Right-wing populism

Marielle Franco was Brazil’s most prominent advocate and defender of human rights. A year after Franco was shot dead, her followers continue to mourn and demand answers from the government as to the murky circumstances of her murder.

In his inauguration address on Tuesday, Brazi’s new President Jair Bolsonaro said his election had freed Latin America’s largest nation from “socialism and political correctness.”

In addition to sparking public violence, political divisions have cut deeply into the private lives of Brazilian families. One week after Brazil voted in the far-right Jair Bolsonaro as their next president, reporter Catherine Osborn met up with a 35-year-old banker from Rio de Janeiro named Raquel to speak about how the election had affected her relationships.

Jair Bolsonaro’s rise from fringe candidate to Brazil’s next president has, of course, been likened to Trump’s rise from reality TV star to the White House. But Bolsonaro makes Trump look like Mr. Rogers.  

Jair Bolsonaro’s campaign has spread deceitful and misleading news debunked by fact-checkers. Brazil’s electoral courts planned to take measures to curb the spread of fake news, but they underestimated its impact, and the measures hardly came to fruition.