Legitimation of hate and political violence through memetic images: the Bolsonaro campaign

Abstract

The federal elections were held in Brazil in 2018. The ballot resulted in a victory for the far-right candidate, Jair Messias Bolsonaro. The question that arose after the victory of the far-right was: How could this have happened? One of the instruments that undoubtedly contributed to this unexpected victory was a peculiar aspect of his political campaign: memetic communication. Through the use of memes in the social media (above all WhatsApp), Bolsonaro’s project transformed these violent discourses against political opponents, feminism, racialised persons and poverty into a series of discourses legitimised through humour and irony. It was a simplification through the memes affecting the static system of cognitive and metaphorical frameworks. During the pre-election period in 2018, we carried out digital ethnographic research in the WhatsApp groups of supporters of Bolsonaro’s project (“Bolsonarism”). In this period, we collected a sample of 132 memes belonging to WhatsApp groups composed of up to 256 members, who did not know each other and were geographically dispersed. The analysis we carried out demonstrates the trivialisation and legitimisation of violence against political opponents and other social groups. Much of this legitimisation was camouflaged under the mask of supposed humour and irony, which in reality was insulting, prejudicial and dehumanising.

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“…18-19) o crear conciencia. Aunque en ocasiones las imágenes pueden banalizar y legitimar la violencia (Villanueva y Bayarri, 2021), también pueden desencadenar un efecto de responsabilidad en el espectador (Belli y Fernández Villanueva, 2021, p. 7).…”

The rhetoric of the Brazilian far‐right, built in the streets: The case of Rio de Janeiro

“…However, Bolsonaro's rhetoric had always been characterised by violence and stigmatisation. Diverse studies have shown how this violent rhetoric was articulated towards women (Pinheiro‐Machado & de Freixo, 2019) and the Afro‐descendant population (Fernández‐Villanueva & Bayarri, 2021), using stigmatisation, animalisation and hyalinisation: black people were represented as obese and dirty, transsexuals as an aberration, and feminists were associated with communism. All of this came together to produce a ‘political enemy’ with respect to the traditional, heterosexual, white family, and established a strong and appealing heteronormativity as part of the Bolsonaro construction of the ‘real’ citizen entitled to civil rights.…”

Sufism and Politics: Internalization of Political Piety in Young Sufi in Indonesia

“…In order to achieve their political desires, people often find people doing various ways to bring down their political opponents. Hatred of political opponents is often found in the campaign arena (Fernández Villanueva & Bayarri Toscano, 2021).…”