Authoritarianism in Brazil Is on the Rise, According to Report

10/06/2017 - 10h52

Brazilians have a high propensity to support authoritarian views.

The trend is bolstered by the dire state that the nation's public security is in, with an average of 60,000 homicides per year, on top of the fact that 50 million adults have declared that they know of at least one person who was murdered.

That was one of the conclusions in the report "Fear of Violence and Authoritarianism in Brazil", which was conducted by the Brazilian Forum on Public Security (FBSP), a non-profit organization that has it's very own "Propensity to Support Authoritarian Views Index" for Brazil.

Based on research that was conducted by the Datafolha Institute, the index suggests that, on a scale from zero to ten, Brazilian society's propensity to support authoritarian views reached a staggering score of 8.1.

The finding becomes even more relevant when considering that Brazilians will be taking to the voting booths for next year's elections in a context of political and social instability, which, in theory, favors populist and authoritarian adventurers.

"We are being attacked by groups that profess their belief in violence as a form of governance and, paradoxically, as a form of pacifying society, in what can be considered a moral and political vendetta that keeps attracting more and more supporters", said Renato Sérgio de Lima, the director and president of FBSP who also believes that the notion of a "devastated" country favors a surge in proposals with a "salvationist bent".

When it comes to next year's presidential election, one candidate that presents such attributes is congressman Jair Bolsonaro (PSC) who, according to a Datafolha poll that was released last Sunday (1st), has somewhere between 15% to 19% of the vote, depending on the different electoral scenarios that the research institute proposed.

Translated by THOMAS MATHEWSON

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