Dossier: Grammars of Bolsonarismo

Of what is Bolsonaro the name?

Rodrigo Nunes

[O]ne might refer to the fascist movements as the wounds, their divisiveness, shady connections and constant at-
the scars, of a democracy that, to this day, has not lived up tacks on potential challengers to their control over this
to its own concept. political capital.
Theodor Adorno
‘Bolsonarista’ thus refers to a social segment that has
acquired an explicit political orientation in the last eight
What’s in a name? years or so through an interactive relation with leaders
like Bolsonaro, even if the fact that the latter came to
First things first: to speak of ‘Bolsonarismo’ is not dominate it is itself contingent. It can be estimated at
the same as speaking of Bolsonaro voters. Evidently, around 15% of the population; considering Bolsonaro’s
whatever we can call ‘Bolsonarismo’ must have been a approval ratings have never dropped far below 30%, it
factor in Jair Bolsonaro’s November 2018 election; but comprises the solid, unwavering half of that percentage.1
the former army captain’s victory was overdetermined in Though less than one sixth of the adult population, this
all sorts of ways, and the electoral coalition that brought group has a disproportionate political weight by virtue
him to power is broader than any phenomenon we can of the high electoral floor that it offers, its commitment
accurately describe with that name. In short, not every and permanent engagement. Though composed of at-
Bolsonaro voter is a Bolsonarista – a distinction that it is omised individuals not organised in any major political
both analytically and politically essential to make. structures, it is the vocal, militant core from which the
Smaller than Bolsonaro’s actual or potential elector- gravitational pull of the far right radiates to the rest of
ate, Bolsonarismo is at the same time bigger than Bolson- Brazilian society.
aro himself: neither created by nor solely dependent Insisting on a contingent, synthetic link between
on the individual from whom it borrows its name. This Bolsonaro and Bolsonarismo might beg the question of
means that the link between ‘leader’ and ‘movement’ is why call the latter by the former’s name. But following
synthetic rather than analytic, and its strength hinges Laclau’s remarks on naming as retroactively constitutive
not on some essential bond but on the contingent fact of its object, we could turn the question on its head and
that, having found himself at the crest of a groundswell reply that it is exactly that contingency that justifies this
at a critical time, Bolsonaro now has more power to shape choice.2 Not, of course, that Bolsonarismo emerged fully
it than anyone else. In short, my contention is that formed the moment the name was uttered. For polem-
Bolsonarismo is a real convergence of different trends in ical and ontological reasons, Laclau tends to exaggerate
Brazilian society, with the potential to consolidate itself the passivity of things and the spontaneity of leaders,
as a major force for quite some time; but the arrangement minimising the horizontal ties that pull people together
of political forces that expresses it is neither coherent in favour of a shared vertical bond with the figurehead or
nor necessarily stable. In fact, one of its key sources of the empty signifier. The truth tends to be more prosaic:
instability is precisely Bolsonaro and his sons, owing to

RADICAL PHILOSOPHY 2.09 / Winter 2020-21 3

instead of naming as the foundational act that inaugur-
ates a linear causal chain, a feedback process through Elective affinities
which people begin to gravitate towards one another
and represent themselves as doing so until one or more What, then, are the elements that went into the compos-
representations ‘stick’. While the political operation ‘at ition of Bolsonarismo? Sociologist Gabriel Feltran offers
the top’ was essential to giving it shape, Bolsonarismo us a starting point by listing three ‘discursive matrices’
should be seen as the coming together, under the aegis of he calls ‘police militarism’ (support for law-and-order
the political factions that coalesced around Bolsonaro’s policies and the extrajudicial use of force), ‘Evangelical
campaign, of social trends that had for some time been anti-intellectualism’ (rejection of science and formal edu-
imbued with a certain mutual tropism. And while they cation in favour of religion and personal experience), and
are certainly far from constituting a consistent theory or ‘entrepreneurial monetarism’ (an ‘entrepreneur of one-
worldview, they have a lot of common ground to connect self’ ethos for which precarity equals autonomy).3 This
them. is doubly useful, as it not only pinpoints long-term tend-
Most accounts of Bolsonaro’s rise to power tend to encies that Feltran has identified in his fieldwork in the
stay at the more superficial level of the sequence of periphery of São Paulo, but does so by resorting to the
events that led to his triumph. While it can enrich our concept that Eder Sader advanced in his analysis of the
understanding of the political decisions that produced early 1980s’ ‘social movement boom’ out of which the
Bolsonarismo, this approach is insufficient when it comes Workers’ Party (PT) emerged.4 The same caveat raised
to identifying the deeper social shifts that were both pre- above about Laclau applies here: to speak of ‘discurs-
cipitated by these decisions and made them possible. A ive matrices’ is not to claim some fundamental priority
comprehensive look at Bolsonarismo must work on more for language over embodiment or affectivity, but to pro-
than one timescale and take into consideration at least pose that we think the two spheres in a circular, recip-
four different levels of analysis: rocal relation. Language has the power to give names to
things that are already vaguely sensed in everyday ex-
• the different discursive matrices that came together perience, and resonates to the extent that it does so; in
in its formation; so doing, however, it renders that experience communic-
able, enhances its publicness and reframes sensibilities
• the common grammars that ensured these matrices’
accordingly.5 Discursive matrices should therefore be
communication and mutual compatibility;
considered as generative not only of statements, but of
• the affective conditions or collective moods that affective structures (likes and dislikes, hates and loves,
gave them something to latch on to; objects of admiration and repulsion; what Spinoza would
call ingenia), identification and belonging, ways of under-
• the organisational infrastructure – encompassing standing and narrating oneself – all the latent conditions
churches, radio and TV shows, YouTube influen- for what may or may not develop into fully conscious,
cers, WhatsApp groups, Twitter bots etc. – that mobilised political subjectivity.
they rely on. Yet Feltran’s conclusions, valuable as they are for
showing the fertile ground Bolsonarismo has found
In this article, I will focus primarily on the first two, allud-
among the poor, are needlessly constrained by the way
ing to the third in the conclusion. My goal throughout
he generalises (or fails to generalise) his ethnographic
will be double. Firstly, to present Bolsonarismo perspect-
findings. As he himself recognises, anti-intellectualism
ivistically, as a phenomenon that can take on different
is not exclusive to the Evangelical population and is just
meanings depending on the position that one occupies
as visible among the predominantly Catholic upper class.
within it. Secondly, to highlight what is generalisable in
As for militarism and entrepreneurialism, though they
this story. To the extent that similar conditions can be
are each a single matrix shared by rich and poor, they take
found elsewhere, that of which Bolsonaro is the name is
on such different connotations depending on class and
in no way a uniquely Brazilian phenomenon.
racialisation as to result in very distinct subjective posi-

