Programmatic Crisis and Moralization of the Politics: a Proposal to Define the Bolsonarism from the Experience with the Covid-19 Pandemic

The Bolsonaro government and the bolsonarism have undeniable autocratic characteristics and tendencies. However, unlike other authoritarian movements, the authoritarian use of power does not serve the implementation of some project of society based on specific values. It is a “war government.” Its main axis is the “cultural war” itself: the incessant search for enemies, scapegoats, to be fought and eliminated as a method of maintaining power, even if this makes it impossible to build public policies and government as a whole. The article interprets the bolsonarism on the basis of the analysis of social and political conditions that allowed the moralization of politics to become the central axis of the power struggle. The argument is that bolsonarism must beunderstood as a phenomenon of moralization of politics that exploit power opportunities created by the economic crisis and the programmatic crisis of the political system.