Brazil, now

Abstract

Abstract:With the election of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil has entered into unknown territory. Bolsonaro is an extremist who has promised harsh security and policing and a clamp-down on all forms of liberalism. The regime's hatred is particularly focused against feminists and gay activists. Bolsonaro's neoliberal economic policies are backed up by a rhetoric of hate and by violence. The police and militias now have a license to kill and have started doing so on the streets. Bolsonaristas are also poised to attack the universities, which they see as fostering the bogeymen of 'gender ideology' and 'cultural Marxism'. The election result reflects the erosion of the old popular majority based around the Workers Party's and the traditional civil society groups that sustained it. There has, however, also been a flourishing of some groups-especially black and women's organisations. The left in Brazil needs to do some serious thinking, and to begin to make new alliances-a fragile hope for which is currently sustained by recent popular unity in mass protests over the killing by right-wing militia men of Rio councillor, feminist, and black and human rights activist Marielle Franco.