Jair Bolsonaro and the violent chaos of the Brazilian presidential election

The violence promised by Jair Bolsonaro, a member of the extreme right-wing Congress of Rio de Janeiro in the mortar zone of the Brazilian presidency, was visited at a rally on Thursday.

In the state of Minas Gerais, Adélio Bispo de Oliveira, who later told the police that he was "on a mission with God", allegedly plunged a knife into the candidate's body. Bolsonaro was transported to a hospital and operated to treat internal injuries and a significant loss of blood, Brazilian media reported.

"You bandidos who tried to ruin the life of a man who is the father of a family and the hope of all Brazilians, "Flávio Bolsonaro – the son of the deputy who is a representative of the state of Rio – said in a statement. "You have elected the president, and it will be in the first round."

The stabbing provoked a tense, chaotic and unpredictable presidential election. Bolsonaro, a former army officer who in the past has called for the return of the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985, has been at the top of the presidential elections since last summer. Friday, with only a month before the first round of voting, on October 7, he was at the head of all the polls, with the exception of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, popular leader of the left deemed ineligible last week. July 2017 conviction for corruption.

Normally, the radical views of Bolsonaro's right would have kept him on the sidelines of Brazilian politics, with little influence beyond his ability to capture a title or an indictment. thanks to his racist, sexist and homophobic statements. Bolsonaro once told a legislator that she was too ugly to rape. He described the immigrants as "scum" and offered to sell land set up by indigenous Brazilians and descendants of enslaved Africans. He wants to give the country's already deadly police force, which killed more than 4,000 people last year, even more power to shoot and kill with impunity. In 2016, he dedicated his vote to the indictment of the then president, Dilma Rousseff, to the colonel of the army who oversaw the program of the dictatorship that tortured her.

But as his dagger in the streets of Juiz de Fora could be on Thursday, these are not normal times. Over the last four years, Brazil has faced a series of crises that it can not escape: a terrible economic recession that has cost three million jobs and millions of people into poverty; an expansive political corruption crisis that has attracted hundreds of politicians, including da Silva and prominent members of the country's largest centrist political parties; and an outbreak of violent crime that has resulted in more than 60,000 homicides in the past two years. The crises and the institution's inability to solve them left little room for Brazilians in their democracy or country.

Bolsonaro has seized discontent, despair and anger, provoking a violent reaction against a corrupt establishment with a false and noisy populism. If this sounds familiar, you should do it. Bolsonaro became known as the "Trump of Brazil", and he benefited from many of the conditions that produced President Donald Trump and spurred the rise of xenophobic, anti-immigrant and quasi-authoritarian policies around the world.

The attack should strengthen Bolsonaro's candidacy: his membership in a small party has given him little television time under the Brazilian electoral law, but his stabbing will put him in the forefront as he breaks into his campaign. Brazilian markets rallied on Thursday afternoon hoping the attack would help the right winger who, under his rhetorical populist stance, has adopted more traditional market-based economic policies to appeal to financial elites. And the experts said the attack could push the issue of violent crime more to the center of voters' concerns and increase support for Bolsonaro, who has cultivated a picture of "maintaining order" that, like all these calls, is a promise of disorder in the service of the ruling classes.

"A very violent episode against a candidate who wants to change everything generates a story that is very beneficial," said Thiago de Aragão, director of Latin American political risk at Arko Advice, a Brazilian-based consulting firm. "This further reinforces his story because everything he said people could suffer, he really suffered."

The Bolsonaro candidates condemned the attack as a new attack on democracy in a country where political violence is nothing new: in 2016, there were 28 assassinations of political candidates, including 15 during the official campaign. The incident resulted in numerous appeals from candidates and human rights groups to end such violence.

While Bolsonaro no longer calls for the return of the military dictatorship, he nevertheless promised to stock his cabinet with military officers, to further militarize Brazilian society and to bring even more violence to Brazil. Its rise is one of the most difficult events that the democratic institutions of Brazil have had to face since the end of the dictatorship three decades ago.

"This is the most important election in Brazil's history," said James Green, director of the Brazil Initiative's Brazil Initiative program, before Thursday's attack. "Brazil is really at a crossroads."

The consequences of the election – which will take place in two rounds of voting in October – will go beyond the country's borders. Brazil may be a young democracy, but it is also influential: it is the largest democratic nation in Latin America and the fourth largest democracy in the world. What will happen in October will offer a sort of referendum on the state of world and multicultural democracy itself.

"I do not tend to accept this idea that we have entered a global democratic recession," political scientist Steven Levitsky of Harvard said in an interview this summer. "These claims have been overestimated so far. But if [Brazil] suffers from a democratic erosion, I would change my air very much.

"If Brazil falls, if Brazil becomes authoritarian, I would be very worried about the rest of the region," said Levitsky. "The people of Latin America – the military in Latin America, the demagogues and the democrats in Latin America – will pay particular attention to Brazil. This would have devastating regional consequences.

