Jair Messias Bolsonaro (born 21 March 1955) was the 38th president of Brazil from 2018 to 2022 and a retired Brazilian Army military captain. Controversial is the mildest way anyone can describe him as his public image has always been associated with controversy in one way or another. He became known when he publicly criticized the army for the low wages of its members, which landed him in Court Martial, though he received a lot of support from his peers. He entered politics shortly afterwards and got into the spotlight once again in 1998 when he publicly praised the Brazilian Military Regime and Augusto Pinochet's rule over Chile, particularly regarding the Brazilian dictatorship as a "glorious period" in their country's history, and their greatest mistake was that "they didn't kill enough". Naturally, he drew a lot of condemnation from the public and human rights activists due to the extremely authoritarian nature of these regimes, especially in light of being still fresh in people's memories at the time (the former ended in 1985 while the latter ended in 1990).
For many decades, other people considered Bolsonaro a fringe radical due to his outrageous statements condemning interracial couples, women's extradomestic participation and LGBT rights, while favoring the military dictatorship, advocating for torture, the death penalty, nuclear weapons development, and many, many other horrors. It would be hard to imagine someone like him being even considered as president, but his appeal among the public grew following a very turbulent time in The New '10s that saw the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers' Party) in control being involved in a never-ending series of corruption scandals and president Dilma Rousseff being impeached (though depending on who you ask, she was subjected to a coup) and replaced by her Vice-President Michel Temer. (Bolsonaro himself dedicated his vote to impeach Rousseff to an army officer who tortured her when she was a young dissident.)
In the following presidential election in 2018, Bolsonaro ran as a candidate, based on a platform like that of Donald Trump in the United States in 2016 by presenting himself as an "outsider" who would defy the establishment. Just like Trump, many doubted that he would actually win in no small part due to the most likely candidate to win being PT's representative LuĂs Inácio Lula da Silva, who also served as President for two four-year terms between 2002 and 2010 and ironically shares some similarities with Bolsonaro: Lula is a populist (albeit a left-leaning one) who is fairly divisive on his own and ran as an outsider during his previous presidential campaigns against the established status quo of the time.note The game was changed when Lula was barred from running due to (widely questioned) corruption charges and replaced with his running mate, former education minister Fernando Haddad. Not helping matters was an Assassination Attempt on Bolsonaro, where a guy stabbed him with a knife, requiring him to be hospitalized. Bolsonaro won against Haddad the two election rounds as a result.
Bolsonaro built his campaign on socially conservative, economically liberal policies: he supports the idea of smaller government and free market, while promising to crack down hard on crime and preserve Christian values. His gun ownership advocacy is one of his trademarks, but proved to be extremely polarizing, with a little more than half of Brazilians disapproving of it, with the other half strongly agreeing with his viewpoint that Brazil, as a country that suffers from extremely high criminality rates, jad to arm citizens to fight against thugs, stating that drug dealers have access to automatic and high-caliber weapons while innocents have no means to defend themselves and argues that they should be able to "level the game". He has been very critical of "Cultural Marxism" and condemned The European Union as well as Communist regimes like Cuba and Venezuela for promoting it, and dismissed secularism as "nonsense", viewing Brazil as a Christian state where the minority must adjust to the majority.note
As mentioned above, many people would consider him the Brazilian equivalent to Donald Trump (even being nicknamed the "Trump of the Tropics"), which Bolsonaro himself would definitely view as a compliment. His foreign policy is staunchly pro-American (specially towards the Trump administration) and pro-Israel (to the point he intended to close relations with the State of Palestine). Bolsonaro showed suspicion towards China, which also happens to be Brazil's economic partner in the BRICS, and intended to move away from its sphere of influence to formalize closer relationships with America. And before India saw a surge of cases in early 2021, Brazil was only behind the United States in countries most afflicted by the COVID-19 Pandemic, as Bolsonaro, like Trump, downplayed the potential dangers of the disease.note Bolsonaro, like Lula, has an aversion to the Brazilian media in general (although he expresses his hatred much more explicitly than Lula) and has a well-known resentment toward TV Globo, Brazil’s leading television network. This was evident when a witness mentioned him during a Globo news report about Marielle Franco's assassination, prompting an angry outburst from him. This incident aside, his distaste for Globo is driven by its supposed leftist slant, which contrasts with his politics. Throughout his presidency, Bolsonaro frequently mocked Globo, circulated an edited image of its logo superimposed with a sewer
, and even made threats to deny its broadcasting license renewal.note
Back in The '90s he actually defended Hugo Chávez (being that they're both military figures who entered politics and defended/launched coups, eventually leading both their countries) and a more statist economic policy, with the government having a key role in national development and owning key sectors of the economy (which was actually the policy of the Brazilian military regime after its more liberal, smaller-government early years), even voting in Congress against privatizations, but that's all in the past now, even because the Right was only reborn in Brazil and in the world after embracing capitalism and the free market.
