This article analyses the masculine aesthetics of Italian and Brazilian far-right leaders Matteo Salvini and Jair Bolsonaro, exploring the performative dimension of their virile self-representation online. It advances a multimodal aesthetic analysis that centres visual and iconographic investigations of digital contents, supported by critical discourse, social semiotic, and historiographic methods. The investigation examines how the image of the two leaders has been shaped through specific aesthetic strategies to consolidate their representation as strongmen in public perception. Central to this construction is the figure of the captain (capitão/capitano), an aesthetic that blends representations of authority with imageries of ordinariness and imperfection, exploiting the logics of celebrity politics and online influencer culture. Building on selected examples drawn from the social media profiles of Salvini and Bolsonaro from the period of their respective electoral victories in 2018, the analysis dissects three central themes enabling parallels between Italian and Brazilian far-right politics and discourse: the link with football popular culture, the praise of the military, the rehabilitation of the memory of both countries’ authoritarian pasts, and the fetishisation of phallic dominance and violence through the public exhibition of weaponry. This article demonstrates how the virile performances of the two leaders foster a shared identity and a sense of belonging in an ethno-nationalistic sense, cementing perceptions of male dominance and patriarchal hegemony. Ultimately, it underscores the centrality of visual and historiographic investigations to better understand the social and cultural conditions that fostered the rise of far-right politics in positions of global power.
Erica Capecchi (Thu,) studied this question.