One of Acton’s most high-profile alumni is taking on a regime to defend the country he loves.
“I do not want to live in another country,” Marcel Van Hattam believes. “I want to live in another Brazil.”
For the 40-year-old politician, his allegiance to Brazil has come at a high cost. Van Hattam, a federal representative in the country’s legislature, was one of thousands of Brazilians targeted by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s (“Lula”) regime. The crackdown from the Lula regime became a stunning political persecution scandal covered by voices around the globe, including public confrontation between American media moguls like Elon Musk and Brazil’s executive and judicial branches.
Van Hattam’s rise to prominence is a fascinating mosaic of parts, from his Dutch parentage to his current status as an outspoken member of Brazil’s Partido Novo (‘the New Party,’) defending free market economics, property rights, and accountability for government officials. And major part of that mosaic has been Van Hattem’s work with the Acton Institute. Perhaps the most high-profile Acton alumnus in electoral politics, he has attended Acton University, Acton’s flagship conference, fourteen times, starting in 2012. 2026 will be his eighth year speaking at Acton University.
Van Hattam started attending Acton University in his early 20s. Today, his lectures at Acton, including “Twitter Files Brazil – The Increasing Censorship of Social Media Worldwide: The Case of Brazil” and “Fighting the Leviathan from Within,” are typically standing-room only.
Since coming to Acton fourteen years ago, Van Hattam has become an integral part of bringing more and more Brazilians into Acton’s orbit, massively increasing not only the Brazilian cohort at the conference but the amount of people bringing the timeless ideas and concepts present at Acton University to their vocations and ministries in Brazil. “Much in my life has changed since my first participation in [Acton University],” Marcel told Acton attendees in 2018. “I rethought my role in society. I met great and inspiring people from all over the world. And I was granted additional intellectual support and motivation to defend a free and virtuous society.”
To say that Marcel Van Hattem has made the most of that support and motivation would be an understatement. What started as a small outreach effort has grown, through the tireless efforts of Van Hattem and others, into a group of more than a hundred Acton alumni in Brazil, taking the ideas of a free and virtuous society and infusing them into the country’s political, entrepreneurial, and spiritual life. That work has led to tremendous recognition for Van Hattem’s work. In 2019, he was awarded the Order of Rio Branco, Brazil’s highest civilian award, by then-President Jair Bolsonaro. And the recognition extended to American audiences as well — Van Hattem and many of his fellow Brazilian alumni attended Acton University 2024, where he was honored with the Institute’s Alumni Achievement Award for his work forwarding Acton’s mission in Brazil.
The road to a freer Brazil hasn’t come easily for Van Hattem or his fellow Brazilian advocates for liberty. As the Lula regime remains in power ahead of Brazil’s 2026 election, he remains a highly regarded voice for liberty in South America’s most powerful country. Van Hattam represents his birthplace of Rio Grande do Sul in the legislature, a state in southern Brazil and the fifth-most populous in the nation.
Marcel himself came into public life at only 18 years old, serving as a newspaper deliverer and later a journalist and reporter. Since then, he has amassed millions of followers across social media, spoken around the world, and becoming an increasingly popular voice against governmental corruption and authoritarianism in Brazil, the country he has called home for the past 4 decades.
That high profile has come at a high cost, as political persecution continues from the regime. As an elected representative and a member of an opposition party, Van Hattam was the subject of illegal surveillance, and his criticism of Brazil’s Supreme Court led to threats of massive daily fines. But Marcel Van Hattam wasn’t, and isn’t, the type to back down quietly. When the Lula regime came after him, Van Hattam pushed back.
His commitment to free enterprise and free speech is perhaps only eclipsed by his uncommon courage in the face of opposition. After X owner Elon Musk defied governmental attempts to silence Brazilian dissidents on the platform in 2024, Van Hattam posted the following to his (now) more than a million X followers:
“You may not be Brazilian, but you are fighting for freedom in our
country in a way that inspires millions in my homeland to raise their voices and
fight even harder to overcome this dire situation. And we WILL overcome it.”
After a 2024 indictment over criticism of members of the Brazilian government, (criticism the regime described as defamatory), Van Hattem currently runs the risk of jail time in Brazil, should the Lula regime decide to crack down further. Yet even the threat of imprisonment hasn’t coerced him into silence. “Of course it worries me. Of course you take extra precautions,” he reflected in a 2025 episode of Acton Line.
“But it’s not going to silence me.”