A hot January in Brasilia

The “two Brazil” theory is now stressed, as never before. From now on, culture wars will have a civil confrontation dimension. It remains to be seen in what terms and on what scale. From the divided families to the broken country, the march goes on. The thesis of an actual split of the country, a break-up of the Federal Union, is on the table. In a more mitigated scenario, the security forces can prevent the escalation and leave democracy safe, but in a state of permanent alert whose political effects in the Senate are still challenging to predict. 

By João Ferreira Dias*

From the very beginning of Bolsonaro’s presidential path, still in the campaign that led him to the presidency of Brazil in 2018, the former Brazilian president sought to copy Trump’s strategy (Baptista, Hauber & Orlandini, 2022), taking prejudice to the center of the campaign (Martins, 2002). The so-called culture wars (Hunter, 1992) have definitively entered the political arena, perfectly demarcated between (a) the regions that are majority white and expressing animosity toward the North-East, the evangelical sector of society which is transversal in terms of class but dominated by the elites, advocating a conservative turn in terms of customs for the country and the confluence between state and church, and (b) the non-evangelical lower social classes, the progressive left, and the LGBTQ+ and anti-racist militant and activist sectors. In Brazil, it includes the sense of loss of the historical privileges of the Brazilian upper and middle classes, who inherited a form of the social organization of colonial matrix –which Quijano (1997) named coloniality – and did everything to preserve it through the ideology of the state.

The battle for the heart of Brazil took place. The Right radicalized and regimented itself around Bolsonaro, which made use of the corruption that surrounded the PT (Lula’s party) governments to implement the so-called agenda of customs (conservative moral values) and the neoliberal agenda in the economy, with an inclination for privatization and exploitation of natural resources, such as the deforestation of the Amazon. The Ox-Bull-Bible axis (Stefanoni, 2018) created the conditions for Bolsonarism to become vigorous. 

The basis of this strength lies in the middle class, which has always attended the best universities (and which, in some cases, has been overtaken by more able young people from the lower classes due to the social policies of the PT governments), which works in the leading newspapers of the big cities like São Paulo, which saw its capacity to exploit poor labor diminished by the PT’s labor legislation that imposed guarantees on workers. Jessé Souza asks categorically, in The Elite of Backwardness (2017), “how someone who exploits the other classes below her in the form of a vile wage to save time on domestic chores, and supports the indiscriminate killing of poor people by the police, or even the slaughter of defenseless prisoners, can have the nerve to believe oneself morally elevated?”

Now, the intersection between a sense of injustice in the face of the loss of class privilege, the natural displeasure with structural corruption (truly structural, insofar as it is found in the very formation of Brazil as a state), the importation of the most alienated Trumpist conspiracy and populist theories, and the deep messianic belief in a providential leader and an elected people (themselves; Ferreira Dias, 2020), produces a mass of voters with a mission, which because they consider providential owes no respect to the Constitution and democratic rules.

Having rehearsed an ambiguous Trumpist posture of defeat without defeat, Bolsonaro has fed the hosts, letting marinate the belief of electoral fraud, which his party has continued and amplified. 

We can affirm that we are facing a movement of a fascist nature (following the plastic definition of Stanley (2020)) of the caudillo type, which refuses electoral results, does not accept democracy, and wants a single identity for the country (ideology of the nation), centralized in a vital state apparatus, of “law and order,” strongly classist and racial, and deeply conservative-religious (evangelical).

The probable military repression to restore the normal functioning of institutions is no guarantee of the regime’s survival. Lula is seen as an anti-Christ that needs to be defeated, no matter what. The advance of the police could be interpreted as the advance of the Romans on the Christians, and the Bolsonarists could take themselves on as martyrs to their patriotic cause. 

Lula’s speech of reaction to the invasion of Congress, the Planalto and the Supreme Court will do little to heal the situation by reinforcing the fight between Left and Right, by accusing Bolsonaro of being “genocidal,” by forcing social division, and by placing a negative weight on Bolsonarist supporters by calling them “fanatical fascists.” The coolness of state that one might demand has given way to continued social rupture and ideological struggle.  

The “two Brazil” theory is now stressed, as never before. From now on, culture wars will have a civil confrontation dimension. It remains to be seen in what terms and on what scale. From the divided families to the broken country, the march goes on. The thesis of an actual split of the country, a break-up of the Federal Union, is on the table. In a more mitigated scenario, the security forces can prevent the escalation and leave democracy safe, but in a state of permanent alert whose political effects in the Senate are still challenging to predict. 

The precedent of The United States Capitol opened the space for these tumults. What can and should be feared is replication in the West, in the forthcoming elections in several European countries, where populism, many of authoritarian inspiration, claims to be the voice of the people. We must remember the words of Georges Duhamel: “The greatest tyrants of the people have almost all emerged from the people.” For now, Brazil is the ticking time bomb, the most apparent laboratory of the culture wars and ideological alienation. This time it will be the Trumpist sector of the United States that will look to Brazil as a laboratory of potentialities. How the situation unfolds in Brazil will affect the future paths of the more polarized Western democracies.

(*) João Ferreira Dias is a researcher at the Centre for International Studies – ISCTE, Lisbon, in the Research Group Institutions, Governance, and International Relations. He is researching culture wars, politics of identity, and fundamental rights. PhD in African Studies (2016). PhD candidate in International Studies (2021- …). Columnist. http://joaoferreiradias.net

References

Baptista, Érica Anita; Hauber, Gabriela; Orlandini, Maiara. (2022). “Despolitização e populismo: as estratégias discursivas de Trump e Bolsonaro.” Media & Jornalismo. 22.40: 105-119.

Ferreira Dias, João. (2020). “O Messias já chegou e livrará ‘as pessoas de bem’ dos corruptos: messianismo político e legitimação popular, os casos Bolsonaro e André Ventura.” Polis. 2.2: 49-60.

Hunter, James Davison. (1992). Culture wars: The struggle to control the family, art, education, law, and politics in America. Avalon Publishing.

Martins, Erikssonara Thalessa da Câmara. (2022). O avanço do neoconservadorismo e a extrema-direita no Brasil: uma análise a partir da Campanha Eleitoral de 2018 ao Governo Bolsonaro. Bachelor’s Thesis. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte.

Quijano, Aníbal. (1997). “Coloniality of power in Latin America.” Anuario Mariateguiano. 9.9: 113-121. 

Stefanoni, Pablo. (2018). “Biblia, buey y bala… recargados: Jair Bolsonaro, la ola conservadora en Brasil y América Latina.” Nueva Sociedad. 278: 4-11.

Souza, Jessé. (2017). A elite do atraso: da escravidão à Lava Jato. Leya.

Stanley, Jason. (2020). How fascism works: The politics of us and them. Random House Trade Paperbacks.