Brazilian Integralist Front

The Brazilian Integralist Front (Portuguese: Frente Integralista Brasileira) is a Brazilian political movement with a fascist inspiration and an anti-liberal, anti-communist, traditionalist and extreme right nationalist character. It appeared in 2004, in the so-called I Integralist Congress for the 21st century, held in the city of São Paulo, but it was officially founded on January 22, 2005.

After the death of Plínio Salgado, in 1975, new integralist associations appeared responsible for trying to disseminate the political and literary work of the Integralist leader, such as the Centro Cultural Plínio Salgado, in São Gonçalo (Rio de Janeiro).

During the 1980s, in the context of redemocratization in the country, there was again an attempt to refound the Brazilian Integralist Action (AIB), by veterans of the first, second and third generation of integralists. This attempt resulted in the founding of the Integralist Action Party (PAI), however, due to internal differences, the caption did not flourish as its supporters expected.

In the 1990s and 2000s new associations emerged, among them the Center for Historical and Political Studies (CEHP), located in Santos, the Integralist Nucleus of Rio de Janeiro (NIRJ) and the Youth Nativist of Niterói (JNN), who assisted the work of remaining organizations from the 1980s, such as the Casa de Plínio Salgado and the Centro Cultural Plínio Salgado, the latter then commanded by the ex-militant of the Brazilian Integralist Action, Arcy Lopes Estrella. These last two organizations expanded their area of activity, articulating and grouping different organizations that had integralist doctrine in common.

Created by young people belonging to the so-called fourth generation integralist and historical activists of the movement, the FIB emerges as a result of the union of different existing integralist associations, which until then were autonomous. The leaders of these associations organized the so-called 1st Integralist Congress for the 21st Century, which was held on December 4 and 5, 2004, in the city of São Paulo. On that occasion, the Brazilian Integralist Movement (MIB) was founded, whose name would later be changed to the Brazilian Integralist Front. According to the organization's website, the FIB was officially founded the following month, on January 22, 2005.

The ideology defended by the organization has been described by academics as chauvinist. Brazilian integralism does not accept neoliberal capitalism or communism. It defends private property, the rescue of national culture, moralism, values nationalism, Christian moral values and Brazilian Christian traditions, the principle of authority (and therefore the hierarchical structure of society), the fight against both communism and economic liberalism, and the defense of municipalism. At this point, the FIB is seen as radical in the defense of the principles that guided the old IBA, keeping the original ideology intact.

Integralists claim to reject liberal democracy as an instrument of political and economic support for capitalism by identifying that this structure reduces all political activity to a mere electoral formalism that is repeated periodically and is exercised only by political parties. In opposition to this, the integralists claim to defend democracy in a broader and more participative character through the conception of organic democracy, whose political participation is not restricted only to political parties, also giving voice to the so-called natural groups. Taking François Furet's analysis of totalitarian movements in the twentieth century into perspective, this allows for a distinction between integralism and fascist and communist movements, which aim to suppress liberal democracy by a totalitarian structure.

The FIB is organized into state (often treated as provincial) and municipal centers, whose objective is to carry out social actions, studies and advertising. According to researcher Jefferson Rodrigues Barbosa: "the FIB is organized in approximately twenty states of the federation, with more than thirty centers spread across Brazil". These nuclei are geographically subdivided and their activities are guided by five Regional Coordinators: North, Northeast, Midwest, Southeast and South.