Bolsonarismo by Fernando Brancoli;

Author:Fernando Brancoli;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 2023-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

5

Authoritarian Meritocracy

Bolsonarismo, the Establishment of an Entrepreneurial Nation, and the Privatization of the Family

An Entrepreneurial Soul

Carlos Copane, a teenage shopkeeper in Rio de Janeiro, had one of the most popular tweets in May 2022. The message gained popularity after being republished by several Jair Bolsonaro supporters, including two congressmen. In the statement, the shopkeeper defended the far-right government against claims that it was not doing a good job of handling the economic crisis following the COVID-19 pandemic. The video became so popular that some far-right organizations began selling T-shirts featuring excerpts from it. “Since I have an entrepreneurial soul, I consider life to be the same as my business, and my revenues, my personal GDP, have increased in the past three years. Disregarding inflation, it is eight times greater than it was 15 years ago. Those who do not waste time complaining help the nation flourish and assist everyone. Bolsonaro is there to educate us all, but the president of my life is me” (Copane 2022).

In the same week, Bolsonaro provided a similar line of reasoning in response to concerns about gas prices. The president attributed the problem to a “lack of entrepreneurialism” and pledged to privatize Petrobras, the country’s mixed-capital oil exploration company (Sartori and Rosas 2022). A few months before the election, the idea of selling the controlling interest of the most valuable company in Latin America, in which the Brazilian government is still the biggest shareholder, seemed like bravado and an attempt to draw attention away from the rising inflationary pressure. In any event, the president’s stance on the matter recalls Carlos’s unusual phrase: “Petrobras will no longer be a problem if everyone cultivates an entrepreneurial spirit deep inside their soul. [Gasoline] costs are only a problem for those who are already in a difficult situation” (Mões 2022).

During the latter years of the Bolsonaro administration, the nation recorded its worst economic, social, health, and political indicators in decades. Due to the government’s disregard for public health during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022, the nation registered almost seven hundred thousand fatalities. Unemployment was at 13 percent of the total population, and the monthly inflation rate was 20 percent. Nonetheless, the business community remained one of the greatest backers of the administration at the time. Bolsonaro said repeatedly that “a few fatalities from this virus could not stop the economy” (Morais 2021) and that entrepreneurs were “the nation’s heroes” (G1 2019b). According to several surveys, such as Datafolha (Mendonça 2022), despite the government’s diminishing popularity, the president maintained high approval ratings among company owners and self-described “entrepreneurs.”

Jair Bolsonaro’s statements and the young shopkeeper’s videos are anecdotal examples of the collision of individual subjectivity and corporate rationality, and they both show one of Bolsonarismo’s guiding principles: entrepreneurial neoliberal logic. According to this viewpoint, the individual is the most tangible social unit that may be utilized to assess the epistemic basis and consequences of social action. Since individual capacities are evaluated to define responsibilities and rights, this has social and political implications.

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