Abstract
This study aims to understand, from a psychoanalytic point of view, the affective motions established in our social body that made possible a massive adherence to conservative speech in the 2018 presidential elections. Based on group psychology studies, on Brazilian social though authors, and research on recent events in the country, we concluded that political, moral, and economic instability ocurred mainly from the years 2013 and 2014 significantly undermined the representations that guaranteed minimal stability to the community. Facing helplessness, more regressive defense mechanisms acted within our social body, splitting it into two antagonistic extremes, that polarized it. This context of internal rupture was propitious for the emergence of paranoid discourses that seduced a large portion of the population by offering answers based on persecutory elements already considered among the masses, sustaining a hate speech directed at the enemy side.
Keywords:
Psychoanalysis; Culture; Brazil; Politics; Polarization