“Foreign threat” rhetoric justifies militarist action in the debate on indigenous peoples during the last years of Bolsonaro government

Analysis by: FGV ECMI 

• With a strongly nationalist character, the government's debate during April 2020, 2021, and 2022 was conducted by the federal security forces;
• Welfare government actions are also evidenced by official profiles in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in 2020;
• Profiles and media vehicles allied with Bolsonaro defend the government's initiatives to protect Indigenous people and speak of collusion so that the agenda harms the image of the former president;

During the last three years of President Jair Bolsonaro's tenure, the debate related to Indigenous peoples was restricted to a defensive posture on the part of the government, which countered accusations of negligence and scrapping of inspection bodies by highlighting the work carried out by the forces of security in the fight against violence in Indigenous lands and welfare measures, such as delivery of basic food baskets and vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The debate on Indigenous peoples mobilized by allies of the Bolsonaro government during the months of April 2020, 2021 e 2022 was analyzed by the FGV School of Communication, which explored 297,800 posts on Twitter. In this first part of the study, the posts of the group aligned with the Bolsonaro government were analyzed, sectioned through the clustering of the posts from the interactions between them. The groups that oppose the government in the debate will be analyzed in the second part of the study.

  

 Nationalist discourse and welfare perspective in relation to

  Indigenous people follow Bolsonaro government debate.

The “Bolsonarist” field remained cohesive during the month of April in the three years analyzed, with a slight reduction in profiles and interactions over the years. There is a militaristic rhetoric associated with the debate on Indigenous peoples, which manifests itself especially through a nationalism and protectionism of the Amazon, in the face of supposed “foreign threats.” The government's role in protecting Indigenous peoples, in this sense, would be related to the preservation of national sovereignty in relation to external agents, which would have objectives contrary to Brazil.

Map of interactions of the debate on Indigenous peoples on Twitter 

Period: from April 1st to 30th, 2020, 2021 and 2022

Source: Twitter | Elaboration: FGV School of Communication, Media and Information

Despite being composed of different actors, the cluster aligned with Jair Bolsonaro’s government in April 2020, 2021, and 2022 remained cohesive and isolated from the other groups that dealt with the debate on Indigenous peoples on Twitter. In addition to official profiles of the federal government and political leaders, “Bolsonarist” media outlets aligned with the government discourse on the agenda stand out. There is a reduction in the percentage of profiles and interactions in the cluster over the years, however, the group remains engaged in defending government actions and fighting the so-called “globalist agenda.” The current Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Sonia Guajajara, was the target of criticism from the group during the three years analyzed, evidencing the activist's protagonism in the opposition to Bolsonaro government throughout the period observed.

2020 - 18.1% of profiles | 15.0% of interactions - Total of 52.5 thousand posts

The debate on Indigenous peoples during April 2020 focused on the situation of these individuals amid the COVID-19 pandemic, across all policy fields. With a large role in the government cluster, @jairbolsonaro and @DamaresAlves mobilized a narrative that the government was providing maximum assistance to this population, through social programs and actions to combat the invasion of Indigenous territories. Both emphasized the sending of thousands of basic food baskets through Funai and highlighted the partnership between the government agency and the National Force to combat crimes in the region. Part of the posts even suggest a political-media collusion to boycott the disclosure of these actions. In addition, institutional profiles - such as @exercitooficial and @minsaude - strengthened the cluster with the dissemination of humanitarian aid actions, rhetoric that contributed to endorsing Bolsonaro and Damares Alves's defense against criticism that the government was being silent in relation to the situation of Indigenous peoples in the context of COVID-19.

2021 - 16.1% of profiles | 13.3% of interactions - Total of 83.0 thousand posts

Starring @BolsonaroSP, @gen_heleno, @kimpaim and @carlosjordy, former president Jair Bolsonaro's support group focused on defending government actions on the environmental agenda and public policies for Indigenous peoples. In this sense, messages stand out denouncing an alleged persecution of the then Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, attributed to NGOs that would be interested in “profiting” from Brazilian forests. The profiles suggest that there is a globalist agenda that the minister is trying to combat, based on the idea of protectionism for the Amazon rainforest and the country's wealth, following the same nationalist perspective as in the previous year. Within this perspective, federal government actions of “interaction” and protection of Indigenous peoples are praised, also encompassing measures taken by Funai and the security forces. For criticizing the government in a documentary about the impact of the pandemic on Indigenous peoples, Sonia Guajajara was subpoenaed by the Federal Police and later attacked on social media. During this period, it is possible to notice the adoption of a more critical tone towards Indigenous activists and agendas linked to the protection of the rights of this population, within a larger field of attacks on the left as a whole.

2022 - 11.0% of profiles | 9.0% of interactions - Total of 162.2 thousand posts

In April 2022, a significant dilution of the ruling cluster aligned with Bolsonaro was observed, compared to the same month in the immediately previous years. This shrinkage of the debate compared to the months of April in previous years suggests that the electoral context may have favored the weakening of the agenda amidst the demonstrations involving the group in question. In the government cluster, publications of an institutional nature and dissemination of pro-indigenous actions prevailed, with emphasis on posts by president @jairbolsonaro. Amid criticism related to the advance of mining and cases of violence, profiles linked to the government echoed operations to protect Indigenous territories, conducted by Funai. In this sense, the accusation that a Yanomami girl had been raped by miners did not have strong repercussions. One of the exceptions was the “Bolsonarist” media vehicle  @TerraBrasilnot, which reported that the Federal Police would not have found evidence of crimes. Other profiles, such as @MarcosQuezado1, criticized the fact that members of the Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (APIB – Brazilian Indigenous Peoples Articulation) reported to the International Criminal Court in The Hague the practice of human rights violations against Indigenous peoples and activists during Bolsonaro government. In this regard, the news that a teacher allegedly “humiliated” a student who allegedly disagreed with Sonia Guajajara's position in a lecture at the school was widely circulated. Amidst the discussions in evidence about cases of violence against Indigenous people, the episode was mobilized by the government camp to defend the idea that opponents of the government would be authoritarian and prone to “alienating ideological practices”.

