An internet prankster has hijacked a website long used to glorify Brazil’s far-right president and turned it into a devastating online excoriation of Jair Bolsonaro’s “clownish”, “neo-fascist” government.
Bolsonaro and his three politician sons have reportedly used the bolsonaro.com.br domain as an official mouthpiece since the early 2000s.
But earlier this month a Brazilian objector with rather less affection for the populist clan managed to commandeer the URL, apparently after the Bolsonaros failed to pay for its renewal.
The result was a public relations fiasco for the South American rabble-rouser, as Bolsonaro’s former propaganda outlet began portraying him as a cretinous, subservient, incompetent, duplicitous, corrupt and tyrannical hate-filled liar.
One cartoon shows a snake emerging from the Brazilian president’s blood-stained jaws alongside an excerpt from Psalm 140: “Rescue me, O Lord, from evil men … the poison of vipers is on their lips.”
A second parody shows Bolsonaro behind bars, where many angry voters believe he belongs because of his internationally condemned response to a Covid outbreak that has killed more than 680,000 Brazilians.
“Bolsonaro is weak and pathetic,” proclaims one text on the dissident website decrying the Brazilian leader’s servility to his US ally Donald Trump.
“Bolsonaro is a court jester,” announces another scathing critique alongside a caricature in which Brazil’s 67-year-old leader appears as a neck ruffle-wearing clown.
Elsewhere on the website Bolsonaro is likened to a milkmaid, the Grim Reaper, a mythological faun, a feathered chicken, Satan and Adolf Hitler.
“This website is not administered by nor does it belong to the Bolsonaro family,” says a disclaimer at the foot of the page.
The expropriated URL comes at a sensitive time for Bolsonaro, who polls suggest will fail to win re-election when 156 million Brazilians choose their next leader in just over a month.
The ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva currently leads in the polls by a 12-point margin and retains control of the website bearing his name.
On Sunday, Bolsonaro lost his cool during a televised presidential debate, lashing out at a prominent female journalist who he labelled “an embarrassment to Brazilian journalism”.
On Wednesday the embarrassment was Bolsonaro’s as reports that his website had been captured prompted a tsunami of sniggering and contempt.
“I want to see more people stand up to the fascist,” the activist supposedly responsible for the stunt wrote on Twitter. “Now is not the time to remain silent.”
