Bolsonaro’s Brazil Faces Risk of “Idiocracy”, Says Major French Newspaper

(Idiocracy Trailer)

By Arkady Petrov

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil, governed by President Jair Bolsonaro, is in danger of becoming an “Idiocracy”, says an article published in leading French newspaper “Le Monde”.

The publication assesses the president’s intellectual level and compares the country’s situation to the film “Idiocracy”, a comedy in which the United States would become a country dominated by ignorance. The Brazilian idiocracy is the government of the ignorant, the idiots.

The text is a reference to an article by journalist Hélio Schwartsman published in the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, questioning Bolsonaro’s intellect.

According to the French newspaper, Brazil’s state of affairs raises concerns “connected to Bolsonaro’s intellectual level, as head of state since January 1st, and to the perpetual mayhem caused by the president, feeding on trivial and vulgar controversy on social networks, attacking culture, social sciences and humanities, cutting university budgets and sustaining a blatant obsession with phallic issues to the detriment of progress of crucial reforms.”

Le Monde further notes the controversy involving the sons of Jair Bolsonaro and the government’s “guru”, Olavo de Carvalho, who “disclosed the assumption that the Earth is flat.”

According to Le Monde, questioning the government’s rationality could be dangerous. “The intellectual level of Bolsonaro is questioned by the press and some of his countrymen, but the chaos he maintains may be part of his political strategy,” it says.

Le Monde is one of the principal French newspapers of record, alongside publications Libération, and Le Figaro.

(See original “Le Monde” post, here)