Supported by Evangelicals Angry with the Left and Its Anti-Family Attacks, Jair Bolsonaro Is Elected Brazilian President

By Julio Severo

In a report titled “Brazil Election: How Jair Bolsonaro Turned Crisis into Opportunity,” the New York Times summed up very well the reasons that led to the impressive victory of Jair Bolsonaro against a socialist candidate who advocated homosexual indoctrination of children.

Jair Bolsonaro and Silas Malafaia

Giving prominence to Pentecostal televangelist Silas Malafaia as the most important support to Bolsonaro, the New York Time said,

Had the blade slashed a bit more of Jair Bolsonaro’s abdomen, the evangelical preacher who came to see him in the hospital might have had to prepare a eulogy about his friend’s presidential hopes being dashed by the same plague of violence that fueled his stunning rise.

Instead, when he saw Mr. Bolsonaro in intensive care last month, the preacher, Silas Malafaia, who is enormously popular in Brazil, saw fit to crack a joke.

“Look what God did!” Mr. Malafaia recalls telling the candidate, who was dazed after undergoing numerous procedures to stitch up his intestinal tract and other organs. “You were stabbed, and now all the other candidates are complaining about all the television coverage you’re getting.”

Before the knife attack last month, Mr. Bolsonaro had already begun to look like an indomitable phenomenon in Brazilian politics, campaigning in angry outbursts against corruption and violence that largely matched the national mood.

But far from blunting his rise, the near-fatal stabbing crystallized Mr. Bolsonaro’s conviction that only he could straighten out a country reeling from years of economic trouble, corruption scandals and a record-high wave of bloodshed, the pastor said.

“I think it gave him a greater sense of purpose,” Mr. Malafaia said. “He said, ‘More than ever, my will to help these people, to rescue our nation, has increased.’”

The years of economic trouble, corruption scandals and a record-high wave of bloodshed are the legacy of the Workers’ Party, a socialist party whose main concern is to promote the typical left-wing agenda: murder of pre-born babies through legal abortion, homosexual indoctrination of children, etc.

The Huffington Post also recognized that the main base of Bolsonaro is evangelical:

Bolsonaro earned support from across Brazil’s political and social spectrum among Brazilians tired of corruption and fearful of violence. But his strongest support came from a growing conservative evangelical movement that shares his views on social issues.

In a report titled “Far-right, pro-Israel candidate Jair Bolsonaro wins Brazilian presidency,” the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post confirmed it by saying:

The live broadcast of Bolsonaro’s words was preceded by a prayer led by lawmaker, pastor and gospel singer Magno Malta, underscoring Bolsonaro’s ties to evangelical churches that backed him for supporting their conservative social agenda. Brazil's rapidly expanding evangelical congregations have created a conservative political force, which Bolsonaro tapped into by decrying sex education in schools and pushing back against gay rights.

Even though Bolsonaro is Catholic, there is a positive similarity between him and Trump: the main support for both came from evangelicals. Trump, who is an evangelical, got its presidential victory thanks to evangelicals.

Yet, there is also another similarity, albeit negative. A self-proclaimed “strategist,” whom eventually Trump expelled from the White House for opportunism and for thinking that he was the cause of Trump’s victory, has a counterpart in Bolsonaro’s case, and both are adherents of Islamic occultist René Guénon.

Antagonizing (something that the self-proclaimed “strategist” in the case of Trump never tried to do) evangelicals, the self-proclaimed “strategist” in the case of Bolsonaro has said, “Evangelical churches have done more harm to Brazil than the entire left.” Does it mean that he wants Bolsonaro to fight more now evangelical churches than the fight he had against the left?

Yet, just as evangelicals, more than strategists, gave the victory to Trump, in Brazil also evangelicals, more than strategists, gave the victory to Bolsonaro.

The New York Times concluded,

Veteran Brazilian political operators marveled at how a campaign strategy that seemed so haphazard was beating everyone else’s. If it looked messy and improvisational from the outside, Mr. Malafaia said, it’s because it was. “Look, I’m going to say something, and you can laugh,” Mr. Malafaia said, adding that Mr. Bolsonaro and his campaign “had no real strategy.”

Evangelicals and their prayers have more power than strategy do.