The antisemitic speech in the Ação Integralista Brasileira

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on antisemitism within the Ação Integralista Brasileira (AIB) through the movement’s press, especially the newspaper A Offensiva, in order to delimitate more precisely the political contours of antisemitism in AIB, which means, its doctrinal role as well as its relationship with AIB’s strategic political objectives. Particularly in 1935, the international Jewish conspiracy theory was highlighted in various AIB’s periodicals; in A Offensiva, the movement’s main newspaper, for about a year, Gustavo Barroso, most prominent antisemitic intellectual in Brazil by that time, published a column exclusively dedicated to anti-Jewish propaganda. This theme is scarcely explored within the integralism’s historiography despite the large spread of the antisemitic speech in the world during the interwar period. Therefore, this work intends to be an initiative for new reflections regarding AIB’s antisemitism.