Fear, Faith, Freedom, and Force: Bolsonarism as a Counter-Enlightenment Political Religion

This project reconstructs the genealogy of Counter‑Enlightenment activism and political violence in Brazil, arguing that recurrent Counter-Enlightenment waves paved the way for Bolsonarism as a contemporary political religion. The research traces continuities from late‑efforts of the colonial enterprise like the policies advanced by the racial‑whitening movement through Traditionalism (1910s–20s), Integralism and Estado Novo (1930s–40s), the 1964–85 dictatorship, and twenty‑first‑century neo‑Traditionalist, parafascist mobilisation. The study also analyses Bolsonarism in synchronic comparison with Trumpism and the AfD, and in diachronic comparison with colonialism and Hitlerism.
Combining comparative‑historical research, critical discourse analysis, political philosophy, social psychology, and sociology of law, the study examines how fundamentalism and narratives of prophecy, martyrdom, and crusade legitimise violence, focusing on the armed forces’ role under a supremacist, tyrannical notion of national security from Caxias and Góis Monteiro to Bolsonarism amid contemporary militias and death squads. The project analyses impunity’s legacies and patterns of selective, chronic violence typical of internal colonialism and fascistic models. It concludes by examining the events leading to and including the 8 January 2023 Brasília attacks as a process of reactionary escalation and asymmetric radicalisation and assessing implications for Brazil’s democratic future.