A demonização do outro: ativismo evangélico conservador na esfera pública técnico-midiatizada

Abstract

The Devil is an ancient figure in Brazilian society, installed in Brazil through European Catholicism in the period of colonial invasion. His symbolic figure was used to demonize the myths, nature cults and ways of being of native populations and African people. The Brazilian religious matrix is formed in syncretism around the Eurocentric domination of Catholicism and the Portuguese crown. The Devil, meaning, the "demonizing speech", resurfaces in the history and it gains specifics contours depending on the conjunctural demands. Following this thread, evangelicals have been working in the public sphere in a controversial way and aligned to a conservative agenda in-mid 2010’s. In elapsing of the political crisis that culminated in the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, the political imprisonment of former President Lula and the election of Jair Bolsonaro to the Brazilian presidency in 2018, conservative evangelicalism members were a fundamental part on it, as a political force. Besides being, according to analysts, the "faithful balance" for the election of Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro’s political front bench grows in every legislature in the National Brazilian Congress. Their approaches on the digital platforms build public controversies, many times it becomes the subject of disputes around moralities and human rights. In addition, the performativity, in its radicalized form, is inherent to divide world between ‘’good’’ and "evil" stresses the public debate, especially on the internet, creating controversies around race and gender identities, political and social guidelines, by which the republican debate is impaired in favor of a moralistic enthusiasm where the image of the other that is different is stigmatized (women, LGBTQIA+, Afro-Brazilian religions, scientists, among others minorities). The appeal for moral panic at specific junctures is moved on digital platforms by interest groups in favor of a conservative agenda linked to the political far right, seeking to influence public opinion in favor of their agendas, as it has occurred in the election of Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency of the Republic in 2018. This study aim is to understand the conservative evangelical activism in its political performance in the technical-mediatized public space. We used the intersectional approach (Lélia Gonzalez), in addition to the contributions of Paula Montero (Controversias Publicas), Richard Miskolci (espaço público técnico-midiatizado) in line with the methodological pluralism suggested by Pierre Bourdieu.