Description
The radical right has increasingly assumed leadership positions worldwide, encompassing both the Global North and South. Indicators from organizations such as Freedom House demonstrate mounting pressures on liberal democracy in countries led by radicalized leaders. Similarly, Feldstein’s (2022) Digital Repression Score documents the growing deployment of intrusive surveillance and control technologies by far-right administrations to intensify harassment of political opponents. In these contexts, as noted by Mudde (2019), security agendas have become central and serve as primary instruments for reinforcing mechanisms of social control and subordination. Intersections between militarized and police-oriented discursive practices and logics frequently emerge in the construction of the “order–security” nexus. Nevertheless, the themes advanced, the targets identified, and the sociotechnical apparatuses employed differ across national contexts, shaped by specific social and political contingencies. This paper analyzes how militarist perspectives, actors, and discursive practices are mobilized in the formulation and implementation of security policies, facilitating the expansion of intrusive surveillance systems such as spyware and facial recognition. The analysis focuses on the United States under Donald Trump and Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro, as well as selected state and municipal administrations, to examine the intersections of militarism, policing, and vigilantism in contemporary security governance.
