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Brazil’s Bitter Presidential Race Leads to Scores of Assaults

Fernanda Villas Bôas, a journalist who was attacked by supporters of Brazil’s far-right presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, believes he has encouraged both sides to act violently.Credit...Dado Galdieri for The New York Times

RIO DE JANEIRO — Fernanda Villas Bôas had just cast her vote in Brazil’s presidential election on Oct. 7 and was leaving her polling station when a man grabbed her arm from behind.

The knife-wielding assailant was wearing a black T-shirt that said “Bolsonaro for president,” in reference to the former Army captain, Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right candidate who won the most votes in the first round of the bitterly divisive race.

“When my commander wins, the press will die,” she remembers him telling her during the attack in Recife, a city in the northeast. Ms. Villas Bôas, a journalist, was wearing a badge from the news website where she works.

As Brazilians prepare for the second round of the most polarized election in their recent history, animosity between avid supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro and those who ardently oppose his bid have set off a wave of politically motivated attacks that range from verbal assaults to beatings and stabbings. At least two attacks were fatal.

A tally kept by the investigative journalism group Agência Pública tracked more than 70 attacks in the first 10 days of October. While most of the reports involve attackers who appeared to support Mr. Bolsonaro, six of his backers have also said they were targeted.

This surge of political violence comes at a time when Brazil’s murder rate has hit a record high. Mr. Bolsonaro’s radical tough-on-crime message has resonated with a population furious over the escalation of crime and fed up with political corruption and the painful effects of a deep recession.

But many critics believe Mr. Bolsonaro’s inflammatory rhetoric is in part responsible for stoking this climate of violence against political opponents. He often says that “violence should be fought with violence,” and mimics the firing of a pistol with his hands during speeches.

During a recent campaign rally in the northern state of Acre, he hoisted a tripod, pretended it was a machine gun and told supporters, “Let’s shoot Acre’s Workers’ Party supporters,” in a reference to the leftist party whose candidate, Fernando Haddad, he faces in the runoff on Oct. 28.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s campaign later said he was joking.

He has also vowed to make it easier for citizens to own guns and, in a country where police violence has long been a problem — over 5,000 people were killed by police officers in 2017 — he promised to give the police license to kill suspected criminals. One of the candidate’s sons posted on Twitter a photo that simulated the torture of an opponent.

The candidate himself was nearly stabbed to death by a man who plunged a knife into his stomach during a campaign rally in September. Mr. Bolsonaro spent the weeks preceding the first round of the election convalescing in bed, but he still received 46 percent of the vote to Mr. Haddad’s 29 percent.

While Mr. Bolsonaro has said he does not want the votes of people who committed violence, he also questioned the veracity of the reported attacks.

“Don’t keep spreading this fake news, as if my people were spreading hate,” he said in a news conference on Thursday. “After all, I was the one who was stabbed.”

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While Mr. Bolsonaro has said he does not want the votes of people who committed violence, he also questioned the veracity of dozens of attacks that have been reported so far.Credit...Leo Correa/Associated Press

Ms. Villas Bôas was able to escape her attackers. While her assailant and another man debated what to do — “Let’s take her and rape her,” the second man said, according to her recollection. “No, let’s cut her up,” the first assailant replied — a woman drove by and began honking. The two men ran, but not before using the knife to cut her neck, face and arm.

She is among those who believe Mr. Bolsonaro has encouraged both sides to act violently.

She said the candidate had “full responsibility, because he worshiped hate.”

“What we see on the streets today is, ‘You’re either with my candidate or you’re my enemy,’” she added. “There is no dialogue about politics anymore.”

Ahead of the election, virulent messages are spreading on social media, through videos and even a computer game in which players can use an avatar of Mr. Bolsonaro to kill gay people and leftists. Mr. Bolsonaro has a long history of making misogynist, racist and homophobic remarks, some of which have resulted in civil fines and criminal charges.

It is too early to say whether the recent wave of violence is a passing phenomenon or whether it will become an established facet of political life in the country.

But the escalation of conflict between political groups became palpable in recent years as Brazilians lived through an exceptional political and economic crisis, said Marcos César Alvarez, a sociologist at the Violence Studies Center at the University of São Paulo.

In this climate, aggressive talk by politicians like Mr. Bolsonaro can legitimize the acts of those predisposed to act violently, he said.

“Violence has always been very present in Brazilian society,“ Mr. Alvarez said, pointing to the country’s surging crime rates. “There was this illusion that violence at least didn’t reach politics. But now it has. We need to make clear that either we engage in curbing violence in general, in all its dimensions, or things are going to get really tough.”

The police are investigating two cases in which the victims of what seemed to be politically motivated violence died.

On Tuesday, a transgender woman was knifed to death in downtown São Paulo by assailants who yelled out Bolsonaro’s name, according to witnesses interviewed by the local news media. The police confirmed that they were investigating the murder, but said they still hadn’t been able to identify the victim, or the aggressors.

The music composer Romualdo Rosário da Costa, known as Môa do Katendê, was stabbed to death by a Bolsonaro supporter on Oct. 8 in a bar in the city of Salvador after saying he supported the Workers’ Party.

In the southern city of Curitiba on Oct. 9, Khaliu Turt was wearing a Landless Workers Movement cap and a red T-shirt — the color of the Workers’ Party — when about 10 assailants began to beat him up, yelling Mr. Bolsonaro’s name, witnesses said. They smashed several glass bottles on his body. Photos of his bloody head were shared widely through social media.

Mr. Turt said that he was apprehensive about the political climate, but that he wouldn’t stop wearing clothes that make clear his support of social movements.

“I will wear it even more gladly, even being scared,” he said. “They can’t stop me from expressing myself.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: In Bitter Race in Brazil, Electioneering by Assault. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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