Context:
In 2016, the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff was a brutal shock for Brazilian democracy. An aftershock was the elimination of her predecessor, Lula, from the following presidential race in 2018 while the polls indicated that he was clearly the frontrunner: the Workers’ Party was thus out of the race. The consequence was the victory, not of the right, but of the far right. Indeed, Brazilian democracy has been under threat since Jair Bolsonaro’s inauguration on January 1st, 2019. It was well known that the new president was nostalgic for the military dictatorship Brazil had undergone for twenty years; today, he even wants to celebrate the 1964 coup. The execution of Marielle Franco, an activist fighting against police brutality in the favelas, in retrospect looks like a harbinger of the state violence that has increased since. Even before the election, Bolsonaro was (in)famous for his racist, sexist, and homophobic comments, and the imaginary “gay kit” even increased his popularity. In addition, putting Paulo Guedes in charge of the economy confirmed that the president had rallied the neoliberal ideology of the Chicago Boys who defined General Pinochet’s rule. But it is not always easy to relate these different aspects.
The recent measures against sociology and philosophy in public universities that have been announced by the minister of education, and supported by the president, may seem surprising in a country whose motto, Order and Progress, adorning the national flag, is borrowed from the philosopher, and founder of sociology, Auguste Comte. However, these measures clarify the connection between cultural and ideological attacks from the new regime. This international petition soon to be available in several languages has been signed already by over 1,000 academics, from more than 40 countries and 30 disciplines, by professional associations or their presidents (the president of LASA, Latin American Studies Association, Lynn Stephens, and the vice-president, Mara Viveros Vigoya, the president of the Brazilian Anthropological Association, ABA, Maria Filomena Gregori ; l’Association française de sociologie, l’Association des sociologues de l’enseignement supérieur, Die Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie, The European Sociological Association, The Australian Sociological Association, AtGender, the network The Gender International, the Italian gender network GIFTS, etc.). This text emphasizes the democratic, as well as economic issues in this anti-intellectual populism.