Much like former Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte on the other side of the globe (with whom he also shares a similar history of controversial statements), he is an extremely hot topic not just in Brazil but abroad too — two of his most well-known detractors are Elliot Page and Stephen Fry, who view him as someone who threatens the rights of minorities, especially members of the queer community. He himself sees Leonardo DiCaprio as something of an Arch-Enemy. His supporters say that his policies run contrary to one who seeks to establish a fascist regime, while critics at best didn't necessarily believe he would implement a dictatorship but thought that his policies would backfire regarding environmental issues and granting access to weapons to anyone would have a net effect of increasing violence.
In 2022, Bolsonaro would run against Lula da Silva for re-election to the presidency. It was found that during the trial that sentenced Lula, the judge, Sergio Moro (who would go on to become Bolsonaro's Minister of Justice) exchanged Telegram messages with the prosecution, essentially telling them how to get a guilty verdict, which resulted in Brazil's Supreme Court declaring him biased and nullifying the whole case, allowing Lula to run for public office again.note The initial results were inconclusive, with neither side securing a majority vote, thus necessitating a second round of voting some weeks later. The second round narrowly went to Lula,note making him president for a third term. Bolsonaro refused to accept the election results and concede defeat, instead leaving Brazil for the United States. On January 8, 2023, in a parallel to the 2021 attack on the United States Capitol and after spending months camping outside barracks in the attempt to secure a military coup to keep him in power (and, indeed, Bolsonaro would later on be convicted of planning and attempting one), supporters of Bolsonaro stormed the seats of the three main branches of government buildings in protest, carrying out several acts of vandalism.
Jair Bolsonaro has appeared in the following works:
- The Eagle Down Under: He actually pulls a military coup against president Michel Temer in an Alternate History scenario where Brazil is nuked by Islamic terrorists. Thankfully he fails though.
- O Candidato Honesto 2, released shortly before the 2018 election, has a thinly veiled parody of Bolsonaro in Pedro Rebento, a right-wing candidate which among other references loves to do a Finger Gun.
- Jair Bolsonaro, as well as his sons like Eduardo Bolsonaro, have appeared as recurring characters in the animations of YouTuber André Guedes, who created animations covering most of Bolsonaro's controversies from his candidacy to his state after leaving the presidency and being replaced by Lula, often being portrayed as a form of joke.
- In 2020, the rock band Detonautas made a protest song against his government titled Micheque, a satire with deposits of checks worth 89 thousand reais that would have been made by FabrĂcio Queiroz to the then first lady of the country, Michelle Bolsonaro, discovered in an investigation into an alleged scheme. The song contains audio tracks of Jair Bolsonaro as well as mentions of his sons.
- He appeared in some Charges.com.br animations in the late 2010s, notably making his debut in one of the episodes of Tobby Entrevista during the period of his candidacy.
- Bolsonaro was the main focus of two Mundo Canibal episodes. The first one being "Bolsonarinho - O Brinquedo Assassino" from 2019 where it is shown a parody commercial of a killer doll based on him that shoots real bullets from his fingers to kill people who are against his controversial views as well as burning down the Amazon. The second, "Bolsonarinho Atleta VS Covid-19" from 2020, alludes to his comment minimizing the Covid-19 pandemic, claiming to be immune due to his history as an athlete.