A Brasil para leigos: A disputa pelo senso comum da população brasileira pelas políticas do medo nas redes digitais

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand how the Brazilian populist radical right, represented by bolsonarismo, leverages the narratives contained in the productions of the company Brasil Paralelo to exploit fear in order to increase support for its political project. The use of fear as a tool for political gain is not new nor is it exclusive to the radical right. However, the populist radical right uses fear fundamentally in its political project, benefiting from the emotional arousal this feeling generates in the population and consistently listing enemies responsible for the ills facing the society in which it operates. The paper is divided into three chapters. In the first one, we conduct a bibliographic review of various works on the far right in order to synthesize a set of characteristics common to the New Right phenomenon, as well as an umbrella term that could be used to refer to this object. In the second chapter, we present the history of Brasil Paralelo, the discursive matrices contained in its productions and, with the help of Antonio Gramsci's theoretical framework, its classification as a private apparatus of hegemony, more specifically as an apparatus of doctrinal action in the cultural field. Finally, we examine the effect of fear on so-called human rationality, examples of the use of fear in politics throughout history and the particular relationship that the populist radical right establishes with this sentiment in the construction of its political project. In the conclusion, we revisit the work's findings to identify Bolsonarism as an expression of the populist radical right in Brazil, to indicate how Brasil Paralelo's productions disseminate and legitimize the ideology of the ruling class, thus renewing its hegemonic position, and how fear is intrinsically linked to this political project.