Brazil’s far right borrowed Ukraine and Indonesia’s de-communization laws as templates.

Evidence

Eduardo Bolsonaro, the third son of the president, took inspiration from Ukraine when he proposed a new law in Congress, where he had served since 2015. After his father became president, he pushed to make “apology for communism” illegal. This would mean the criminalization of a significant portion of the political opposition. His main reference point for the proposed law, he said, was the “de-communization” process carried out after the Maidan uprisings. In addition to banning the previously influential Communist Party (KPU), which had its base of support among older voters, the government in Ukraine under Petro Poroshenko had outlawed leftist symbols like the hammer and sickle, as well as old Red Army memorabilia. But in interviews, Eduardo Bolsonaro also pointed to the example of Indonesia, which officially made communism illegal during the mass murder of approximately one million people in 1965–1966. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 732

Categorization

• QUESTION: What does proposing criminalization of ‘apology for communism’ reveal about the template these anti-establishment movements export to each other?
• XREF: connects to: Brazilian far-right supporters adopted Ukraine’s far-right symbols as their own. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 730