By 2018, however, a new conservative common sense had reduced the redistributive functions of the Brazilian state to a demonic form of corruption or communism exercised by the PT to maintain power at all costs. Bolsonaro and his allies described the achievements of Lula and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, as corrupt and immoral. Bolsonaro's victory thus came to signify not only the undoing of a moderate social democratic legacy, but also the neutralization of its basic premise, namely that the federal government can and should act to improve the lives of the majority of the population.

Bolsonaro's election was preceded by a Dantesque fire that destroyed the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, one of the great works undertaken during the government of Getúlio Vargas, the authoritarian populist leader who laid the Whatsapp Mobile Number List Brazil between the 1930s and 1930s. 1950. The fire, which consumed pieces of enduring national pride and importance – a large part of the country's cultural heritage – did not have many repercussions among Brazil's elite. At best, the fire served as a pathetic metaphor for what Bolsonaro's agenda, an essentially elitist project cloaked in fiery populism, sought to achieve:

The complete destruction of the legacy of the post-1930 state. One of Bolsonaro's first acts after assuming was to close the Ministry of Labor, that was at the center of Vargas's political project. In this sense, Bolsonaro's project continues the one implemented by the unelected and illegitimate government of Michel Temer, who came to power through a parliamentary coup that removed Rousseff in 2016. Temer launched an open attack on the foundations of the Brazilian Welfare State. , destroying the labor code and passing a constitutional amendment that capped federal spending, along