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“The following is a description of a video that I did not watch,” writes Vanessa Barbara in her report on the nation’s recent presidential election in the February 23, 2023, issue of the Review. “‘A male synthetic organism was walking down the street when it came across an evil 5G entity. The biological entity had taken the third dose of the vaccine and its graphene nano-bot system was revved up.’” Though the leftist candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva prevailed over the right-wing Jair Bolsonaro in the October election, a thriving cottage industry of social media conspiracies still mobilizes support for extremist, pro-dictatorship politicians, leaving Brazil’s democracy in a fragile, if hopeful, state.
Barbara, a Brazilian novelist, journalist, and translator, has a lively eye for detail (to take only one example, an Op-Ed she wrote for TheNew York Times took time to record the name of a neighbor’s pet: Turtle Moses). A current of humor runs through her writing—on subjects as diverse as health, media, and environmental degradation—which is perhaps necessary when reporting on the surrealist turn that politics has taken in both Brazil and the United States.
Last week we corresponded over e-mail about the private messaging app Telegram, Borges, and leftist vegans.
Willa Glickman:What brought you to writing and journalism?
Vanessa Barbara: I was born in 1982 on the outskirts of São Paulo, where I’ve lived my whole life. I started by getting a degree in journalism, but then realized that reporting was not exactly what I wanted to do. I also tried to concentrate on writing fiction, but that was not what I wanted to do, either. Then I tried doing a little bit of everything, and it somehow worked better. That’s what I’m still doing today. In 2008 I earned the Jabuti Prize for O Livro Amarelo do Terminal, a nonfiction book about São Paulo’s—and Latin America’s—largest bus terminal, and in 2014 I received two other prizes (one in France) for a novel, Lettuce Nights. I’ve also written a graphic novel (why not?), and I’m going to publish a children’s book in April. I swear I once copyedited the Portuguese subtitles in a Polish documentary.
Does your writing for an English-speaking audience in the US feel distinct from what you write in Portuguese for Brazilian readers? Is there one genre you especially enjoy?
My Brazilian writing career is very diverse and loose, as I mentioned. But when I’m asked to write for an American audience, things get a little tenser. As someone who’s never studied abroad and who spent most of her life mastering the Portuguese language, writing in English feels like trying to play the flute on a bamboo stick. Not very easy. Additionally, I rarely get asked to write about issues other than Brazilian politics, which eventually becomes a little restrictive. Jorge Luis Borges once said that Argentine writers should not confine themselves to a few local themes, because the universe is their patrimony too. I do try to honor Borges: in eighty pieces for TheNew York Times during the last nine years, I’ve managed to write about astronomy, turtles, mental health, obstetrics, my sleep disorder, feminism, dengue fever, and the nail polish industry. For the Review I once wrote about the World Cup sticker album. I love writing essays, but my favorite genre is the crônica, a Portuguese-language essay form that is a playful combination of journalism and literature.
With Bolsonaro out of the way, I look forward to writing more about mental health issues and other topics of everyday life. For example, I’ve never written about dance, planetariums, odontology, or Carnival.
In your essay about the election, you document a number of fascinating examples of political and scientific misinformation that are often spread over the messaging service Telegram, which we’re less familiar with in the US. Could you tell us a bit more about this app—what makes it so popular, and does it have certain features that make it easy for users to spread misinformation?
Telegram is an encrypted message platform that supports group chats with up to 200,000 users and channels with an unlimited number of subscribers, so it’s easier to mass-reproduce content there than on WhatsApp, for example, which limits the size of groups. Telegram’s rules on abuse and disinformation are vague, and they are loose about moderation. The company has also, until very recently, eluded all orders and requests from the Brazilian courts. Other social media companies, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and WhatsApp, had working relationships with the courts; they started flagging and removing false information. So when users were banned from other platforms, they went to Telegram.
Was there already a current of mistrust for scientists in the country before Bolsonaro came to power? You note that vaccination rates for children were once very robust.
We’ve always been cited for our successful children’s vaccination campaign. Our national immunization program, which is among the best in the world, offers more than twenty free vaccines to all Brazilians and has been making its way to self-sufficiency in vaccine production. Between 2002 and 2012 the program achieved an average child vaccination rate of 95 percent. This started to change after presidents Michel Temer (2016–2018) and Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022) both delivered damaging cuts to our national healthcare system. Bolsonaro has also worked hard to discredit Covid vaccines, and delayed the government from buying them, while promoting an imaginary “early treatment” with ineffective drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Bolsonaro has in fact embodied a historical shift in the Brazilian population’s trust in science, especially on public health and environmental issues.
The January 8 attack on the capitol by Bolsonaro supporters echoed the January 6 attack in the United States, and there are obvious parallels in the vaccine denialism and other preoccupations of the so-called culture war—to what extent does information flow directly between American and Brazilian right-wing influencers?
Brazilian and American far-right supporters are close to one another. Steve Bannon, for example, has repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of Brazil’s electoral system and is considered an informal advisor to Jair Bolsonaro’s campaign. Tucker Carlson has also amplified the baseless claims of election fraud in Brazil. The national politician Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of our former president’s sons, acts as Brazil’s primary representative to the American right; in the last five years, according to the Brazilian news agency Pública, he has attended seventy-seven meetings with high-ranking Trump supporters, including Trump himself, as well as Jared Kushner, several Republican senators, and representatives from the alt-right platforms Gettr and Project Veritas. (The list is very long.) He attended a CPAC conference and hosted a CPAC meeting in Brazil. During my incursion into Brazilian far-right Telegram groups and channels, I’ve seen many translations of fake news articles from American far-right conspiracy theory websites like Infowars and The Gateway Pundit describing how vaccines are supposedly killing children and how the vegan leftists are trying to normalize cannibalism.
A truism for our times: a story doesn’t need to be factual to go viral. In June 2020, not long into the Covid-19 pandemic, an Instagram user shared a video of a mustachioed man wearing floral shorts and a cropped tank top, pouring himself some beer at a crowded bar in Santos, a coastal city in southeastern Brazil. According to the caption, the man was Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization. He had apparently decided to break the quarantine by ditching his shoes and dancing to a forró song called “Já que me ensinou a beber” (Since You Taught Me to Drink).
Of course, it wasn’t the director of the WHO in the video, which was actually recorded before the start of the pandemic. Nonetheless it circulated as evidence of the hypocrisy of international health authorities, and news of it was translated into several languages. Last August I saw an updated version of the video: this time, Ghebreyesus had been “caught enjoying his vacation in Brazil and spreading monkeypox.” So much homophobia and moral outrage in such a short phrase.
Brazilians, like many others around the world, have been exposed to a deluge of fake news and social media hoaxes over the past few years. Again and again we have been pushed toward radicalization, tribalism, and conspiracy. In this light, the results of the presidential election held in October are not surprising: the center-left candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, did prevail, but it was an alarmingly tight race against the far-right incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, who led a catastrophically irresponsible administration. The race went to a runoff, which Lula won with 50.9 percent of the vote. Despite refusing to implement measures scientifically proven to mitigate the spread of the virus, leading to over 695,000 Covid deaths in the past three years, Bolsonaro still enjoys enormous support in much of the country.
Indeed, on January 8 thousands of his supporters marched to the federal government buildings in Brasília. They proceeded—in an echo of the January 6, 2021, attempted coup at the US Capitol, and with the same baseless claims of election fraud—to invade and ransack the National Congress building, the Supreme Federal Court, and the presidential palace. (After an insufficient initial reaction, the police managed to reclaim the three buildings.)