4
tions: it is not because people are using the same words not speak as if there were a pre-existing movement to
that they are saying the same thing. In short, Feltran’s which some groups latched on to in 2018, but rather think
observational bias puts him at risk of (correctly) counter- of what happened as the confluence of different vectors,
ing the idea that Bolsonarismo is merely ‘a mobilisation ‘from above’ as well as ‘from below’, that already had
of the elites against the poor’ with the (incorrect) sug- much in common. The top 10% of the electorate were
gestion that ‘sectors of finance, agribusiness, religious in fact the first sector Bolsonaro won over, very early on,
and rural elites’ joined this ‘totalitarian movement’ late and if the 1% did not have him as their first choice, they
in the game, ‘possibly without realising what they were had no qualms about embracing him when it became
6
doing’. clear he could win. To sum up, Bolsonarismo is a cross-
A formulation like this misses three crucial things class project held together at the top by politics and at
about Bolsonarismo. Firstly, its character as a cross-class the base by strong elective affinities.
alliance around a few common identitarian and political This means that we can distinguish among the dis-
reference points that have, until now, far outweighed cursive matrices that compose it three different types:
the contradictions among the divergent interests that it those that are restricted to a particular class or group;
brings together. Secondly, the fact that what makes this those that are widely shared but whose meaning remains
balancing act possible is both the pervasiveness of cer- constant across groups or classes; and those that are
tain discursive matrices and their having enough gram- shared but take on different meanings depending on
mar in common as to be compatible with one another. one’s position in the social structure. As we have seen,
Thus, although there may be an upper- and a lower-class anti-intellectualism, militarism and entrepreneurialism
militarism or anti-intellectualism, the two sides can still all cut across strata, but the latter two belong to the third
understand and identify with one another, especially type.7
when set against what they oppose (criminality, drug As regards militarism, the difference is obvious. For
use, unbridled sexuality, leniency with ‘marginals’, leftist those living in dangerous areas, the hankering for un-
indoctrination etc.). This means, thirdly, that we should restrained state violence supposes a clear demarcation

5
between the ‘working people’ and the ‘criminals’ in 2014, many have followed a career path that went from
the neighbourhood, with some collateral casualties in becoming a right-wing influencer on social media to go-
between. For those in well-off areas, policing is about ing into politics. 85% of the senators and 47% of federal
protecting them from the poor, making the grey zone representatives elected in 2018 were first-timers, most
of potentially disposable life much larger. As for en- of them successfully riding on Bolsonaro’s ‘outsider’ dis-
trepreneurialism, whereas for the rich it often acts as course – even though the latter had been a congressman
a meritocratic narrative disguising inequality of oppor- since 1991. Among these were 22 policemen or members
tunities, among the poor and much of the middle class of the military, a retired porn actor and an heir of the
it is more akin to what Verónica Gago has called ‘neolib- Brazilian royal family.
eralism from below’. This ambivalent dynamic, through
which individuals engaged in inventing strategies of Constructing the upstanding citizen
survival in an environment reconfigured by neoliberal
policies come to understand themselves according to Despite being more socially circumscribed, two other
‘the logic of the microentrepreneur’,8 is in fact a major matrices play an important role in establishing narrative
factor in the sea change that Latin American politics has connections among the others: economic libertarian-
seen in recent years. Largely unchallenged and often ism and anti-communism. Whereas anti-intellectualism,
elicited by the progressive governments in the region, militarism and entrepreneurialism developed in parallel
this ‘mass self-entrepreneurship’9 was effectively rein- across social strata, in these two the direction of diffu-
forced by the growth of informality and indebtedness sion is more evident, going from the upper classes to the
of the Pink Tide years, making neoliberalism even more poor. Besides, their propagation is more obviously the
‘anchored in territories, strengthened in popular sub- result of coordinated action.
jectivities, … expanding and proliferating within popular The seeds of the staggering resurgence of anticom-
economies’. 10
Phenomena like Mauricio Macri in Argen- munism in Brazil started being sown during PT’s first
tina and Bolsonaro in Brazil are partially understandable term in power. At a time when the economy was boom-
as the encounter between a radicalised version of the ing and most people’s material standards were improving,
1990s ‘neoliberalism from above’ and a neoliberalism red scares manufactured with the aid of the media were
from below that flourished during the neodevelopment- among the few weapons in the opposition’s armour. The
alist interlude of the 2000s, which continued to pose the contrast between these and the embracing of Lula by the
market as the primary arena for the pursuit of recognition international establishment produced a cognitive dis-
and material satisfaction. As Rosana Pinheiro-Machado sonance that conspiracy theories about a global leftist
and Lucia Scalco show, the empowerment produced by conspiracy would subsequently help solve. It was the
PT’s ‘inclusion through consumption’ was so imbricated social media-fuelled spread of the latter that operated
with the capacity to buy things that, once the economic the shift from Cold War discourse as a tool in parlia-
downturn took that capacity away, many of ‘the very cit- mentary struggle to anticommunism as an overarching
11
izens that had symbolised Brazil’s rise’ under PT readily geopolitical narrative pitting Trump and Bolsonaro as
shifted allegiance from Lula to Bolsonaro. the Asterix and Obelix of the struggle against ‘cultural
Not only does Bolsonarismo openly espouse entre- Marxism-driven economic globalisation’.12 The very fact
preneurialism, it is an entrepreneurial phenomenon in that no concrete threat existed only made this discourse
its own right. The quintessential Bolsonarista is neither more efficient, as its ‘abstractness’ meant that ‘anything
rich nor poor, but a member of a downwardly mobile that somehow [did] not fit [could be] subsumed under
‘lower upper middle class’ (to borrow Orwell’s turn of [an] all-purpose term’ like ‘communism’ or ‘globalism’.13
phrase) among which ‘failed businessman’ is perhaps the While market libertarianism is in one sense merely
most common occupation. Extremely sensitive to negat- the theoretical counterpart to entrepreneurialism, it
ive fluctuations in the economy, they are by that same merits independent consideration because of its import-
token especially prone to a politics of resentment that ance as a rallying point for a young, university-educated
blames others for their frustrated expectations. Since middle class that played a protagonist role in the events

