Questions that need answering, beyond the "So what?"

What makes reporters from corporate media outlets (supposedly ordinary people, like you and me), even if their agencies are now eventually in political opposition to the president, still manage to normalize a large part of Bolsonaro's blatantly psychopathic and criminal acts? 

Why this extreme tolerance? Why are people only now asking – surprised, astonished? – how the president is capable of so many sordid acts and words, when he has always openly demonstrated, throughout his thirty years of public life, his sick and perverse nature? Why this insane tolerance, from an entire society, in the face of the acts of this harbinger of death and human indifference, who projects onto all of us a voracious, morbidly prejudiced and hostile society? Why does this society, this country, not allow itself/not allow itself to be touched by the starkness of the facts exposed in broad daylight, without any embarrassment, which from the beginning (and also during the presidential campaign) unabashedly revealed the level of psychopathy of the individual who wanted to occupy the presidential chair? 

From the "immemorial" times when he first occupied a seat in parliament, Bolsonaro has never hidden who he is. He has never used disguises; he has always been ostentatious. He spoke of death, torture, racism, and misogyny with the coldness of someone who trivializes evil. Is it, then, a deliberate blindness, an insistence on not seeing the obvious, that prevents this sick society from perceiving – and reacting! – to the accelerated, undeniable advance of the country towards the abyss of fascist authoritarianism?

Any reading about the emergence of governments historically labeled "fascist" (Mussolini in Italy; Franco in Spain; Salazar in Portugal, among others) makes us realize how these phenomena and processes present very similar characteristics, so strikingly similar that, at a certain point, we ask ourselves: who are we even talking about?

I will not elaborate in this article on aspects related to the economic alliance between the fascist government and the establishment – ​​of which the corporate media is an essential part, constituting a kind of sadistic and suicidal pact. But it is worth briefly illustrating some other similarities between the current Brazilian government and more basic concepts of fascism. This authoritarian regime can be described as an amalgam of feelings of revolt with reactionary ideas and values ​​(Reich), whose main characteristics could be listed as: anti-communism; anti-politics; nationalism; anti-intellectualism; and misogyny. As if that were not enough, we can also add the permanent use of strategies to mobilize supporters, among which the creation of the "enemy" is an excellent example, in order to guarantee a process of militarization and the constant outbreak of social violence. 

There are several other factors and characteristics that converge on our current scenario, some of them related to the role of the left in the context immediately preceding the outbreak of the fascist regime, but this topic can be explored on another occasion. There is, however, one element that I wish to highlight. This is what some authors define as the "paradox of fascism": if, on the one hand, fascist regimes are constituted by attacking the institutions of the liberal democratic state; on the other hand, it is these same 'democratic' institutions that establish bonds of complicity with the new government, guaranteeing its legitimacy of existence.

Therefore, those who still believe that the country's institutions are strong enough to contain this sick and authoritarian fury should think again. There is a great battle ahead and – history is there to show us – it is not yet certain how and who will emerge victorious.