Since 2013, Brazil has been in turmoil. The political crisis comprised massive streets protests in that year, a parliamentary coup d’état in 2016 and the election of the right-wing leader Jair Bolsonaro for president in 2018, putting an end to a more or less stable period following the re-democratization of the country in 1985 after the last dictatorship.

The presentation will address key elements to understand what is happening in Brazil, and what is the nature of the new authoritarianism of Bolsonaro and his entourage. In order to do that, it will address topics such as the approach of coloniality, the roots of Brazilian conservative ideas, the international constellation of new authoritarian leaders, the role of lies and the unleash of cultural wars, and how Bolsonaro was able to ride the Brazilian political crisis and reach the presidency.
 

Ricardo Pagliuso Regatieri is a visiting research fellow at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. He is a professor at the Department of Sociology and at the Graduate Program of Social Sciences at the Federal University of Bahia, where he is also one of the leaders of PERIFERICAS - Research Group on Social Theories, Modernities and Colonialities. During his stay at AHCD, he is leading the research project “Authoritarianism, Democracy and Political Crises in the Periphery of the Modern Capitalist World-System: the Brazilian Case”.

Moderation: Graziella Moraes Silva, Co-Director of the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy