Brazil, it is time to wake up from your Bolsonaro nightmare

Belén Fernández, Contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine, writing on Aljazeera.com, says “Brazil, it is time to wake up from your Bolsonaro nightmare”.

Only the unitiated and developmentally challenged three-year-olds would disagree.

Bolsonaro’s 2018 win had supposedly put ‘socialism’ on trial. On Sunday, Brazil’s leader faced his own indictment from voters.

According to one bizarre article by the right-wing writer Mary Anastasia O’Grady, there was a simple explanation for the electoral triumph of the man that many analysts had compared with the then-president of the United States, Donald Trump. Despite the fact that Bolsonaro had been “labeled a racist, a misogynist, a homophobe, a fascist, an advocate of torture and an aspiring dictator”, he had prevailed, the piece argued, because Brazilians were “in the midst of a national awakening in which socialism – the alternative to a Bolsonaro presidency – has been put on trial”.

Who is Bolsonaro and what has he been doing recently?

Jair Bolsonaro, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, (born March 21, 1955, Campinas, Brazil), Brazilian politician who was elected president of Brazil in October 2018. A right-wing nationalist, law-and-order advocate, and former army captain who expressed admiration for the military government that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985, Bolsonaro came into office on a wave of populist antiestablishment indignation stirred by the massive Petrobras scandal that had tainted much of the country’s political class.

Bolsonaro grew up in Eldorado, a town of some 15,000 people in Brazil’s Atlantic rainforest, where his father practiced dentistry without a degree until the arrival of certified dentists prompted him to shift to work on prosthetics. The third child in a family of three sons and three daughters, Bolsonaro attended the Preparatory School of the Brazilian Army and graduated from the Agulhas Negras Military Academy in 1977. He then served in the army for some 17 years, including a stint as a paratrooper, and rose to the rank of captain. Bolsonaro gained notoriety in 1986 when he wrote an article for the popular magazine Veja in which he was critical of the military’s pay system. That public stance earned Bolsonaro condemnation from his superiors but was celebrated by his fellow officers and military families.

Bolsonaro's recent actions and how they've drawn comparisons to cult leaders.

As the 2022 campaign draws to a close, many of the myths that made Bolsonaro appealing have been washed away by the grim realization of what he has always been: a huckster, most notable for his abrasiveness and authoritarian posturing.

Four years after the election of Bolsonaro, Brazil has been transformed from a generally respected rising power into a pariah state, repudiated for its appalling environmental and human rights record and for what Doctors Without Borders has called the world’s worst response to COVID-19. Brazilians like to joke about foreigners only knowing the country as the land of soccer, samba, and carnival. Today it is known as a prominent hub of far-right transnational conspiracy theories and democratic erosion. Bolsonaro, who ascended to the presidency of Latin America’s largest nation on a wave of reactionary bloodlust, willful ignorance, and the wishful thinking of establishment actors convinced they could control him, looms in international coverage of Brazil as a clear and present danger.

What this means for Brazil and the future of Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro risks losing his bid for re-election. If he disputes the result, his shrinking but increasingly far-right support base might take to the streets. State institutions should prepare to deal with baseless fraud accusations and to curb possible violence.

Bolsonaro’s rise to power was as much a condemnation of previous left-leaning governments as a victory for conservatism in Brazil. Drawing on burgeoning discontent with the Workers’ Party government, which had been in power since 2003 and stood accused of involvement in grand corruption, Bolsonaro, a long-time member of Congress and defender of military prerogatives, portrayed himself as the consummate political outsider, a man unafraid to speak his mind in coarse language. At the same time, he gave a megaphone to a growing conservative clamour in Brazilian society. His allies included evangelical Christians affronted by demands for LGBTQ+ rights, farming groups opposed to environmental restrictions and urbanites demanding tough measures to combat crime. Support from disenchanted voters on the left and backing from a broad right-wing coalition, combined with Lula’s exclusion from the race after questionable judicial proceedings, enabled Bolsonaro to win the 2018 election by a handsome margin.

In Conclusion

As Brazilians head to voting booths again, here’s hoping the country is about to awaken from a bad dream.

Jerry Nelson is an American writer living the expat life in Argentina and winner of the Revi 2021 Reader Award. You can find him at any of hundreds of sidewalk cafes and hire him through Fiverr, join the quarter-million who follow him on Twitter or contact him at [email protected]

https://authory.com/JerryNelson