Therapeutic Fascism and Public Health in Brazil

This book examines how unproven medical treatments became central to political, moral, and social life during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. It develops the concept of therapeutic moral authoritarianism to explain how health practices were mobilized as forms of agency, belonging, and political expression in contexts of crisis and uncertainty.

Drawing on long-term ethnographic research with healthcare professionals, digital influencers, and patients engaged in the Early and Preventive Treatment movement, the book explores how scientific authority, moral values, and political imaginaries became entangled during the pandemic. It shows how individuals did not simply reject science but sought to inhabit and reinterpret it, transforming biomedical knowledge into a language of autonomy and resistance. The analysis situates these dynamics within broader histories of biopolitics, colonial medicine, and neoliberal governance, demonstrating how care and coercion, freedom and responsibility, are deeply intertwined. By tracing the circulation of drugs such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine across digital platforms and everyday practices, the book reveals how personal health decisions became linked to national futures and moral claims about truth, risk, and responsibility.

The book will appeal to scholars and students in anthropology, political geography, science and technology studies, and public health, as well as to readers interested in misinformation, populism, and the social life of medicine in times of crisis.

Wagner Guilherme Alves da Silva is a Brazilian Anthropologist concerned with public health, platformisation and political radicalisation. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology, National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (PPGAS-MN/UFRJ) and member of the Digital Economy and Extreme Politics Laboratory (DeepLab), at the School of Geography, University College Dublin.