Bolsonaro’s Problems in the Last Stretch before the Elections

          Mirroring Trump, Bolsonaro's campaign is using social media as its main means of communication. Engagement occurs through the construction of narratives based on fake news. The formula is supported by propagating absurd messages, dehumanizing opponents, and producing an atmosphere of psychological terror among voters. In Brazil, Bolsonarism produces a political debate focused on issues related to the “cultural wars.”  It involves three main themes: combating abortion, opposing the so-called “gender ideology,” and guaranteeing broad access to weapons.

During the 2018 and 2022 presidential campaigns, Bolsonarism produced a narrative about a dystopian reality that would be established if the “Left” returned to rule the country. Some of the most recurrent threats, so the campaign argues, are that Brazil will become a Venezuela, where people will be forced to eat their dogs to survive. According to this narrative, the “Left” will ensure that children are forced to start their sexual lives early and change their gender, and pedophiles will be protected by the law. In 2018, this strategy was very successful, and several pieces of propaganda were produced and widely disseminated with fake news that associated Fernando Haddad, the leftwing presidential candidate, with the sexual abuse of children, for example, saying that the candidate would create a law that would allow sex between adults and twelve-year-old children.

As in the United States, the dystopia produced by Bolsonarism gained greater relevance because it found resonance in the language and dogmas propagated by fundamentalist Christian churches. In this way, ideological disputes about political questions have been replaced with metaphysical ones. Bolsonaro and his allies claim that what is at stake is not a model of public management, but a spiritual war. According to this logic, the voter is asked to position himself as a soldier of God, engaged in something greater than mundane social problems.

First Lady Michelle Bolsonaro has been an important part of this discourse, especially among evangelical Christians. The strategy of shifting public debate to the religious arena serves the objective of diverting the focus on the real problems of Brazilian society, such as, for example, necessary debates about the recovery of the economy and how to erraticate hunger at a moment when 33 million Brazilians are in extreme poverty and cannot even eat three meals a day.

In addition to these cultural wars, Jair Bolsonaro has built a messianic image for himself. Despite his 28 years of public life, Bolsonaro promotes himself as a political outsider, the Messiah, a virile man, defender of the family, guarantor of morals and designated by God to free Brazil from darkness, which encompasses all of Bolsonaro’s opponents. Among his supporters, Bolsonaro is revered as a “myth” with a superhuman character.

A bizarre fact in an attempt to reinforce an image of virility took place during the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Brazil's Independence in September 2022. In front of an estimated audience of 1 million people, President Jair Bolsonaro asked the public to shout: Imbrochável (Never limp, referring to his sexual performance). This was not the first time that the president used this kind of language to divert public opinion from relevant topics, such as the corruption scandals plaguing his government, including a massive pork-barrel operation, known as the secret budget, where vast amounts of federal government monies were allocated to candidates supporting the president in an effort to influence the election results. 

Another more recent episode made Jair Bolsonaro get a taste of his own medicine. In an interview for a podcast designed to exploit the fear that Brazil would become
another Venezuela,” the president told the following story:

“I was in Brasília, in the São Sebastião community. . . . I stopped my motorcycle at a corner. I saw some pretty girls, 14, 15 years old. Dressed up on a Saturday morning and in a [poor] community. I saw that they were kind of similar. There was a vibe; I came back and asked: ‘Can I come in? I entered. There were about 15, 20 girls, Saturday morning, getting ready. All Venezuelans. I asked myself: ‘Pretty girls, getting ready Saturday morning, for what? To earn a living, prostitute themselves. They were prostituting themselves.’”

This strange story told on live air quickly became an important part of the national debate. According to a survey, Bolsonaro's comments generated more than 1.8 million posts on Twitter in a space of just two days.

The main communication outlets and social networks began to problematize the case, analyzing it in several different ways and showing that this was not the first situation in which the president told this same story. On none of these occasions did Bolsonaro explain the measures he had taken to protect the girls.

The case provoked strong reactions. All over the country, agencies for the protection of children, adolescents, and immigrants issued declarations repudiating the president’s statement and demanding he make a retraction.  

The day after the president's speech, Lula's campaign produced videos that associated Bolsonaro with the crime of pedophilia. The Superior Electoral Court ordered that these political ads be removed from the air. 

As a defense strategy, Bolsonaro's campaign produced ads distancing the president's image from the crime of pedophilia. Despite these measures, Bolsonaro's messianic stature was damaged, even among the most conservative sections of Brazilian society.

Another effect of the episode was the adoption by Lula's campaign of the issue of the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents. Previously, this question had been exploited by the extreme Right in fake news items that associated the Left with pedophilia. The topic became central in the last two weeks of the elections, and this time, it gave rise to debates that shifted from articulating a “paranoid dystopia” to offering analysis of concrete information on public policies to protect children and adolescents. 

As this graph demonstrates, the Bolsonaro government has reduced the amount earmarked for special social protection by 99%. The 2033 budget is entirely inadequate to tackle the issue of sexual exploitation and abuse of children and adolescents in Brazil.

The statistics on the vulnerability of numbers of child and youth are alarming. Public security data, compiled by the NGO Childhood Brazil, show that every hour four girls suffer sexual abuse in Brazil. Seventy percent of the rape cases registered in the country are of children and adolescents, and 51 percent of sexually abused children are between the ages of one and five. At least 45 percent are black. While the issue of child protection has been a main component of the extreme Right's strategy to fuel the cultural wars and incite fear, real children are in a situation of extreme social vulnerability.

The lack of public policies designed to offer social protection for the vulnerable are the challenges for the next government. Regardless of the outcome of the elections, the protection of children and adolescents in Brazil must be a policy priority.

Graziella Rocha is a member of the National Committee to Combat Trafficking of Persons and coordinator of projects at the Brazilian Association for the Defense of Women, Children and Youth. She holds a doctorate in social policy from the Federal Fluminese University.