In Brazil, those who won in the first round of the elections are the ones who are most preoccupied with the uncertainty of the second round in three weeks’ time, which will determine whether former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva returns to power or the ultra-right-wing Jair Bolsonaro retains it for another four years. The losers, meanwhile, are on adrenaline in the face of the possibility of retaining the presidency and power.
Lula fell less than two percent of the valid votes short of winning the presidency, but the climate prepared by the pollsters made him the winner. Fascism was already in government, but now it appears strengthened. Three weeks before the run-off, Lula’s lead in the polls remains stable, despite the terrorism unleashed by the Bolsonarista machine.
In any case, the first round of elections showed that the democratic forces are well positioned to win over the majority of voters, even though the alliance with neoliberalism does not seem to have had much weight in the vote for Lula. In Sao Paulo, the unity with the Solidarity Party (PSOL) and the large vote for Guilherme Boulos weighed much more than the figure of the right-wing Geraldo Alckmin, the vice-presidential candidate.
The late support of the historic leaders of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) does not seem to have had any electoral influence either. Perhaps dialogue with neoliberal sectors that are not comfortable with Bolsonaro’s fascistic dynamic is really important for the second round.
Bolsonaro’s candidacy has ceased to be “competitive” and has become one with a real chance of victory, based on his organised force both in the state and in society, and on his political capacity to operate large centralised movements of voters. In addition to the undisguised backing of the Armed Forces.
In the first week of the second round, Bolsonaro launched a strategy to win votes with a series of measures aimed at low-income people, women and the Northeastern population, segments considered strategic.
First, he tried to convince that the economy is improving. “We recognise that the purchasing power of families spilled out, but the economy is recovering well,” he said. The focus is on the expansion of 520,000 families in the contingent served by Auxílio Brasil and the promise to create a Christmas bonus for women enrolled in the programme (this will only be implemented in 2023 given the lack of budget this year).
And he continues to use the state machine and its secret billion-dollar budget, the corporations of the army and security forces, the Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches, the social networks dominated and financed by right-wing and far-right groups integrated with transnational capital, the Bolsonarisation of Ciro Gomes’ campaign and his reactionary anti-Pepetism, Tebet’s flirtatious feminism, and those of the null vote.
Finally, he blocked the education budget… in a country where all that is missing is someone to throw a match: a spark to set the prairie on fire, as Mao said. If Lula wins, he will have to reassemble the jigsaw of conflicts into which the government has plunged Brazil.
While some speak of a fascistisation of the popular sectors, what has become evident is the neoliberal or ultra-liberal ideology, anti-popular and anti-national, which seems to have taken root in the Brazilian comfortable middle class, part of which used to be progressive years ago.
Where is the “democratic front”?
There is talk of a necessary articulation of the left in Lula’s campaign command, because the support of artists or academics is not enough, it is essential to take to the streets to seek votes, especially when it has been demonstrated that the general population does not remember the pro-poor actions of Lula’s governments two decades ago.
Lulismo’s message did not reach the low-income strata, basically because of the refusal to occupy public spaces, while Bolsonaro gathered crowds wherever he went. Even as the standard-bearer of the Workers’ party, Lulismo forgot the working class, the poorest population, dazzled by neoliberal agendas and losing the possibility of connecting with its electorate.
Even the American linguist Noam Chomsky points out that it is not enough to have artists or academics on your side, but that you need to take to the streets and organise the masses to really have real popular forces. People don’t know that they can benefit from the programmes that Lula created, they don’t know that he was responsible for getting their children into universities. According to the official discourse it must have been God, or luck, but not the PT or Lula.
A week before the elections, the pollster Datafolha noted the performance of both candidates by segment: for example, gender, schooling, income, where Lula lost among people with incomes above five salaries, with a university degree and among evangelicals.
In translation, Bolsonaro is favoured by those at the top of Brazil’s economic and academic pyramid. Both sectors, at the top of the income pyramid, too.
The left gives good speeches on media manipulation, but lacks plans and strategies that reach the masses. Progressivism does not know what a communication policy is. There are Lulist intellectuals who believe that taking to the streets (“ir para a rua”) means hiding in the internet: the streets of the 21st century are digital, they are not useful to win votes and they are useful in case of protests, they say. Bourgeois comfort, first and foremost, in the name of the poor.
