Road (radical) on the right: an analysis of the rise of bolsonarism as a populist political phenomenon

After 14 years of left-wing hegemony of the Workers' Party (PT), Brazil is today witnessing the rise of a conservative far-right wave, led mainly by the current president of the Republic, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, of the Liberal Social Party (PSL). Rather than making a positive or negative critique of Jair Bolsonaro's government, this article aims to analyze the main reasons that led to the election of the PSL politician, with the aim of understanding pocketship as a political phenomenon. Based on the theoretical assumptions of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's thinking about populism, we argue that Bolsonaro's rise does not occur at random. Before that, it is the result of a process by which a hegemonic populist discourse of the far right was constructed, in the context of a context of economic recession, popular discredit in national democratic political institutions and ideological polarization