Bolsonaro’s voices: President mobilized people but abandoned them after election

Never before in Brazilian history has an incumbent president lost a re-election race. Success fell to Jair Messias Bolsonaro (PL), who dragged a crowd of supporters across the country during his election campaign but eventually lost to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).

After the defeat, Bolsonaro actively chose seclusion and silence on the streets and on social media. However, this does not mean that your ideas will fall behind.

He produced the documentary “As Vozes de Bolsonaro”. UOL News and MOV, video maker UOLthis shows a bit of the Bolsonarist universe and how mobilization of the so-called right or far right tends to continue in Brazil even without the ruling leader.

HE UOL accompanied the locomotives of the 2022 campaigns across the country. In Bolsonaro’s case, we covered more than 2,000 kilometers in 14 states. We talked to more than 100 fans. On campaign trips, I saw the support and cooperation of my colleague Felipe Pereira, who is a reporter. UOL???????? Together with the cameramen, we were able to record the behavior of a significant part of the presidential electorate, the so-called Bolsonaristas.

As a reporter focused on following Palácio do Planalto in Brasília since 2015, I have followed the Bolsonaro government closely from the beginning. The president, who began his term by saying that he would not seek re-election, showed throughout the election campaign that he was confident that he would win. And maybe that’s why he’s still not happy with the defeat, and even some of his supporters.

Followers remained faithful to the “myth” or “christ” because in the 2022 campaign religion occupied a prominent place in the dispute. Including the slogan adopted by Bolsonaro: God, Fatherland, Family and Freedom. The phrase has fascist origins.

Many people literally wore their shirts, with faces or expressions supporting Bolsonaro or the Brazilian football team that was kidnapped by the president during the campaign, such as the national flag.

Trying to persuade the Brazilians to play for the national team at the World Cup, without any affiliation supporting Bolsonaro, required publicity. And it is true that many have stopped using it.

Bolsonarism is a phenomenon that started before 2018, but after almost four years of government and ballot box defeat, it has come to life on the streets.

Bolsonaro had (and probably still has) the ability to mobilize and take people to squares and streets. And even in defeat, he left the seeds of his speech in state governments and elected allies in the National Congress.

Many of the supporters are camped out at the barracks gates and even screaming for coup-like intervention. Others, in more recent episodes, engage in acts of vandalism and violence.

After the defeat, Bolsonaro was imprisoned in Palácio da Alvorada for more than 20 days. With 16 days left in his term, the president quickly took the stage without much talk, but returned to receive his supporters at his official residence.

divided country

In addition to the uniqueness of not re-election of an incumbent president, the 2022 election recorded another success: less vote distance in the dispute. Lula was elected with 50.9% of the votes and Bolsonaro with 49.1% of the vote, with a margin of just over two million votes.

Therefore, addressing the phenomenon of Bolsonarism is a difficult task for historians, scholars, and society as a whole.

There are no clear answers about the future of this more radical stratum of supporters, as some of the characters in “As Vozes de Bolsonaro” show when they point out that they can be machine-gunned, for example, by the president.

João Cezar de Castro Rocha, professor at UERJ and author of “Guerra Cultural e Retórica do Ódio (Chronicles of a Post-Political Brazil)”, proposes the concept of “collective cognitive” in an article published in the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo. It would be a kind of “general hallucination that ignores facts and arguments” to explain Jair Bolsonaro’s votes.

In the professor’s assessment, the current scenario is the result of a so-called “extremist media sphere, a powerful mechanism of fake news and conspiracy theories”.

Pablo Ortellado, professor of Public Policy Management at EACH-USP, who also studies the behavior of the so-called far-right in the country largely represented by these Bolsonaristas, takes a different view.

“I disagree with many of my colleagues working on this in academia. I think it’s wrong to treat it as irrationality politically, but sociologically we need to listen to what the demands are. We need to work without hating the object of study,” he said in an interview with UOL.

In Ortellado’s assessment, the literal division of the country between two political parties requires a stance of “critical empathy” to understand the fanaticism of the Bolsonaristas.

“Everyone has an aunt, a father, a neighbor. To understand how one group manages to bring these people together and realize political exploitation, we must consider this social phenomenon with agendas against the progressive elite.”

The professor says that this social phenomenon is not limited to Brazil and cites the example of former US President Donald Trump, who inspired Brazilians and also divided his country politically and resulted in events such as the occupation of the Capitol.

“Polarization in politics divides society but also unites those on the same side, so this polarization is important for maintaining dynamics, whether in Brazil or the United States,” he says.

It’s hard for Ortellado to predict the future of Bolsonaro’s move, but he can’t believe his defeat at the ballot box will finish him off.

“This is a very new phenomenon. It’s very hard to say where it’s going. It seems permanent and it’s not just a surge. But how long will it last? I don’t think anyone has that answer.”