In the October election the far right tightened its grip on both houses of Congress. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party won ninety-nine seats in the 513-member lower house—an increase of twenty-two—and a coalition of right-leaning parties now controls half the chamber. In the Senate, the Liberal Party won eight of the twenty-seven seats in dispute. Four of the new senators, who will be in office for the next eight years, are Bolsonaro’s former ministers; Hamilton Mourão, his former vice-president and a retired army general, also won a seat. Bolsonaro’s close allies and former high officials have also been elected governors of major states such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In total he helped to elect fourteen governors of Brazil’s twenty-seven federative units.
These are not ordinary conservatives. They are extremist politicians who seem to celebrate the period of brutal military dictatorship, when, beginning in 1964, the military dissolved Congress, suspended constitutional rights, and imposed extensive censorship; democracy was not restored until 1985. They claim that the great mistake of the military regime was “to torture but not kill,” as Bolsonaro himself declared in 2016.
Many of these right-wing figures are not ashamed to call for a new military intervention in the government. They follow a leader who advocated for the death penalty and sought impunity for police officers who murder alleged lawbreakers. And they still panic, or at least perform panic, over the threat of Communists, who will supposedly confiscate their property, turn their children into homosexuals and drug addicts, and convince all women to stop shaving their armpits. “They want a single bathroom for boys and girls,” a conservative woman in her seventies told me in December when I visited a pro-Bolsonaro campsite in São Paulo. She was one of the thousands of far-right extremists who spent two months after the vote lodged in front of military barracks around the country demanding a coup.
Over the past decade the country’s center-right has steadily collapsed. Bolsonaro’s radical vision has ascended. What remained of other centrist democratic parties gathered around Lula, but even that broad front was nearly defeated. Lula’s return to the presidency is a profound relief. All the same, the election results were shocking.
**
Brazil is the largest country in Latin America, with more than 215 million people and the highest GDP in the region. Historically, it has been conservative and majority-Catholic, with a stratified and hierarchical society. Brazil was the last nation in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1888. Today 60 percent of the population is against the legalization of abortion.
The Portuguese arrived in 1500 and ruled until 1822, when Emperor Pedro I established a Brazilian monarchy. In 1889 the military worked with large landholders to create a republican government. The presidents of the First Republic were backed by the wealthy coffee and dairy oligarchs in fecund states like São Paulo and Minas Gerais, and ruled until 1930, when Brazilians revolted after the assassination of João Pessoa, a vice-presidential candidate in that year’s election. The military swiftly staged a coup and handed power to the populist dictator Getúlio Vargas, who governed until 1945, when he was deposed in another military coup.
Vargas returned in 1951 but in 1954 was again threatened by the military (and discredited after one of his bodyguards attempted to assassinate a political opponent); then he shot himself. The next elected president, Juscelino Kubitschek, built a new capital, Brasília, and ruled until 1961, when the conservative Jânio Quadros was elected under an anticorruption banner. But Quadros resigned after seven months in office. He was succeeded by the left-wing reformist João Goulart, a member of the Brazilian Labor Party who had served as vice-president under both Kubitschek and Quadros.
Goulart was deposed in the 1964 coup. The military dictatorship, backed by the United States, seized power, claiming it would save the country from the (vastly overblown) threat of communism. In the two dark decades that followed, five generals took turns as president. The regime tortured approximately 20,000 people and killed or “disappeared” more than four hundred.
The government at last returned to civilian control in 1985, after a complex redemocratization process during which the old military regime’s main opposition groups consolidated into political parties. They have been succeeding one another in the presidency ever since. In her recent book O ovo da serpente (The Serpent’s Egg, 2022), the Brazilian journalist Consuelo Dieguez offers an excellent synthesis of our recent history, one deeply informed by her interview with the Brazilian economist Eduardo Giannetti. In the late 1980s the first of these opposition groups, the center-right PMDB (Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro), solidified Brazil’s young democracy by organizing and putting into place a new constitution. Ulysses Guimarães and José Sarney were the PMDB’s main leaders.
The second group, the more centrist PSDB (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira), formed in 1988, managed to stabilize the economy and end inflation. One of its leaders was the sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who governed the country from 1995 to 2002. The last group, the center-left PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or Workers’ Party), led by Lula from 2003 to 2010 and then by Dilma Rousseff from 2011 to 2016, pursued macroeconomic balance and bolder income-distribution policies. Millions of Brazilians were lifted from poverty. Lula’s government implemented a pioneering program of monthly cash allowances to the poor called Bolsa Família, which also contributed to advances in children’s schooling, nutrition, and health care.
This steady progress was marred by corruption scandals and the economic crisis in the 2010s. Brazilians began to feel dissatisfied. In 2013 an estimated one million people took to the streets, demanding everything from free public transportation to the end of endemic corruption. Multiple groups rose up, on the left and the right. In 2016 Rousseff was impeached and removed from office by a largely conservative legislature on vague charges of manipulating the federal budget to conceal evidence of economic shortcomings. It was, in fact, a congressional coup to oust a very unpopular president.
Lula was considered a front-runner in the 2018 presidential election, but he was deemed ineligible to participate after he was arrested on money-laundering and corruption charges. He spent 580 days in prison. In 2021 the Supreme Federal Court nullified the convictions, declaring that the trial was faulty and the judge biased. (Sergio Moro, the crusading young judge who presided over Lula’s trial, later served as Bolsonaro’s minister of justice and public security.)
Bolsonaro, a sixty-three-year-old retired army captain, emerged from the depths of Congress, where he had served in relative obscurity for twenty-seven years, to speak to those nostalgic for the military era. Born in the countryside of São Paulo, he served briefly in the army’s parachute brigade. He was considered a “bad military man” by the former president General Ernesto Geisel. After being imprisoned for insubordination, he left the armed forces and launched a political career in Rio de Janeiro.
Bolsonaro is a self-declared homophobe. He once told a congresswoman that he would never rape her because she didn’t “deserve it.” After his decades in Congress he ran for president with a promise to drag the country back into the past if elected. In 2018—while Lula was still imprisoned—Bolsonaro defeated Fernando Haddad of the PT with 55.1 percent of the vote.
**
How did Bolsonaro stage this ascendance? And how has the Brazilian center-right been so totally overrun? In The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World (2022), the New York Times reporter Max Fisher begins to answer that question. In a chapter on the political situation in Brazil over the past few years, Fisher correctly notes that the political establishment had rejected Bolsonaro for decades because of his fanatical positions, misogyny, and hate speech. “But that attention-grabbing behavior performed well online,” Fisher notes, with social media channels such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and particularly YouTube responsible for the upsurge in Bolsonaro’s popularity. I especially appreciated a comment from Brian Winter, the editor of Americas Quarterly, who visited Bolsonaro’s office before the 2018 election. All eight staffers were “doing social media the entire time I was there,” he said. “There was no legislative work being done.”
Fisher explains how social media platforms are designed to provide users with more and more divisive content, driving them into “self-reinforcing echo chambers of extremism” in order to retain their attention and increase engagement time. A 2019 internal Facebook report on hate and misinformation found “compelling evidence that our core product mechanics, such as virality, recommendations, and optimizing for engagement, are a significant part of why these types of speech flourish on the platform.” Fisher’s book is not specific to Brazil, but the populous, diverse country offers a laboratory for his thesis.
Fisher draws on his field research to argue that YouTube not only created an online fringe community but also radicalized Brazil’s entire conservative movement, displacing traditional right-wing politics almost completely. The results of the October election corroborate this. The PSDB, which once was one of the strongest political forces in the country, is now virtually dead.
