Igor Sacramento 254 fered, they cannot be lying, even more so when they are willing to report their own suffering in a mediatized experience. There is, therefore, a social demand and appreciation for transforming intimate experiences into images and spectacle. This new ethos, a derivation fromAristotelian rhetoric, reflects the “moral image that the orator constitutes [and constituted] discursively for the public” (SODRÉ, 2002, p. 45) in an environment strongly marked by a new form of staging the doxa, whose language operates in a prescriptive manner and guides the process of transformation of ethos into habitus, through “techniques of ‘naturalist’ verisi- militude (imagistic cloning of the world, whether by cinemato- graphic and television images, or by the computational visuality of networks)” (ibid., p. 52-53). It is a contemporary configura- tion of moral control and legitimation of a mediatized form of truth. Regarding specifically the production and circulation of denialist discourses in the Brazilian context of the COVID-19 pandemic, we observe a phenomenon that goes beyond the mere denial of knowledge mediated by scientific procedures. Also, according to Oliveira (2020), far from simply denying sci- ence, Brazilian conservative leaders – under the direct influence of olavism – reject historically consolidated forms of knowledge production to elect their experiences and needs as the produc- ers of “true science6.” As all scientific procedures will already be corrupted a priori, “direct observation, through which the free thinker experiences reality with his own body, without being conditioned by any methodological mediation, [seems to be] the only possible form of true knowledge” (OLIVEIRA, 2020, p. 84). In this context, knowledge of the true passes from the philo6 Olavo de Carvalho, a self-proclaimed philosopher, is an astrologer, writer, pro- fessor, and digital influencer, who became the principal ideologue of the ultra- conservative national current that has been organized around the rise of Jair Bolsonaro to the Presidency of the Republic in Brazil and has been fundamental in maintaining his government. Although without scientific basis and proof, his opinions, which range from Aristotelian philosophy to international relations, including vaccination, have a vast number of followers and disciples, as they call themselves. Carvalho repeatedly claims that his ideas are not recognized in the scientific field due to ideological persecution since Brazilian universities, according to him, would be dominated and controlled by what he calls “cultural Marxism.” More information may be found in Oliveira’s work (2020).
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