Today the challenge for so many Lulista intellectuals and academics is to understand the mass support of Evangelicals for Bolsonaro. They seem to have forgotten that almost all of these churches are descended from US missions that at different historical moments were installed as centres of parallel US diplomacy, importing their political and economic vision not only for Brazil but for the whole of Latin America.
In the social networks, and especially with the so-called fake-news, the communication strategists of bolsonarismo dedicated themselves to confusing their opponents by manipulating the facts and interfering with their ability to orient themselves in the new reality. The slogan of the political, business, judicial and media establishment for the last two decades has been to annihilate Lula.
To remove it from the presidential race, shortly afterwards Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment by parliamentary coup, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Six months before the 2018 presidential election, he was jailed for almost two years and he chose Fernando Haddad as his replacement, who won just 29.2 per cent of the vote in the first round. Annihilating Lula and destroying his image was always the watchword.
In his farewell speech to the Army Command in January 2019, General Eduardo Villas Bôas paid tribute to “three personalities who stood out so that the ‘river of history’ would return to its normal course”, recalls Jeferson Miola.
These personalities were Bolsonaro, for winning the 2018 elections when Lula’s candidacy was prevented, General Walter Braga Netto, for intervening in Rio de Janeiro to consolidate the control of the state by militias and corrupt and criminal structures, and Judge Sérgio Moro, for the persecution and illegal imprisonment of Lula, an essential measure for the advancement of the fascist-military power project.
In a video with a military parade in the background, the pro-Bolsonar deputy Roberto Jefferson – under house arrest for slander, libel, defamation, insult and apology for crime – criticised the abstentions on 2 October: “40 million washed their hands, they gave a first round victory to the Satanist, the abortionist, the gay, the paedophile, the drunkard, the addict, the corrupt, Luladrão”.
The success of the propagation of fake news against the party, the candidate and the left in general suggests that the issues of abortion or the arming of civilians are diversionary strategies to divert the focus of the poorest from the important issues, the economic policies that keep them in the basement of survival. Perhaps Bolsonaro’s worst crime has been to destroy the Amazon, which endangers the survival of humanity, but that is not what he talked about.
The Superior Electoral Court ordered the removal of lying and manipulative publications on Bolsonaro’s social networks, which associate former president Lula da Silva with Satanism. An actor identified as Vicky Vanilla recorded a video in which he poses as a Satanist who supports Lula. The images were shared by the senator-elect for Minas Gerais, Cleitinho, who called on “Christians” to vote against Lula in the first round.
The absence of Lulismo in the surviving factories left space for the radical right to capture that slice of the electorate. The PT is not organised from the grassroots, as it was when it emerged from the hand of that bearded steelworker from Sao Bernardo do Campo, known as Lula.
A letter from a Lulista from the favelas, circulated on social networks, clearly describes the situation: It is not the time to talk about a secret budget or vote-buying for those who are hearing that if Lula wins he will have to roast his own dog and his house will be invaded by the homeless.
Videos of artists doing the L in front of his mansion do not convince those who are sleep deprived because of rent arrears. It is time to get out of the fizz, out of the academy and stop talking to the already convinced. There are millions of realities: people are hungry and those who are hungry are hungry now, not tomorrow, not when the government programme is approved, he adds.
These discussions are extremely important, but they are not for now. Enough of this fizz that we are smart and special and we are doing everything for the good of humanity. We are doing it for ourselves, but it is on this side that the rope is snapping…, the message says.
“Enough with the sambit of making sambitas out of reality: that doesn’t convince and often doesn’t even reach those who need it most. We must remember that this is not the 80s, that Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso are divinities, but they no longer speak to the people, and that the world is not just Rio and Sao Paulo. It is necessary to have people in the campaign with whom real people can identify. With or without Lula, the police are charging into the favela and shooting first and asking questions afterwards…”, he says.
That is the real Brazil. But to get to know it, you have to reach out to the people, seduce them, convince them to walk together, go through the favelas and the countryside and hear the realities of the people, forget about academia. The only truth is reality. In short, you have to do politics.
