Even their critics recognize their success in naming the company when they founded it in 2016, amid massive anti-political protests. Brasil Paralelo is a media company that, through documentaries, series, films, e-books or courses online, opens a door for its viewers to immerse themselves in a parallel universe where ultra-conservative values, historical revisionism and scientific denialism prevail. His omnipresent claim is most effective: we are going to show him the hidden side of this and that, what the traditional press and the powerful want to hide from him. With that hook, they launched a service streaming —its own Netflix— which has 400,000 subscribers, offers a wide catalog with a hundred of its own productions and 90 films, according to its website.
Brasil Paralelo’s offer seems very much to the taste of Brazilians framed in Bolsonarism, but its promoters have their sights set further, on conservatism in general. That is the public they aspire to convert to their creed of culture war and liberalism. Probably the most successful product of their production is a documentary released in 2019 in which they revisit the dictatorship (1964-1985) in line with the speech of the then newly elected president Jair Bolsonaro, who defends that that military coup was actually a revolution against communism. Now Bolsonaro is accused by the police of plotting a coup against his successor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and of inciting the assault on the headquarters of the three powers in Brasilia.
Its Netflix is much cheaper than the original, which its website imitates. It costs between 19 and 59 reais per month (between 4 and 11 dollars). And it offers content that does not neglect the most notorious crimes and issues of recent years, such as the murder of councilor Marielle Franco. “Every day there is a new product,” says Luciana Carvalho, who studies Parallel Brazil as part of her master’s degree in Social Sciences at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, in an interview. She details that they are professional content, always in clear and direct language. “This is a Brazilian phenomenon related to the new rights in the rest of the world, although they present themselves as non-partisans,” she says in a video call.
On the eve of the Argentine elections that ultra Javier Milei won in 2023, they released a documentary that presents him as a symbol of “a liberal revolution.” On the eve of the presidential elections in Brazil in 2022, justice prevented the premiere of a documentary about the stabbing suffered by Bolsonaro at the hands of a madman in the previous election campaign.
They spend a fortune on advertising on the Internet, the ecosystem that feeds them and in which they grew up. Brazil, with 203 million inhabitants, is one of the countries in the world where Internet users browse for the most hours a day. And Brasil Paralelo, the company that invests the most in this country in ads on Facebook and Instagram. Some 25 million reais (4.8 million dollars) has been spent in almost four years on advertising on Meta, according to the library of political ads of the company that owns the two aforementioned networks. That doesn’t include Google, YouTube, etc.
These days, when someone enters the audiovisual platform’s website, an ad immediately pops up that says: “How much do you know about communism in China?”
Brasil Paralelo Entertainment and Education SA was born eight years ago in the southern city of Porto Alegre by three twenty-somethings fresh out of the Faculty of Advertising who had no idea about journalism or television. They gave birth to it in the heat of those gigantic mobilizations against President Rousseff and the Workers’ Party in which the Brazilian extreme right came out of the closet without complexes. They present themselves as proud conservatives, staunch defenders of freedom and convinced that the battle of our era is the war of narratives. That is why they chose audiovisual content and the Internet as the most favorable terrain for this duel. They never miss the opportunity to remember that they do not receive a real of public money. But their accounts are a mystery.
The company has not responded to this newspaper’s requests for information, but one of its founders, Henrique Viana, said two years ago in an interview that they had 240 employees. Right now they offer a range of jobs on their website.
The columnist Pedro Doria warned a few months ago in the newspaper State about what they expand quickly off the radar and without rivals. And he pointed his finger towards the fertile ground where his alternative and very right-wing version of the world takes root: the medium-sized cities, the Brazil with the most inhabitants, municipalities with between 200,000 and half a million residents, where life is good, there is security but there is a lack of cultural offer. “A Brazil that most do not know,” the columnist told his readers. Cities that are far from the traditional axes of power. “Brazilians have little access to education and are unaware of their history. Whoever tells a story presents an idea of Brazil. A thesis on what it does well and what it does badly. About what problems need to be solved and what not. And, in the fastest growing Brazil, Brasil Paralelo is telling its version of the country alone, without any competition. Mass”.
The content produced and disseminated by the audiovisual platform fits like a glove with the menu of the cultural wars of the most reactionary right-wing international: feminism, abortion, drug legalization, climate change… “Its audience is not worried about disagreeing with the academy. Their message is always something like… ‘we are going to tell you the story that your teachers didn’t tell you’. And they offer a truth anchored in alternative facts or in real facts but combined to make an alternative reading,” says researcher Carvalho. Looking through its catalog leads to a repertoire where those who lead are men, the women are above all mothers and that draws on the theories spread by the main ideologue of Bolsonarism, the late Olavo de Carvalho (who is not related to the researcher).
The professional quality of their productions contrasts with rookie mistakes like the one they made with what was going to be their first fiction film. Magazine Piauí revealed that Brazil Parallel lacked copyright for Devil’s Office (Devil’s Office), a film based on a best-seller by CS Lewis. They had not requested them. The project was put on hold.
The researcher explains that the Brazilian company has recently signed agreements with large audiovisual multinationals such as Sony or MGM to include in their streaming films from their international catalogues. Obviously, they only select those that match their values. And that’s where they hope to expand their clientele. Another of the most recent developments is their first cartoon production, in a few days they will release a History of Brazil tailored to children’s audiences.
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