I have followed many right-wing groups on social media for The New York Times and piauí, a monthly Brazilian magazine, trying to make sense of these changes. I’ve been submerged in racist, misogynist, anti-Semitic, and violent discussions. (“Nobody in the past hundred years has done more for peace than Adolf Hitler,” I read in a Brazilian chat group with over 4,500 members.) I’ve heard endless refutations of science and epidemiology. Social media has let opinions that long lurked in the ugly political fringes bask in the open.
In this historically violent and unequal country we feel that there is a void in the democratic field, that political rationality has been disappearing before our eyes. This void can be explained by the conversion of a large group of voters to autocratic extremisms with conspiratorial outlooks.
**
“I think even fake news is valid, with all due respect,” Bolsonaro said in a radio interview in 2018, months before that year’s election. Three years later, as president of the country, he declared: “Fake news is part of our lives.” And: “The Internet is a success.” He had just been granted a special communication award from his own Ministry of Communications (which kind of sums up our situation).
From the beginning of his presidency Bolsonaro tried to undermine the credibility of Brazil’s media and the Supreme Federal Court, institutions necessary for rational balance in our democracy and capable of constraining his totalitarian impulses. He also worked hard to disparage Brazil’s electronic voting machines—the same ones on which he was elected. In July 2022, for example, he called dozens of foreign diplomats to the presidential palace to discredit the country’s voting system, lecturing from a baseless and bizarre PowerPoint presentation. After he finished there was an embarrassing silence from the audience, followed by timid applause from the president’s cabinet members.
Apparently the main goal of Bolsonaro’s right is to promote a flood of disinformation to keep people disoriented and angry, spreading distrust. A (provisional) list of institutions vilified on Brazilian Telegram by the far right includes the United Nations, UNESCO, the WHO, the Supreme Federal Court, Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, the Health Regulatory Agency, NASA, the mainstream media, fact-checking organizations, Pope Francis, heliocentrism, stars, dinosaurs (they never existed), pollsters, and padded bras.
On Telegram, a messaging service that supports groups of up to 200,000 members and channels with an unlimited number of subscribers, a kind of moral and epistemological free-for-all has been reigning for years. YouTube videos are often among the most shared posts on the platform. According to Digital Democracy Room, a project run by the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a Brazilian think tank and higher education institution, YouTube videos accounted for eight of the top ten major links shared on Telegram in August. These are often videos from right-wing influencers who spread misinformation about their political enemies to keep their base inflamed.
It took me a while to absorb the terminology used by members of these communities. People who trust vaccines are called aceitacionistas (a neologism to describe people who accept things without questioning). Those of us who received Covid shots are “hybrids” who have been “zombified.” LGBTQ people are “people with inverted poles.” I have browsed through a Telegram dating group exclusive to single heterosexuals “with a 100 percent uncorrupted DNA,” which means those who have gotten no Covid vaccinations and never submitted to PCR tests. The main goal is to “date, marry, and procreate.”
Despite exhaustive efforts from fact-checking agencies and the WHO, these groups continue spreading old falsehoods claiming that Covid vaccines contain microchips, nanoparticles, graphene oxide, quantum dots, and parasites activated by electromagnetic impulses. According to them, vaccines can carry HIV (the virus that causes AIDS), make coins stick to our arms, and give us the ability to connect to Wi-Fi networks or pair with Bluetooth devices. From these groups I have also learned of “vaccine shedding,” which occurs when a vaccinated individual stands near someone “with pure DNA,” sometimes fatally contaminating them. Members still apparently believe in hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as Covid treatments, while denying effective mitigations like masking and social distancing.
Their rhetoric is so absurd that, after many turns of the screw, it almost becomes a work of art. My favorite channel is the completely insane “Desmagnetizado” (Demagnetized), which has over 11,000 subscribers and headlines such as “Zombified Hybrids Interacting with 5G” and “Explosive Zombified People.” The following is a description of a video that I did not watch: “A male synthetic organism was walking down the street when it came across an evil 5G entity. The biological entity had taken the third dose of the vaccine and its graphene nano-bot system was revved up.”
**
Here is an example of a fake headline that caused moral outrage on a Brazilian Telegram channel: “UNICEF Suggests That Pornography May Be Good for Children.” On a YouTube channel, a similar assertion aroused the wrath of its members: “They want to pass a pro-incest law.” (“They” are obviously the Satan-worshiping, pedophilic left.) Made-up stories like these are designed to set off tribal defense instincts among groups that feel they are threatened, creating a climate of “us versus them.”
There are many who share fake news unwittingly, and there are those who exploit this vulnerability. Rodrigo Nunes, a philosophy professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, explains that the new Brazilian far right can be seen as an entrepreneurial movement, with politicians carving out a niche market for the high demand of frustrated citizens. In his essay collection Do transe à vertigem (From Trance to Vertigo, 2022), Nunes discusses the resentment among the Brazilian petty bourgeoisie, who feel aggrieved by a “cultural elite” that masters intellectual codes, a “social elite” that has connections, and an “economic elite” that holds the wealth. On the other hand, they also feel the threat of losing their markers of dominance: exclusive access to services such as international travel and paid domestic work. Meanwhile, Nunes writes, sensing new market demands, hundreds of “bankrupt businessmen, decadent rock stars, failed actors, journalists of dubious reputation, sub-celebrity ‘activists,’ struggling traders, mediocre life coaches, police and military officers looking to supplement their income” have found an opportunity for a new career. They began to identify themselves as conservative and patriotic agitators, often entering mainstream politics. Look at Nikolas Ferreira, a twenty-six-year-old evangelical TikTok star who received nearly 1.5 million votes in his run for a seat in Congress.
We are trapped in a vicious cycle: moral outrage and threats to status produce stronger group affiliations, which are then exploited by politicians who profit from this division and further incentivize it. It can be a short climb from here to autocracy. As noted in the 2022 Democracy Report published by the V-Dem Institute, a research group based in Sweden that tracks the state of democracy around the world, “Once political elites and their followers no longer believe that political opponents are legitimate and deserve equal respect, democratic norms and rules can be set aside to ‘save the nation.’”
**
The race between Lula and Bolsonaro was, seen from this perspective, a momentous crossroads: Brazil could either keep sliding toward a democratic rupture or reverse course.
The political scientist Oliver Stuenkel, a professor at the School of International Relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation and a columnist for Americas Quarterly, argues that to sink a democratic system an authoritarian leader in most cases needs to be reelected at least once. This is because, first, the dismantling of institutions usually takes time. Reducing legislative and judicial independence might require, for example, multiple opportunities to nominate ideologically aligned judges. Second, reelection represents both a moral boost for the authoritarian leader and a strong letdown for the opposition and civil society.
Bolsonaro’s own tactics mixed a violent and morally righteous discourse with a generous dash of militarism. In 2019 around a third of his cabinet was made up of retired or active-duty military personnel, with many more in crucial government positions. While in power Bolsonaro helped to dismantle environmental agencies, increasing the rate of deforestation in the Amazon. Each year he was in office, hundreds of indigenous people were murdered. He signed over a dozen decrees loosening restrictions on civilian gun ownership; as a result, the number of privately owned weapons rose to 1.9 million in 2022, up from 695,000 in 2018.
Luckily, we’ll never know what he had in mind for a second term, but his next step at least was clear: to eliminate the opposition from the judiciary. He appointed two hard-right justices to the Supreme Federal Court. Had he won, he would have appointed two more to fill this year’s vacancies. (There are eleven members of the court.) The Supreme Federal Court and the Superior Electoral Court were a strong check on Bolsonaro; in 2022, for instance, they ordered social networks to remove antidemocratic posts spreading disinformation about the electoral system. They also issued an arrest warrant for a right-wing congressman for inciting both a coup and violence against the judges. (Bolsonaro pardoned him the next day.)
