Inside the strange, sad­ly telling Bol­sonaro-DiCaprio feud

As Leonar­do DiCaprio​’s lead­ing-man gigs have grown few­er and far­ther between over the years, he’s com­mit­ted more of his time to envi­ron­men­tal preser­va­tion. The pho­to above depicts the A‑list heart­throb-turned-activist speak­ing to the UN about the para­mount impor­tance of pro­tect­ing the plan­et, part of a wider effort that’s also involved pro­duc­ing and nar­rat­ing doc­u­men­taries to this same effect.

So it came as some­thing of a sur­prise when Jair Bol­sonaro, the recent­ly elect­ed ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive Brazil­ian pres­i­dent, accused DiCaprio of finan­cial­ly back­ing the fires now rav­aging the Ama­zon region. More of a sur­prise, rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing, than it would’ve been for any nation­al leader to place the blame for an inte­ri­or cat­a­stro­phe on any oth­er Acad­e­my Award winner.

As not­ed in Dead­line over the week­end, Bol­sonaro was heard to say, ​“This Leonar­do DiCaprio’s a cool guy, isn’t he? Giv­ing mon­ey for the Ama­zon to be torched.” The puz­zling com­ment echoed a sen­ti­ment Bol­sonaro expressed dur­ing a Face­book live broad­cast, in which he claimed, ​“Leonar­do DiCaprio, dammit, you’re col­lab­o­rat­ing with the burn­ing of the Ama­zon,” and the­o­rized the exis­tence of a ​“cam­paign against Brazil”.

One might won­der why some­one who’s devot­ed much of his adult life to pro­tect­ing nature on a very pub­lic plat­form would want to bankroll a for­est fire through murky back chan­nels. Bol­sonaro has offered no expli­ca­tion of his accu­sa­tions, or evi­dence to sup­port them, which is undoubt­ed­ly part of the point.

Brazil’s com­man­der-in-chief has been fre­quent­ly com­pared to the Unit­ed States’ own strong­man du jour, Don­ald Trump, and this odd sto­ry lays bare the play­book that they both share. Trump’s modus operan­di has long been to make out­ra­geous claims and let the pub­lic busy them­selves sift­ing through them in search of truth or some­thing to disprove.

Bolsonaro’s régime has pre­vi­ous­ly arrest­ed four vol­un­teer fire­fight­ers charged with set­ting the blaze so that Brazil could attract more ben­e­fit mon­ey from non-gov­ern­men­tal aid orga­ni­za­tions, one of which has con­nec­tions to DiCaprio. The vague­ness, the expec­ta­tion that every­one else will do the work of mak­ing sense of it, the relaxed rela­tion­ship to real­i­ty – it’s all clas­sic Trump­ism, which is to say clas­sic authoritarianism.

DiCaprio respond­ed to the spe­cious state­ments on Insta­gram with no minced words:

https://​www​.insta​gram​.com/​p​/​B​5​f​s​Q​_​v​F​U​N​3​/​?​u​t​m​_​s​o​u​r​c​e​=​i​g​_​embed

The final para­graph feels espe­cial­ly point­ed, as DiCaprio men­tions local gov­ern­ments with the impli­ca­tion that he’s mak­ing the dis­tinc­tion from the now-com­pro­mised nation­al gov­ern­ment. If this odd saga can be under­stood through the lens of Trump­ist thought, we may also secure­ly pre­dict how this will all end: with a whim­per at most, as Bol­sonaro moves on to the next pie-in-the-sky denun­ci­a­tion of his ene­mies and the rest of the world focus­es on his deeds more heinous than slan­der­ing the good DiCaprio name.

It’s a dis­cour­ag­ing case study in an emer­gent polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy gain­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty around the globe, one trou­bling­ly adopt­ed by local can­di­dates in the States as a warn­ing sign of deep soci­etal cor­ro­sion. Those will­ing to resort to dirty, under­hand­ed tac­tics are wak­ing up to the fact that they often work, at least par­tial­ly. Bolsonaro’s behav­ior, seem­ing­ly inex­plic­a­ble, fits into a trend. He didn’t begin it, and he won’t be the end of it, either.