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Notes -
It started decades ago as a progressive economics term to argue that rising economic inequality risked America looking more like much of Latin America, where the top 5% live like Americans while the bottom 90% are poor. Over time it was adopted by the right in light of ongoing mass immigration, keeping some of its original meaning but adding the idea that Brazil is also poorer, more corrupt, more violent, more dysfunctional. On the internet right the Brazilification thesis stands in contrast to the ‘Balkanization’ or Lebanon scenarios in which ethnic tensions crystallize into hot conflict. Brazil, by contrast, has little significant racial strife of the kind far rightists sometimes predict in the West’s future.
Got it, thanks.
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