The neofascist management of Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil: From the purification of life to the normalization of death

Cavalcante, S. M.

This article aims to develop the argument that the strength of scientific denialism (negationism) and the normalization of death in the conduct of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil were possible in recent years insofar as it has been attributed to the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, by diverse social interests and agents, the role of leadership and authority responsible for the purification of politics, the economy and the nation. His strategy of "to make live and to let die" found active or passive support in a significant part of Brazilian society because Bolsonaro is able to establish himself in this pole of purification and restoration of a supposedly lost-regime of truth. The research encompasses diverse textual productions and official and informal statements by the social agents in question. To analyze them, social theories, especially in sociology, were used in order to identify the agents, ideologies and discursive that produce meanings about life and death. As a result, it is possible to affirm that the government's objective of making the virus circulate, outlined as an implicit and explicit goal since the beginning of the pandemic, demanded a normalization of preventable deaths, which only the neo-fascist language, which is capable of producing an alternative meaning of life more authentic and purer, it has been able to achieve so far. © 2021 Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos. All rights reserved.