Covid vs. Democracy: Brazil’s Populist Playbook

Covid-19 has had unambiguously tragic human consequences in Brazil, worsened by the "executive underreach" of President Jair Bolsonaro in failing to follow public-health guidance. Still, the democratic impacts are mixed. The health crisis might have taken away the ghost of military intervention-so alien to Bolsonaro's proclaimed affection for military coups-and emboldened the elites, holding their positions firm against his "performative golpismo." The pandemic has sharpened societal polarization and promoted partisan filters even when people read or receive information about an issue so close to their health concerns. If the pandemic is a crucible, Brazil’s democracy will likely emerge brittle but intact.

An imagined scene captures something of Brazil’s present moment. In a political cartoon from early June 2020, Alberto Benett depicts President Jair Bolsonaro standing in front of a crucified Jesus.1 The hand-drawn president proclaims to the dying Jesus, “I’m sorry, but it’s destiny. .” The cartoon refers to a real-life scene from two days earlier.A religiously devout supporter had asked Bolsonaro what he would say “to the countless grieving” who had lost loved ones to covid-19. Bolsonaro had replied, “I’m sorry about all the deaths, but it is the destiny of each of us.”.The Amazon region has been hardest hit. In April and May, the public-health infrastructure of Manaus (population 2.7 million), the region’s largest city, began to collapse. Intensive-care units were overwhelmed, and cemeteries filled with fresh graves. The virus has also devastated indigenous reservations, where health services are scant and local "invaders" engaged in illegal deforestation or mining spread disease.

Besides, economists forecast a decline of GDP by close to a tenth in 2020, while the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics reported in June that fewer than half of working-age adults were employed.2 The scale of the crisis is widely blamed on executive inaction. [End Page 76] Journalists have compiled ever-growing lists of quotes evincing Bolsonaro's lack of concern for the virus and its victims, as well as his refusal to assume responsibility for action. In late April, Bolsonaro greeted news of rising deaths by asking, "And so what? I'm sorry.

What do you want me to do? I am not a miracle worker."3 In late July he told a group of supporters, "I think almost all of you are going to get it one day. What are you afraid of? Face it! " And, in early August, when Brazil neared the mark of a hundred-thousand deaths, Bolsonaro ruminated on television that "We'll get on with our lives and escape our problems." The tragic human consequences of Covid-19 have been immeasurable in Brazil, but its impact upon the democratic health of that country is decidedly ambiguous. Covid-19 infected an ailing Brazilian democracy. Grading the performance of the new coronavirus requires juxtaposing the actual trajectory followed by Brazil against a covid-free counterfactual trend line.In both the real and counterfactual worlds, the president is a right-wing, authoritarian populist who is loud in his praise for military interventions in democratic politics. In both, Brazilian democracy is in peril, but its chances of survival might actually be superior under covid-19.If the pandemic is a crucible, then Brazilian democracy is likely to emerge from it brittle but intact. By emphasizing Bolsonaro's frailties as a governor, the pandemic has apparently emboldened public officials to resist him. As military intervention in politics became more and more concerning, the pandemic may have tamed the most fervently pro-Bolsonaro elements of the military. But the point is not only that Bolsonaro's inability to contain the coronavirus strengthened checks and balances.

The passage of recent months appears to have exposed some of Bolsonaro's threats as empty: Opportunities to stage a coup or some other form of military intervention have come and gone without incident. In such a context of nonhappenings, the golpismo of Bolsonaro-or rather, his vocal ideological support for military intervention-takes on an increasingly performative tone, a threat he mimics to appeal to that portion of his base which is enamored with strongmen and to intimidate the opposition. Of course, this would not mean that Bolsonaro's style of presidential management of the pandemic involves no risk to democracy at all. The alternative to the authoritarian crackdown, Bolsonaro has adopted in his mediated strategy, was to emphasize political polarization and social media "culture wars." By this, Bolsonaro aims at two things: managing information and constructing an alternative narrative of the pandemic. His vociferous promotion of the drug hydroxychloroquine, or HCQ, an antimalarial in the early stages seen to have some promising effects against the symptoms of covid-19:.