6
leading to Bolsonaro’s election. This too was a process beckoned, however, they increasingly converged with so-
that began shortly after PT came to power, the creation cial conservatives, not only finding areas of cooperation
of Instituto Millenium in 2005 being a major landmark. but adopting some of their discourses and tactics. Con-
Funded by some of the most powerful financial, industrial versely, their newfound clout was one of the factors that
and media groups in the country, this think tank worked pulled Bolsonaro, whose economic views had previously
to popularise ultraliberal ideas and, alongside players appeared to lean statist, towards an ultraliberal agenda.
like Instituto Mises Brasil (founded in 2007), contributed Despite the former army captain’s unequivocal author-
to a veritable editorial boom in the field. (A boom in itarian tendencies, they continue to support him with
conservative literature was happening around the same varying degrees of enthusiasm, invoking a distinction
time.) This created the environment in which young, between the government’s ‘technical’ (economic) and
media-savvy ultraliberal activists started to organise, ‘ideological’ areas as an excuse.
drawing on grants from international funders like the The most universal of these discursive matrices, anti-
14
Cato Institute. The most important of these groups is corruption, illustrates the power of libertarianism and an-
the Students for Liberty-trained Movimento Brasil Livre ticommunism in tying Bolsonarismo’s different strands
(Free Brazil Movement, or MBL), which emerged during together. In Brazil, corruption has long worked in the
the June 2013 protests as the right-wing answer to Movi- public imaginary as a sort of meta-problem, the magical
mento Passe Livre (Free Fare Movement, or MPL). Two cause which, once eliminated, would cure all other ills.
years later, MBL were key to organising the marches call- In this account, the weight of structural constraints and
ing for the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff; in 2018, they differences of political orientation are entirely disreg-
elected seven congressmen. arded in favour of a voluntaristic, individualised vision
At first, this sector’s selling point was the cosmopol- of politics: the country would be prosperous and there
itan, socially liberal attitude that set them apart from would be money for everything if only there were honest
the traditional right: ‘liberal in economics and in social individuals in charge.
mores’ was how they described themselves. As power

7
 Although Brazilian elites have used anti-corruption Unlike anticommunism or market libertarianism, it did
rhetoric to destabilise progressive governments in the not spread downwards, but was already well established
past, until recently it was widely understood that mis- across all classes. Spurred by the advances made by fem-
appropriation of public funds was endemic to the polit- inists and the LGBTQ+ community in the last decade
ical profession. Having usually been far from positions on the one hand, and by fabricated moral panics on the
of power, left-wing parties were, if anything, deemed other, it too relied on a sense of urgent threat to expand.
more trustworthy. Yet the vast institutional sleaze un- Growing steadily over the Lula years, the defence of ‘fam-
covered in 2014 by the now-famous Operation Car Wash ily values’ proved to be a force to be reckoned with the
presented libertarians and anticommunists with a unique ‘gay kit’ episode in 2011.16 By 2015 it was so strong that
opportunity to promote a new narrative. It combined a many invoked it as a reason to support the impeachment
Hayekian mistrust of social justice as ‘[amounting] simply of Dilma Rousseff, one congressman in particular claim-
to the protection of entrenched interests’15 with the no- ing to be acting against ‘programmes that aim to make
tion that the left’s universal modus operandi is to buy off children change sex and learn sex at school’.
interest groups such as minorities and artists in order to As Isabela Kalil has noted, Bolsonarismo’s greatest
install corrupt totalitarian regimes. The sheer size of the achievement was to make all these different elements
schemes Car Wash revealed thus functioned as evidence – militarism, anti-intellectualism, entrepreneurialism,
not of PT’s definitive incorporation into the country’s anticommunism, market libertarianism, anticorruption
political elite, but of how far they had advanced in their discourse, social conservatism – converge around a single
plan to ‘turn Brazil into Venezuela’ – exactly as the right figure, the ‘upstanding citizen’ (cidadão de bem).17 If
had been warning they would for a decade. there is an empty signifier that represents the Bolson-
It helped that one of the largest corruption scandals arista base to itself, it is that.18 On the other side of
in the country’s history unfolded in parallel with one of the antagonistic frontier, the concept of mamata (from
its worst economic crises ever, indelibly connecting the mamar, ‘to suckle’) does the same work when it comes
two in most people’s minds. If there was a recession, the to identifying the enemy. Meaning ‘easy life’ or ‘un-
thought went, this was not due to bad economic policy or due advantage’, mamata can apply to anything from per-
a global slump, but to an unprecedentedly large attack on ceived leniency with criminals to the exorbitant salaries
the state’s kitty. It became easier on this basis to cement of politicians and the judiciary; from labour rights to the
the association between left-wing governments, sleaze supposedly charmed existence of artists and academics;
and economic inefficiency, even though the scandal ac- from the job stability of civil servants to sexual freedom
tually involved all mainstream parties. The political ad- and the questioning of traditional gender roles; and from
vantages of this account were obvious. In one fell swoop, the misuse of public funds to affirmative action at uni-
it turned what was deemed to be a universal, endemic versities. Its capacity to establish equivalences between
problem into a particularly left-wing vice; it painted even basic rights and elite privileges, and to present the former
PT’s cautious reformism as part of a communist threat, in terms of the latter, is key to building the class alliance
making anything but the most pro-market libertarianism on which Bolsonarismo depends. Its constitution of a
potentially suspicious; it legitimised opposition to pro- continuum between private and public morality allows it
gressive policies by reframing it as resistance against a to be the point de capiton that makes changes in societal
slide towards tyranny; and it nurtured a feeling of immin- attitudes resonate with rising crime rates, corruption,
ent danger that created the demand for urgent, radical progressive social policy and even contemporary art as
action. gathering evidence of a single process of moral decad-
The final element in the Bolsonarista constellation ence that it behoves the upstanding citizenry to stop.
is another discursive matrix that plays an important role It bears repeating that, although these discursive
in tying together the rest: social conservatism. Like an- matrices overlap at various points, not every Bolsonarista
ticommunism, it came from the fringes of the political (let alone Bolsonaro voter) subscribes to all of them with
spectrum and was progressively mainstreamed by politi- the same intensity, or at all. Not only are there inconsist-
cians and vehicles interested in denting PT’s popularity. encies between them, none of them is fully consistent

