The Role of Fake News and Verbal Insults in Brazilian Far Right’s Anti-Political Strategy

Abstract

This paper, which is based on the polemical discourse perspective (Amossy, 2017), has two objectives, namely analyzing Fake News as a disinformation strategy used by the Brazilian Far Right, and investigating the resignification of verbal insults as a subaltern resistance tactic. Through Queer Linguistics (Borba, 2015), we suggest the conceptual distinction between “strategies” and “tactics” (Certeau, 2007), as well as “subaltern resignification” as a solution for the “Paradox of Tolerance” (Popper, 1974). Furthermore, we use semantic chains (Morais, 2018) to formalize the “architecture of disinformation” and the “architecture of information.” Our analysis is based on a few statements given by Bolsonarists in interviews, in the Federal Senate Committee and five tweets posted on former Federal Deputy Jean Wyllys’ official Twitter account. We conclude that linguistic expressions that reiterate situations of symbolic violence are the primary foundation for legitimizing physical and structural violence against LGBT people. Despite this fact, the controversial clash indicates the possibility of a tactical emergence of new political and social subjects who were previously subordinate.