The Brazilian right muted itself because it had backed dictatorship

Evidence

But on the ground, and in the data, it was undeniable that something real was happening. Many people you met, rich or poor, were doing things they had never done before. Poor people got full-time jobs with benefits, or took their first flight. Middle-class kids got to vacation in Paris or Tokyo or Mexico City. Throughout 2012, Dilma’s approval rating hovered around 65 percent. Conservative forces were muted. Analysts called this phenomenon the direita envergonhada, or “embarrassed right,” a legacy of the fact that almost everyone agreed that during the military regime, the left had fought for democracy, and the right had defended dictatorship. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 315

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘direita envergonhada’/‘embarrassed right’ — a historically useful concept that explains why Brazilian conservatism went quiet and later re-erupted.
• XREF: Pays off the chapter 7 theme of Brazil’s eventual far-right turn — the embarrassed right reversing itself. — connects to: Brazil’s extreme inequality was so entrenched it went unmentionable in polite society — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 169; Brazil’s post-dictatorship history produced an ‘embarrassed right’ muted in 2012 — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 315; Being called right-wing functioned as a slur in 2014 Brazilian politics — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 539