“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”? Religious rhetorics in the construction of the bolsonarist “myth” and its reception by brazilian evangelicalism

Abstract

This article deals with the success obtained by Jair Bolsonaro in gaining such a resolute adherence from Brazilian evangelicalism, based on the premise that this phenomenon cannot be explained in terms of mere political convenience or ideological alignment. To answer this problem, we adopted the hypothetical-deductive method, using the anthropological concept of worldview (Weltanschauung) to establish a parallel between the dominant religious doctrines in national evangelicalism and the content of the discourse presented by Bolsonaro and his supporters. The hypothesis defended is that the success of his campaign results from the fact that it used themes, signs and myths that are central to neopentecostal theology, detaching them from their original context to associate them to the president himself and to government of the candidate/president, thus building a narrative mimesis that presented Bolsonaro, both implicitly and explicitly, as a new messianic figure who would come to free his people from captivity, demanding from his sympathizers not only political support, but also affective and quasi religious adherence.