During the Carnival holidays of 2019, Jair Bolsonaro—still in the nascent months of his presidency—took to Twitter to share a video from street celebrations in São Paulo that he found troubling. The uncensored clip showed one man urinating on another while dancing on the roof of a newspaper stall, about which the president urged his millions of followers to “comment and draw [their] own conclusions.” Doubling down on the absurdity of his previous tweet, he then asked his social media audience “what is a golden shower?”
During this year’s celebrations—which came to an end today at noon—many were waiting with bated breath to see what would be on the president’s mind as he took time off from running the country to relax in the beach town of Guarujá. As it turned out, Jair Bolsonaro did take to social media, but on a decidedly more sinister topic.
As reported by Estadão‘s Vera Magalhães, President Jair Bolsonaro shared two videos on his personal WhatsApp Messenger account pertaining to a demonstration called for March 15 to protest against Congress and the Supreme Court. The clips use emotive imagery—such as Mr. Bolsonaro’s stabbing on the campaign trail in 2018—and talk about the Brazilian people’s need to “take back Brazil” and “rescue” it.
Far-right Bolsonaro-supporting groups involved in the organizations for the March 15 rally have openly called for the impeachment of the heads of Congress and Supreme Court Justices, as well as celebrating the involvement of the Armed Forces in this “movement.”
While the golden shower incident contained an element of prudish naïveté, of a conservative man in his 60s struggling to get to grips with Twitter, this year’s Carnival social media story is altogether more sinister, with the fueling of such discord between branches of power being—at...
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