Has the Brazilian people finally found an ‘enemy’?

The childish rivalry with Argentines, inflamed by the media, reveals moral weaknesses within Brazilian society.

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Almost every people possesses what Carl Schmitt called the fundamental distinction between friend and enemy. Liberal utopianism promised to overcome this historical reality through trade, democracy, and economic interdependence. That promise, however, was never fulfilled. Societies continue to require antagonisms to organize their collective identity. The difference is that, in the twenty-first century, the enemy must be morally justifiable.

Brazil has always been a curious exception. Surrounded by stable borders and removed from the great interstate wars, the country never developed a permanent national enemy. While many nations carried centuries-old rivalries, Brazilians cultivated the image of themselves as a cordial, racially mixed, and welcoming people. The very idea of harboring lasting hostility toward another nationality seemed incompatible with the national self-image.

This absence, however, did not eliminate a profound human impulse: the periodic need to find a target for collective frustrations. It is in this context that Argentina has emerged as an interesting sociological phenomenon in contemporary Brazil. Suddenly, the Argentine is no longer merely a sporting rival. He has become a convenient archetype. He is portrayed as racist, arrogant, violent, a voter for Javier Milei, a Zionist, or a football cheat. Each isolated incident comes to reinforce a broader narrative according to which “the Argentine” constitutes a homogeneous moral category.

This transformation is revealing. For years, the dominant discourse condemned any form of generalization about national, ethnic, or religious groups. Yet once the target becomes sufficiently “legitimate” in the eyes of public opinion, those same moral barriers disappear almost instantly.

Following the recent World Cup, episodes of hostility toward Argentines in Brazil gained prominence on social media and in the press. There were clashes between supporters, vandalism against businesses associated with the Argentine community, and online boycott campaigns. In a coastal town in the state of Rio de Janeiro, there was even an incident in which an Argentine tourist was stoned, while in Goiás, in central Brazil, a traditional Argentine steakhouse closed during the World Cup final after its owners and employees received threats from fanatical Brazilian militants.

In practice, individuals began to be judged simply because of their nationality. The logic ceased to be individual and became collective. Curiously, all of this has occurred without many participants perceiving any moral contradiction. The Brazilian liberal press itself has contributed to legitimizing this behavior by reinforcing the image of Argentines as inherently “rude” and “racist.”

In fact, Brazil can be described as a post-Christian society that has retained the language of compassion while losing much of its universal moral boundaries. The distinction is no longer between loving or hating one’s neighbor. Instead, it has become a matter of hating the “wrong” people or the “right” people. There is hatred considered illegitimate, but there is also hatred presented as civic virtue.

This is precisely where the paradox lies. Brazilians can pour accumulated resentment onto an entire national group without abandoning their self-image of tolerance and cordiality. After all, the target has already been framed as deserving rejection. Hatred no longer appears as hatred; it is reinterpreted as moral responsibility or a form of “justice.”

This is a recurring mechanism in contemporary societies. The need to have enemies has not disappeared; only the way of justifying them has changed. Liberal discourse has not abolished the logic of antagonism. It has merely replaced traditional geopolitical adversaries with moralized figures whose exclusion is presented as a sign of virtue, often for entirely trivial reasons.

The Argentine case illustrates this process accurately. It does not matter that millions of Argentines hold completely different political views, values, and life experiences. The collective category becomes more important than the individual. Judgment is no longer based on concrete actions but on mere national belonging. Ultimately, the recent “hunt for Argentines” in Brazil reveals a deeper characteristic of Brazilian society: its need for moral justification in order to antagonize “the other.” In this framework, the moralization of hatred becomes a greenlight under which anything is allowed against those placed outside the accepted moral boundaries. For Brazilians, the Argentine is coming to serve the same symbolic role that the “witch” served in medieval Europe or the “terrorist” serves in modern America.

For decades, the narrative persisted that Brazilians were naturally incapable of deep antagonisms. Perhaps that image never reflected reality. Perhaps what was lacking was simply a sufficiently convenient object onto which impulses present in every society could be projected. The media sensationalism surrounding isolated incidents of racism in football stadiums provided precisely the moral excuse that many Brazilians had been waiting for.

It is undeniable that certain political sectors benefit from all of this. Brazil and Argentina are sister nations with an almost symbiotic relationship. Thousands of Argentines live in Brazil, just as thousands of Brazilians live in Argentina. The average Argentine is often virtually indistinguishable from southern and border-region Brazilians, both sharing origins in the Gaucho ethnicity. Every year, millions of Brazilian and Argentine tourists travel between the two countries, alongside seasonal workers who cross the border to earn income during specific times of the year.

Hatred between Brazilians and Argentines is ultimately unsustainable. Yet it is particularly useful to parasitic sectors within both societies. In Argentina, there is a right-wing neoliberal government that is strongly pro-Zionist and highly hostile toward Brazil. In Brazil, meanwhile, there is an equally neoliberal but left-wing government that criticizes Israel (without ever seriously considering severing ties) and is likewise hostile toward Argentina. In the end, both peoples lose. The real beneficiaries are the transnational elites that exploit resources from both countries while fueling this polarization.

At present, the expressions of hatred are primarily coming from Brazilians. But they are unlikely to go unanswered. Before long, cases of Argentines attacking Brazilians may also become increasingly common. The friendship between two mutually dependent nations could gradually be erased. All of this might have been avoided had the myth of Brazilian “cordiality” finally been abandoned and the country’s natural tendency toward antagonism been strategically directed against those who genuinely oppress Brazil: the same transnational elites that now tell Brazilians it is morally acceptable to hunt Argentines in the streets.