Informational chaos as a strategy of Bolsonaro’s government to dismantle socio-environmental policies

Abstract

This text constitutes an essay with interpretations about the relation between the communicative strategies and the socio-environmental policies of Jair Bolsonaro’s government. From discussions about the so called “post-truth era” in the context of strengthening conservative-neoliberalism, we highlight how the current presidential administration relies on informational chaos as modus operandi that enables the formulation and propagation of self-defense narratives directed mainly to its support base and which confuse the public debate on contentious issues. Regarding the socio-environmental area, we observe discourses by federal government actors based on climate denialism and the “anti-globalist” narrative to justify destructive policies against nature and the traditional communities, whose origins can be traced back to the anti-environmentalism and anti-indigenism of the Civil-Military Dictatorship’s national-developmentalist project. In view of this, the last section critically addresses some ideas pronounced in these agents’ discourses and the adopted policies to the environment and the traditional communities, especially the indigenous peoples, with the environmental justice as normative guiding perspective. As preliminary conclusions, we consider the employment of contradictory discourses, sometimes directed to the electoral base, sometimes to the international community that defends sustainable development. Simultaneously, it is observable the promotion of policies aimed at dismantling institutions and legislations for the protection of nature and socio-environmental rights, in addition to encouraging predatory extractivist practices.