Jacobin Magazine: From the Union Hall to the Church

There’s some truth to this hypothesis, but it underestimates Bolsonaro’s large number of votes from women (41 percent of valid votes), black and mixed race people (41 percent of total votes) and low-income groups concentrated in families that receive between two and five minimum wages (61 percent). In addition, this hypothesis tends to downplay the importance of the support Bolsonaro received from non-denominational evangelical churches (59 percent of the total votes, against only 26 percent of the votes for Haddad, according to Datafolha), without which, according to most political analysts, he would probably have lost the second round to the Workers’ Party candidate.[...]

The political scientist André Singer and sociologist Gustavo Venturi convincingly argue that low-income support for the ultra-right candidate stemmed from his emphasis on public safety –– a real concern in a country that sees constant street crime and over sixty thousand murders a year. [...]

Lulismo was defined by the way it aimed to stabilize social conflict in Brazil. Between 2003 and 2013 it forged two different forms of consensus. First, a form of passive consensus among the subaltern classes who were attracted to the PT’s distributivist public policies, such as the Bolsa Família program and the policy of valorization of the minimum wage. Second, the PT constructed an active consensus among the leaders of the main social movements in the country. Despite the neoliberal macroeconomic policy advocated and sustained by the PT governments, the conjunction of these two forms of consent was able to guarantee the strengthening of certain policies compatible with the project of building a wage society in Brazil. Of course, the limits of Lulismo were revealed when the international economic crisis put an end to the commodity super-cycle that had benefited the Brazilian economy during the PT governments. [...]

The popularity of certain policies, such as Bolsa Família or university racial quotas, strengthened a backlash from those precarious workers who, living in the informal sector or receiving low wages, did not directly benefit. In the eyes of many of these workers, the public policies of the PT era have done nothing more than stimulate laziness and political clientelism, transforming citizens into parasites and objects of electoral exploitation by corrupt politicians. The Brazilian far-right managed to instrumentalize this feeling through the rhetoric of “meritocracy,” appealing to popular resentment against the PT as the crisis deepened and decimated jobs. [...]

Surprisingly, the neo-Pentecostal evangelical movement was the one that benefited the most in organizational terms from the Lulista hegemony. According to data from the 2010 census, its growth went from 15.4 percent in 2000, to 22.2 percent in 2010 (see table below). This is different from what happened in the 1970s, when the flourishing of religiosity in grassroots communities occurred pari-passu with the strengthening of union power. Now a rather different theology is taking root in the sphere of low-income groups: the neo-Pentecostal theology of prosperity — a variant of US televangelism in which achieving grace correlates to the satisfaction of individual desires for protection and material prosperity.

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Jacobin Magazine: Bolsonaro’s Conservative Revolution

The reasons for this reactionary wave are diverse. As has been noted elsewhere, since the PT’s narrow victory over the PSDB in 2014 there has been a radicalization of the predominantly white middle to upper classes towards authoritarian solutions. This was the part of the population that dominated the street protests calling for Dilma’s impeachment in 2016, but have become disillusioned by the mainstream right. Not all have authoritarian preferences, of course, and many would prefer it if the PSDB continued to represent a viable option. Many dislike Bolsonaro, but their virulent “antipetismo” (hatred of the PT) leads them towards viewing him as a lesser evil.[...]

The demographic breakdown of first-round voting intentions by pollster Datafolha, a few days before the election, shows that 51 percent of voters earning between five and ten minimum wages ($1,261–2,522 USD per month) and 44 percent earning over ten minimum wages ($2,522) planned to vote for Bolsonaro, compared to 12 percent and 15 percent respectively for Haddad. Meanwhile, 42 percent of those self-defining as white planned to vote for Bolsonaro, compared to 15 percent for Haddad. (That said, the relationship between race and class in Brazil is complex and should be treated with caution. While the middle and upper classes are predominantly white, whites are not predominantly well-off. Furthermore, racial self-classification varies significantly according to both income level and region of the country.)[...]

As with any trend involving large numbers of people, there is no single explanation for “Bolsonarismo popular” — ie. Bolsonaro’s appeal to lower-income people. Some, thanks to the media’s relentless attacks on the PT, have developed antipetista attitudes similar to those of elites, complaining about everything from PT corruption to high taxes to the unfairness of racial quotas in universities. However, in my experience, such attitudes are relatively rare. [...]