Most importantly, the judiciary has been conducting investigations to identify the groups responsible for funding and spreading misinformation and propaganda in the country. The evidence points to an orchestrated scheme that fabricates and broadcasts disinformation on social networks for “ideological, party-political, and financial gains.” This so-called cabinet of hate is allegedly composed of Bolsonaro’s closest allies, his special aides, and members of his family. Carlos Bolsonaro, one of the former president’s sons and a Rio de Janeiro city councilman, has been identified as a central player in the scheme. The former president himself is being investigated for his “direct and relevant role” in spreading disinformation. (They all deny the accusations.)
Now the federal police are working to identify the January 8 rioters and their financial sponsors, and a Supreme Federal Court judge approved a request from prosecutors to include Bolsonaro in the investigation. Around 1,500 people have been detained so far in relation to January 8—two hundred during the attacks on government buildings and others at the pro-Bolsonaro camp in Brasília—on charges of terrorism, criminal association, attacks on the democratic rule of law, coup d’état, persecution, and inciting crime. There’s nothing left of the campsite in São Paulo that I visited in December.
Bolsonaro’s electoral defeat means respite for Brazilians from his endless promotion of conspiracy theories. Lula’s victory was only possible because democratic forces from many points on the political spectrum united to block the country’s descent into the old depths of totalitarianism. This means that Lula will have to share power with a broad-based coalition whose interests are quite varied.
But it also means that there will be no place anymore for antiscientific discourse in the fight against Covid and other illnesses, including polio and tuberculosis; we desperately need to restore the excellent vaccination coverage for childhood diseases that we had in the not-so-distant past. Lula has promised to address the urgency of food deprivation and hunger, which affect 33 million Brazilians (an increase of 57 percent from December 2020). And with Marina Silva as minister of the environment and climate change and Sônia Guajajara in the newly created Ministry of Indigenous People, there is also great hope for the Amazon rainforest. It is perhaps here that Lula’s election matters most to the planet.
**
Still, we are at a fragile moment. All the components that enabled Bolsonaro’s rise are still in place. As two Democratic members of the US Congress, Tom Malinowski and Anna Eshoo, wrote in a letter to the CEOs of Google and YouTube, it would take eliminating “the fundamental problem” of algorithms that reinforce users’ existing biases—“especially those rooted in anger, anxiety, and fear”—to curb this toxic polarization.
Facebook, according to internal documents quoted by Fisher, knew by April 2021 that their algorithms “were boosting dangerous misinformation, that they could have stemmed the problem dramatically with the flip of a switch, and that they refused to do so for fear of hurting traffic.” The company’s researchers had found that “serial reshares” were likelier to be false, but the algorithm, measuring them for potential virality, artificially boosted their reach anyway. “Simply turning off this boost,” the researchers found, “would curb Covid-related misinformation by up to 38 percent.” This would be an important step to amend political fracturing in Brazil and elsewhere. After all, despite the results of the last presidential election, extremism on the Brazilian far right has not been defeated.
The day after the election, my four-year-old daughter returned from preschool telling me about a heated bathroom scuffle. A little boy shouted that President-elect Lula was a thief. My daughter and her classmate yelled back at him, “He is not! He is not!” A commotion followed. Luckily, discussions in the preschool bathroom are not intensified by an exploitative algorithm, and before long the children were on speaking terms again.
Lula was inaugurated on the first day of the year, but liberals should not presume that almost half of the population has returned to their senses now that the sensible guy is back in office. It is still up to Brazilians to set their country on a more democratic, less ludicrous course.
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — As a shocked nation watched live on television and social media, thousands of radical supporters of a defeated president marched on the seat of the federal government, convinced that an election had been stolen. The mob ransacked the Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace. It took the authorities several hours to arrest hundreds of people and finally restore order.
Hopefully, that was the last act for the bolsonaristas, extremist supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who was once called the Trump of the Tropics. Yet, as with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump, it is unclear if this is the end of a political movement or just the beginning of more division and chaos.
The new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, already faced a difficult challenge to unite his divided country, even without a bombastic former president just offstage and many of his supporters now prone to violence. Bringing those responsible for the attack to justice is a vital place to start.
On Jan. 1, Mr. Lula was sworn in to his third term as president of Brazil in a ceremonial inauguration in the capital — but Mr. Bolsonaro didn’t attend. He was supposed to pass the presidential sash to Mr. Lula as a sign of a peaceful transition of power. Instead, he opted to spend the last days of his presidency and the first weeks of Mr. Lula’s administration in Orlando, Fla., at a house near Disney World.
Yet in the days since his defeat many of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters have camped outside military bases around the country, figuring that the former president would pull together a last-minute plan. “We don’t know the date, we don’t know what will happen, we don’t know where, we only trust our president,” one of the protesters told me.
In the end, nothing happened, so some members of the mob took matters into their own hands.
Over the last two years, Mr. Bolsonaro repeatedly made baseless claims that the electoral system could be manipulated. When Mr. Bolsonaro said there were only three alternatives for his future — prison, death or victory — he did not mention a fourth option: go eat fried chicken in the United States, which he was photographed doing in December. In the end, the necessary components for a successful insurrection just weren’t there. The defeated president had neither the institutional nor the public support he needed to jolt the military into taking his side.
For a start, he lacked allies. As soon as Mr. Bolsonaro’s electoral loss was announced, some of his political allies congratulated the new president-elect. Other Latin American presidents did the same. Joe Biden’s congratulations came late on election night and were heralded in the Brazilian media as important endorsements of the fairness of the electoral process.
Most important, Mr. Bolsonaro’s defeat provoked a much softer outcry among his voters than was feared — although it was still disruptive. Thousands of his supporters blocked roads and set vehicles on fire in an attempt to paralyze the country. Hundreds of others decided to place tents in front of army barracks across the country, pressuring for military intervention in the government. “S.O.S. armed forces,” they screamed, often alternating martial slogans with Hail Marys and the national anthem.
A few weeks later, all roads had been cleared. Some camps remained, including one in the Santana neighborhood here in São Paulo. On Christmas, I spent part of my afternoon talking to a dozen Bolsonaro supporters camped there. They still believed that the elections had been rigged. The strongest evidence came in the form of a question: “If everybody is here, why has the minority won?”
They insisted to me that Mr. Lula wouldn’t be sworn in on Jan. 1. “We are certain that he won’t,” said a woman in her 70s. (The people I spoke to declined to give their names out of fear for their safety.) When I asked what might happen instead, the woman hinted at two possible outcomes: Either the military would be called to support a presidential coup just as the bolsonaristaswanted, or the “good citizens” would take to the streets — also allegedly under Mr. Bolsonaro’s instructions — to ensure that he stayed in power.
Mr. Lula’s administration, a broad coalition of democratic forces, will lead the country to communism, the protesters told me. That’s why they called for military intervention while interpreting possible secret messages that the president has tapped to them in Morse code. (Yes, they’ve spent some time trying to decipher the drumming of Mr. Bolsonaro’s fingers on a desk during his last livestream.)
The truth is that Mr. Bolsonaro’s political capital has dwindled. When he left the country, his vice president, Gen. Hamilton Mourão, told the nation: “The alternation of power in a democracy is healthy and must be preserved.” He also made a blunt reference to “leaders who were supposed to reassure and unite the nation around a project for the country” but who had instead fomented a climate of chaos and social collapse. Ouch. It appears that even the armed forces just want a calm transition to power so they can remain a privileged class without too many responsibilities.
