A “war on science?” Far-right movements and the disputes over epistemic authority in Brazil

Abstract

Current research on post-truth politics often portrays a war waged by anti-science populists against pure, truth-seeking scientists. This critical framework was replicated in Brazil, where the former President Jair Bolsonaro was accused of neglecting scientific expertise to promote alternative treatments for the COVID-19 pandemic. Bolsonaro was deemed responsible for replacing sound scientific evidence with religious and ideological claims, resulting in many deaths. In this article, we investigate public controversies surrounding chloroquine (HCQ) and indicate that Bolsonaro’s discourses were not based on anti-science statements, as the literature on post-truth politics often emphasizes. Instead, Bolsonaro invoked the symbols of modern science and claimed to have the actual experts on his side. Thus, we argue that to understand the challenge posed by far-right populists to scientific institutions, we need to employ analytical instruments that help us complicate easy demarcations of facts and stark binaries of science/anti-science.