Charismatic leadership and affective mobilization in brazilian Integralist action:

the “fascination of the predestined” in Paraná (1935)

Abstract

Studies of charismatic leadership in European fascism show that in the presence of the leader, crowds reach high levels of detachment and emotional ardor, which leads them to abandon their common patterns of consciousness. In Freudian terms, this is an identity loss in devotion to the “intangible chief”. Based on these arguments, our objective is to analyze the charismatic leadership of Plínio Salgado in Brazilian Integralist Action, observing its affective aspects and based on a regional / local documentation (the newspaper of the movement in Paraná, A Razão). Such documentation reveals the levels of charismatic devotion both in urban agglomerations and in far-off places, whose expectation of seeing the leader, in person, on the part of the partisans, was very reduced or nonexistent.