Some of Mr. Bolsonaro’s former allies in Congress now support Mr. Lula, and the former president’s Digital Popularity Index, which is tracked by a consulting firm, has fallen more than half since its peak.
But hard-core bolsonaristas aren’t to go quietly. Only on Monday did they remove their tents from outside military barracks in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and other cities. In Brasília, the authorities dismantled the camp and detained 1,200 people. The demonstrators have been waiting for more than two months for a miracle to happen. When it didn’t, they tried to take the government by force.
In response, Mr. Lula signed an emergency decree allowing the federal government to intervene and restore order to the capital. It will remain in effect until the end of the month. The federal district governor was temporarily removed from his post by a Supreme Court judge. A criminal investigation has been opened to identify the rioters and their financial sponsors. On Monday, a member of Congress asked the government to request Mr. Bolsonaro’s extradition.
Democracies need the rule of law to flourish. They also need a shared understanding that power must be transferred peacefully. Mr. Lula has his work cut out for him to hold his nation together. A good starting point will be to keep calm after these deplorable events and firmly follow the rites of justice to hold the culprits accountable.
For his part, Mr. Bolsonaro didn’t speak out in support of the rioters. But he didn’t ask them to go home, either, preferring to let them interpret his silence as they wish.
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 11, 2023, Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: The ‘Trump of the Tropics’ Goes Bust.
SÃO PAULO, Brasil — Uma nação chocada assistiu ao vivo, pela TV e pelas redes sociais, milhares de apoiadores radicais de um presidente derrotado marcharem até a sede do governo federal, convencidos de que a eleição foi roubada. A turba saqueou o Congresso, o Supremo Tribunal Federal e o Palácio do Planalto. As autoridades levaram várias horas para prender centenas de pessoas e finalmente restaurar a ordem.
Espera-se que tenha sido o último ato dos bolsonaristas, apoiadores extremistas do ex-presidente Jair Bolsonaro, que já foi apelidado de “Trump dos Trópicos”. Ainda assim, tal como ocorreu com o ataque dos apoiadores do ex-presidente Donald Trump ao Capitólio em 6 de janeiro, não está claro se este é o fim de um movimento político ou apenas o início de mais polarização e caos.
O novo presidente, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, já enfrentava o difícil desafio de unir um país dividido, mesmo que sem a presença de um ex-presidente bombástico, recém-saído de cena, e com muitos de seus eleitores agora propensos à violência. Levar os responsáveis pelo ataque à Justiça é um ponto essencial por onde começar.
Em 1o de janeiro, Lula assumiu o terceiro mandato como presidente do Brasil em uma cerimônia de posse na capital — mas Bolsonaro não compareceu. Ele deveria passar a faixa presidencial para Lula como símbolo de uma transição pacífica de poder. Em vez disso, preferiu passar os últimos dias de sua presidência e as primeiras semanas da gestão de Lula em Orlando, na Flórida, em uma casa próxima ao parque Disney World.
Ainda assim, no período após a derrota, muitos apoiadores de Bolsonaro acamparam em frente a bases militares em todo o país, imaginando que o ex-presidente iria implementar um plano de última hora. “A gente não sabe data, a gente não sabe o quê, a gente não sabe onde, a gente só confia no nosso presidente”, uma das manifestantes me disse.
No fim das contas, nada aconteceu, então alguns membros da turba tentaram agir por conta própria.
Nos últimos dois anos, Bolsonaro tem repetido infundadas alegações de que o sistema eleitoral poderia ser manipulado. Quando ele disse que havia apenas três alternativas para o futuro — estar preso, ser morto ou a vitória —, ele esqueceu de mencionar uma quarta opção: ir comer frango frito nos Estados Unidos, algo que o fotografaram fazendo no começo do mês. Afinal, não havia os componentes necessários para uma insurreição bem-sucedida. O presidente derrotado não tinha o respaldo institucional nem o apoio público de que necessitava para induzir os militares a assumirem seu lado.
Para começar, faltavam-lhe aliados. Logo que a derrota eleitoral de Bolsonaro foi anunciada, alguns de seus correligionários parabenizaram o novo presidente eleito. Outros presidentes latino-americanos fizeram o mesmo. As congratulações de Joe Biden vieram mais tarde, na própria noite da eleição, e foram anunciadas pela mídia brasileira como uma significativa confirmação da lisura do processo eleitoral.
E o que é mais importante, a derrota de Bolsonaro provocou um clamor entre seus eleitores bem menor do que se temia — ainda que tenha havido tumulto. Milhares de seus apoiadores bloquearam estradas e incendiaram veículos, na tentativa de paralisar o país. Centenas de outros decidiram montar tendas diante de quartéis e outras edificações militares por todo o território, clamando por uma intervenção militar no governo. “S.O.S. Forças Armadas”, eles gritavam, por vezes alternando palavras de ordem belicosas com ave-marias e o Hino Nacional.
Algumas semanas depois, todas as estradas estavam liberadas. Alguns acampamentos permaneceram, incluindo um no bairro de Santana, em minha cidade, São Paulo. No Natal, passei parte da tarde conversando com uma dúzia de apoiadores de Bolsonaro que ocupavam o local. Eles ainda acreditavam que as eleições haviam sido fraudadas. A evidência mais forte vinha em forma de pergunta: “Se está todo mundo aqui, por que a minoria venceu?”.
Eles insistiam que Lula não assumiria o poder no dia 1o de janeiro. “A gente tem convicção de que ele não vai”, declarou uma mulher de aproximadamente 70 anos. (As pessoas com quem conversei não quiseram fornecer seus nomes por questões de segurança.) Quando perguntei o que poderia acontecer, a mulher sugeriu dois possíveis desenlaces: ou os militares seriam acionados para apoiar um golpe do presidente — assim como os bolsonaristas desejavam – ou os “cidadãos de bem” tomariam as ruas — também seguindo supostas instruções de Bolsonaro — para garantir que ele permanecesse no poder.
O governo Lula, formado por uma frente ampla de forças democráticas, irá conduzir o país ao comunismo, me disseram os manifestantes. É por isso que eles pediram uma intervenção militar enquanto interpretavam as possíveis mensagens secretas que o presidente lhes mandou em Código Morse. (Sim, eles passaram um tempo tentando decifrar as batucadas de Bolsonaro na mesa durante sua última livenas redes sociais.)
A verdade é que o capital político de Bolsonaro definhou. Quando ele deixou o país, seu vice-presidente, o general Hamilton Mourão, disse à nação: “A alternância do poder em uma democracia é saudável e deve ser preservada”. Ele também fez uma franca referência a “lideranças que deveriam tranquilizar e unir a nação em torno de um projeto de país”, e que em vez disso fomentaram um clima de caos e desagregação social. Essa doeu. Parece que até as Forças Armadas almejam apenas uma transição de poder tranquila, para que possam continuar sendo uma classe privilegiada sem maiores responsabilidades.
Alguns dos antigos aliados de Bolsonaro no Congresso agora apoiam Lula. O Índice de Popularidade Digital do ex-presidente, calculado por uma empresa de consultoria, caiu para menos da metade de seu ápice.
Mas os bolsonaristas radicais não irão cair em silêncio. Apenas nesta segunda-feira eles retiraram as tendas da frente dos quartéis e instalações militares em São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro e outras cidades. Em Brasília, as autoridades desmontaram o acampamento e detiveram 1.200 pessoas. Os manifestantes passaram mais de dois meses esperando um milagre acontecer. Quando não houve nada, tentaram tomar o governo à força.
