Brazilian “hooligans” and some current anti-democratic practices

Abstract

The paper analyzes some of the contemporary Brazilian anti-democratic practices, notably in the period from 2018 to 2022. The central objective is to diagnose one of the main misconceptions that still resonates in the Brazilian social imaginary: that in that period the temporary occupant of the Federal Executive played within the “four lines of the constitution”. In order to understand this fable, one goes through (i) the theory of rational ignorance (Brennan, 2016), which provides the theoretical basis for the analyses; (ii) the argument that economic new liberalism has a facet that is incompatible with the democratic rule of law, although it presents a “democratic veneer”; (iii) a concrete example of the limits of democracy in confronting anti-democratic practices in the inquiry n. 4.781/DF, still pending in Brazilian Supreme Court (STF in Portuguese). To this end, this paper uses the theoretical documentary research and the technique of systematic literature review to substantiate the absolute incompatibility between certain ideas and practices with the democratic rule of law. One of the results allows us to state that economic new liberalism has a significant share of responsibility for anti-democratic practices within the “four lines of the constitution”. In conclusion, it is argued that the mentioned inquiry offers necessary institutional answers, however, insufficient to overcome a fable that still hovers in the present time.