What does it mean to turn the ordinary into “myth” and give him the government of the country?
by ELIANE BRUM
Since 1 January 2019, Brazil has as president a character who had never occupied power by voting. Jair Bolsonaro is the man who neither belongs to the elites nor did anything exceptional. This median man represents a wide layer of Brazilians. It is necessary to accept the challenge of understanding what he does there. And with which segments of the Brazilian society allied themselves to draw a government that unites distinct forces that will dispute the hegemony. Although there are several proposals and symbols of the past in the election of the new president, the configuration embodied by Bolsonaro is unprecedented. In this sense, he’s a novelty. Even if it is a difficult to swallow for most Brazilians who did not vote for it, choosing the opposite candidate or voting white, null or simply not attending the polls. Bolsonaro also embodied the first extreme right president of Brazilian democracy. The “thingy” is in power. What does it mean?
When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva arrived at the Palácio do Planalto for the first time, in 2002, after three consecutive defeats, it was a historic landmark. Who witnessed the rally of victory on Avenida Paulista, having voted or not in Lula, understood that at that moment the floor of Brazil was scratched. There would be no turning back. For the first time a laborer, a union leader, a man who made the family the classic pilgrimage of the dry Sertão from the northeast to the industrialized São Paulo concrete, reached the power. Someone with the “DNA of Brazil”, as his biographer would say, the historian Denise Paraná.
The Lula who conquered power by vote was exceptional. “Man of the People”, no doubt, but exceptional. A brilliant leader, who commanded the strikes of ABC Paulista at the end of the military dictatorship (1964-1985) and became the central figure of the new Workers ‘ Party created to compete for democracy that returned after 21 years of dictatorship. Regardless of the opinion that everyone may have of him today, one must accept the facts: How many men with the trajectory of Lula became Lula?
Lula was the best among his own, the best among those that the whites of the South discriminated with the pecha of “dull head”. If its origin and path led to a huge novelty to the central power of one of the most unequal countries in the world, the idea that the one who is considered the best should be the one chosen to govern crosses politics and the concept of democracy. One does not choose any to command the country, but one or the one in which they see qualities that make it capable of realizing the hope of the majority. In this sense, there was no news. When part of the elites felt pressed to divide the power (to maintain power), and after the letter to the Brazilian people signed by Lula guaranteeing the continuity of economic policy, it was the exceptional that reached the plateau by vote.
What Lula’s arrival in power did for Brazil and how it influenced the imagination and mentality of Brazilians is something that deserves all the efforts of research and analysis to reach the fair dimension. But much has already been assimilated by those who lived these times. The effects of what Lula represented only by getting there are not even perceived by many because they have already been incorporated. They are. As the historian Nicholas Sevcenko once said (1952-2014), in another context: “There are things we must not ask what they will do for us. They’ve done it. ”
Marina Silva, defeated in the last three consecutive elections, in each of them losing a larger share of electoral capital, would be another unpublished representative of a portion of the population who never occupied the most important chair of the Republic. Unlike Lula, as I have already written in this space, Marina emans Another broad segment of Brazilians, much more invisible, represented by the forest people. It carries in the body broken by contaminations and also by diseases that should no longer exist in Brazil a totally diverse life experience of someone like Lula and other urban poor. But this is Marina’s past.
The black woman, who was literate at the age of 16 and worked as a maid after leaving the rubber tree in the Amazon rainforest, undertook a search for academic knowledge and today speaks more as a university intellectual than as an intellectual of the forest. He also left the Catholic Church linked to the theology of liberation to become a genuine evangelical, of those who live religion in daily life rather than instrumentalizing it in elections, like so many neopentecostal pastors. If Marina had succeeded in reaching power, she would represent all this complex trajectory, but it would also be an exceptionality among her own. How many women with Marina’s route become marina?
Jair Bolsonaro, the son of a practical dentist from the interior of São Paulo, originating from a family that could be defined as low middle class, is not the only representative of a social stratum. He represents another worldview. There’s nothing exceptional about him. Each of us has met several Jair Bolsonaro in life. Or there’s a Jair Bolsonaro in the family.
During the various Republican phases of Brazil, the candidacy and candidates were the successes of the elites who disputed the power – or the result of a dispute between them. The most popular president of the 20th century Brazil, Getúlio Vargas (1882-1954), who in part of his political trajectory was also a dictator, was a statesman, son of the elite Gaucho. Although there have been some presidents only medians during the Republic, they were by rule men from some kind of elite and grounded by it.
