People against the elite? Jair Bolsonaro's presidential campaign

Abstract

It aims to identify and characterize the populist rhetoric of Jair Bolsonaro, candidate for the Brazilian presidency in the October 2018 election. Applying the methodology proposed by Rooduijn and Pauwels (2011), I analyze the candidate's personal tweets from 5 May 2018 to 5 September 2018. The conclusion is that populism is an important element of Bolsonaro's rhetoric. First, he attacks political elites, accuses them of corruption, and blames them for the economic and political crises. Second, he appeals to the Brazilian people and claims to be the only candidate who will govern in their interest. Nevertheless, the construction of 'us', 'the people' is drawn in an exclusionary manner: he denies the existence of class, race, and gender conflicts; opposes minority rights; and does not present initiatives for social inclusion. Therefore, Bolsonaro detaches from Latin American inclusionary populism and shows similarities to Western European exclusionary populism. This fact is also illustrated by the radical aspect of his rhetoric: law and order are highly salient in his discourse, the second most frequent topic of his tweets. Finally, Bolsonaro embraces the free market economy, but as with other populist politicians, distributive issues have very limited space in his discourse.