Usos da Leitura e Populismo: os livros e a eleição de Bolsonaro

Based on the principles of discourse analysis, we present an overview of the bookstore scenario in Brazil that promoted titles and authors that composed the new right-wing electoral and editorial segment. In the elections in which Bolsonaro became president, some of these titles played a relevant role in his campaign. We are dedicated to describing one of those books whose title and author were honored by Bolsonaro in his victory “live”, after winning the elections. Alongside the Bible, the Federal Constitution and Winston Churchill’s biography, this book indicates Bolsonaro’s populist anti-intellectualism. Published by a major Brazilian publisher in 2013, Olavo de Carvalho’s The Minimum You Need to Know to Not Be an Idiot immediately became a bestseller, contributing decisively to the Bolsonarist campaign, owing to its rhetoric being riddled with bad language, anti-left, neoconservative in manners and ultraliberal in economics.