Barbarism is Bolsonaro’s political asset – opinion

With a cry of “Here’s Bolsonaro!” A Bolsonarist federal prison guard invaded Saturday night the birthday party of Marcelo Arruda, a PT-linked municipal guard who ran for Vice Mayor of Foz do Iguaçu in 2020, and shot the birthday boy to death. Faced with a criminal attack by a Bolsonaro supporter, President Jair Bolsonaro had a civic duty to show solidarity with the victim’s family and, especially, to condemn and prohibit any form of violence against political opponents.

However, Jair Bolsonaro did nothing of the sort. Instead of promoting peace and protecting the political freedom of all citizens, as befits a President of the Republic, he chose to seize the opportunity to escalate provocation against his political opponents. On Twitter, instead of vehemently condemning the violence practiced by his supporter, Bolsonaro accused the left of accumulating “an undeniable history of episodes of violence.”

This is the moral degradation of Bolsonarism. The President of the Republic even uses the aftermath of the assassination of a political opponent to advance his campaign politics in a creepy MMA. He did not express outrage. He did not express solidarity with the victim’s family. For Jair Bolsonaro, the crime committed in Foz do Iguaço by his declared supporter was an occasion to remember that the left is the side “that stabs, spits, destroys property, shoots fireworks at operators, defends international terrorists, dehumanizes people with labels and asks them to set them on fire, who invades farms and kills animals, who pushes a gentleman in a moving truck.”

No one denies that people and groups on the left have resorted to violence, breaking laws and not respecting human rights. The point is different. Jair Bolsonaro did not devote a single second of his time to softening the situation, recognizing the humanity of his political opponents, promoting an electoral atmosphere of peace and mutual respect. And this is unacceptable. It’s inhuman. This is barbarism.

Jair Bolsonaro is denying the other side the respect that his political opponents, all of them, showed when he was stabbed in September 2018. No candidate gloated over the abuse the then PSL candidate endured. Not a single political leadership took advantage of the opportunity to use their candidacy. There was solidarity. Neither side felt they had to relativize the severity of the attack by “remembering” Jair Bolsonaro’s violent actions throughout his political career.

Jair Bolsonaro’s reaction should alert the country. There is the President of the Republic, unable to understand that all violence is unacceptable. There is a President of the Republic who lacks the courage to acknowledge a crime committed by one of his fellow believers. There is a president of the republic who sees in everything, even in the murder of a person, an additional reason to mock his political opponents.

The Foz do Iguaçu crime shocked the country. It was an explicit materialization that Bolsonarist’s rhetoric of violence has real consequences. It is not humane or democratic to play politics while being ready to “fire the gun,” as Jair Bolsonaro did in the 2018 campaign. Now the president has said that “phrases taken out of context” do not encourage violence. However, the facts say otherwise. His frank speeches about violence are not just “phrases taken out of context.” Over the decades, Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly advocated aggressive disrespect for political opponents.

Bolsonaro’s omission was not accidental. It fits perfectly with its goal of keeping the country in artificial tension. The calm environment harms the political interests of Jair Bolsonaro. It is no coincidence that his speeches are always focused on conflict, anger and resentment, on the field where the president feels at home, and not on issues of governance and public interests – which for Bolsonaro is a foreign land. This is the great tragedy of Bolsonarianism: in order to triumph politically, it tries to bring out the worst in everyone.