8
either. This matters little, as the power of the metanar- social conservatism and no-holds-barred neoliberalism.
ratives that establish their connection lies in association When the loss of certain privileges (white, male, hetero-
more than logic, and coherence derives less from any ac- normative etc.) is associated with the conquest of rights
tual content than from the feeling of being on the same by others (affirmative action, for example), the desire
side in a struggle.19 Whether one believes or not in all to see the status quo restored finds a natural ally in the
that is said about the enemy is less important than believ- rejection of redistributive policies.
ing that there is an enemy and it must be defeated. And Not that this confluence should surprise us too much.
precisely, what these metanarratives promise is more In places like Brazil and the United States, the coming
than just certainty amidst change and sensory overload. together of social conservatism and neoliberalism has
The perception of imminent existential threat that they long been prepared, on the one hand, by the ‘prosper-
cultivate intensifies subjective commitment, presents ity gospel’ of Neopentecostal churches, which provides
their adherents in a heroic light and frames politics as divine justification for the accumulation of wealth and
a fight to the death in which all means are justified in ‘reinforces the Calvinist tenet of individual responsibility
advance. for material success’.22 And, on the other, by a ‘neolib-
eralism from above’ that has never ceased to invest the
A common grammar family as disciplinary institution, counterweight to the
market’s disaggregating tendencies, safety net that could
Although mamata has a very Brazilian flavour, the oper- take on functions previously exercised by the state (edu-
ation it makes possible is the far right’s quintessential cation, health, well-being), and part of a dispositif for
conjuring trick everywhere: promoting the confusion the privatisation of risk.23 Ultimately, however, what
between anxiety around the loss of rights and the fear Bolsonarismo helps us see is that, if neoliberalism and
of losing privileges. This is what has allowed it in recent neoconservatism can be relatively easily welded together
years to gather the support of both those sectors that by politics, it is because they share to a large extent the
have few material concerns but resent the advances made same moral grammar.
by some groups, and those that are haunted by falling Once again, to speak of ‘grammar’ is not to stay at
standards and the prospect of no longer enjoying rights the level of language only. A grammar, following Wit-
they once had. In that, it was evidently abetted by the tgenstein, is part of a form of life. Thus, if the way one
fall-out from the 2008 crisis coming on the back of a lives conditions what one can say about the world, what
‘progressive neoliberalism’ that combined a ’plutocratic one can say about the world provides the grounds for
economic program’ that left millions of people behind decisions and institutions that condition the way one
with a ‘liberal-meritocratic politics of recognition’ and lives.24 Indeed, the moral grammar of the far right at
20
mostly symbolic improvements for some minorities. once reflects how its adherents see the world and de-
The concomitance of severe losses for some and modest mands that the world be remade according to that vision.
gains for others is what helps the far right convince the Its key elements are individualism, punitivism and the val-
‘losers’ of globalisation that if they are being deprived orisation of order above the law.
of rights, it is because others – women, migrants, ethnic Ideas like self-reliance and becoming an ‘entrepren-
groups, LGBTQ+ people etc. – are gaining privileges off eur of oneself’ are of course among the highest values
their backs. posited by neoliberal discourse. But in a world recon-
It is this triadic structure of right populism – not ‘the figured by these ideas, they are also essential to the
people’ versus ‘the elite’, but the people against an elite strategies required to navigate relationships, institutions
that unduly favours some other group21 – that explains and work, and integral to how individuals perceive them-
how, in the United States, a billionaire could appear as the selves. As safety nets shrink and uncertainty grows, the
candidate of the common man against an ‘establishment’ sheer ‘strain of risk-bearing’25 forces people to intern-
consisting of Hollywood actors, newspaper columnists alise the idea that they are solely responsible for their
and graduate students on Twitter. It also helps us make own fate. By rendering invisible both the interdepend-
sense of the confluence, particularly sharp in Brazil, of encies that sustain individual trajectories and the struc-

