Demonizando as esquerdas: política e religião no imaginário evangélico (de 2016 a 2018)

Abstract

This dissertation is part of the line of Politics and Culture studies, relating to political ideas and the dimension of their symbolic power using religion as a discursive tool. The text deals with the relationship between the political and religious fields of evangelical segmentation in Brazil and how the overlap occurred mainly in the 21st century. An analysis was carried out of the narratives shared on Twitter by evangelical leaders, Silas Malafaia and Marco Feliciano, and how they describe the left as vile and malevolent. Using content analysis as a methodology that prioritizes the semantic value attributed to words, tweets from both pastors were selected to prove how they promoted anti-left narratives through short reports present on the selected social network. With a time frame that ranges from Dilma Rousseff's impeachment in 2016 to the 2018 elections, the speeches by evangelical pastors made on Twitter demonized the left, fueling what they considered to be a cultural war marked by the dichotomy between good and evil, with religious contours of spiritual battle, positioning political spectrums within moral and religious definitions. To understand the context in which the visibility of prominent religious figures was possible, the work tried to demonstrate how evangelicals have related to Brazilian politics throughout part of the republished period and deepening between 2016 and 2018.