Bolsonaro: Politics as Permanent Crisis

Abstract

With the election of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil faces a bleak future, but how did such a racially diverse country elect a racist, fascist, dictatorship enthusiast after over a decade of Left governance? This chapter examines the role of anti-corruption politics as a political strategy in Bolsonaro’s rise to power. I argue that mass anti-corruption protests against Dilma Rousseff’s government 2015 and 2016, which incubated the “soft coup” that removed her from power in 2016, were vital to Bolsonaro’s rise. Bolsonaroism can be conceived of as a politics birthed by the irresolvability of political and economic crisis under neoliberalism. This chapter examines the 1932 Constitutionalist separatist revolt of São Paulo against the rule of Getúlio Vargas as a parallel elite rebellion constitutive of the social forces that gave rise to Bolsonaro. This racialized regional identity promoted by an elite and new middle class connected to a specifically anti-developmentalist vision of the nation re-emerged again through the protests against Dilma, I argue that the New Right’s anti-corruption politics is deeply connected to the events of 1932.