9
tural constraints that hold them back, this individualistic to a diminishing horizon. This has reached a paroxysm
grammar voids the notion of a social space beyond the with the Covid-19 pandemic, when the official discourse
immediate private sphere: there are only individuals and in places like Brazil and the United States has literally
(at best) their families, as someone famously put it. This been that people have to choose between the economy
not only deprives people of the language in which to or their lives.
address structural injustice, but induces them to inter- As a product of internalised discipline, punitivism
pret positive changes in their economic environment as is highly respectful of established authority, social roles
their own achievement and structural demands as special and divisions; organised crime and social movements are
pleading: ‘if they have to battle through life alone, then potentially equally loathsome and despised. Among the
26
everyone else should too’. rich as well as the poor, the punitive animus is directed
Perversely, individualism is an ideal that works as against those at the base of the social pyramid more than
well in success (narrated as heroic self-realisation) as it those at the top, whose transgressions can be shrugged
does in failure (in a ‘therapeutic’ mode that restores dig- off as part of their reward for having ‘made it’.
27
nity by locating emotional development in adversity). It is here that individualism and punitivism intersect
In our societies, individual sovereignty is the site of ‘cruel with a notion of order as something above, and ultimately
optimism’28 par excellence, the frustration of its expecta- against, the law. Many have identified this as a founding
tions only making its grip stronger. Inadequacy is there- trait of Brazilian culture of which Bolsonaro is merely
fore less likely to lead to a reformulation of the ideal the latest, obscene flower.32 It goes back to the early
than to a doubling down that can be turned inward as days of the country’s formation, when local landown-
self-aggression and outward as resentment and negative ers were at once representatives of state power and the
29
solidarity. most powerful men in their areas, fostering the confu-
This is where the grammars of individualism and pun- sion between public and private interests.33 The agrarian,
itivism intersect. In a world where everyone feels they slave-holding structure of the plantation economy not
are (and ought to be) out on their own, non-conformity is only divided society into individuals endowed with rights
seen as eschewing personal responsibility or seeking spe- and pieces of common property, but meant that even free
30
cial treatment, and therefore worthy of punishment. men often owed their fortunes to attracting the favours
This tendency is compounded by the increasingly pun- of the property-owning elite. This meant that liberal dis-
itive features of post-2008 (in Brazil, post-2014) neolib- course and a modern state apparatus developed not by
31
eral governmentality. If neoliberalism has managed supplanting but by appeasing, and often providing cover
to hold on since, despite a huge loss of legitimacy, it for, this archaic structure of command.34 Even after the
is because the disciplinary mechanisms that sustain it abolition of slavery – which Brazil was one of the last
have become starker, even as – or precisely because – countries to enact – the permanent and assured exer-
the normative claims behind them have become more cise of one’s rights was a privilege reserved to those of
suspect. What many failed to appreciate a decade ago is a certain social standing. Punishment, conversely, was
that crisis itself can be a highly effective source of dis- certain only for those whose status did not exempt them
cipline, given its power to rescind alternatives, mobilise from observing the same rules as everyone else.
subjective investment, intensify economic coercion and In a society in which the guarantee of equality before
reactivate neoliberalism’s founding myth of being the the law is a privilege, the demand for order is thus usually
rational, technocratic cure for the excesses of a previous not about applying the law, but about revoking the rights
period. This metanarrative proves that the retributive of those who do not ‘deserve’ them and granting special
element in neoliberalism is not entirely new and has in treatment to those who do. This was visible in the way
fact been there from the start. Yet what is different now is the media and the public cheered Operation Car Wash on
that calls to tighten the belts come with only the faintest through its numerous procedural infringements, which
prospect of ever loosening them again, and whereas sac- have exposed its legal results to revision and annulment
rifice was once a means to a better life, it increasingly even if its political effects are irreversible.35 It is also
appears as end in itself: the naked imperative to adapt visible in four themes dear to Bolsonarismo: the call

