Much of Bolsonaro’s political support comes from agribusiness, the arms industry, and the religious right, a nexus of power referred to as the Three “B”s—beef, bullets, and Bibles.
By John Lee Anderson
The New Yorker (4/1/19)
The authoritarian leaders taking power around the world share a vocabulary of intolerance, insult, and menace. Jair Bolsonaro, who was elected President of Brazil on promises to end crime, right the economy, and “make Brazil great,” has spent his career gleefully offending women, black people, environmentalists, and gays. “I would be incapable of loving a homosexual son,” he has said. “I would prefer that my son die in an accident than show up with some guy with a mustache.” As a national legislator, he declared one political rival, Maria do Rosário, “not worth raping.” Immigrants are “scum.” The United Nations is “a bunch of communists.” He supports the torture of drug dealers, the use of firing squads, and the empowerment of a hyper-aggressive police force. “A policeman who doesn’t kill,” he has said, “isn’t a policeman.”
On New Year’s Day, Bolsonaro was inaugurated in the capital city of Brasília. Standing in the back of a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith convertible, he waved at crowds of supporters, and they shouted back, “The captain has arrived!” “The legend!” Bodyguards trotted alongside the car, flanked by uniformed cavalrymen on elegant white horses. Bolsonaro is sixty-four, tall and slim, with sharply parted dark hair and heroically bushy eyebrows. His third wife, Michelle, stood next to him, waving at the masses.
Bolsonaro’s motto, repeated as an applause line at the end of speeches, is “Brazil above everything, God above all.”
After the inaugural ceremony, Bolsonaro gave a speech outside Planalto, the Presidential palace; huge video screens magnified his image for tens of thousands of supporters. Many wore Brazilian flags draped over their shoulders and T-shirts featuring the outline of Bolsonaro’s face, in the style of the movie poster for “The Godfather.” At the ceremony, Bolsonaro had spoken broadly of the need to “unite the people.” Now, addressing his most fervent supporters, he could relax. He said that he had come to free them from the scourge of socialism—an allusion to his left-leaning predecessors Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, who had governed from 2003 to 2016. “Our flag will never be red,” he said. “It will be red only if we need to bleed over it.” The crowd took up a chant: “Never red!”
Calling for repressive military dictatorship
A former Army captain, Bolsonaro served seven undistinguished terms in the Chamber of Deputies, Brazil’s highest legislative body, representing four different political parties. Over twenty-seven years, he delivered some fifteen hundred speeches and introduced more than a hundred and fifty bills, but only two passed—one exempting computer equipment from taxation and another approving a controversial cancer drug. Mostly, he spoke on behalf of the armed forces, even calling for a restoration of the repressive military dictatorship that governed Brazil from 1964 to 1985. …
- Brazil Prosecutors Open Money-Laundering Probe Into Bolsonaro’s Son — BRASILIA (Reuters) – The senator son of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is under investigation by federal authorities for money laundering in connection to unexplained increases in his net worth, the prosecutor general’s office said on Thursday. Federal prosecutors said this month that an accusation of money laundering had been raised against Senator Flavio Bolsonaro in connection with at least two luxury apartments he purchased in Rio de Janeiro. … Read the Rest