On October 7th, 2018, Brazilian citizens witnessed
the consolidation of the far-right as the leading political force in the
country. The former military Jair Bolsonaro almost won in the first round for
the presidency. His party – the Social Liberal Party – achieved one of the
largest congressional benches in the Chamber of Deputies (51 out of 513 seats)
and candidates associated to Bolsonaro excelled in Senate, Gubernatorial and Legislative
Assemblies elections all around Brazil.
The country seems to mirror the path that was already trailed
by European countries, such as Austria, Germany, Poland and Italy – not to mention Trump’s election in the U.S. The recent Brazilian experience is connected with this
broader global movement towards the far-right, an outcome of a structural
crisis of capital in its neoliberal phase.
Differently from Europe, xenophobia does not seem to
play a relevant role in the Brazilian case – even though Bolsonaro has already
referred to recent immigrants in Brazil as the ‘scum of the world’. Indeed, the very possibility of Bolsonaro taking
over is an outcome that combines this global element with the authoritarian
political culture in Latin America. The current rise of the far-right, which
follows the fall of the 2000s’ Pink Tide, reproduces and synthetises the swing
of democratic and anti-democratic regimes that historically characterises
politics in the region.
The former Brazilian dictatorship started in 1964 and
formally ended in 1985. A democratic period was set up when the so-called citizen
Constitution was released. It became the mark of a transition from the
dictatorship to a democratic period: the ‘new Republic’ (1988-2015). However, the
self-amnesty of the militaries (1979) and the continuity of former political
forces in power show that this label ‘democracy’ should be relativized.
The 1987-88 Constituent Assembly represented a unique event
in which the organized democratic forces of society demanded the ‘rules of the
game’ to be reset, as well as the creation of a certain kind of welfare state
in Brazil. This happened coincidentally with the period that neoliberalism was
spreading throughout the world as ‘the only alternative’. The Brazilian paradox
was then how to reconcile democracy, neoliberalism and a to-be-constructed welfare
system.
Curiously, re-democratization was only viable due to
the arrangement of ‘co-optation democracy’ – gestated during the transition
from the civil-military dictatorship to a democratic regime and only consolidated
during the Worker’s Party (PT) terms. Co-optation was the political device used
by hegemonic class fractions to incorporate, in the political and economic arena,
a variety of sometimes conflicting values and interests, via the generation of
dividends to different classes and class fractions. The point, however, is that
co-optation does not truly integrate the poorer in the civil or political
society, as the economic power of the old plutocracy is still determinant.
The Brazilian Social Democracy Party’s (PSDB), which
ruled the country from 1995 to 2002, provided a response to that paradox through
the combination of commercial and financial opening and a ‘successful’
stabilization plan that tamed high inflation. However, positive effects of
price control on wages and living conditions were ephemeral. After a short
period, the detrimental consequences of a neoliberal agenda in terms of
employment, productive structure and social equality come to the fore.
But co-optation democracy would be best portrayed when
PT took over in 2003. Ironically, this political party, created to stand for
the workers’ cause, undertook the PSDB agenda and consolidated neoliberalism in
Brazil. PT assumed ‘macroeconomic soundness’ as a synonym to ‘economic development’
and the party put forth economic policies that incorporated millions of people
to the financialised consumption market.
PT’s response to the paradox achieved some positive
results in the short-term (employment, wages and extreme poverty), but they
were also fragile. The shortcomings of PT’s tactics proved to be rather
frustrating as, ten years later, people went to the streets to stand up for poor
public services, bad conditions of life and politicians in June 2013.
The 2013 demonstrations paved the way to the polarization
in 2014 general elections and benefited right-wing candidates, with the
election of a very conservative Congress, even though Dilma Rousseff (PT) was
elected again for the presidency. Dilma’s second term marks the end of the
‘co-optation democracy’, with international and local pressures and
dissatisfaction with the results of the ballots. The instability promoted by central
capitalist fractions eventually led to a parliamentary coup that impeached Dilma
in 2016.
The replacement of Dilma by Michel Temer inaugurated a
period of enhanced austerity and structural reforms against workers. This resulted
in a wave of hatred of masses: a cathartic moment in which people express
violence against the system in social media. Bolsonaro emerges in this context.
He presents himself as a somewhat ludicrous character, just like Trump or
Berlusconi. He openly supports the civil-military dictatorship and he is also
known by his racist, sexist and homophobic speeches.
Moreover, Bolsonaro’s campaign is based on the
capillarity of WhatsApp and it is built on the dissemination of fake news, resembling
and enhancing the Cambridge Analytica-Trump strategy. His campaign is marked by
contradictory messages coming from himself, his deputy General Mourão and his
economic guru, Paulo Guedes, regarding many programmatic points (tax reform,
wages and privatisation of public companies), and by several manifestations of violence by his supporters.
Despite the confusion induced by fake news and by his
team’s ‘hybrid informational warfare’ strategy, three things can be taken for
granted in the likely case of his success in the ballots: the military direct
influence in the government will be widespread, regardless some naïve opinions; social movements will be severely repressed and
workers’ rights will suffer another assault.
The lack of legal punishment to the culprits of the
political crimes of the civil-military dictatorship is to be thought over if
democracy is to be kept safe. The democracy/anti-democracy pendulum is now
clearly pointing to the emergence of an authoritarian regime in Brazil, even
though we do not know properly the form it will take. On October 28th,
Bolsonaro is going to face PT’s candidate Fernando Haddad.
Norberto Montani Martins
Jaime Ernesto Winter Hughes León
Institute of Economics
(IE), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
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