By Their Fruits: Jair Bolsonaro

Jair Bolsonaro came to power in 2018 with the slogan «Brazil above everything, God above everyone» and the support of a large part of the evangelical churches. Eight years later, the facts are no longer anyone's opinion: they are in sentences, in reports of parliamentary commissions and in Federal Police inquiries.

The word that sows

In September 2018, at a rally in Rio Branco, in Acre, Bolsonaro picked up a camera tripod as if it were a rifle and shouted: «Let's shoot the petralhada here in Acre». The crowd laughed and applauded. He said afterwards that it was a figure of speech.

Four years later, in the 2022 campaign, the figure of speech took on flesh:

• Marcelo Arruda, a municipal guard and treasurer of the Workers' Party in Foz do Iguaçu, was killed at his own fiftieth birthday party, which had the party as its theme. The penal officer Jorge Guaranho passed by the door shouting Bolsonaro's name, went away and came back armed. He was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
• Benedito Cardoso dos Santos, in Confresa, in Mato Grosso, was killed by a work colleague, a Bolsonaro supporter, after an argument about the election — with more than seventy blows of knife and axe. The perpetrator confessed and was sentenced to 14 years; the Public Prosecutor's Office stated that the crime had a political motive.
• Antônio Carlos Silva de Lima, in Cascavel, in Ceará, answered «I am» when a man came into a bar asking who voted for Lula. He was killed with a knife. The Public Prosecutor's Office wrote in the charge: «a life cut short by political disagreement».

To be fair: in 2022 Bolsonaro supporters also died, and that blood also cries out. Violence does not have a single owner. But it was not Lula who picked up a tripod and staged the shooting of his adversaries. No court has said that Bolsonaro ordered anyone killed, and this blog does not say so either. But a leader answers for what he sows.

The digital machine

The press called it the «hate cabinet»: a nucleus for producing and firing off content that operated in articulation with people close to power. The Supreme Federal Court opened the Fake News Inquiry and, later, the Digital Militias Inquiry, which led to the lifting of confidentiality, searches, blocking of accounts and suspension of monetisation. The Fake News CPI, in the Senate, described a chain with a division of labour: who produces, who replicates in mass, who finances and who gives the face. You do not block the revenue of someone who has no revenue.

The blogger Allan dos Santos, who mixed politics with the language of «spiritual warfare», had preventive arrest ordered by the Supreme Court in October 2021. He was already in the United States and did not return. And the pastor Silas Malafaia, one of the main articulators of the movement, had his passport seized by the Federal Police in 2025, in the inquiry into the pressure exerted from the United States against the Brazilian judiciary. Both deny any crime and claim to be persecuted; the denial is recorded, as are the investigations.

The bosses who commanded the vote

In 2022, the Public Labour Prosecutor's Office received 2,838 complaints of electoral harassment, against 2,137 companies and employers — almost thirteen times more than in 2018, in the great majority in favour of Bolsonaro. In Guarapuava, in Paraná, an employee was dismissed the day after the first round. In Bahia, a businesswoman asked the other employers to dismiss «without mercy» anyone who voted for Lula. The Superior Labour Court convicted business associations in Santa Catarina for pressure on workers.

The pandemic

The Pandemic CPI, in the Senate, ended in October 2021 asking for Bolsonaro to be indicted for nine crimes, among them charlatanism and crimes against humanity, for the delay in buying vaccines and for promoting remedies with no efficacy. Brazil passed 700,000 covid deaths.

The Indigenous peoples

Between 2019 and 2022, the Indigenist Missionary Council, linked to the Catholic Church, counted 795 Indigenous people murdered. Paulo Paulino Guajajara, the «Guardian of the Forest», was killed in an ambush by loggers in 2019; the indigenist Bruno Pereira and the British journalist Dom Phillips were killed in the Javari Valley in 2022. These crimes were committed by loggers, illegal miners and fishermen, not by militants. But they happened under a government that weakened FUNAI and IBAMA and promised not to demarcate one more centimetre of Indigenous land.

In the Yanomami Territory, illegal mining grew, the rivers filled with mercury and the children died of hunger and malaria — in 2022 alone, 99 children under five, from avoidable deaths. In January 2023 a public health emergency was declared, and the Federal Police opened an inquiry for genocide and failure to provide assistance, still without conclusion. The former minister Damares Alves denies any omission.

The coup

After losing in 2022, his supporters camped at the gates of the barracks and, on January 8, 2023, destroyed the Congress, the Planalto Palace and the Supreme Court. In July 2025, the Supreme Court imposed precautionary measures on him, among them the electronic ankle monitor. In September 2025, the First Panel of the STF sentenced Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years and 3 months in prison for attempted coup d'état.

«Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.»

Matthew 26:52

«Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?»

Matthew 7:16

This article is part of the series that accompanies the book The Altar and the Algorithm — How to identify the new merchants of faith. The rule is the same as in the book: separate the proven fact from the suspicion and from the defence's denial, and put the source beside each statement.

The series «By Their Fruits»

• The far right that calls itself Christian
• Donald Trump
• Jair Bolsonaro
• Eduardo and Flávio Bolsonaro
• Javier Milei
• André Ventura

Sources

• Poder360 — «Fuzilar a petralhada»: the action goes to the Justice of Acre
• SBT News — Guaranho sentenced to 20 years for the death of Marcelo Arruda
• Brasil 247 — 14 years for the perpetrator of the death of Benedito Cardoso dos Santos
• Diário do Nordeste — MPCE: «a life cut short by political disagreement»
• Congresso em Foco — Electoral harassment 13 times greater than in 2018
• Band — 795 Indigenous people murdered between 2019 and 2022 (CIMI)
• Diário do Nordeste — PF opens inquiry into the Yanomami