It is true that neo-Pentecostal churches have grown precipitously among the poor and built a powerful clientelistic machine. It is also true that Bolsonaro’s agenda fits with a broader popular conservatism among lower-income groups. As shown by a Datafolha survey last year on Brazilians’ social attitudes, poorer people are more likely to think that those who believe in God are better people, that abortion is a crime that should be punished, and that drugs should be prohibited. They respond well to Bolsonaro’s claim to be resisting the “deconstruction of heteronormativity” and to proposals of forced internment for drug addicts.[...]

However, few poor people ever saw the mainstream right as offering a meaningful alternative. I would suggest that their anger about the economic crisis and corruption scandals are fundamentally motivated by a desire for more redistribution, whereas the elite’s embodies indignation about the limited redistribution that already occurred under the PT. In any case, with the mainstream parties all implicated in the crises, both groups became receptive to any candidate who was sufficiently distant from the incumbents to look like an “outsider” and who sounded as angry as they were.

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Haaretz: Is Brazil About to Vote in the Far-right Executioner of Its Democracy?

At the same time, revelations that executives of Petrobras, the state-owned oil company, and other enterprises, had siphoned off millions of dollars in contract manipulations further weakened the Workers’ Party’s image among broad sectors of the middle classes, who, in the current elections, have mostly moved to the far-right.

On-going urban violence, in part linked to the drug trade, but also a result of the worsening economic situation, has also fueled support for Bolsonaro’s law and order discourse. His proposals to arm all citizens, offer impunity for police involved in shootings, and crudely racist language against people of color have alarmed human rights advocates. [...]

Bolsonaro calls for the retraction of legislation that protects battered women. He criticizes affirmative action programs that have allowed tens of thousands of Afro-descendants and indigenous people to enter the country’s universities, diversifying higher education for the first time in the country’s history.

In televised comments he has condemned interracial marriages, defended the rape of women, and called for violence against LGBT people. His opposes teaching the concept of gender in public schools, and decries the influence of the ideas of the late world-renowned and anti-authoritarian Brazilian educator Paulo Freire.

Supported by evangelical Christians and conservative sectors of the Catholic Church, he has explicitly condemned minority religions, although Brazil’s constitutions have separated the church and state for the last 140 years.

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The Atlantic: Brazil Turns Its Back on Democracy

Jair Bolsonaro, the former army captain who dominated the first round of Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, talks a lot about killing people—common criminals, political opponents, the organizers of queer-art shows. Promising to cleanse the nation of corruption, he holds up the 1964–85 military dictatorship, when torture was state policy, as “a period of glory for Brazil.” Since Brazil’s return to democracy a generation ago, no major politician has spoken like this. But it turned out to be highly effective in an atmosphere of seemingly unending crisis, both economic and political—and one in which more than 60,000 people were murdered last year.

Bolsonaro still must win the runoff on October 28. But by taking 46 percent of the vote in the first round of elections on Sunday, he nearly claimed an outright majority, which would have prevented a second round altogether for the first time in 20 years. Making a mockery of the latest polls, other right-wing populists edged out established candidates in governor’s races. Bolsonaro’s Social Liberal Party, which previously had eight seats in Congress, will now have 52, second only to the left-wing Workers’ Party (PT). In São Paulo, Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo—who recently tweeted a photo of himself standing beside the former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon, a supporter—won the most votes of any congressional deputy in Brazil’s history. [...]

It’s not just the poor and the poorly educated who yearn for a strongman. Business leaders were initially put off by Bolsonaro’s fervor, common in the Brazilian military, for state intervention in the economy. But then he tapped a quasi-libertarian with a doctorate from the University of Chicago as his economic adviser, and the chance to propose cutting pensions and peeling back labor regulations proved too tempting to pass up. Now the stock market rallies when Bolsonaro gains in polls. Luciano Hang, the owner of a chain of department stores that feature towering replicas of the Statue of Liberty, has threatened to fire his 15,000 employees if Bolsonaro doesn’t become president.

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