4220 6th Ave SE Lacey
WA 98503 (SPSCC Lacey Campus)
Jonathan Warren, Professor at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, UW, will discuss how right-wing populism is on the rise globally, especially in those parts of the world that embraced most aggressively neoliberal modes of capitalism. Unfortunately, Brazilians have embraced one of the most extreme and violent forms of it. Examples include the assassination of political opponents, the harassment of critics of the status quo, ethnic-cleansing of indigenous peoples, environmental plunder, mass extermination of working-class communities of color, and unprecedented levels of violence against women and people of different gender identities. Jonathan Warren will discuss how this movement caught most experts and pundits off guard, both in and outside of Brazil, in large measure because they misunderstood the source of the economic uptick in the 2000s, underestimated the fatigue people had with violence and corruption, misread the reasons for the rise of evangelical Christianity, ignored the authoritarianism at the heart of Brazilian day to day culture, and failed to appreciate the centrality of racism to Brazilian society
