Jair Bolsonaro campaigned as a murderous, homophobic, anti-feminist, declaring open season on the organized working class, the left, and the Amazon rainforest.  He won election in the wake of the shipwreck of the Workers Party (PT), after its successor presidents Lula and Dilma were forced to the sidelines. Can Bolsonaro put through a neo-liberal, politically repressive program with little popular appeal? Can the PT remake itself? Is democracy or military rule in the offing?

Pedro Paulo Zahluth Bastos, a specialist on Brazilian political economy in the twentieth century, has focused his work  in recent years on the rise and fall of the PT, the ascent of Bolsonaro, and Bolsonaro’s  political prospects.