Jair Bolsonaro's election: Building fear and hate in the 2018 election campaign

Abstract

This paper analyzes the 2018 Brazilian elections and the social construction of hate and fear speeches during the election. With the protagonism of the elected President Jair Bolsonaro, the election period featured dramatic narratives. The corpus of this work is specifically the electoral period, having as its peak the attack suffered by the, then candidate, Jair Bolsonaro on September 6, 2018 and its developments in the political field. Our theoretical framework draws on Zygmunt Bauman, Christopher Lasch and Thomas Hobbes to analyze fear, and Jeremy Waldron and Ronald Dworkin for understanding hatred in Brazilian politics. It was concluded that hatred and fear were paramount in the election of the winning candidate.