10
for ‘human rights for the right humans’,36 not criminals; own sphere of influence (the pastor, the landowner, the
the flexibilisation of gun laws, which amounts to privat- cop, the pater familias, the crime or paramilitary boss); in
ising the sovereign power over death; the dismantling of which conflicts of jurisdiction are nonetheless unlikely,
environmental protections, understood as obstacles to because ‘everyone knows their place’. The supreme leader
entrepreneurship; and the crusade against speed cam- thus really is at once a ‘father of the horde’ and a ‘great
eras and traffic fines, seen as impinging on car owners’ little man’.41 If he is entitled to a surplus of obscenity, it
liberties.37 is not because of any intrinsic quality, but simply because
On the one hand, the pre-modern logic that places he ‘made it to the top’. He is therefore free to use his po-
the right to flaunt common rules as the greatest right of sition in his own favour, as any of us would. (‘If I can give
all fits in well with the libertarian absolutisation of indi- my son steak, I will’, as Bolsonaro said of his intention
vidual freedom. This was made explicit by Bolsonaro’s to make his middle son the Brazilian ambassador to the
rejection of movement restrictions or mask enforcement United States.)
during the pandemic, which he has since followed on The problem, of course, is that such a dream cannot
by insisting that ‘nobody can force anyone to take the work for everyone. If dog-eat-dog is made the rule, dog
vaccine’ once it is available. On the other hand, as this will eat dog, and the strong will feed on the weak. It is
type of order supposes not the formal equality of laws but at this point of convergence, then, that Bolsonarismo
the arbitrary exercise of authority, it combines perfectly (and even more so Bolsonaro’s election) reveals itself as
38
with the defence of a ‘private life of power’ premised a huge misunderstanding. Whereas some (mostly poor)
on a traditional distribution of roles between men and supporters tend to see him as the sheriff who will re-
women, white and non-white, straight and not straight, store respect, others (mostly middle class) perceive him
etc. As Wendy Brown has noted, nihilistic revanchism as a self-made chancer who will make life easier for go-
against the inroads made by oppressed groups ‘releases getters like himself. The elite, finally, identify him above
the will to power not only in subjects, but in traditional all with that figure from the plantation whose function
values themselves, baldly revealing the privilege and en- was historically superseded by the army and the police.
39
titlement they encode’. ’Those who can, rule; those Unable to find a viable candidate in their own ranks, they
who have sense, obey’, as the Brazilian saying goes. chose to elect the overseer; and as long as he fulfils his
This too is a moral grammar, but one indexed less on duty of containing demands from below while ensuring
codes than on the power of a ‘strict father’ to lay down the even more draconian conditions for capital accumula-
40
law. This confluence of the pre- and the post-modern, tion, he can manage his political capital as he pleases. A
traditional authority and the neoliberal voiding of the dangerous bargain, to be sure, as the overseer is given
social, creates the basis on which the ruling elite and the free rein to combine this political capital with the armed
excluded can meet. It is a meeting between those who support of overseers like him in the police, paramilitary
have given up on waiting for the democratising promises and armed forces.
of modernity and those no longer even nominally inter- Characteristic as it may be of Brazilian society, the
ested in pursuing them; those who have ceased to expect confusion between order and law is hardly exclusive to
accountability and equality, and those unwilling to make it, and neither are any of the other elements considered
concessions to such values. here. Bolsonarismo is not reducible to either a national
It is in this sense that Bolsonarismo is the scar of a atavism or a simple repetition of historical fascism. It is
democracy that has failed to live up to its concept, as per a very contemporary tragedy, the conditions for which
the Adornian aphorism I have chosen as the epigraph for are given far and wide today, and tend to worsen as polit-
this text. Bolsonarismo converges around the paradox- ical and economic inequality grows and the effects of
ical dream of a state of nature presided over by a paternal climate change intensify. Some form of overseer capital-
figure at once strict (with those who are not ‘upstand- ism may well be part and parcel of that ‘Brazilianisation’
ing citizens’) and permissive (with those who are); in with which the developed world is menaced from time to
which authority is both exercised decisively from above time.
and devolved to local powers that are free to act in their

11
 resurgence of the far right and denialism – about the holo-
Dark moods: the rationality of the caust, the crimes of the military dictatorship in Brazil,
irrational the climate crisis.43 What I am calling by this name does
not, however, refer exclusively to the lies that those who
Among the thorniest problems in analyses of historical deny the existence of such things consciously spread. It
fascism is the interplay of deceit and desire, rationality also involves the public that consumes them and what at-
and irrationality at its heart. To what extent were people tracts this public to them in the first place. My intuition
duped into doing certain things? To what extent did they here is that the state we describe as ‘being in denial’ – an
actually come to desire them – and how conscious were unconscious attempt to protect oneself from a traumatic
they of doing so? Were irrational justifications such as experience or thought by refusing to recognise its real-
conspiracy theories mere attempts to rationalise anti- ity, or what Freud called disavowal – creates a demand
social urges run rampant? Was stirring and performing for the commodity that conscious “denialists” supply. A
these urges merely a cover for base interests and calcu- booming market for the latter should therefore lead us
lations, such as appropriating the wealth of persecuted to suspect an increase in the former. This would mean
groups? Although it is not hard to notice that there is a that it is no coincidence that a sizeable fraction of the
certain ‘phoniness’ about fascists – a category that ‘ap- Brazilian upper class would turn to those who blamed
plies to the leaders as well as to the act of identification social conflict on ‘cultural Marxism’ when the modest
on the part of the masses’42 – it is not always easy to tell gains made by historically marginalised groups forced
who is faking what to whom, and when. them to confront their place and role in the country’s ex-
Thinking through these questions demands that we tremely unequal social structure. Disgusted by the sight
consider the discursive matrices and grammars on which of his face in a mirror, Caliban chose to believe those
the far right relies in relation to the affective conditions who said that the mirror was broken. Likewise, it is no
that give them something to latch on to: the shared af- coincidence that the rise of leaders who eschew even the
fects or moods that enhance receptivity to far right polit- usual insincere platitudes about the environment comes
ics and make it appear as a plausible answer in a concrete after states and markets have failed to adequately ad-
situation. Given that the recent resurgence of far right dress global warming for decades. It may be easier to
politics is a global phenomenon, we should expect to find imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,
the same affective conditions in several different coun- but it is much less costly psychologically to just wish its
tries, and be able to trace them back to processes taking reality away.
place globally. And indeed, everywhere we look today we Of course, the picture that the far right paints of the
will find feelings of humiliation in the face of joblessness, present is far from rosy. On the contrary, it is a narrat-
underemployment, poverty and debt; fear of losing one’s ive of war, of slow-building civilisational conflict finally
place in the world; wounded male pride; resentment coming to a head. But this is exactly where its perverse
against groups perceived as benefiting from transform- rationality lies. For while it on the one hand meets the
ations occurred in the last decades; abandonment and demand for disavowal by fabulating easier problems with
being taken for granted; and the diffuse, unfocused anti- easier solutions, it does not fail, on the other, to acknow-
systemic sentiments that follow from that. It is not hard ledge just how bad things are. In so doing, it speaks to
to see the processes set in motion by neoliberal globalisa- the atmospheric dread of a world haunted by climate
tion and accelerated by the 2008 crisis at the root of all of change, a stagnating economy, precarisation, the lack of
these. Yet there are other components to our present am- democratic oversight and global pandemics much bet-
bient mood that are less salient because the changes to ter than most well-meaning liberals would. It may well
which they respond unfold on a timescale that is longer be that one of the reasons why Bolsonaro’s popularity
and less immediately obvious. Among these, I would like went up among the poor despite his disastrous handling
to focus on one in particular that provides an interesting of Covid-19 was that framing the situation as a choice
angle on the issue of phoniness; I will call it denialism. between life and the economy was, for them, objectively
Many have already drawn connections between the true. It showed him as more in touch with their reality

