Polarization, Religion, and Judicial Overreach in Brazilian Democracy: Youth Conservatism, Identity Politics, and the Crisis of Democratic Deliberation in the Digital Age

This paper examines five interconnected crises reshaping contemporary Brazilian democracy: (i) the resurgence of political conservatism among youth, challenging the post-1960s liberal assumption that younger generations are intrinsically predisposed toward institutional rupture; (ii) the instrumentalization of religious identity—particularly evangelical Protestantism—as a tool of political mobilization rather than a purely spiritual end; (iii) lifestyle polarization as described by Robert Talisse’s theory of civic solitude, in which political identity colonizes everyday consumer, aesthetic, and spatial choices; (iv) the structural entrenchment of political correctness as a juridically enforceable orthodoxy, suppressing heterodox inquiry within universities and newsrooms; and (v) the expansion of judicial authority through the Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) as a form of implicit epistemocracy, as theorized by Jason Brennan. Drawing on Max Weber’s sociology of charisma, Platonic political philosophy, and contemporary empirical political science, the paper argues that Brazil’s democratic pathologies are not incidental but structural. They arise from the convergence of social atomization, the decline of civic deliberation, and the colonization of public reason by tribal identity markers. The study concludes that remediation requires institutional redesign, epistemic pluralism within educational systems, and a renewed commitment to non-partisan civic culture.