Deactivated accounts and institutional channels remain in the spotlight 

in the debate on Indigenous peoples between 2020 and 2022

Deactivated accounts and institutional profiles were among the accounts with the highest average engagement in the Indigenous debate. There has been a significant change in the profile ratio over the years, but accounts of political actors linked to Bolsonaro and official government profiles stand out among the most prominent actors in the public debate, with demonstrations committed to defending the government.

Digital capital of the debate on Indigenous peoples in Twitter

Period: from April 1st to 30th, 2020, 2021 and 2022

 

Source: Twitter | Elaboration: FGV School of Communication, Media and Information

The accounts aligned with the government of Jair Bolsonaro that had the greatest reach in the debate on Indigenous people obeyed a relative regularity between 2020 and 2022. In the years analyzed, the predominance of profiles of political actors, government institutional channels, hyper-partisan media vehicles and digital influencers. Former ministers @DamaresAlves and @andersongtorres and the congressmen @BolsonaroSP and @carlosjordy stood out among the political actors involved in the debate, in addition to “Bolsonarist” businessman @salimmattarbr, who gained visibility within the scope of the debate by having defended a mining project in Indigenous lands. Regarding the media channels, “Bolsonarist” media profiles such as @SigaGazetaBR, @JornalDaCidadeO and @TerraBrasilNot, had greater visibility in the cluster, in addition to the traditional media profile @CNNBrasil.

Among influencers, in particular, a trend of suspended/deactivated accounts was recorded. Most of these profiles were compulsorily deactivated due to violation of the platform's rules, as it was the case with the account of the congresswoman @CarlaZambelli38. The exception was  @renovamidia, whose author informs in the profile description that he chose to deactivate the page “due to the troubled Brazilian political scenario.” There are also reports of alleged censorship of far-right content on the platform. Inserted in the 2022 list, the profile of the singer @NETINHOOFICIAL3 currently presents a prior warning that the account contains “sensitive content” and restricts the visualization of posts, which was denounced by its author as an alleged persecution against conservative accounts on the social network. 

The institutional channels of the Federal Government were central throughout the analyzed period, especially @exercitooficial and @JusticaGovBR. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, publications in which sectors of the government tried to make public supposed efforts to help the Indigenous population made vulnerable by the health crisis became frequent. Announcements for sending food to isolated locations were frequent, including through the accounts of @DamaresAlves and @jairbolsonaro, who were also trying to respond to the growing number of criticisms and complaints of human rights violations in Indigenous territories. In general, these channels invested in posts that defended the idea that the government was joining forces to help Indigenous peoples during the pandemic, especially in 2020, and investigating reports of rapes and homicides in the following years. 

Concern about a “foreign threat” intensifies with the approach of the electoral period, as a way of shielding itself from criticism

The terms associated with the words “Indigenous,” “Indians” and their variations had significant changes over the three years. While in the first two there is a more welfare and “care” perspective, in 2022, close to the election period, the idea of an ideological agenda associated with Indigenous agendas, which would come from “foreign NGOs”, gains more prominence.

Similarity between words in the debate on Indigenous peoples in Twitter

Period: from April 1st to 30th, 2020, 2021, and 2022

 

Source: Twitter | Elaboration: FGV School of Communication, Media, and Information

• The contextualized analysis of words points to moderate degrees of preference for the denomination “Indigenous,” with “Indian” and “Indians” appearing in the background. Nominal reference to term set remains bearish in 2020 and 2021, growing significantly in 2022.
• In 2020, the health of Indigenous peoples during the COVID-19 pandemic was the central topic and the most frequent associations signaled the prospect that these peoples would be fully assisted by the government. Terms such as “caring”, “food”, “health”, “donations”, “booklet”, and “campaign” stand out as they are linked to the welfare actions of the Federal Government and former Minister Damares Alves, such as the delivery of basic food baskets and visit of vaccination teams.
• In 2021, government actions continue to be conveyed and terms such as “watch over”, “commitment” and “brothers” appear in this context, being associated with the perspective of promoting the “integration of Indigenous peoples into society”. In turn, joint uses of terms such as “whites” and “blacks” appear in an attempt to deny specificities, in tweets that indicate that “race, color, ethnicity does not matter”, after all, “we are all one PEOPLE”. 
• Already in 2022, the political dispute of the election year is manifested in frequent associations with the terms “incriminate”, “press”, “fake news” and “hacking”. The terms are mobilized in the context of criticism aimed at the work of environmentalists and NGOs, as well as denial of problems that are being wrongly denounced as violations of Indigenous rights by the government. This is what happens, for example, in a tweet that states that the violence of illegal miners is, in reality, a “narrative of leftist NGOs.”