The day Fernanda (not her real name) discovered that her parents were Bolsonarists was left in a state of shock. When there were just a few months left before the 2022 presidential elections, her mother accused Lula of wanting to “sexualize children,” one of the main issues of the fake news of Bolsonarism. “I refused to accept that my parents were extreme right-wing. I had to go to a psychoanalyst to get over it. Politics divided the family,” says this 44-year-old woman, who lives in Rio de Janeiro.
The experience of André Muggiati – 55 years old, journalist and documentary filmmaker – is, however, radically different from that of Fernanda: “My family and most of my friends did not fall into the cult of Bolsonaro.” But Muggiati, who was born in the city of Assis, in the interior of the conservative state of São Paulo, acknowledges that there is still a “systematic persecution of left-wing people in largely Bolsonarists”.
