The election campaign between President Jair Bolsonaro and former President Lula da Silva was one acute phase of the process of ideological polarizationvalue and affection in Brazil.
Although these two political sectors have carved a deep crack in Brazilian society, it would be simplistic to divide it between followers of the Workers’ Party (PT) and fans of Bolsonaro.
We have in fact witnessed the intense proselytism that has compared not only PT and Bolsonarists, but, above all, anti-Bolsonarians and anti-PTists. So, the crack that has opened in Brazil is between two “antis”.
A society divided between two negative identities, presents very complex challenges for political representation and democracy. When refusals predominate as motivators of citizens’ political action, electoral endorsement is, in reality, a mandate that is granted to destroy the rival.
The goal is not to win, but prevent the antagonist from winning. Once that happens, the winner’s circumstantial supporters feel satisfied, and this is where their relationship with the presidential candidate ends.
You know why Gabriel Boric in Chile, Gustavo Petro in Colombia and Pedro Castillo in Peru saw lower their popularity levels a few months after wearing the presidential sash? Because most of their electorates were “antis”: “anti-duopoly” (as they call the system of the two coalitions that governed Chile between 1990 and 2022), respectively anti-uribist and anti-fujimorist.
Such a situation will repeat itself with the winner of the Brazilian elections, because the raw material of his electoral capital is made of refusal of the opponent.
Representing an “anti” is less and less programmatic and more visceral. When it mobilizes voters out of animosity, the rational basis of public policy proposals. Indeed, Bolsonaro and Lula’s campaign proposals were similar: wage increases and social assistance.
The continuity of Aid Brazil or the relaunch of Bolsa de Familia, in any case it will generate fiscal imbalances. Consensus in politics is not built because the agitation of contempt, fear and hatred that unites each party predominates.
Thus, representing becomes expressing hatred. For this reason, in the Brazilian campaign we have seen how Bolsonaro has capitalized the contempt for the corruption of the PT and how Lula has done the same with the social sanction for the denial of the former military.
The vote that comes from the stomach ignores any verification of the facts, making possible the imposition of low-level conspiracy theories (Lula and his pacts with the devil himself; Bolsonaro as an undercover man of the “Freemasonry that gave rise to communism”). This was the dirtiest countryside in Brazilian historyeven with political hate crimes.
The real danger that awaits Brazilian democracy is not that a denier president or one who has embraced the greatest continental political corruption wins. The threat that truly undermines the social foundations of the democratic regime is the validity and perpetuation of negative identities as the predominant form of representation.
Representing “antis” democratically implies, paradoxically, getting rid of the main value of liberal democracy (pluralism), since such representation is based on the elimination of the rival. Democracies are not built with 50 + 1 hater, but with the integration of all the members of a community.
Those who celebrate today, not the triumph but the defeat of the rival, do so to the rhythm of the samba that animates the sinking of South American Titanic democracy.
* The author is professor at Diego Portales University (Chile), academic at COES and visiting researcher at CEU-Democracy Institute (Hungary)
Source: Clarin
