The ridiculous farce of Jair Bolsonaro’s political history serves as a warning to all other politicians who are riding the wave of populism.

Join us on Telegram, Twitter, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Bolsonaro is behind bars. The decision for his preventive arrest was justified as the appropriate response to the possibility of the former president attempting to escape his house arrest under the cover of the “vigil” that his son Flávio Bolsonaro was organizing at the entrance of the residence. Since Bolsonaro lives 15 minutes from the embassy sector of Brasília, it was considered that he might try to escape and that if he managed to get into a car and leave under the cover of the present crowd, he could take refuge in an embassy, probably that of the USA.

It is necessary to understand that Alexandre de Moraes’s decision was “a shot in the dark.” It was more a demonstration of power to crown the week, after the partial revocation of the Trumpist tariffs – thereby displaying the failure of the Bolsonarist plot to try to use the USA to save Jair Bolsonaro – than anything else. But, in fact, when Bolsonaro was taken to the penitentiary, it was discovered that he had tried to remove the electronic ankle monitor using a soldering iron.

To some extent, this is the end of Bolsonaro’s story. After all, his health is fragile due to the sequelae of the stabbing he suffered during the 2018 electoral campaign. He is frequently hospitalized, and it is known that it is difficult to take care of one’s health in prison conditions.

A bitter end, certainly. To some extent, the essence of Bolsonaro’s tragedy is that he believed his path was an epic, but it turned out to be a farce with touches of comedy.

When we set out to analyze Bolsonaro as a political phenomenon more than as a singular figure, it is necessary to reject attempts to read him as part of an “international far-right” phenomenon, a term more evaluative than descriptive. The term “populism” is more comprehensive, scientific, and neutral, so it is through it that we can try to understand Bolsonarismo.

The phenomenon of political populism began to be debated again at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. During that period, it became obvious that the emergence of nationalist parties in Europe was not an ephemeral phenomenon or even a temporary outbreak, and that voting for these parties was not a “protest vote.” During this time, figures like Jörg Haider of the FPÖ, Marine Le Pen of the FN, and Geert Wilders of the PVV were becoming important and no longer ignorable figures in their countries’ political debates; and their parties were consolidating positions as the 3rd or 4th most popular political party.

Obviously, this is a complex phenomenon that cannot be easily summarized in one or two paragraphs, but one can outline an introduction to the topic by highlighting the exhaustion of liberal democracy, its forms of conflict resolution, and its propositions in the fields of politics, culture, and the economy. Populism is the vital reaction of sectors marginalized and abandoned by post-liberalism, notably the middle class, the proletariat, and small farmers. In the establishment, these classes saw an artificial alternation between “center-right” and “center-left” parties, which simulated enmity while, in power, applied the same program with few variations. Which program? Labor precarization and job offshoring, dilution of borders, cultural progressivism, etc.

Due to the very transversal nature of the establishment, populism also tends to assume a transversal character. Although there are more libertarian figures in this populism, the standard is a mixture of proposals once confined to the left – usually in economics – and proposals once confined to the right – usually in culture and politics. Even where it deviates somewhat from this typical populist formula, primarily anti-liberal (or illiberal), skepticism or even open hostility to the “rules of the game” of liberal democracy remains in all expressions of populism.

Populism seeks in the direct link with the people the fundamental mechanism of its governability, and, not infrequently, even the content of its public policies – consequently, it is not uncommon for appeals to “direct democracy” to be common among populists.

In its own way, and considering the unique context of Brazil, Bolsonaro represents an expression of this same phenomenon. Generally speaking, Brazilian politics had been monopolized, since the end of the military regime, by the PT, the PSDB, and the PMDB, each representing a small variation of the liberal hegemony.

Under the tutelage of these liberal-democratic establishment parties, Brazil saw the collapse of public security, the acceleration and radicalization of the dissolution of the social fabric by progressivism, the replacement of development by the multiplication of social benefits, the growing perception of endemic corruption, and the feeling that taxes were too heavy for the little counterpart offered by the Sixth Republic.

Increasingly, a considerable part of the Brazilian population (the “losers of globalization,” the “deplorables” described by Hillary Clinton), usually composed of small business owners, truck drivers, taxi drivers, farmers, and even a part of the proletariat, began to see decreasing differences between the main parties that alternated in power. References to an “old politics” and the need for a “new politics” – more connected with new technologies, new social demands, etc. – became commonplaces in Brazilian political discourse.

The formalization and judicialization of progressivism, in response, drove the consolidation of a sentiment and praxis of a conservative “culture war,” guided by the Brazilian epigones of American conservatives (other anti-progressive currents have had little impact in Brazil so far).

Meanwhile, the democratization of the internet and social media was undermining the narrative monopoly of traditional mass media. Alternative narratives began to proliferate freely, competing with the “official truths” of the globalist superclass expressed through “respectable” television news broadcasts.

