By Guilherme Becker
After a cold and rainy winter in Southern Brazil, springtime has already come with some sunny but not so shiny weeks. As time runs towards the national election on October 7th, a land worldwide known for its clear sky and spectacular shores seems to be a bit cloudier and darker than usual. The feeling may come from the fact that things will remain the same for the next hundred years: stagnant, conservative, late, backwards and with its best minds leaving it behind. Is there anything worse than that? Well, maybe yes.
Democratic since 1985 and with direct elections since 1989, Brazil now faces a campaign full of hate. Violence has dropped off from the internet directly into the streets. Almost a month ago the right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro (PSL) was stabbed while campaigning in the midst of a crowd in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Southeast.
On March this year, violent mood was already in the air, when a bus transporting voters of the then candidate of centre-left-wing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT, Workers’ Party, former president from 2003 to 2010, sentenced to jail for corruption and thus forbidden to run under Brazilian law) was shot twice in the state of Paraná, in the South, without injuries.
The first impression is that all that hate speech that people used to flow freely on social media now has poured into reality. And that is not only worrying: it actually is a very frightening development to observe. Continue reading “Elections in Brazil: A Case of Political Polarisation”
