An analysis of Jair Bolsonaro’s conservative-populist rhetoric: from the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff (2016) to the 2018 presidential election

Abstract

This paper analyzes the rise of conservative rhetoric in contemporary Brazil through the lens of Ernesto Laclau’s discourse theory, focusing on Jair Bolsonaro’s speeches between the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff (2016) and the 2018 presidential election. The investigati-on starts from the crisis of hegemony within the post-1988 Constitutional pact, characteri-zed by social dislocations that culminated in crises of representation and polarization. It is argued that Bolsonarism operated a successful articulatory practice by converting heteroge-neous demands and anti-PT sentiment into a chain of equivalences, fixing the leader as the central signifier of a new popular-democratic identity. The analysis integrates the Aristote-lian proofs of persuasion (ethos, pathos, and logos) and the technique of dissoi logoi to un-derstand how the mobilization of categories such as family, religion, and fatherland consti-tuted an antagonistic frontier against the previous power bloc. It is concluded that the Bol-sonarista phenomenon represents a discursive metamorphosis that, by articulating resen-tment and traditional morality via social networks, succeeded in fixing a new center of po-wer, challenging the institutional frameworks and fundamental rights in the national scena-rio.