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As the corruption crisis and the eco-
nomic downturn has played out over
the past four years, Bolsonaro has found
his popularity spiraling upward. Highly
active on social media, he has built upon
the base of police and military voters
that has kept him in Congress for almost
three decades. Polls suggest 60% of his
supporters are under-34s, who are often
highly disillusioned but too young to
remember the military regime. Indeed,
public opinion has actually turned away
from democracy. Only 56% of Brazilians
now say it is “always the best form of
government.” Small but noisy protests
calling for military rule have sprung up.
“Although there is a certain popular
outcry for military intervention, from
what I see, no one in the armed forces
wants to launch it, as for us it would be
an adventure,” Bolsonaro says. “I think
politicians and the people have to ind a

solution for Brazil in the democratic way.”

He does, however, plan to signiicantly

increase the role of armed forces in

government and society. “We intend to

have 15 ministers, and about ive or six

would be generals, for sure,” he says, citing

defense, transportation, infrastructure

and education. “You have to show that

you want a government with seriousness.”

By convention, military personnel have

largely stayed away from top ministerial

roles since the dictatorship. He also

recently proposed increasing the number

of Supreme Court Justices from 11 to 21,

in a move that echoes a 1965 diktat of the

dictatorship.

Can he conirm he would not instigate

a military regime if elected President?

“No, there is no such risk. There is no

such risk,” Bolsonaro says. If elected, he

insists, the next presidential elections

would happen as normal in 2022. “The

only modiication I would make is to

introduce paper voting, to end electronic

voting. We distrust the electronic vote

here. That’s the only diference.” So

committed is he to democracy, he adds,

that he is considering a “political reform

proposal to limit a President to one term

only, beginning with mine.”

But the ive portraits remain on his wall.

Under that regime, nuns were raped. Men

were castrated. Mothers were mutilated

in the presence of their children. In 2014,

Brazil’s National Truth Commission found

the regime responsible for the deaths or

disappearances of 434 of countrymen

and the torturing of at least 1,843 others.

But because of an amnesty law passed

in 1979, no one has ever been convicted.

For Bolsonaro, the regime was justiied

to maintain order and avoid a communist

“dictatorship of the proletariat” in the

midst of the Cold War. He advances

the revisionist notion that Brazil’s

military regime was not a dictatorship,

and suggests there was no substantial

censorship of the press. “Nothing here

was controlled,” he says.

The hundreds killed under the regime

were combatants in a war, he argues.

“[The U.S.] did not kill anyone when you

went to Afghanistan? Here it happened,

it was combat,” he says. “Look, you killed

[Osama] bin Laden. Why did you not

catch bin Laden alive?”

I begin to suggest the distinction

might be in a dictatorship killing its own

citizens. “No, no, no, no. What is the

diference? What is the diference?” he

says. Brazil is not the only country that

had to take such extreme measures, he

argues. Chile’s Pinochet, for example,

who killed 2,279 opponents, “did what

‘This is probably

one of the biggest

tests Brazil’s

democracy has

faced.’

Anthony Pereira, director, Brazil

Institute, King’s College London

Bolsonaro and one of his sons, Eduardo,

in June. In 2011, he said he would rather

have a dead son than a gay one