Backlash Politics and Contempt for Truth and Knowledge

Anti-Gender Campaigns in Bolsonaro’s Rise to the Brazilian Presidency

Bibliographic Data

ID22185087
AuthorsAllan Santos (0000-0002-1094-2478)
Year2025
Volume258
Pages135-160
Publication date2025-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueRevue internationale des études du développement (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2554-3415 • E-ISSN: 2554-3555
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/14bb5
LanguageEN
References cited22

This article contributes to current understanding of backlash politics by analyzing parliamentary speeches and social media posts by Jair Bolsonaro on his path to the Brazilian presidency (2010-2018). Contempt for truth and scientific knowledge is seen as a contemporary rhetorical practice through which far-right leaders stigmatize public human rights policies and enter mainstream discourse. Bolsonarist backlash politics on gender and sexuality are not characterized in this study as inevitable retrograde reactions, but rather productive phenomena used to fabricate a new political order marked by anti-democratic politics of truth and anti-intellectualism

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