Jair Bolsonaro was, in all this, the “wrong man at the right time.”

“Wrong man” because, compared to most other so-called international populist leaders – like Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen, or even Donald Trump – he is clearly the least intellectually gifted. And he was also the one who least knew what to do in the eventuality of seizing power.

4 years of Jair Bolsonaro’s government left practically no positive legacy. None. Contrary to his own discourse, Bolsonaro handed the economy over to George Soros’s banker in Brazil, Paulo Guedes – responsible for dismantling Petrobrás, selling and closing strategic refineries and selling the national fuel trading company, as well as privatizing Eletrobrás, the main electricity generation and transmission company.

In the cultural field, there was no initiative aimed at stopping the progressive wave. On the contrary, Bolsonaro took money away from Culture, thus facilitating the work of private Capital sectors that support wokism. To make matters worse, his government approved the most misandric legislation in Brazil’s history, allowing men to be arrested based on unproven accusations of “sexual abuse.”

No other demand from his own electoral base was met. Bolsonaro did not toughen the fight against organized crime, did not strengthen patriotism or conservatism, absolutely none of that happened. He didn’t even manage to organize his own party, failing shamefully in that.

Where Bolsonaro truly stood out was in agitprop and in the use of social media for the permanent mobilization of his supporters. From time to time, Bolsonaro called his supporters to street demonstrations – all of them huge – and in them, he spoke against the Judiciary, against Congress, against the “communists,” against China, etc. In the specific case of Brazilian institutions, especially the Judiciary, Bolsonaro made constant threats.

As a Brazilian saying goes, “a barking dog doesn’t bite.”

The constant threats to the institutions intensified a radically anti-Bolsonarist sentiment within them. In this sense, to a certain extent, Bolsonaro created enemies unnecessarily without having the means or the will to get rid of them definitively. A crass error.

But an error compatible with Bolsonaro’s own personality: excessive and reckless courage when speaking, and the most abject cowardice when it comes to putting his own speech into practice.

And to this deplorable personality trait, add the adherence of his sons to an accelerationist political sect – led by the now deceased Olavo de Carvalho – which preached precisely a neocon version of the Trotskyist doctrine of “permanent revolution” with the aim of overthrowing the old “communist” order that was supposedly ruling Brazil through the destruction of institutions, all of them impossible to reform. What to put in its place? None of that was in question. Behold the height of nihilism.

A contact, who was well-positioned in the core of the Bolsonarist government, confided in me that at a certain point, some stalwarts of the more centrist sector of the Brazilian establishment – authentic dinosaurs of politics – called Bolsonaro for a “talk.” The idea was to seek dialogue for a collaboration that would benefit everyone. It is obvious that part of this logic involves carrying out projects that would benefit allies and protégés of these “dinosaurs.” Bolsonaro didn’t want to talk. He preferred to sell the country to foreigners than to local oligarchies.

The payment for the service rendered to the USA? A virulent campaign orchestrated in Washington to replace Bolsonaro with Lula, whose spearhead was Victoria Nuland herself.

Faced with this mosaic, to say the least unusual, of incompetences of all kinds, who will be surprised by the fact that most of the armed forces commanders refused to embark on the Bolsonarist adventure of trying to reverse the election result through protests, strikes, and mass mobilization. We could say that here began the beginning of the end.

It is no use attributing all responsibility to alleged “electoral fraud.” The reality is that Bolsonaro led the largest mass movement in decades in Brazil and failed when he came to power. He simply did not know what to do with it.

From then on, Bolsonarismo constantly dreamed of a “silver bullet,” faith in a miracle, a “magic wand” solution, instead of strategy and tactics. First, the Bolsonarists believed the military would save them, then that Elon Musk would do it, finally that Donald Trump would rescue them.

But Trump found that, in the Brazilian case, it is better to simply negotiate with those already in power and, with that, guarantee U.S. influence in the region, than to excessively antagonize the country pushing it towards China.

What to say, then, about the campaign waged by Eduardo Bolsonaro in the USA for Trump to impose sanctions and tariffs against Brazil? Indeed, after waiting so long for a “silver bullet,” it came. But it hit Bolsonarismo in the heart and was fired by the Bolsonaro Family itself. The measure was even rejected by Bolsonaro’s own electorate, helping to finish sinking his political career and accelerating his judicial conviction.

Is it possible that, as happened with Lula, Bolsonaro will have a triumphant return to politics? It is possible, but the sequelae of the stabbing Bolsonaro suffered represent a difficulty for his political future. Still, his trial had sufficient irregularities to possibly be eventually annulled when the political climate is different.

Nevertheless, this ridiculous farce of Jair Bolsonaro’s political history serves as a warning to all other politicians who are riding the wave of populism.

Actions matter more than words.