Bolsonaro has spent his entire political career advocating violence against his political opponents and those he deems unworthy of the country he claims to love. In 1999, he declared that "the dictatorship should have killed 30,000 corrupt people, starting with President Fernando Henrique Cardoso". He has repeatedly suggested that former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, accused of having murdered 3,000 people and tortured another 40,000 have killed even more. He denied that the Brazilian dictatorship tortured people.

Bolsonaro's most ardent and direct calls for violence, however, target the Leftist Workers' Party, which, under da Silva and his hand-picked successor, former President Rousseff, led Brazil from 2003 to 2016. During a campaign called to shoot down members of the PT because the workers party is known.

Bolsonaro's presidential candidacy is fueled by his opposition to da Silva, Rousseff and the PT: he started campaigning for president in 2016, shortly after Rousseff's indictment and Da Silva's initial involvement in Operation Car Wash, a four-year investigation.

By that time, Trump was almost two years old in the campaign that would make him president, and right-wing leaders had begun to emerge across Europe. Bolsonaro launched his campaign in this context, posing as a savior – his middle name is Messiasas if life itself was a pirate – who alone could save Brazil.

His game book was similar to Trump's: Bolsonaro cultivated a base of dedicated social media fans, allowing him to tour mainstream media; Bolsonaro and its supporters commonly suggest that these outlets carry misinformation and "false information".

When Trump demobilized on the issue of immigration, Bolsonaro focused his attention on Brazil's troubled economy and its rampant corruption. The fact that the Workers' Party presidents oversaw the economic downturn and were involved in Operation Car Wash gave him all he needed to paint the left and his supporters as the cause of Brazil's misfortunes.

Basically, however, the Bolsonaro campaign, like those of other countries, was an explicitly nationalist reaction to the Left and the policies it had implemented for a decade. The conservative legislative caucus "Balls, Bible and Beef", to which Bolsonaro belongs, abandoned him during the impeachment of Rousseff, while she did not know the reason invoked to justify her eviction – that she had illegally manipulated the deficit of the federal budget. Instead, he voted unanimously for his dismissal on the grounds that it represented a total attack. on "God, the family and the Brazilian people". On his campaign site, Bolsonaro alludes to the left as alien saying, "We are a country proud of our colors and we do not want to import ideologies that destroy our identity. "

His campaign clearly showed that Brazilians do not belong to this "us": Bolsonaro is opposed to the quotas of affirmative action previous governments have implemented to increase access of universities and jobs to Brazilians and black women; he compared same-sex marriage, fully legalized in 2013, to pedophilia; The Brazilian dictatorship, Bolsonaro said, was justified because it defended Brazil as a "communist". His candidacy and his opposition to the current leftist movements of Brazil exist, he says. for the same reason.

Bolsonaro has not reserved his violent rhetoric to his political opponents; This is the solution he prefers to deal with the most marginalized groups in Brazil. In the past, he said he would hit gay men if he saw them kissing in the street. During his campaign, he proposed to use helicopters to dump brochures in the largest favela neighborhood – where the vast majority of the inhabitants are poor and black – to warn the drug traffickers that they had six hours to surrender before the army came to blaze. He suggested entrusting the Brazilian public security operations to the army and giving the country's police, who are already among the world's deadliest police forces, more freedom to shoot and kill anyone who suspects a crime. . (The vast majority of victims of police violence in Brazil, of course, are black Brazilians.)

Bolsonaro apologized for the death of Marielle Franco, queer black counselor from Rio de Janeiro, who was murdered in March, "just another death in Rio de Janeiro". He noticed that Brazilian feminists are only good for oral sex that they could offer. ; his calls to seize indigenoAmerican lands are their own form of violence against people who are already suffering disproportionately.

"His plan is to reverse every social progress since the mobilizations against the dictatorship in the late 1970s," Green said. "For the LGBT movement, for the women's movement, for the important movement for the rights of people of color".

Bolsonaro's reaction against the left has fueled its popularity among the growing Brazilian evangelical movement, which shares its socially conservative views on same-sex marriage, abortion and women's rights. Evangelicals and Bolsonaro are often closely aligned politically. Evangelical leaders and their political allies are known for their provocative statements about LGBTQ people, black Brazilians who still practice Afro-Brazilian religions and feminist pressures for access to abortion. Many also support the militarization of the police and the execution of people for drug-related crimes.

Bolsonaro, too, has energized small marginal movements that openly support the return of the Brazilian military dictatorship, and has appealed to Brazil's middle and upper-class segments who believe they have lost control of the poor.

"Bolonarism is partly the reaction of those who feel they have lost their guarantees and status in recent years; and, like Trumpism, he promises to turn resentment and resentment into pride and affirmation, "said Harvard professor Bruno Carvalho. wrote recently. "Too many poor people who fly these days (a chorus of years of prosperity)? Too expensive to have a housekeeper (a chorus these days)? Life becomes more difficult? Your personal situation is deteriorating? It's not your fault. "

It was the segments of Brazil that supported the dictatorship that ruled for two decades until its collapse in 1985; These are the same segments of the Brazilian electorate to which such an authoritarian regime is now called.

