À base do medo: a política do pânico moral na comunicação on-line da direita radical no Brasil

Abstract

This thesis analyzes discourses produced by supporters of the radical right in Brazil, gathered in an online community supporting President Jair Bolsonaro, during the period from 2019 to 2021, focusing on discussing the role of moral panics in the political-communicative actions of this spectrum, at the peak of its political rise. Considering that online networks were fundamental to the organization and political struggle of the Brazilian radical right during this period, the discursive climate of permanent crisis forged in these spaces was investigated, in order to better understand the processes of mobilization, engagement, and organization that involved the supporters/sympathizers of bolsonarism. In this sense, the ethnographic method was used to identify, monitor, and analyze different topics disseminated over time, in search of discursive patterns. The results suggest that the panic politics enacted did not solely aim for effects in the realm of moralities but also in (anti)politics, traversing both the dimensions of sexuality, race, and gender, as well as the patriotic defense of the nation, upon which campaigns for democratic rupture and disintegration of factual truth were anchored. A relevant finding regarding this dynamic is that the panic discourses fostered, for the most part, presented themselves detached from reality, lacking factual basis, without proof or concrete evidence, intentionally produced to affect and destabilize the public. In this direction, narratives of threats to the future and to the innocence of children were intensely explored, stemming from a systematic struggle for what they called the "desquerdização" of the nation. With all this, the thesis identified that the political actions of the Brazilian radical right capitalized on the online ecosystem to exploit, in the absence of regulation or external limits applied to platforms, lies, hostility against divergence, drastic measures, generalization, and extreme polarization to manipulate affections and relationships of belonging. The research lasted approximately 30 months, analyzing an exclusive and open virtual community of supporters of President Bolsonaro, which had up to 42.000 subscribers, hosted on the Telegram platform.