A religião política contemporânea psicanálise, Steve Bannon e a economia libidinal da extrema-direita

Abstract

This research discusses the contemporary far right as a producer of a deinstitutionalized religious experience, articulated through digital liturgies that reconfigure the social bond and helplessness in the neoliberal era. Drawing on a theoretical-interpretive essay, it mobilizes the framework of Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis, in dialogue with contributions from studies on cults, necropolitics, and political religion, to analyze how far-right leaders convert subjective vulnerability into affective adherence and ritual engagement. The category of “religion” is used in an analytical-typological sense, rather than as a direct equivalence with confessional institutions. In this key, the figure of the leader ceases to be merely a political actor and comes to assume a quasi-messianic function, organizing the group’s libidinal economy and authorizing necropolitical practices directed at bodies deemed disposable. By emphasizing the articulation between helplessness, cult, and technology, the article suggests that the digital liturgies of the far right constitute a form of religious experience without a temple that intensifies both the perception of threat and the promise of protection, reinforcing regimes of symbolic and material violence. The article concludes by indicating the limits and implications of this reading for the study of religion, media, and politics.