Affective Political Mobilization Motivated By Religion: Engagement of Evangelicals in Brazil

Conceptions of how societies should be organized have become more incisive in recent years. Public arguments for the political coordination of social relations seem to have lost some of their relevance in the face of discursive performances that are less focused on content and understanding, and more on the mobilization of affections - whether positive or negative. Apparently, the democratic ideal anchored in a public sphere centered on reasonably overcoming disagreements with the force of the best argument (Habermas) has been losing ground to a plurality of projects anchored in fear, conflict, physical force and even the expectation of intervention by transcendent powers. In place of propositional argument comes the mobilization of affections, generally negative, such as insecurity, fear and hatred. But the appeal to transcendent powers also increases. The text sets out to analyze the content, strategies and rationale used in the disputes over these conceptions of political action. It analyses proposals and justifications for the changes considered necessary in central dimensions of society and the “dangers” pointed out to politically mobilize the affections of the population described as “Christian”. The text is the result of an analysis of texts published between 2019 and 2024 in the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper and, to a lesser extent, in virtual environments that make up platform capitalism. Special attention has been paid to those conservative evangelical sectors that have joined the new right, with its anti-communist militancy, its truncated neoliberalism, adding to it the defence of a project that can be called Christocracy, a kind of theocratized nationalist messianism, in the name of Jesus Christ. Although the empirical reference comes from Brazil, it deals with a widespread phenomenon.