Em resposta, Lula assinou um decreto de emergência permitindo a intervenção do governo federal para restaurar a ordem na capital. A medida terá efeito até o fim do mês. O governador do Distrito Federal foi temporariamente afastado por um juiz do STF. Uma investigação criminal foi aberta para identificar os insurgentes e seus financiadores. Na segunda-feira, uma deputada pediu que o governo requisitasse a extradição de Bolsonaro.
As democracias precisam do estado de direito para prosperar. Também precisam da compreensão mútua de que o poder deve ser transferido de forma pacífica. Lula tem a difícil missão de manter coesa uma nação. Um bom ponto de partida será manter a calma após eventos tão deploráveis e observar com firmeza os ritos da Justiça, a fim de responsabilizar os culpados.
De sua parte, Bolsonaro não se pronunciou em apoio aos insurgentes. Mas também não pediu que fossem para casa, preferindo que eles interpretassem seu silêncio do modo que desejassem.
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 11, 2023, Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: The ‘Trump of the Tropics’ Goes Bust.
Acho que é porque quase não vi a Copa passada —estava ocupada exercendo a função de vaca leiteira de um recém-nascido e cochilava ao primeiro som de um hino nacional—, mas foi como se acordasse em 2022 e o futebol tivesse entrado em modo turbo. O que assistimos em campo nos últimos dias é espantoso feito espirro de tartaruga.
Penso em alguns gols da Espanha contra a Costa Rica (placar final: 7 a 0). Marco Asensio parece que fez uma passada de voleibol antes de marcar um golaço, quase sem deixar a bola bater no chão. Do alto de seus 18 anos, Pablo Martín Páez Gavira, o Gavi, parecia um maluco atrasado tentando entrar no vagão do metrô depois que a campainha tocou. No quinto gol da Espanha, ele veio voando de lá do meio do campo feito um coelhinho de desenho animado, deu uma bicuda com o pé direito e não parou de correr até cair no banco dos passageiros preferenciais.
Fico particularmente satisfeita quando o placar já está definido e os jogadores passam a tocar a bola e chutar para o gol sem a menor cerimônia. Tudo parece mais solto. Nos 6 a 2 contra o Irã, a seleção inglesa jogava ao mesmo tempo tranquilamente e em alta velocidade. Bukayo Saka, de 21 anos, só faltou lixar as unhas depois do segundo gol. A França, depois de virar contra a Austrália (placar final: 4 a 1), tocava a bola com facilidade – o passe de Kylian Mbappé de calcanhar fazendo tabelinha com Adrien Rabiot e Olivier Giroud foi um poema.
Ainda assim, o queixo continuava no lugar até que veio o jogo do Brasil contra a Sérvia. Assistindo a sua primeira partida de Copa, minha filha de 4 anos não gostou “daquela parte em que um empurra o outro” e resolveu mexer nas minhas gavetas. Durante o primeiro tempo, ela passou de lá para cá com canetas marca-texto, réguas, papéis e cola, comentando meio indignada: “É tudo pessoa grande que sabe que não pode empurrar!”. Enquanto espremia despreocupadamente um tubo inteiro de cola no papel, chegou a sugerir à Fifa que contratassem a prô Simone como juíza da partida. Depois de seus protestos, o jogo de fato ficou mais tranquilo. Mas, até o momento, eu não estava muito impressionada.
Então veio o segundo gol de Richarlison de Andrade, vulgo Pombo. Aquilo, não tenho dúvida, foi uma referência ao “universo monumental” de Claude Lévi-Strauss e aos “tecidos do espírito humano” de William Faulkner . Em plena pequena área, ele ajeita a bola com o pé esquerdo, vira de costas para o gol (a empáfia!) e manda uma bomba de voleio. O estádio explode em volta. Ele comemora com a seriedade de uma estátua grega.
E assim terminou a primeira rodada da fase de grupos. O queixo está meio deslocado até agora.
Famílias estão divididas. As autoridades buscam controlar a situação. Discussões por vezes terminam em batalhas campais, com pedradas e pauladas distribuídas a esmo. A polícia é frequentemente acionada para acalmar os ânimos. Ao que tudo indica, é possível dividir a população do país ao meio: 80 milhões do lado de cá e 80 milhões do lado de lá.
Estamos falando, é claro, da polarização futebolística em Bangladesh, que já adquiriu contornos míticos na imprensa internacional. Há décadas, o país se divide entre apoiar a seleção do Brasil e a seleção da Argentina. A radicalização só fez aumentar nos últimos anos, chegando a ganhar o apelido de “guerra fria” do jornal Dhaka Tribune.
Na cidadezinha de Rangamati, no sudeste de Bangladesh, o placar atual é de duas pontes a um. As pontes Brahmantila e Puranabasti-Jhulikya foram pintadas de branco e azul celeste. A ponte Asambasti é verde-e-amarela. Um engenheiro da agência estatal responsável pelas duas primeiras negou ao jornal que elas tenham sido pintadas com essa cor em homenagem à seleção argentina. Ele disse que a nova decoração buscou apenas “realçar a beleza das construções”.
Ninguém acredita nele, é claro. Na municipalidade de Betagi, torcedores locais confeccionaram uma bandeira argentina com 92 metros de comprimento; seus rivais responderam com uma bandeira brasileira de 152 metros. Autoridades locais prometeram retirar ambas caso ocorra algum tumulto: “Não há lugar para o caos ao redor da Copa do Mundo”. Lembremos também do intrépido Joynal Abedin Tutul, que em 2014 pintou um prédio de seis andares em Daca com as cores do Brasil.
Já na cidade de Nandail, o alfaiate Abdul Matin e sua esposa passaram seis dias costurando uma bandeira argentina de mais de 900 metros de comprimento, que agora margeia a estrada que leva à estação de trem. Outras bandeiras gigantes dos dois times estão sendo estendidas em várias localidades do país.
E há quem seja ainda mais ousado. Um cidadão bengali chamado Masudur Rahman, que morou no Qatar por dez anos e é fanático pelo futebol portenho, construiu oito miniaturas dos estádios da Copa em Faridpur, para que os habitantes de seu vilarejo possam aproveitar o torneio como se estivessem no país-sede. Ele teve a ajuda de seu sobrinho e cerca de 25 adolescentes da região.
Infelizmente essa guerra insólita, travada a 16 mil quilômetros daqui, não é tão fria quanto deveria. Em junho, mais de trezentas pessoas se envolveram em um tumulto com pedras e tijolos em um campo de críquete no subúrbio da capital Daca, e sete acabaram feridas. (Sim, um campo de críquete.) Eles discordavam sobre quem é melhor no futebol: Argentina ou Brasil. Em 2014, uma luta campal irrompeu em Barisal quando um fã da seleção brasileira mencionou no refeitório da faculdade o gol de mão de Diego Maradona em 1986, que ele chamou de “ilegal”. Onze pessoas ficaram feridas. Semanas depois, um rapaz de 18 anos foi morto durante uma briga a pedradas entre as torcidas rivais.
Na próxima quinta-feira, enquanto os colegas transmitem do Qatar, trarei mais notícias de Bangladesh.
Vanessa Barbara é jornalista e escritora, colaboradora do The New York Times e da revista piauí. É autora da coletânea de crônicas O Louco de Palestra (Companhia das Letras) e do romance Noites de Alface (Alfaguara), que foi adaptado para o cinema em 2021. Como cronista, cobriu os Jogos Olímpicos de 2012 (Londres) e 2016 (Rio), além da Copa do Mundo de 2014, para a Folha de S. Paulo.
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Four years of madness are nearly over. In a tense second-round runoff, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva prevailed over President Jair Bolsonaro, taking 50.9 percent of the vote. Barring a dramatic turnaround — the dreaded coup that has hung over the country for months, for example — Mr. da Silva will, on Jan. 1, be Brazil’s president.
