil certainly didn’t take the path that Venezuela took.”

“In fact, I think for Brazilians the threat Bolsonaro poses to institutions is a little more Chávez-like than that posed by Haddad. Bolsonaro [who has repeatedly praised dictatorships] is the one who has made anti-institutional statements during his career, rather than Haddad.”

The former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a well-known critic of the PT and Lula, has also called Bolsonaro’s claims “an exaggeration”.

But Bolsonaro’s vast fanbase seems to be convinced by it, with supporters up and down the country repeating theories of the supposed red peril posed by the PT.

“They want to transform our flag into a red flag – the flag of communism!” declared Cleuzenir Barbosa, a member of Bolsonaro’s party in Minas Gerais state, warning that moral decay and “severe communism” lurked behind the PT’s “beautiful and serene words”. “Worse, I would say, than that of Venezuela or Fidel Castro!”

Paulo Henrique Villas Boas, a Pernambuco-based bolsonarista, agreed: “They support dictators like Fidel Castro! Like Maduro! Hugo Chávez! Dictatorships in Africa! Hamas!”

Critics say the PT – which enjoyed close ties to Chávez’s government under Lula – has failed to neutralize such attacks by sufficiently distancing itself from the increasingly authoritarian regime of his successor, Nicolás Maduro.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Presidents Hugo Chavez, left, of Venezuela and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, pictured together in 2007. Photograph: Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images

Some of those seen as being furthest to the party’s left have even publicly backed Maduro. Last year – in what one commentator denounced as “the most shameful page in the PT’s history” – the party president, Gleisi Hoffmann, voiced support for his socialist party as it resisted “a violent rightwing offensive”.

Maurício Santoro, an international relations expert from Rio de Janeiro’s State University, called the PT’s relutance to question Maduro “a big mistake” that brought Haddad “a series of problems and no benefits”.

In a recent interview with the Guardian, Haddad conceded that Venezuela’s “democratic environment” had been “compromised” but stopped short of criticising Maduro.

'Totally divided': how Venezuela's crisis split the Latin American left Read more

On Wednesday, he again dodged a question about whether he considered Venezuela a democracy or a dictatorship, admitting only that its situation was “dramatic”.

“Brazil’s role is that of a leader in this continent. We don’t need to take sides. We don’t need to declare war on any of our neighbours,” Haddad told foreign correspondents in São Paulo, pointing to the PT’s commitment to “the principle of non-intervention”.

“[The answer] isn’t more bullets, more military bases, more war … The continent needs more cooperation.”

Celso Amorim, Brazil’s foreign minister under Lula, was similarly cautious. “Venezuela is in a complex situation, it has a lot of inequality, it might have committed mistakes,” he told the Guardian.

But Amorim called claims his party wanted Brazil to follow Caracas an invention of the “radical right”: “To imagine that Brazil will be influenced by Venezuela is a fantasy … It is a myth, it is a lie.”

Mônica Valente, the PT’s international relations secretary, accused Bolsonaro of trying to polarize the election by “caricaturing” Haddad’s campaign: “You can’t characterise the candidacy of Fernando Haddad as extreme left.”

That, though, is exactly what Bolsonaro’s campaign is doing – with energy and with success.

Between them, Eduardo and Jair Bolsonaro have sent more than 50 Venezuela-themed tweets this year, most flagging up the supposed socialist threat to Brazil.

His father returned to the theme on Tuesday morning in his latest Bolivarian-themed broadcast, accusing the Brazilian leftist of being “in love with Venezuela”. “It’s us against them. It’s Brazil against the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes,” Bolsonaro declared.

The tactic appears to be catching on: on Wednesday, another rightwing populist warned of the “suffering, misery and decay” that leftwingers planned to inflict.

In a rare editorial for USA Today, Donald Trump wrote that “the new Democrats are radical socialists who want to model America’s economy after Venezuela”. The assertion drew scorn from political opponents and Latin America experts, with a Washington Post fact check noting drily: “We are unaware of any Democratic leader that has pointed to Venezuela as an economic model.”