Brazil will go to the polls in a far right context: NPR

For those who follow the evolution of extreme populist nationalism around the world, Sunday's elections in Brazil represent an important test to determine just how far the right-wing voters of the largest country in Latin America are willing to to turn.

In the midst of a race widely regarded as the country's most controversial general election in decades, attention is focused on Jair Bolsonaro, a veteran congressman and an army captain retired from the far right.

Bolsonaro not only led the polls throughout the campaign, but also strengthened his lead in the final days of the race.

Corruption, widespread crime and a stagnant economy have tarnished public confidence in the establishment's politicians, forcing many Brazilians to turn to Bolsonaro to defend it, considering it an outsider despite its 25 years of congress .

His rise is often compared to that of Donald Trump, whom he admires.

To win Sunday, Bolsonaro must win more than 50 percent of the vote – a prospect unthinkable by Brazilian political observers just a few weeks ago, but that some people think is now conceivable, although unlikely. Otherwise, the first two candidates will move to a second round on October 28.

The possibility that 63-year-old Bolsonaro is coming out of this election as president is anger and fear among his opponents, partly because of his record of misogynous, racist and homophobic rhetoric, but also because of his military ties. and admiration for the oppressive dictatorship of Brazil. between 1964 and 1985.

Last Saturday, hundreds of thousands of Brazilians – many of them women – staged protests across the country organized by online women's movements including the hashtag – "#EleNao" or "Not Him" ​​- became viral. Large crowds gathered in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, including many blacks, LGBTs and indigenous Brazilians – all groups denigrated by Bolsonaro over the years.

In Rio, the crowd was made up of Fernanda Moreira, a 34-year-old black woman, who was teaching young adolescents in one of the city's "favelas" – low-income neighborhoods hit by violence between police and criminal drug organizations.

Mr. Moreira is particularly concerned about Bolsonaro 's tough stance on reducing violent crime in Brazil, which recorded nearly 64,000 homicides last year. He is in favor of arming the public with firearms and praised the systematic use of lethal force by the police. Last year he had noticed that "a policeman who does not kill is not a policeman".

"I look to the future, and it's not good," said Moreira.

"When I look at Bolsonaro and my students, I say to myself," What will a man like him do to these kids? " ", She added.

The day after these mass demonstrations, the Bolsonaro campaign was thwarted by the holding of large rallies, including a procession of thousands of cars that invaded the streets of Brasilia, the capital of the country. Many of his supporters wore the bright yellow jersey of Brazil's famous football team and waved the national flag, shouting "Yes, he!"

The dueling demonstrations have highlighted the deep divisions caused by these elections: families, work colleagues and friends are at the antipodes of a deadly political battle in which the debate revolves around the future of democracy in Brazil.

"Families are divided, old school friends do not speak," said Christian Dunker, professor of psychology at the University of São Paulo. "It's a kind of new phase in consciousness[ness] of the country, because our own image of being a kind of friendly people, to be cordial to each other, [has] it's gone down. "

The election is all the more unusual as its two main opponents have been confined to quarters. Bolsonaro spent more than three weeks of campaigning at the hospital after being stabbed in the stomach during a rally in September in the city of Juiz de Fora, in the southeastern part of the country. His main opponent, the former two-term president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is locked in a prison cell where he is serving a twelve-year sentence of imprisonment for corruption.

Polls have consistently shown that Lula – as he is universally known – was by far the most popular politician in Brazil, but on August 31, an election court disqualified him from the race because of his criminal convictions.

The man chosen as Lula's replacement is Fernando Haddad, former Minister of Education and Mayor of São Paulo.

Haddad is a professor of political science city, whose turbo-charged charisma is very underdeveloped and struggles to make itself known nationwide. Some cadres of his left-wing labor party did not even know how to pronounce his name. is of Lebanese origin. His campaign slogan, "Haddad, is Lula!" is intended to appeal to working-class Brazilians who remember the Lula government for putting in place social programs that helped them raise their standard of living.

Yet this also exposes Haddad to asserting that he is Lula's "puppet", a useful weapon in the hands of Bolsonaro's camp, which portrays the governments of Lula and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, as authors in leader who freely spends the worst recession of all time in Brazil and the main culprits of the vast scandal of bribes for corruption under the carwash program

A survey of the polling company Ibope, conducted Wednesday, showed that Haddad was 23%, behind Bolsonaro by nine points. Of the 13 candidates running for the presidency of Brazil, he is in second place. It is generally expected that he will reach the second round to face Bolsonaro in a clash between the left and the far right. The same poll showed that in the last round, the two men were tied.

If this happens so, the second round will surely be a fierce battle, mainly amid extremely charged emotions and a tsunami of false news. Bolsonaro enters the fight with some sympathizers – from army generals to highly influential evangelical and agricultural lobbies of Brazil.

His opponents will likely continue to highlight his most controversial and offensive behavior, which includes telling a congressional woman in 2003 that she did not deserve to be raped by her. That it works is a questionable point. Bolsonaro is significantly less popular among women than men. Yet polls this week have shown a significant increase in women's support to around 26% – after the "not him" protests.

Many Brazilians seem willing to accept Bolsonaro's claims that his remarks were either taken out of context or false news, and his insistence that he be on a mission to unite all Brazilians. Others consider them insignificant given the scale of the crisis in Brazil.

"I think he's a chauvinist and homophobic man, just like other politicians," said Amanda Lemos, a 21-year-old psychology student in Rio, at the time. a recent pro-Bolsonaro rally on Copacabana beach.

"But he is the only candidate who seems to have a solid plan to start bringing Brazil out of chaos."

Nobody in Brazil seems to dispute that this election is a decisive moment for the country at this time of uncertainty. The question of who will be the chair will be settled soon. But, says psychoanalyst Dunker, the painful divisions that this process has exposed in Brazilian society will continue regardless of the outcome.

"I'm afraid we'll never recover," he says.