Thursday September 6, 2018 – “O Mito” (“ THE myth”), as his supporters nicknamed him at the time, became a martyr. In the countryside at Juiz de Forain southeastern Brazil, presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro is stabbed in the stomach and collapses in front of the cameras. His attacker, Adélio Bispo de Oliveira, was saved at the last minute from the vengeful hands of the crowd by the police and placed in police custody. His lawyer then explains that his client acted “for religious reasons, of a political type” and in particular, “because of the prejudices that Bolsonaro shows every time he talks about race, religion and women”.
Far from silencing him, this assassination attempt sanctifiesoutsider a few weeks before the election, from which he emerged victorious with 55.13% of the votes collected in the second round. Despite his seven terms in Congress, the former army captain had until now never really been taken seriously by the elites. The fault – no doubt – of his outrageous outings, in dignity “Trump of the tropics”.
“Things are only going to change, unfortunately, when we launch into a civil war here, doing the job that the military regime didn’t do, killing thirty thousand people,” he declared in 1999 during an interview on TV Bandeirantes. And to directly name among these the current social democratic president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, whom he accuses of humiliating the armed forces. On this same channel, in 2011, he was pleased to have “well behaved” his children, so that there is no “no risk” that they date black women. “I would be incapable of loving a homosexual son. I would rather my son die in an accident than see him appear with a mustache,” he still confides to Playboy the same year.
An elected official despised and underestimated… wrongly
So many slip-ups which make pollsters say that he will not be able to reach the highest position and enrage his opponents… On his Facebook profile, Adélio Bispo de Oliveira regularly publishes messages critical of Jair Bolsonaro, while supporting the left, within which he campaigned between 2007 and 2014. Not enough to justify his action according to the magistrates. In 2019, the latter was finally judged irresponsible and interned in a federal prison for psychiatric care. His crime undeniably precipitated the fate of Jair Bolsonaro.
“ Brazil has very strict rules regarding hearing times during elections, reminds Jacob Blanc, associate professor of history at McGill University. Candidates have advertising spots of only nine seconds, and their on-air interventions are limited », underlines this fine connoisseur of the Latin American country. Occurring a few weeks before the election, the knife attack gave Jair Bolsonaro unexpected media coverage. And allows him to interfere in every home, while being careful not to address his ideas of reform and politics in general, continues the lecturer. Not to mention the messianic aura given to him by the unfolding of the incident and which he plays with a certain brilliance.
“Brazil above all, God above all”
Jair Bolsonaro has been immersed in Christianity since his birth. It should also have been called “Messias » (“messiah”)if the wish of his mother, who wanted to pay homage to the redeemer after a difficult pregnancy, had been respected. But “Jair”preferred by his father, in reference to the Brazilian football player Rosa Pinto, relegated this symbol to second place. Stabbed while he was literally carried on the shoulders of his supporters, the little hands who take care of his campaign during his convalescence do not fail to exploit this middle name.
The end of a myth
While Brazil is undermined by corruption scandals, in the grip of an explosion of violence – the number of homicides reached 63,880 in 2017 – and has suffered a serious economic crisis since 2014, only a miracle seems to be able to save the country. Jair Bolsonaro intends to embody this hope by choosing the slogan: “Brazil above all, God above all”. A profitable strategy which he continues to use once elected.
On the evening of his victory, he gave a speech broadcast on Record TV, a media outlet controlled by the founder of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, Edir Macedo Bezerra. “I want to first thank God, who through the hands of men and women from (the clinic) Santa Casa de Juiz de Fora and the Albert Einstein Hospital in São Paulo, left me alive”he begins, before quoting a verse from the Bible: “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (John, 8.32). From anti-system candidate to master of the Palace of Dawn, his rise does indeed have a divine aspect. But reality doesn’t take long to bring him back to Earth…
If Latin America’s largest economy regained some color at the end of his mandate, inflation was still in double digits and the number of unemployed was around 10 million when Lula returned to power. Poverty rates have jumped and hunger has increased by 73% since 2020, while 686,000 Brazilians have died from Covid-19, which Jair Bolsonaro called a “grip” throughout the pandemic. The miracle did not happen. The Brazilians give back the keys to the country to their left-wing adversary in October 2022. The descent into hell continues. This Thursday, September 11, 2025, the Supreme Court of Brazil sentences him to 27 years in prison for attempted coup d’état. Aged 70, the former president is now ineligible until 2030 and under house arrest.
