[10][11] While publishing about politics, literature and philosophy since the 1980s, he made himself known to wider Brazilian audiences from the 1990s onwards, mainly writing columns for some of Brazil's major media outlets, such as the newspaper O Globo.

[12][13][14] In the late 2010s, he rose to prominence in the Brazilian public debate, being dubbed the "intellectual father of the new right"[15] and the ideologue of Jair Bolsonaro,[16] a label which he rejected.

[39] In 1979, he founded the "Revista de Astrologia Júpiter" ("Jupiter: Astrology Review"); around this time, he introduced himself in his business card as the "scientific director of the Brazilian Astrocharacterology Society", headquartered at his home.

[40] From the 1970s to the 2000s, he wrote for several Brazilian magazines and newspapers, such as Bravo!, Primeira Leitura, Claudia, O Globo, Folha de S.Paulo (starting in February 1977 with an article about The Magic Flute in the "Folhetim" literary supplement[41]), Época and Zero Hora.

[45][46] In addition to newspaper articles and many blog and social media posts, he authored a number of books, many of them collections of previously published texts.

[48] He collaborated with Ted Baehr, Paul Gottfried, Judith Reisman,[49][50] Alejandro Peña Esclusa, and Stephen Baskerville through the Inter-American Institute.

[1][53] In 2020, Carvalho was ordered to pay 2.8 million Brazilian reais in libel charges after accusing musician Caetano Veloso of sexual crimes against children.

[63] Partido dos Trabalhadores, the party of Bolsonaro's opponent Fernando Haddad, is a member of Foro de São Paulo.

[66] Journalists writing for El País and Folha, respectively, claimed that Carvalho influenced the nomination of two prominent Ministers by Bolsonaro: Ricardo Vélez Rodríguez (Education)[67] and Ernesto Araújo (Foreign Affairs).

[68] Leonardo Sakamoto, writing for the website UOL (Universo Online),[69] also made these claims, but emphasized Bolsonaro's responsibility for these ministers.

However, in February 2019, Carvalho clashed with some key figures of the Bolsonaro administration, including the vice-president, Hamilton Mourão, whom he accused of being a "traitor" and an "idiot" who is "pro-abortion, pro-disarmament and pro-Nicolás Maduro".

[72] On 17 March 2019, Carvalho criticised the presence of military personnel in Bolsonaro's administration, stating: "He didn't choose two hundred generals.

"[73] In 2020, Sleeping Giants started a campaign to reduce his influence on Brazilian politics and convinced advertisers to remove their media buying from his online newspaper and YouTube channel.

[74] This led to PayPal deciding to cancel their contract with Carvalho, and remove their services from his online seminars, citing violation of terms of use.

[75][33] Although it was officially a tariqa, that is, an esoteric Sufi Islamic order, it was headed by Frithjof Schuon, the Perennialist author of "The Transcendent Unity of Religions", and therefore syncretically incorporated various elements from other traditions.

The accusations were denied by her siblings and by Olavo himself, who initiated a lawsuit against her citing that in her letter she "distances herself from any contact with reality by spreading outrageous lies and vile insults".

[30][3] His personal doctor denied it was COVID-19 and stated officially that his death was caused by respiratory stress associated with emphysema, heart failure, bacterial pneumonia, and a generalised infection.

[106][107][108] He claimed in a 2006 essay that Isaac Newton introduced a self-contradictory thesis into the Western mind, which was responsible for spreading a virus of "formidable stupidity".

[114][115][116] In The Political Science Reviewer, Victor Bruno highlighted Carvalho's conceptualization of philosophy as an adventurous search, akin to an individual's struggle for illumination, and contrasted it with Gnostic thought.

[117] Carvalho believed that, according to Aristotle, "human discourse is a single power, which actualizes itself in four different ways: poetics, rhetoric, dialectic, and analytic (logic)".

[120][121] His writings about this view were collected in his book "Aristóteles em nova perspectiva: Introdução à teoria dos quatro discursos" ("Aristotle in a New Perspective: Introduction to the Theory of the Four Discourses").

[120][125] Second, rhetorical discourse seeks to establish plausibility (verossimilhança), aiming to invoke a strong belief and the consent of the will, going beyond mere imaginative presumption.

[120][125] Finally, logical or analytical discourse starts from universally accepted premises and seeks apodictic certainty through syllogistic reasoning.

[137][140] Carvalho argued that the mentality is supported and propagated by powerful entities including international organizations, wealthy families, and businessmen.

[141] In Carvalho's view, the revolutionary mentality led to the emergence of "metacapitalism",[142][141] which he described as a "shadow capitalism" working in tandem with government power, especially under communist regimes.

[116] These agents, who Carvalho called "organic intellectuals",[145] work to change people's traditional modes of thought into a revolutionary one, undermining religion and common sense, he said.