Bolsonaro presents himself as the "slave overseer" of the black and poor population.

On the Roda Viva program, Jair Bolsonaro tried to blame the enslavement of Black people on Black people themselves when he said that there was a slave trade from Africa. But this trade only existed because of the large-scale use of slave labor in gold and silver mines and on sugarcane and cotton plantations, and later, in the coffee plantations of the colonial elites of the American continent and their sponsors in the European mercantile system.

Insisting on denying the responsibility of colonial elites for slavery, and demonstrating his recognized ignorance of history, he said that "the Portuguese never set foot in Africa." Portugal not only colonized Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde, which speak Portuguese, but the richest and most powerful elites in colonial and imperial Brazil were precisely those of the slave traders.

Pretending to be naive, he denies the historical debt of slavery, saying he never "enslaved anyone." He doesn't own slaves, but the white elite that holds economic power in Brazil only managed to accumulate wealth and maintain this privileged position because they exploited slave labor in the past and continue to exploit Black men and women in the present, offering them the lowest wages on the market.

The same white elite that in the past bought slaves in Africa and exploited them on their large estates, today continues to adopt labor in conditions similar to slavery. Many of these slave-owning businessmen were punished during the Lula and Dilma governments, but the victory of the impeachment coup legalized slave labor in the country. These sectors constitute part of Bolsonaro's economic and political support.

In reality, Brazil's structural racism has always been officially covered up with the worn-out cloth of "racial democracy." The fascist candidate now intends to inaugurate a new phase, that of officially acknowledged racism, state racism. What was always done in the realm of private relations or in routine police actions, but officially denied, is now intended to be publicly acknowledged; racism without fear of a vote for Bolsonaro. He is not a candidate for president of all Brazilians, but to act as the "overseer" of the black and poor population.

The quota policy was harshly attacked by him, who tries to appear "indignant" about the supposed "injustice of benefiting poor black students to the detriment of poor white students." He pretends not to know that President Dilma also approved quotas for public schools, which benefit both black and white students from low-income families. What Bolsonaro really defends is the expulsion of black and indigenous populations from universities and their confinement to favelas and peripheries as targets of extermination actions. He uses the flimsy argument of meritocracy, as if there could be equality of opportunity between a poor boy from the favela and a rich boy from the south zone.

Individually, Bolsonaro would be nothing more than another racist and misogynistic buffoon if he hadn't been transformed into a spokesperson for a segment of the Brazilian population that has always been racist, misogynistic, and deeply reactionary. He is neither a leader nor a "myth," but merely an instrument of powerful sectors to oust Lula, crush democracy and the left, and extinguish any policy of social equality. He is a fascist willing to transform Brazil into an American neocolony and a defenseless prey of the most savage and predatory capitalism.