It wasn’t easy. The past month has been a distillation of the Bolsonaro era. There’s been rampant misinformation. (Mr. da Silva’s campaign had to confirm, in response to wild rumors circulated on social media platforms, that he “had not made a deal with the devil nor has he ever talked to Satan.”) There’s been ample discussion of cannibalism, freemasonry and the supposedly desirable politics of the medieval era. And of course, there’s been the threat of political violence, seemingly blessed from the top.
At last, for the sake of our collective mental health, we can say that Mr. Bolsonaro has been beaten. It is not that the country is strongly aligned with Mr. da Silva and the center-left politics of the Workers’ Party, which governed the country for 13 years, ending in 2016. It’s more that the past four years under Mr. Bolsonaro showed us how low a nation could go and we’re desperate to emerge from the swamp of political despondency.
There’s a lot about the administration I won’t miss — its murderous neglect, its deep-rooted corruption, its fanaticism. One of the greatest reliefs will be no longer having to participate in crazy discussions. Brazil, at last, can get back to a semblance of sanity.
It’s hard to believe how much public debate has shifted. Nine years ago, Brazilians took to the streets in favor of free public transport. How far are we from that sort of civic-mindedness today? Now we spend much of our time asserting (in an increasingly exasperated manner) that virology actually exists and climate change is not a globalist hoax.
We are afraid to take to the streets in protest and give the government a reason to attempt a coup. We think any civilian in a passing car may be armed. We know that wearing red will be seen as a political statement. (A Brazilian Catholic cardinal was recently taken to task over his traditional red clothes, showing that not even the clergy is above suspicion.) We do not dare discuss the news with our neighbors, for fear of what they might say. The elevators have never been so quiet.
The truth is that Brazilian society has always been dominated by conservative forces. None of the advances of the past two decades have come easily — the social welfare program Bolsa Família, affirmative action in universities and the public sector or same-sex marriage. They were all met with derision, if not downright indignation, from most conservatives. But these were battles fought between the center left and the center right, which were then both sufficiently reasonable to engage in democratic debate. That changed when Mr. Bolsonaro arrived on the national scene. Gradually at first and then suddenly, a dam of repressed right-wing extremism burst.
Day after day, the integrity of public discourse has been liquefied by conspiratorial claims, turbocharged by social media and encouraged by Mr. Bolsonaro. We have been obliged to waste our time publicly refuting the theory that vaccines contain nanobots or that, as he put it, the Amazon rainforest “cannot catch fire.” All that energy, which could have gone to demanding a better public health care system or a stronger response to climate change, was instead swallowed up combating lurid nonsense.
But Mr. Bolsonaro gave us no choice, right up to the election. There is little doubt that he aimed for autocracy and would seize any opportunity to remain in power; the need to defeat him became an absolute necessity, taking precedence over every other concern. That explains the breadth of the coalition around Mr. da Silva’s candidacy, which included even previous opponents from the center right. The electoral contest was reduced to a binary: for or against Mr. Bolsonaro.
In truth, it isn’t that simple. For one thing, there is no tangible solution for how social networks seem to push citizens to extreme positions, deepening polarization. For another, politicians endorsed by Mr. Bolsonaro are now an established part of the political landscape. More than a dozen Bolsonaro-supporting governors, out of 27 governors nationwide, were elected, and his party is the largest in the Senate, after winning eight of the 27 seats up for grabs. (Some of the new senators, who will stay in power for the next eight years, are former ministers in Mr. Bolsonaro’s administration.) The far right also increased its influence in Congress: The president’s party won 99 seats in the 513-member lower house. Mr. Bolsonaro may leave office, but Bolsonarismo is far from over.
That poses serious challenges for the incoming administration. Not only will an emboldened far right be a constant thorn in Mr. da Silva’s side, but it will also force him to rely on the parties of the center, opening the way for the — often corrupt — exchange of favors that has marred Brazilian democracy since its inception. Even so, this opportunity for a new political trajectory must not be undervalued. The far right, having occupied the presidency, could be pushed back to the fringes. At the very least, we might get a government concerned more with rising inequality and hunger than with the number of followers at its motorcycle rallies. That alone is a tonic.
Crucially, Brazilians should be able to return to a discussion of more urgent topics, such as the country’s housing deficit, public education, military police and racism. Maybe we could also talk about things that interest and astound us, that give us pleasure. (Turtles and astronomy, anyone?) After all we’ve been through, we deserve to enjoy some respite from the madness.
A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 1, 2022, Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: Brazil May Finally Be Free From the Madness of Bolsonaro.
SÃO PAULO, Brasil — Quatro anos de loucura chegaram praticamente ao fim. Em um segundo turno tenso, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva prevaleceu sobre o presidente Jair Bolsonaro, com 50,9 por cento dos votos. Exceto por uma reviravolta dramática — o temível golpe que há meses paira sobre o país, por exemplo — Lula se tornará, em 1 de janeiro, o presidente do Brasil.
Não foi fácil. O último mês foi um resumo da era Bolsonaro. Houve uma quantia desenfreada de desinformação. (A campanha de Lula teve até de confirmar, em resposta a boatos insanos que circularam nas mídias sociais, que o candidato “não tem pacto nem jamais conversou com o diabo.”) Houve ampla discussão sobre canibalismo, maçonaria e o sistema político supostamente preferível da Idade Média. E, é claro, houve a ameaça de violência política, aparentemente encorajada pelo topo.
Finalmente, para o bem da nossa saúde mental coletiva, podemos dizer que Bolsonaro foi derrotado. Não é que o Brasil esteja fortemente alinhado com Lula e a política de centro-esquerda do Partido dos Trabalhadores, que governou o país por 13 anos, terminando em 2016. É mais que os últimos quatro anos de gestão Bolsonaro nos mostraram o quão baixo uma nação pode ir, e estamos desesperados para emergir desse pântano de desalento político.
Há muita coisa dessa gestão que não vai deixar saudades — a negligência assassina, a corrupção arraigada, o fanatismo. Um dos maiores alívios será não precisar mais participar de discussões loucas. O Brasil, enfim, pode voltar a ter uma aparência de sanidade.
É difícil acreditar no quanto o debate público mudou. Nove anos atrás, os brasileiros foram às ruas para pedir a gratuidade no transporte público. Quão longe estamos desse tipo de mentalidade cívica hoje? Agora passamos boa parte do tempo garantindo (de uma forma cada vez mais exasperada) que a virologia de fato existe e a mudança climática não é uma farsa globalista.
Temos medo de ir às ruas protestar e dar ao governo um motivo para tentar um golpe. Achamos que qualquer cidadão passando em um automóvel pode estar armado. Sabemos que usar vermelho será visto como uma declaração política. (Recentemente um cardeal católico brasileiro foi levado a prestar contas sobre suas vestimentas tradicionais, o que mostra que nem mesmo o clero está acima de qualquer suspeição.) Não ousamos discutir as notícias com os vizinhos, por medo do que eles poderão dizer. Os elevadores nunca estiveram tão silenciosos.
A verdade é que a sociedade brasileira sempre foi dominada por forças conservadoras. Nenhum dos avanços das últimas duas décadas veio com facilidade — o programa de assistência social Bolsa Família, as cotas nas universidades e no setor público, ou o casamento entre pessoas do mesmo sexo. Todos foram recebidos com escárnio, se não com total indignação, pela maior parte dos conservadores. Mas foram batalhas travadas entre a centro-esquerda e a centro-direita, que então eram suficientemente razoáveis para se empenhar em um debate democrático. Isso mudou quando Bolsonaro entrou na cena política nacional. Primeiro aos poucos, e então de modo súbito, uma barragem de extremismo de direita reprimido se rompeu.
