Election Denialism: A Comparison of American and Brazilian Tendencies in Public Trust Scandals, Misinformation, and Political Violence
American and Brazilian politics are intimately interconnected, and as a result have comparably similar social trends with misinformation, public trust, and violent tendencies.
By Sage Forman, Arizona State University
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Following the 2020 American presidential election, there has been a rise in election denialism as an intentional campaign strategy, and has placed the integrity of democracy in the United States into an uncertain direction. The narrative of elections being stolen or results being falsified have already lead to direct attacks on democratic institutions on not just the US Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021, but also election offices, and wasted taxpayer resources on election verification. The pathway to this was relatively linear: gradual erosion of public trust in the United States government over the last 70 years (PEW, 2023) gave way to conspiracy theory rhetoric to have room to be popular, then exasperated by media outlets pushing extremist rhetoric for higher profit margins (Zadrozny, 2023), and finally political figures capitalize on these factors and lean into election denialism for self benefit. These rises are not exclusive to the United States, but Brazil also exemplified a rise in election denialism (Friedrich, 2022) that lead in political violence in their last federal election as well, with media equally as polarized.
Intentional campaign strategies for the American right are beginning to focus on more authoritarian ideologies, pushing an “election was stolen” angle while intentionally aiming to dismantle elements of the democratic institutions.
Decline in Public Trust:
Public trust in United States institutions has been on a decline since 1964, beginning to decline all the way back to the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. According to PEW Research, faith in US institutions has fallen from 77%, and has been at an unstable low of about 25% since 2006, as shown in the graph below: (PEW, 2023)
The major turning points of this lack of faith was the obvious Watergate scandal under President Nixon which created a decline in public faith as his resignation unfolded, and started a downward turn in public trust. This lack of trust in institutions leaves a wide open stance for election denialism, especially in the American Republican party and create an opportunity to push more authoritarian type of rhetoric in political campaigning. Trust in the government tends to swap by partisan favor depending on if the party is in the presidency, one of the largest differences between public trust come from the latest presidential election according to PEW Research (PEW, 2023), following the data below.
Controversies in Brazilian government leading up to the 2021 election also track similarly. From 2021-2022, about 50% of Brazilian respondents identified that they had low or no trust in the federal government, according to the OECD (OECD, 2022). One of these major controversies was the PetroBras scandal, where 86 people where arrested and charged related to political bribes. In 2017, people showed how they felt, “a Transparency International report, almost two thirds (62%) of the 22,000 people surveyed in 20 Latin American countries said that corruption had risen in the 12 months prior to when they were questioned” (El-Hage, 2019). They don’t even trust their neighbors, as “Inter-American Development Bank that they found that 63% of Brazilians said they didn’t trust people in their own community.” (Sutherland, 2022).
In both cases, it doesn’t seem too far fetched for people that don’t trust the institutions that make decisions for their constituents to believe in conspiracies that might validate their feelings, but the next question to ask would be: “How did it get so bad?”
Polarization and Capitalization on Fake News: Profit Margins
While shifts in trust seem to be normal in politics, partisanship has been on the rise for years partly due to media consumption. Political partisanship is profitable, where conspiracy theories, election denialism, and misinformation come from profit incentives media outlets can get from pushing misinformation and conspiracies are significant enough to continue to push it. The rise of election denialism among the far-right can be directly tied to media profitability. In a New York Times article called “Inside a Fake News Sausage Factory: ‘This is all about income,” interviews with people that run misleading and fake news websites highlight over and over that profit drives misinformation. One interview said that profits “coincided with the hit bogus story about Mexico closing the border, brought in around $6,000, though monthly revenue is usually much lower.” (Higgins, 2016) elaborating that only one article can bring in that much revenue from a smaller media outlet. A more prominent example of a fake news website would be the Epoch Times, notoriously pushing conspiracies and far right messaging for profit. From 2019 to 2021, the Epoch Times has increased revenue by 685% in only those two years, almost exclusively by platforming on an extremist position and falsified news media, being worth $122 million by the end of 2021 (Zadrozny, 2023).