Lula was the exception. And Bolsonaro is an exception. But they represent opposites. Not just for a left-center being and a right-wing one. But because Bolsonaro breaks with the idea of exceptionality. Instead of voting for the one who recognizes as the keeper of superior qualities, who would make him able to govern, almost 58 million Brazilians chose a man like his uncle or cousin. or yourself.
This disposition of voters was greatly exploited by the successful election campaign of Bolsonaro, who bet on the “common” life, distorting the daily prosaic, improvisations and Gambiarra in the communications of the candidate with his voters through social networks. Bolsonaro shouldn’t look better, but the same. It shouldn’t seem exceptional, but “common.”
The same strategy was retained after being elected, such as the messy breakfast table with which John Bolton, the National Security Advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump, was awarded. In this sense, Bolsonaro can never be considered the “Brazilian Trump”. Trump, in addition to belonging to a very particular portion of the American elites, has a prominent trajectory. Not Bolsonaro. As a military man, he was only notable for breaking the rules by giving an interview to Veja magazine complaining about the value of the Weldos. As a parliamentary for nearly three decades, he was able to approve only two bills. He was better known as a burlesque character and a case creator.
When Tiririca was elected, for example, his great vote was interpreted as proof that urgent political reform was necessary. But Tiririca was a great clown. In a difficult world for the profession since the decay of circuses, Tiririca managed to find a way on TV, make his name and make a living. It’s no small.
Not Bolsonaro. The great finding was to elect a deputy and be able to continue if he elected congressman. Then put all the children on the path of this profession highly profitable and with many privileges. The Bolsonaro family has become a clan of professional politicians who, in this election, have achieved a staggering number of votes. But not for the exceptionality of your projects and ideas.
The new president of Brazil spent almost three decades as a politician of what in the Brazilian Congress is called “Low clergy”, group that makes volume but does not have influence or architect the big decisions. The nickname is an unfair allusion to the religious clergy who do the work of Anthill, the most difficult and persistent, then dangerous, in the world of churches. Bolsonaro himself commented that he had no prestige. When he disputed the presidency of the House, in 2017, he only obtained four votes from the more than 500 possible. “I am no one here,” he said in a plenary speech in 2011.
The deputies of the “low clergy” of Congress have discovered their strength in recent years and also how they can communicate by uniting and making a number in favor of the interests that benefit them. Or simply blackmailing you with your vote. Bolsonaro is that strain. If he had a place in Congress, he was a bufwe. Until a year ago few believed that he could elect himself president. It seemed impossible for anyone to say the barbarities he said could be chosen for the highest position in the country.
What was left to realize is that almost everyone had an uncle or a cousin just like Bolsonaro. Soon this evidence became clear in Sunday lunches or on the family’s festive dates. But it still seemed only a continuation of what the social networks had anticipated, by revealing what people actually thought they seemed reasonable. He stopped seeing, perhaps by denial, how numerous this contingent of people was. The prejudices and resentments repressed in the name of coexistence were now released and strengthened by the group behavior of Internet bubbles. The social networks allowed to “derecalcate” the repressed, a phenomenon that benefited both Bolsonaro.
The cries of the people who occupied the lawn of the Esplanade of ministries in Brasilia were the most revealing part of Bolsonaro’s possession on January 1. Euphoric, the Mass was screaming: “WHATSAPP! Whatsapp! Facebook! Facebook! “. Anyone who wants to understand this historical moment will have to spend years devoted to analyzing the depth contained in the fact that voters scream the name of an application and a social network of the Internet, both of Mark Zuckerberg, in the possession of a president who elected them as A direct channel with the population and gave it the name of democracy.
Bolsonaro represents, yes – and a lot – a type of Brazilian who had been in the way for a long time. And particularly in recent years. And that it was inside every family, when it wasn’t the whole family. All families like to think as different – or, at least, better (or worse, according to the point of view) than others. The experience of a political confrontation determined by the affections – hatred, love, etc – in these elections has left deep marks.