Dia após dia, a integridade do debate público se liquefez em alegações conspiratórias, impulsionadas pelas mídias sociais e encorajadas por Bolsonaro. Fomos obrigados a gastar nosso tempo combatendo publicamente a teoria de que vacinas contêm nanobots ou que, como o presidente declarou, a floresta amazônica “não pega fogo.” Toda essa energia, que podia ser gasta exigindo a melhoria do sistema público de saúde ou uma resposta mais enérgica à mudança climática, foi, em vez disso, dissipada no combate a tolices obscuras.
Mas Bolsonaro não nos deu outra chance, inclusive até o momento das eleições. Não há dúvida de que ele tinha como meta a autocracia e iria aproveitar qualquer oportunidade de se manter no poder; a necessidade de derrotá-lo se tornou uma prioridade absoluta, tomando precedência sobre qualquer outra preocupação. Isso explica a amplitude da coalizão em torno da candidatura de Lula, que incluiu até antigos oponentes da centro-direita. A batalha eleitoral foi reduzida a um binarismo: contra ou a favor de Bolsonaro.
Na realidade, não é assim tão simples. De um lado, não há solução tangível para o quanto as redes sociais parecem empurrar os cidadãos a posições extremas, aprofundando a polarização. De outro, os políticos endossados por Bolsonaro agora são parte estabelecida do cenário político. O povo elegeu mais de uma dúzia de governadores que apoiam Bolsonaro, das 27 unidades da federação, e seu partido obteve maioria no Senado após ganhar oito dos 27 assentos à disposição. (Muitos dos novos senadores, que ficarão no poder pelos próximos oito anos, são ex-ministros da gestão Bolsonaro.) A extrema direita também aumentou sua influência no Congresso: o partido do presidente ganhou 99 assentos na Câmara, formada por 513 deputados. Jair Bolsonaro pode até deixar o cargo, mas o bolsonarismo está longe de acabar.
Isso representa sérios desafios à próxima gestão. Não só porque uma extrema direita encorajada será um obstáculo constante para o lado de Lula, mas também porque irá forçá-lo a recorrer aos partidos do Centrão, abrindo caminho para a troca de favores — muitas vezes corrupta — que desfigurou a democracia brasileira desde sua concepção. Ainda assim, a oportunidade para uma nova trajetória política nacional não pode ser menosprezada. Após ocupar a Presidência do país, a extrema direita pode ser empurrada de volta às margens da política. No mínimo teremos um governo mais preocupado com o aumento da desigualdade e da fome, em vez do número de seguidores em suas motociatas de apoio. Só isso já é um alívio.
De modo crucial, os brasileiros poderão voltar a discutir assuntos mais urgentes do país, como o déficit de moradia, a educação pública, a polícia militar e o racismo. Talvez também possamos falar de coisas que nos interessam e nos surpreendem, que nos dão satisfação. (Tartarugas e astronomia, alguém?) Depois de tudo o que passamos, merecemos algum respiro dessa loucura.
Uma versão deste artigo apareceu na versão impressa do New York Times de Nov. 1, 2022, Section A, Page 22 com a manchete: “Brazil May Finally Be Free From the Madness of Bolsonaro”. Trad. da autora.
A man in a shirt with the image of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is seeking to regain Brazil’s presidency, in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday. Credit: Silvia Izquierdo/Associated Press
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — “If it’s God’s will, I will continue,” Jair Bolsonaro said in mid-September. “If it’s not, I’ll take off the presidential sash and I will retire.”
It feels too good to be true. After all, Mr. Bolsonaro has spent much of the year casting doubt on the electoral process and seemingly preparing the ground to reject the results. The military, ominously, wants to conduct a parallel counting of the votes. Menace hangs in the air: 67 percent of Brazilians fear political violence, and some may not risk voting at all (a big deal in a country where voting is mandatory). Talk of a coup is everywhere.
Amid this uncertainty, there’s one fact to cling to: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s leftist former president, leads in the polls, with 50 percent of intended votes to Mr. Bolsonaro’s 36 percent. Four years after he was expelled from the political scene, on corruption and money laundering charges later shown to be at best procedurally dubious and at worst politically motivated, Mr. da Silva is back to complete the job. On all available evidence, he is poised to win: if not outright on Sunday, by taking more than 50 percent, then on the election’s second round, on Oct. 30.
We Brazilians are holding our breath. The next few weeks could end a dark period, overseen by one of the worst leaders in our history, or they could usher us even further into catastrophe and despair. It’s all a bit much to take in. I’ve personally decided to spend more time sleeping and cleaning the house — the drapes have never been so white (they were originally beige). Yet no matter how much I distract myself, nothing can relieve me from the apprehension that something may go terribly wrong.
On the surface, things seem calm. An outsider walking through the streets would not get the impression that a presidential election is about to be held. Looking out the window, I notice that the Brazilian flags — which have come to represent support for Mr. Bolsonaro — have been removed from the neighboring facades. An ambiguous sign: It could be a pre-emptive response to defeat, or the calm before the storm. There’s not even much talk among friends and family concerning the election; the lines were drawn in 2018 and have not moved much since then.
Yet for all the social polarization, there is still enormous support for democracy here: 75 percent of citizens think it is better than any other form of government. Right from the beginning, Mr. da Silva has been trying to exploit that common feeling and open up a broad front against Mr. Bolsonaro. He picked a former adversary from the center-right, Geraldo Alckmin, as his running mate; assiduously courted business leaders; and secured endorsements from prominentcentrists. In this comradely atmosphere, supporters of the center-left candidate, Ciro Gomes, currently about 6 percent in polls, may even throw their votes behind the former president. If that happens, Mr. Bolsonaro will surely be beaten.
That glorious prospect does little to dispel the anxiety enveloping the country. It’s physically impossible not to dwell on what might happen. The possibilities are terrifying: The polls might be wrong, and Mr. Bolsonaro could win. The polls might be right, and Mr. Bolsonaro could refuse to concede defeat, and even initiate a coup. Each day now seems to be the length of a day on Venus — around 5,832 hours — to go by the agitation of my Twitter feed.
There’s simply too much at stake. For one, there’s the democratic process itself, which has been put through the wringer by Mr. Bolsonaro. For another, there’s the future of our judiciary. Just next year, there will be two vacant seats on the Supreme Court, out of a total of 11 seats. If in power, Mr. Bolsonaro would surely seize the chance to pick hard-right justices as he did with his last two appointees. A Trump-style remaking of the judiciary could be coming down the line.
Then there’s the environment. So far this year, more forest fires have been recorded in the Brazilian Amazon than in all of 2021, which was already catastrophic enough. Since the start of September, dense plumes of smoke have covered several Brazilian states. Under Mr. Bolsonaro’s administration, deforestation has increased, environmental agencies have been dismantled and Indigenous deaths have risen. Reversing these disastrous environmental policies could not be more urgent.
What’s more, a new government could address the appalling fate of the 33 million people living in a state of food deprivation and hunger — to say nothing of the 62.9 million people (or 29 percent of the population) living below the poverty line. It could also draw down the number of firearms on our streets, which, under Mr. Bolsonaro’s watch, has reached the troublingly high figure of 1.9 million. And, at last, Brazilians might begin to heal from the trauma of 685,000 Covid-19 deaths.
But before all that, there’s a necessary first step: pushing Jair Bolsonaro into retirement. Then we can begin to breathe again.
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 1, 2022, Section A, Page 23 of the New York edition with the headline: “We Brazilians Are Holding Our Breath”.