12
than anyone telling them to stay at home when they had though rejection of his administration has grown, reaching
no option but to go work. a peak at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when Brazil
had over 1,000 deaths a day between early June and August.
This is not all there is to this rationality. In what I am
What changed in the meantime was the social profile of his
calling denialism, disavowing the enormity of the chal- support, the losses incurred among the upper class being re-
lenges facing humankind is made all the more necessary couped by gains made among the poor. Against most expect-
by the conviction that no major structural transforma- ations, at the time of writing Bolsonaro enjoys the highest
approval ratings since the start of his term (37%). Igor Gielow,
tions are possible. Now, if none of the big variables can
‘Aprovação a Bolsonaro Sobe e É a Melhor Desde o Início
change – because a real challenge to those at the top is do Mandato, Diz Datafolha’, Folha de São Paulo, August 13
inconceivable – all that is left for those at the bottom is to 2020, www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2020/08/aprovacao-a-
fight each other for ever-diminishing scraps. And this is bolsonaro-sobe-e-e-a-melhor-desde-o-inicio-do-mandato-diz-
exactly what the alternative reality that the far right puts datafolha.shtml.
2. Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005),
in place of the disavowed traumatic content prepares 101ff.
its adherents for. By locating the source of the problem 3. See Gabriel Feltran, “‘The Revolution We Are Living”‘, HAU:
in the misappropriation of resources by various others Journal of Ethnographic Theory 10:1 (2020), 12.
(countries, ethnicities, religions, cultures, genders, sexu- 4. See Eder Sader, Quando Novos Personagens Entraram em
Cena. Experiências e Lutas dos Trabalhadores da Grande São Paulo,
alities) and framing the distributive conflict as a war, it
1970-1980 (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2010).
provides justification for going after the weak and inocu- 5. We could thus say, misappropriating Raymond Williams some-
lates against the psychological burden of any excesses what, that ‘discursive matrices’ and ‘structures of feeling’ always
one might perform or support in the future. It is a ‘con- presuppose one another. That would not be a problem for Sader,
who speaks of ‘demands about social reproduction and symbolic
servative politics of antagonistic reproduction’, as Alberto
recognition’ as enjoying a ‘virtual existence’, that is, actualised
Toscano aptly summarised it, in a world in which social in conscience once they are articulated in language and become
reproduction tends to become ever more antagonistic.44 objects of reflection. See Sader, Quando Novos Personagens, 58.
In denialism, then, we find what is ultimately the 6. Gabriel Feltran, ‘Formas Elementares da Vida Politica.
Sobre o Movimento Totalitario no Brasil (2013- )’, Novos
greatest, most ironic misunderstanding on which the far
Estudos (2020) novosestudos.com.br/formas-elementares-da-
right relies: the fact that it seals an alliance between vida-politica-sobre-o-movimento-totalitario-no-brasil-2013
those gearing up for surviving in worsening conditions 7. As for anti-intellectualism, if its meaning does not change, its
and an elite increasingly at ease with the idea that ‘the source and reference points do: among the upper class, religious
authority often takes a back seat to contempt for knowledge
earth no longer has room enough for them and for every-
without immediate economic utility and the conspiracy theories
one else’.45 spread by YouTube celebrities like far-right guru (and avowed
Bolsonaro influence) Olavo de Carvalho.
8. Verónica Gago, Neoliberalism from Below: Popular Pragmatics
Rodrigo Nunes is Professor of Modern and Contemporary and Baroque Economies, trans. Liz Mason-Deese (Durham, NC:
Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Duke University Press, 2017), 36.
9. Ibid., 6.
Janeiro. He is the author of Organisation of the Organisa-
10. Ibid., 11.
tionless (Mute, 2014) and Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal: 11. Rosana Pinheiro-Machado and Lucia Scalco, ‘From Hope
A Theory of Political Organisation (Verso, 2021). to Hate: The Rise of Conservative Subjectivity in Brazil’,
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 10:1 (2020), 21–22, ht-
tps://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/708627
Photography courtesy of Lara Mancinelli.
12. This is how obscure diplomatic kook-turned-Foreign Min-
Notes ister Ernesto Araújo defines ‘globalism’. See Ernesto Araújo,
‘About’, Metapolítica Brasil blog, https://www.metapoliticabrasil.
1. The estimate was made by statistician Reginaldo Prandi com/about. For a well-informed look into the role of You-
based on polls from the end of June 2020. Reginaldo Tube in the rise of Bolsonarismo, see Max Fisher and Amanda
Prandi, ‘Adeptos Fiéis a Bolsonaro São 15% da Popu- Taub, ‘How YouTube Radicalized Brazil’, The New York Times, Au-
lação Adulta, Indica Datafolha’, Folha de São Paulo, July 2 gust 11 (2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/world/
2020, www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2020/07/adeptos-fieis-a- americas/youtube-brazil.html.
bolsonaro-sao-15-da-populacao-adulta-indica-datafolha.shtml. 13. Theodor Adorno, Aspects of the New Right-Wing Extremism
Bolsonaro’s popularity has remained fairly constant even (Cambridge: Polity, 2020), 19; translation modified.