Not to engender so many destructive possibilities for the country, the Bolsonaro phenomenon would be quite fascinating when looked at as object of study. I suggest some hypotheses to understand how the median among the medians became president of Brazil. The polls of intent to vote showed that Bolsonaro was preferred especially among men and especially among whites and especially among those who won more. That does not mean that you have not had a significant vote among women, blacks and those who earn less. If I hadn’t, Bolsonaro couldn’t get elected. Even in the northeast, the only region in Brazil in which he lost to Fernando Haddad (PT), in the second round of the elections, Bolsonaro received a significant vote.
The new president mainly represents the Brazilian who in recent years felt he lost privileges. Privileges are not always well understood. This is not just about purchasing power, which is decisive in an election, but of what gives ground to an experience of existing, what makes the one who walks feel on land more or less firm, know the signboards and understand how to move to Get where you need it.
Various irruptions disturbed this feeling of walking in known territory, especially for the white and heterosexual man. The women told them with an unprecedented emphasis that it would no longer be possible to make jokes on the streets or harassing them at work or anywhere. Sexual violence was exposed and suppressed. Domestic violence, almost as common as beans with rice (“a pat does not hurt”) was confronted by the Maria da Penha law. Stating that a “woman was bad food” became an unacceptable comment of a Neanderthal.
In the same direction, the LGBTI became more visible in the requirement of their rights, among them the existence, and began to denounce homophobia and transphobia. Public figures like Laerte Coutinho have been announced as a woman without surgery to remove the penis. What’s between the legs no longer defines anyone. And the position of heterosexual man at the top of the hierarchy has never been as questioned as in recent years.
So much so that, as a reaction, propositions emerged as creating the “heterosexual pride Day” or “Man’s Day” and even the “White Day”. It makes no sense to create dates for those who have all the privileges, but the proposals point out how even the loss of these privileges in particular seems to balance the world of those who have always had the full collection of advantages as inalienable right.
What most men understood as right – to speak what they well understood, especially for a woman – was no longer possible. “You can’t say anything else” has become a classic phrase in these men’s mouths. The already traditional “queer” jokes, a classic theme of strengthening male identity, have become unacceptable. The “politically correct”, which Bolsonaro and his followers both attacked in this election, was interpreted as direct aggression to privileges that were considered rights.
For a poor man, be it white or black, gloat about gays and/or women in everyday life may be the only proof of “superiority” while facing the daily massacre of an exhausting and underpaid journey. Mr. Bolsonaro understood that very well. In his speech to the crowded population in the square of the three powers, on Tuesday, the newly sworn president put the fight to “politically correct” as one of the priorities of his Government. Not the haunting social inequality, which even conservative presidents thought of good tone quote, but the need to “liberate” the nation from the yoke of “politically correct”.
At the beginning of the speech, Bolsonaro said: “It is with humility and honor that I address all of you as President of Brazil and put myself before the whole nation on this day as a day when the people began to liberate themselves from socialism, to free themselves from the inversion of values , the state gigantism and the politically correct “.
It is this “chained” Brazilian who voted to resume his privileges, including that of offending minorities, as his representative did throughout his political career and also in the electoral campaign. For many, the privilege of having subject again on the bar table – or not being repressed by the empowered and feminist niece at Sunday lunch.
In addition, racial quotas in universities, as well as the statute of Racial Equality, achievements of black movements recognised by the PT governments, have reached the bottom of race privileges, as rooted in the class and gender privileges in Brazil, possibly more.
Blacks came to not accept passively to be a majority in the worst statistics, to have less everything, as well as to die sooner and later. It is from this confrontation that comes the phrase without any ballast in reality, but repeated with persistence by Bolsonaro and his followers: that “the PT invented racial conflicts”. Of course, while the blacks continued to accept their subalters and deadly place in Brazilian society, there would be no conflict. But that time was over and even places that seemed reserved only to the children of whites, like the most disputed careers of public universities, began to be occupied by blacks.
For the families, especially the white ones, another change struck deeply a rooted privilege that is in the formation of Brazil, and that was little altered by the abolition of black slavery. At the beginning of the second decade of the century, the “PEC (Proposal for constitutional amendment) of the domestic” gave to this category formed mostly by women, most of them black, labor rights that other categories had for decades but that always Were denied to them, such as the limit of the working day and the Fgts (Guarantee Fund for time of service).
This has caused many middle-class families to be unable to keep their contemporary slave doing all the service indoors and/or caring for the bosses ‘ children for an unlimited time. This measure profoundly affected middle-class white women, still largely responsible for domestic administration, despite feminist advances. The complaints occupied all the spaces. The rights of the maids were understood as privileges, when in fact it was the privilege of the whites to have a black woman exploited and poorly paid by doing the housework that was at stake.
