Conservative’s Star Rises in Brazil as Polarizing Views Tap Into Discontent

[WestVirginiaRebel]

NY Times:

RIO DE JANEIRO — In one verbal assault from the podium of Brazil’s Congress, Jair Bolsonaro told a fellow legislator that she was not worthy of being raped by him. “You don’t merit that,” said Mr. Bolsonaro, a former army parachutist.

 

In another episode, the congressman described his abhorrence of homosexuality. “I would be incapable of loving a gay son,” said Mr. Bolsonaro, 61, the father of five children. “I prefer that he die in an accident.”

 

Then Mr. Bolsonaro justified his vote last month for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff by praising Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, who oversaw the torture of dissidents during Brazil’s military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985.

 

Colonel Ustra, who died last year at the age of 83, embodied “the dread of Dilma Rousseff,” Mr. Bolsonaro proclaimed, his reference clear: Ms. Rousseff, an operative in a guerrilla group in her youth, repeatedly endured brutal torture sessions at the hands of Colonel Ustra’s colleagues.

 

Such venomous statements might signal the end of a politician’s career in some places. But not in Brazil, where Mr. Bolsonaro’s rising national prominence reflects a veering to the right and growing vitriol as disillusionment with the political establishment grows.

 

He is already one of the most influential politicians from Rio de Janeiro, where in 2014 he was elected to a seventh four-year term in Congress with more votes than any other legislator. Now, Mr. Bolsonaro is surging among those eyeing the presidency in 2018.

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The Donald Trump of Brazil?