Brazil Unfiltered

On this episode of Brazil Unfiltered James Green talks with Ben Cowan, Associate Professor of History at UC San Diego and a leading expert on the history of Brazil’s military dictatorship. His 2016 book ‘Securing Sex: Morality and Repression in the Making of Cold War Brazil,’ looks at how cultural shifts in the 60s, 70s, and 80s -- especially changing attitudes towards sexuality and gender -- were held up by the dictatorship as dangers to the country. Green and Cowan discuss how this paranoia continues today on the far right, where everything from gender equality to gay rights is viewed as an existential political threat.