‘Bolso shows all signs of fascism’: the journalist who predicted Brazil’s future – and paid the ultimate price

Dom Phillips pictured in 2018. He predicted, correctly, that Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency would lead to more mortalities and more destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer

“Bolso shows all signs of fascism, as do his supporters,” the murdered British journalist Dom Phillips told me before his death. “His sons are all more extreme if anything.”

These words were written in 2018 by the Guardian contributor shortly before the election of the far-right former army captain Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil – a prospect that Dom viewed with dread.