Anti-environmentalism and proto-authoritarian populism in Brazil: Bolsonaro and the defence of global agri-business

Abstract

This article aims to understand how anti-environmentalism connects with the conservative, authoritarian and populist discourse of Brazilian far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. Indeed, we argue that anti-environmentalism is one of the critical factors for understanding the postures and practices of Bolsonarism. We analyse 852 speech acts, drawn from all statements involving environmental issues made by Bolsonaro and three Brazilian ministers over a 14 month period between 2018 and 2019. Our analysis offers two major contributions: a) we situate the contours of authoritarian populism in the Global South (Brazil), shifting the gaze that has hitherto been focused on Europe and the USA, and, above all; b) through focus on the texts of the leader we develop a discursive approach to the understanding of populism and anti-environmentalism. Our results show that Bolsonaro adopts authoritarian measures to defend global agribusiness, in addition to denying or minimising environmental problems. .