For all the grandstanding in Brazil on Monday over the rather surprising victory of Jair Bolsonaro of the far-right in the presidential election, there are several facets that call for reflection. A person with extreme perceptions has been able to command a fair measure of popular support, to the extent that the voter has effected an ideological changeover.

The Latin American country mirrors a trend that has been manifest in several countries across the Atlantic, notably the ascendancy of the far-right in Germany, not to forget the other embattled democracies. It is a vote against the eight-year misrule of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, founder of the Workers’ Party (PT). Chiefly, his pledge to enact radical change through sweeping reforms never materialised, a failure that has led to a sense of disillusionment that became almost endemic.

It is pretty obvious that a fairly large percentage of the electorate backed Bolsonaro not actually because they admired him or his policies, but out of a sense of determination to oust the PT. Ergo, an intrinsically negative vote will propel Bolsonaro to the presidential palace in Brasilia. The politics of hope that emanates from any election has given way to the politics of anger, rejection and despair. It is the thread that runs from Brazil to parts of Europe. It was quite evident before the first vote was cast on Sunday that PT’s new leader, Fernando Haddad, was fighting a losing battle.

It was not a question of left or right, verily the country bears witness to a wholesale rejection of conventional politics or what psephologists would call “politics-as-usual”. There is little doubt that Bolsonaro’s candidature has benefitted from yet another electoral phenomenon ~ a preference among voters for a political outsider or what they call a “disrupter” who can challenge the status quo. Donald Trump, it bears recall, was the “none-of-the-above” candidate in the US in 2016. As with Trump, many voters did not really prefer Bolsonaro, but as it turns out, they have preferred him to any “establishment” figure. In the immediate aftermath of the outcome, parallels have been drawn between Bolsonaro and Mexico’s Leftwing President-elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

However different their political outlook, both have established their position as outsiders, as radical voices largely excluded by the ruling political elites. Clearly, the alienated voters have either ignored, if not forgiven, Bolsonaro’s misogynistic views and his express faith in violent solutions. Unlike previous forms of populism (on the left and right) that endorsed democracy and rejected violence and racism, Bolsonaro’s populism harks back to Hitlerite Germany. Brazil is on the turn, indeed on the cusp of a profound change.