Brazilian Integralism () was a political movement in Brazil, created in October 1932. Founded and led by Plínio Salgado, a literary figure who was somewhat famous for his participation in the 1922 Modern Art Week, the movement had adopted some characteristics of European mass movements of those times, specifically of Italian fascism, but distancing itself from Nazism because Salgado himself did not support racism. He believed that every person of every race should unite under the Integralist flag. Despite the movement's slogan "Union of all races and all peoples", members and leaders like Gustavo Barroso held anti-Semitic views. The name of the party created to support its doctrine was Brazilian Integralist Action (, AIB). The reference to Integralism mirrored a traditionalist movement in Portugal, the Lusitanian Integralism. For its symbol, the AIB used a flag with a white disk on a royal blue background, with an uppercase sigma (Σ) in its center. (In mathematics, the sigma indictates an "integral", or summation of a bounded formula.)
Character
In its outward forms, Integralism was similar to European fascism: a green-shirted paramilitary organization with uniformed ranks, highly regimented street demonstrations, and rhetoric against Marxism and liberalism. However, it differed markedly from it in specific ideology: a prolific writer before turning political leader, Salgado interpreted human history at large as an opposition between "materialism"—understood by him as the normal operation of natural laws guided by blind necessity—and "spiritualism": the belief in God, in the immortality of the soul, and in the conditioning of individual existence to superior, eternal goals. Salgado advocated, therefore, the harnessing of individual interest to values such as pity, self-donation and concern to others. For him, human history consisted of the eternal struggle of the human spirit against the laws of nature, as expressed by the atheism of modern society in the twin forms of liberalism and socialism—capitalist competition leading eventually to the merger of private capitals in a single state-owned economy. Thus the integralists favoured nationalism as a shared spiritual identity, in the context of a heterogeneous and tolerant nation influenced by Christian virtues—such virtues being concretely enforced by means of an authoritarian government enforcing compulsory political activity under the guidance of an acknowledged leader.
In particular, they drew support from military officers, especially in the Brazilian Navy.
Integralism being a mass movement, there were marked differences in ideology among its leaders under the influence of various international fascist and quasi-fascist contemporary movements, as in the issue of anti-Semitism. Salgado was against it. Gustavo Barroso, the party's chief doctrinaire after Salgado, was known for his militant antisemitic views, becoming notorious for being the author of the first and so far only Portuguese translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; he was also the author of various antisemitic works of his own (Judaism, Freemasonry and Communism; Sinagogues in São Paulo). This led to at least two serious ruptures in the movement: one in 1935 and the other, 1936, when Salgado almost renounced leadership of the movement.
One of the most important principles in an Integralist's life was the "Internal Revolution", or "Revolution of the Self", through which a man was encouraged to stop thinking only for himself, and instead start to integrate into the idea of a giant integralist family—becoming one with the Homeland, while also leaving behind selfish and "evil" values.
Attitudes of the Vargas dictatorship
In the beginning of the 1930s, Brazil went through a strong wave of political radicalism. The government led by President Getúlio Vargas had a degree of support from workers because of the labor laws he introduced, and competed with the Brazilian Communist Party for working-class support. In the face of communist advances, and at the same time building on his intensive crackdown against the Brazilian left, Vargas turned to the integralist movement as a single mobilized base of right-wing support. With center-left factions excluded from the Vargas' coalition and the left crushed, Vargas progressively set out to co-opt the populist movement to attain the widespread support that allowed him eventually (in 1937) to proclaim his Estado Novo—a corporatist "New State".