This week an audio was released that could sink Donald Trump in the trial of the secret papers: the former US president admits to having “highly classified” documents in his possession. In Brazil, the Superior Electoral Court decides if Jair Bolsonaro is guilty of abuse of power and disinformation. However, the two former presidents have a large number of followers willing to have them re-elected in the presidency of their countries.
This Tuesday, June 28, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) of Brazil resumed the trial against Jair Bolsonaro for attacks against the electronic voting system during a meeting with ambassadors last July. In this process, the former president faces a possible eight-year disqualification.
In addition, he is accused of crimes against humanity for spreading false information about the covid, such as denying the pandemic or ensuring that people vaccinated in the United Kingdom would develop AIDS. Trump, for his part, has been convicted of sexual abuse in the United States.
Why do these two political figures cause fascination? “There is a decline of symbolic authorities. Teachers, lawyers, the figure of the father are less and less effective. So, in this scenario, a series of characters have emerged that invite us to stop respecting what has to do with the normative space. As Orwell prophesied, fascism was going to appear under the word freedom,” Jorge Aleman, a psychoanalyst and writer specializing in populism and the extreme right, told RFI.
read alsoBolsonaro faces trial and a possible eight-year political ban
“Hate Pulses”
“Something very new is combined that makes it different from historical fascism: on the one hand, they constitute themselves as transgressors, as those who can say anything, and on the other hand, they then introduce homophobic, moralistic logic from power, and there they recover all the previous moment, conservative and fascist ”, he details.
Figures like Bolsonaro and Trump cause fascination, for example, in evangelical sectors. Last weekend saw the reception of Donald Trump at the Road Majority, a gathering of 30,000 evangelicals from the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Washington.
“From the moment the symbolic structures are perforated, substitutions arise. And one of the most powerful substitutes are these evangelical groups”, analyzes Alemán. “There is fascination, but it is really a form of identification and it is related to hate drives,” he says.