"There is a middle class sector – and they have grown over the last 50 years – which is very conservative, based on notions of family values ​​and religiosity as a framework for people's lives." . "They supported right-wing governments in the past, and they still do it today."

Bolsonaro is still far from receiving the support of the majority: he fights to reach 25% of the votes, even in his best results. But he managed to overcome the latent discontent of a country that has lost confidence in its institutions – investigations showed that more than 60% of Brazilian voters do not trust their political parties, congress or presidency – and presidential candidates. Almost all of them suffer from high rates of disapproval in the first polls, and as many as 30% of Brazilian voters could choose to abstain in the October elections, which has opened a door to someone else. one like Bolsonaro. .

"In Bolsonaro, we call in Brazil a fisherman who fishes in dirty waters," said Claudio Couto, a political scientist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a Rio-based think tank.

Bolsonaro tends to erase his calls for violence as mere "sarcasm" and "humor" – to borrow a piece of popular sophistry from Trump's rise, he wants the Brazilians to take it seriously, but not literally. As Trump has proved time and time again, it's a mistake: Donald Trump did as president exactly what he had said that he would do as a presidential candidate .

For Bolsonaro supporters who claim that anyone who is appalled by his rhetoric simply does not have the joke, the stabbing will be another indication that left is the real author of violence and violent crime in Brazil. Hours after the incident, Bolsonaro supporters on Twitter painted the crime as the work of communist forces; his teammate, Army General Antonio Hamilton Mourão, said without foundation that the attack was the result of a plot of the Workers Party.

Observers agree that the attack will boost Bolsonaro's popularity among those who intend to vote for him or who are considering him strongly. The question now is whether this will make its aggressive approach to law and order even more attractive to a wide range of Brazilians who are not inclined to support it.

An overwhelming fear of violence has become an integral part of everyday life in Brazil, from the streets of Rio de Janeiro to the most rural areas of the country.

"The country has seen nearly 64,000 homicides in 2017, which means that one in nine Brazilian homicides out of nine," said Dr. Robert Muggah, co-founder of the Igarapé Institute, a think tank on public security based in Rio. "The question of public security is very advanced and central (in elections.)"

Today's Brazil is a place where commuters check apps that monitor shootings before they leave for work. Along with the economic malaise, the violence of daily life in Brazil has contributed to the exceptionally high number of young Brazilians who want to leave the country to go elsewhere. The ongoing shootings in Rio and elsewhere have already sparked calls for radical policies in a country where a large part of the population already tends to favor a "tough on crime" approach.

To see Bolsonaro as a solution would be madness. He proved that he would be a deeply ineffective leader with regard to the challenges that Brazil and his people are facing: it does not have the intention to tackle the corruption of which he is a victim and his positions on Brazil's main economic problems – including pension reform and the privatization of large state-owned enterprises – have been confused and inconsistent.

His plans for violent crimes are also misguided. In February, outbreaks of violence during the carnival led President Michel Temer to place the army in charge of public security in Rio de Janeiro, the kind of policy that Bolsonaro would favor. (He objected on the sole ground that the army would not have enough freedom to kill). Six months of military control have only led to even higher rates of violent crime, killings and police killings. Bolsonaro suggested easing Silva's strict firearms laws during his presidency: post-study studies have shown that more permissive firearms laws would only lead to more than dead and despair.

Bolsonaro has no plans to address income inequality, increased poverty, or access to sustainable health and education services – even though experts agree that inequality

His Brazil is more violent. It seems possible, however, that some Brazilians view Thursday's incident not as a call for an end to violence and violent rhetoric, but as a reason to reinforce it.

"He was the guy who talked the most about the problems of violence and how the people talk about it," said de Aragão. "This kind of thing is popular because the violence in Brazil has reached such a level that people are desperate for aggressive solutions."

Polls released the day before the attack showed that although Bolsonaro led the first round of voting, he would end up behind almost all potential opponents in the second round.

But even before Thursday, the financial and commercial elites of Brazil had already learned to live with Bolsonaro. Like him, they share a disgust for the Left Workers Party and want nothing more than to keep him out of power. Temer's unpopularity, allegations of corruption and economic policies have had a negative impact on candidates from traditional center-right parties. With few credible alternatives elsewhere, some of these elites have decided that Bolsonaro at least could be their man, especially after hiring an economist from the University of Chicago in April as a consultant.

Other Brazilians could join them if violent crimes became an even bigger part of the elections.

"It could perhaps make him turn in his favor during these second-round projections," said de Aragão. "We have to wait and see what will be the impact."

Although most observers do not expect the incident to make Bolsonaro's popularity high enough to guarantee victory, as his son suggested, the situation remains a familiar recipe for disaster. The danger it poses to Brazil and the world is evident in Bolsonaro's praise for the most famous military man who has taken power and entrusted the economists of the Chicago School with responsibility for a Latin economy. -américaine.

It would have such devastating effects: Brazil is already an incredibly dangerous place, especially for LGBTQ people, women, human rights defenders and black Brazilians. Bolsonaro's version of Brazil will not swallow the kind of violence he has become a victim of. This would worsen the situation and the most marginalized populations in Brazil would suffer the consequences.