Like the United States, political partisanship in Brazil is extremely high, having divided along party lines increasingly since their democracy first began. Reporters Without Borders identifies that “Wide dissemination of disinformation continues to poison the public debate. Brazil remains highly polarized, and social media attacks on the press have paved the way for repeated physical attack…, seen in particular during the 2022 elections and the insurrection attempt by Bolsonaro supporters in the centre of Brasilia on 8 January 2023.” Fake news especially took off leading up to the 2022 election, with election denying, “sharing wild rumours, smears, low blows and outright fabrications, as well as issuing paeans to junk science and trash-talking Brazil’s widely acclaimed electronic voting system.” (Margolis, 2023). Political ads, in many news outlets, are the primary income source and lend themselves towards misinformation and Brazilian media is no exception. “Despite Meta’s policies on safeguarding election integrity. Global Witness submitted 10 Brazilian Portuguese-language ads to Facebook containing election-related disinformation: Facebook accepted all of them.” (Lamensch, 2022). Bolsonaro’s campaign fed itself on misinformation and far-right media outlets, as Columbia university points out, creating an echo-chamber effect. “Telegram and WhatsApp groups as well as right-wing propaganda websites that present themselves as impartial and credible news outlets. Campos Mello says Bolsonaro’s campaign, his political allies, extreme bloggers and hyper-partisan websites feed off one another and amplify the incumbent’s message.” (Lamensch, 2022)
Political Violence and Authoritarian Rhetoric
Fake news and its consumption led towards the events that unfolded on January 6th. Links between misinformation and violence are already prominent as an unfortunate side effect of conspiracies, especially like the “PizzaGate” conspiracy (falsely claiming that politicians like Hillary Clinton and others would abuse children in a pizza restaurant’s underground trafficking ring), led to “ a man armed with an AR-15 fired a shot inside a Washington, D.C., restaurant, claiming to be investigating (fake) reports that Clinton aide John Podesta was heading up a child abuse ring there” (Sol, 2016l), showing that there is a direct link of misinformation that leads towards violence. The husband of Nancy Pelosi (former speaker of the house) was attacked in their home by a man who thought that believed in a conspiracy similar. From The Hill, it reads “he believed “with every ounce of his body” that he was taking action to stop corruption and the abuse of children by politicians and actors.” (Suter, 2023)
January 6th, 2021 exemplifies this violent push. In an attempt to overturn the election results hearing in the Capitol Building of the United States, thousands showed up to riot. The result of this gathering was the forced entry into the building to try and stop the election’s impending loss for Donald Trump, and conspiratorial news outlets pushed election denialism to the point of action. Republican politicians capitalized on these, through claims of false election results and the hashtag “StopTheSteal”. Donald Trump now runs an “openly authoritarian campaign” according to The Guardian, and wrote that “Trump’s angry mindset was revealed on Veterans Day when he denigrated foes as ‘vermin’ who needed to be ‘rooted out’” being in direct conflict with democratic values (Stone, 2023).
This was mirrored almost exactly in Brazil, following the loss of Bolsonaro during the 2022 election. ABC news reports that “Hundreds of supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro stormed three of the most emblematic official buildings in the country’s capital over refusal to accept the results of the election.” (Castano, 2023), leading to a near identical attack.
If successful, these political schemes could have resulted in a direct line to an authoritarian style state. In the US, a conservative think tank called the Heritage Foundation outlines an exact plan to emulate Orban. Mother Jones magazine notes that the foundation’s Project 2025 “ calls for curbing the independence of the Justice Department and proposes revved-up prosecutions of persons providing or distributing abortion pills by mail. The project urges rolling back environmental regulations, reversing actions to address climate change, and abolishing the Pentagon’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.” (Corn, 2023)
Final Thoughts:
Authoritarian style regimes don’t start from nothing. They stem from an erosion of public trust, a capitalization on that mistrust by corporations aimed at profit, and misinformation that radicalize a public towards an intentional erosion of democratic institutions for political and economic gain of individuals. Political figures like Donald Trump and Bolsonaro are among only few that use these advantages to push an intentional erosion of the institutions of democracy. Removing incentives of producing fake news, and political accountability are among the most pressing issues to take in the next waves of politics.
Works cited:
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