O Brasil de Bolsonaro

Breves considerações sobre o nacionalismo e a identidade nacional brasileira

Abstract

This article proposes a few reflections upon the concepts of national identity and nationalism in Brazil under Bolsonaro’s rule. It seeks to understand bolsonarism’s notions of “identity” and “nation” and how they are acted upon. To this aim, data was collected from the government plan presented by the bolsonarist ticket in the 2018 presidential elections and from speeches made by some of Bolsonaro’s ministers during the cabinet meeting of April 22nd 2020. These data were analyzed in light of Brazil’s historical formation process and through concepts such as “identity”, “nation”, “Nation state”, “nationalism”, “race” and “structural racism” in the theories of philosophers Zygmunt Bauman and Silvio Luiz de Almeida. The results of these observations show that bolsonarist nationalism internalizes new ideological contradictions which arise from the current neoliberal global order whilst also emphasizing, in practice, the domination of historical relations of social inequality.