La política de la enemistad: Bolsonaro en Brasil

Abstract

Jair Bolsonaro’s election as president of Brazil struck politics in that country with an unexpected blow. It manifested a worldwide trend consisting on extreme right candidates winning elections by making use of feelings of frustration and hopelessness prevailing among the electorate, promoting themselves with promises of renewal. Traditional parties, focused on the logics of power and governability, were affected by an enormous institutional decay. The common citizenry blames them for the economic and social crises, and uses its vote to punish them. We are facing a political trend that is not based on programatic or proactive proposals, but on mere denial: it is antisystemic, antipartisan. It is the antagonistic politics. Rejecting the Other became an irresistible electoral force. Bolsonaro’s election showed another unsettling aspect: the “bolsonarization” of Brazilian society. During his campaign, the image of the enemy is stretched to encompass the whole progressive politics actors. The symbolic discourse built during that process portrayed the left as a polysemic category that included human rights activists, professors, rally participants. They were all seen as “a bunch of slackers” that “suck from the state’s tits” and “wish that criminals enjoy rights”. This portrayal expressed the binary logics separating people in two fields: on the one hand good citizens, those who neatly fit in the conservative, meritocratic schemes, and on the other hand criminals, those who don’t fit that scheme. This situation creates highly corrosive elements for democracy, such as an antisystemic rhetoric and instrumentalization of the 

yearning for political renewal, praises for mesianic justice, antipartisanship, a vision of the political adversary as an enemy to destroy, and antiintelectualism; all of them elements that played a key role in Bolsonaro’s victory.