The rights of gender, class and race are connected. The recognition of these rights and the expansion of the access of blacks to spaces that were reserved for whites had a great impact on the electoral outcome and also on antipetism. The hatred of the bolsharists is expressed not in action, but in the reaction: that of those who defend themselves from what they believe to be an attack. Also, they feel it is legitimate to cast the worst and most violent words against each other. They believed – and still believe – to be defending themselves, which in their worldview would justify any violence. Also why the other is enemy – and not opposition.
But what is the attack that you believe is suffering? The suspension of privileges that they considered rights, close to the abandonment that an economic crisis and the threat of unemployment provoke. It was people – mainly men, heterosexuals and whites – who in recent years saw the ground disappear beneath their feet. Excluded from the intellectual elites, preshared to be “politically correct” because others would know more than they, ridiculed in their out-of-season tumble, haunted by women even indoors, react. As they feel weak, they react with disproportionate force.
These Brazilians don’t want a better man than they are in the presidency. What they want is a man like them in the government. In a time when even metaphors have been literalized, Bolsonaro returns them – literally – what they feel was taken from them. In assuming power, Bolsonaro shows that the order of the world returns to “normal”. With Bolsonaro, they also return to the government of their own lives, without being questioned or need to be questioned about such thory topics as, for example, sexuality and their place in the family and in society.
They are mostly men, but they are also women who feel that oppression is a low price to pay to return to a territory that, even asphyfying, is known and supposedly safer in a shifting world. They are Brazilians who belong to different religions, but the most expressive vote received by Bolsonaro was among the evangelicals. The Neo-Pentecostal evangelical churches have multiplied the number of believers and increased their representation in Congress in recent years, embodying one of the most important cultural changes – and politics – of Brazil.
As Bolsonaro said in his discourse to the masses, shortly after being anointed with the presidential track: “We cannot let nefarious ideologies come to divide the Brazilians. Ideologies that destroy our values and traditions, destroy our families, the bedrock of our society. We can, I, you and our families, all together, reestablish ethical and moral standards that will transform our Brazil. ”
As they felt stupid in the face of the academic intellectuality that always twisted their pointy nose, the Bolsonarians adopted their own intellectuals. And they were also adopted by them, as did Olavo de Carvalho, who thanks to this became a bestselling author and began to exercise his self-proclaimed “anarchism” in a very interesting way.
Bolsonaro then becomes the one who “is not afraid to say what he thinks” or “the one who tells the truth”. Bolsonaro becomes a hero because he faces the “politically correct” and frees the repressed feelings of his equals. They, who start to feel a little shit in front of more and more assertive women and blacks who no longer accept a subalters place can then again lie about privileges being rights – and affirm that this is “the truth”. Bolsonaro preaches “transformation”, but only elected because his proposal for “change” works with the illusion of return. This “New Right” understands very well the desires of a portion of the desperate men of that time.
In the attempt back to the past that can no longer be, even with Bolsonaro in power, the lost privileges were tfound of “ideology”. Those who ideologize everything, even the sexual orientation and religion of others, blame ideology for everything. If they don’t like the facts, like global warming, they convert us into Marxist ideology. They turn “politically correct” into a dirty word. Any limit becomes an affront to freedom, especially the freedom to be violent. They call all those who point to the need for “communist” or “leftist” boundaries, as if both words signified a kind of capital sin.
As they felt overwhelmed by concepts they did not understand, the Bolsonarians found that they could give the words the meaning that invited them because the group would support them. And, thanks to social networks, the group backed them up. The meaning of the words is given by the number of “likes” in social networks. Emptied of content, history and consensus, emptied even from contradictions and disputes, the words became screams, brute force.
That’s how a mediocre man like Bolsonaro becomes “myth.” Threatened to lose the difference that guarantees them privileges they can no longer have, Bolsonaro and his followers corrupt reality and affirm their mediocrity as a value. Male. White. Subject man.
But is this Brazilian who comes to power with Bolsonaro? Partly yes. But not partly. This is the plot we’ll be watching from now on. Becoming an adult is not just a biological condition. It is, in the broader sense, to acknowledge its limits and to be responsible for its own choices. Bolsonaro is clearly a willful and ill-educated child who needs the approval of the greatest.