13
14. Camila Rocha, ‘Think Tanks Ultraliberais e Nova 30. On the combination of class anxiety, meritocracy and pun-
Direita Brasileira’, Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil 124 (2017), itivism among Lula voters turned Bolsonaristas, see Pinheiro-
diplomatique.org.br/think-tanks-ultraliberais-e-nova-direita- Machado and Scalco, ‘From Hope to Hate’, 27.
brasileira. 31. See Will Davies, ‘The New Neoliberalism’, New Left Review
15. Friedrich von Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty: A New 101 (2016), 121–34.
Statement of the Liberal Principles of Justice and Political Economy, 32. For an overview, see Tales Ab’Saber, ‘Ordem e Violência
Volume 2 (London: Routledge, 1998), 97. no Brasil’, in Bernardo Kucinski et al., Bala Perdida: a Violên-
16. See ’Religion and Politics in Contemporary Brazil’ by Caro- cia Policial no Brasil e os Desafios para sua Superação (São Paulo:
lina Evangelista in this issue of Radical Philosophy 2.09. Boitempo, 2015), 97–102.
17. Isabela Kalil, ‘Quem São e no que Acreditam os Eleitores de 33. See, for instance, Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda, Roots of Brazil,
Jair Bolsonaro’, Research Report, Fundação Escola de Sociologia trans. G. Harvey Summ (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University
e Política de São Paulo (2018). Press, 2012).
18. This is corroborated by Débora Salles’ analysis of the dis- 34. See Roberto Schwarz, ‘Misplaced Ideas: Literature and Soci-
course of the Bolsonaro campaign on Twitter using a method- ety in Late Nineteenth-Century Brazil’, Misplaced Ideas. Essays
ology developed by Sara Walton and Brownyn Boon to apply on Brazilian Culture, ed. and trans. John Gledson (London: Verso,
Laclau and Mouffe’s insights to data analysis. Débora Salles, The 1992), 19–32.
Twitter Effect. The Politics of Tweeting During the 2018 Brazilian 35. It is worth remembering that Bolsonaro only became the
Presidental Election, Doctoral Thesis, Graduate Programme in In- frontrunner in 2018 after Lula was ruled out of the race. The
formation Science, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (2020). Car Wash Operation judge who convicted Lula, Sergio Moro,
19. Among the different types of Bolsonaro voter identified by went on to become the Minister of Justice, but resigned a year
Kalil there were, for instance, the poor people who defended later, accusing Bolsonaro of trying to interfere with criminal
a ‘minimal state’, which they explained as minimal intervention investigations against his oldest son.
from the state in religious or moral matters rather than the re- 36. This is a slight détournement of the slogan direitos humanos
duction of public services. See Kalil, ‘Quem São e no que Acred- para humanos direitos (‘human rights for “straight”, as in “upstand-
itam’, 20. ing”, humans’).
20. Nancy Fraser, ‘From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump 37. ‘[T]o “respect” connotes an option, and is therefore the more
– and Beyond’, American Affairs 1:4 (2017), americanaf- appropriate word for those who think themselves as superior’;
fairsjournal.org/2017/11/progressive-neoliberalism-trump- “to obey” is compulsory, and is therefore much more appropriate
beyond. for those who have learnt to think themselves or as classified
21. See John B. Judis, The Populist Explosion: How the Great Re- and thought as inferior’. Roberto DaMatta, Fé em Deus e Pé na
cession Transformed American and European Politics (New York: Tábua. Ou Como e Por que o Trânsito Enlouquece no Brasil (São
Columbia Global Reports, 2016), 10. Paulo: Rocco, 2010), 69. Roberto Andrés connects the growth
22. Jason Hackworth, Faith Based: Religious Neoliberalism and the of this attitude to the 255% rise in the number of motorised
Politics of Welfare in the United States (Athens, GA: University of vehicles during PT’s administrations, which the party held up
Georgia Press, 2012), 45. This is in fact an important component as evidence of success in the fight against inequality. Roberto
in the constitution of a ‘neoliberalism from below’, which Gago Andrés, ‘Jeitinho sobre Rodas’, Piauí 154 (2019), 32–35.
curiously overlooks. 38. Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Ed-
23. See Melinda Cooper, Family Values: Between Neoliberalism mund Burke to Donald Trump (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
and the New Social Conservatism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018), second edition, 10ff.
2017). 39. Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Anti-
24. This is what Foucault had in mind when he wrote that ‘a so- democratic Politics in the West (New York: Columbia University
ciety made up of enterprise-units is at once the principle of de- Press, 2019), 173.
cipherment linked to liberalism and its programming for the ra- 40. On the strict (versus ‘nurturant’) father as metaphorical
tionalisation of a society and an economy’. Michel Foucault, The model for conservative politics, see George Lakoff, The Polit-
Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979, ical Mind: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics
trans. Graham Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008), 225. (New York: Penguin, 2009), 77–81.
25. Jennifer Silva, Coming Up Short: Working Class Adulthood in 41. See Theodor Adorno, ‘Freudian Theory and the Pattern of
an Age of Uncertainty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), Fascist Propaganda’, in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, eds.
155. Andrew Arato and Eike Gephardt (London: Continuum, 1997),
26. Ibid., 150. 125–8.
27. On the therapeutic narrative, see ibid., 114ff. 42. Adorno, ‘Freudian Theory’, 136.
28. See Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham: Duke Univer- 43. See, for example, Déborah Danowski, Negacionismos (São
sity Press, 2011). Paulo: n-1, 2018).
29. On the concept of negative solidarity, see Jason 44. Alberto Toscano, ‘Notes on Late Fascism’, Historical Material-
Read, ‘Negative Solidarity. The Affective Economy ism blog, April 2 2017, http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/
of Austerity’, Unemployed Negativity blog, October 24 blog/notes-late-fascism#_ftn25. (Italics in the original.)
2019, http://www.unemployednegativity.com/2019/10/ 45. Bruno Latour, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Re-
negative-solidarity-affective-economy.html. gime, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Polity, 2018), 1.
14