As they glimpsed that Bolsonaro could win the election, different groups of elites approached and backed up their candidacy. Each with its own design. There is Paulo Guedes, the ultra-liberal ambitious and intoxicated by the very importance that wants to mark history, commanding the superministry of economics. There’s Sergio Moro, the judge who showed that he can violate the law in case she disturbs his personal project, because he believes that his personal project is public and believes he knows what is best for the nation, as everyone believes that they believe in higher or even superheroes.
There are representatives of “agribusiness”, a branch that in Brazil is confused with crimes such as the grabbing (theft) of public lands and agrarian conflicts that cause dozens of murders each year. Guaradores of the Government of Michel Temer (MDB) and also of the candidacy of Bolsonaro, the ruralists are not only in the government, but “are” the government.
This group will open the Amazon for exploration – soybeans, livestock and mining, as well as great works. This means, among other measures, to change or “regulate” the constitution to open the public lands of exclusive enjoyment of the indigenous peoples or the collective lands of the Quilombolas for the profits of private groups. One of Bolsonaro’s first measures, shortly after being sworn into the presidency, was to transfer the demarcation of the indigenous lands and the Quilombolas lands to the Ministry of Agriculture. On the first day Bolsonaro handed over the future of the forest and the cerrado to those who destroy them.
In the more subordinate level, there is a minister of the environment convicted of violating the environment, a ruralist chosen by the ruralists. There is a minister of the Evangelical dimension who will take care of such broad themes as human rights, women and indigenous people, from a literal reading of the Bible. There is a minister of citizenship who will also be responsible for the area of culture, but has stated that he understands nothing of the area.
There are also the ministers of the affective dimension of Bolsonaro, such as chancellor Ernesto Araújo, who has assumed for himself the task of building the intellectual base of Bolsonaro’s ideology. In an article published in an American magazine, the diplomat who seems to despise diplomacy has launched a sort of religious nationalism: “God through the nation.” And there is the Minister of Education who believes that the coup that led Brazil to 21 years of dictatorship must be celebrated. The erasure of history, sacrificing the facts in the name of ideology, is one of the missions of the Bolsonaro government.
And there is, finally, one who is perhaps the most significant group, consisting of seven military occupying key positions in the government. These groups do not always agree on what is best for Brazil. It is likely that at some points they may disagree radically. How then is the boy Bolsonaro going to deal with the big people dispute?
How’s the spoiled brat going to be with reality now that the campaign’s over? How will it be when the corrosion of the days threatens the passion of the masses? And on the opposite side, how will the adults in the room deal with the child full of wills when it cannot be manipulated – or is being manipulated by the opposing group – and threaten their power project? How will this negotiation be? What are the risks of rupture?
Like all mediocre, Jair Bolsonaro burps ignorance as if it were wisdom. But also like all mediocre, deep down, deep down, he suspects it’s mediocre. And desperately seeks the approval of the adults.
At the moment, Bolsonaro is delighted to have an intellectual connected to the Chicago school telling him how special he is. A hero of Operation Lava jet weaving compliments. And mostly generals saluting the captain. But reality is relentless with illusions.
To spark the possibility of conflict, there is also the family of Bolsonaro, with his trio of princes, this time spoiled by the father, who still calls grown men without limits of “boys”. Exhilarated with power, they’ve already shown how much they like the stage and how much confusion they can get ready for. As a typical father of this historic moment, Bolsonaro protects his boys. In this case, of the mediocrity itself. The Bolsonaros Júnior seem to be sure that they are exceptional and that reality will bend to their will. If you don’t bend, you can always call a corporal and a soldier to do the job.
The experience of Brazil that now begins is fascinating. But only if we lived on Mars and if the largest rainforest on the planet was not threatened. At some point, Jair Bolsonaro will look in the mirror and see only Fabrício Queiroz, the PM and former of the son who cannot explain where the money he deposited in the first lady’s account comes from. At some point, Jair Bolsonaro can look in the mirror and see only the most accurate image of himself. Haunted by the truth that he cannot call “fake news”, he will run to the streets to hear the Queiroz shout: “Myth! Myth! Myth! ” But the scream may have been swallowed up by the reality of days. We will then know, in all its magnitude, what Bolsonaro means in power.
Eliane Brum is a writer, reporter and documentary filmmaker. Author of the books of nonfiction column Prestes-the wrong side of the legend, the life that no one sees, the eye of the street, the