But Lula does not represent a new program for Brazil. “A lot of people want to vote for Lula because Brazil is now in a big crisis because of Bolsonaro - an economic crisis, a healthcare crisis, a lot of crises. He has created this kind of narrative that he’s going to be the person who beats the system - and beats the left. “The PT represents an old project that does not challenge the system.” In contrast, Bolsonaro projects himself as “anti-system”, as “the guy that is working against the powerful people. While the PT emerged as a leftist party out of trade union and social movement struggles against the military dictatorship in the 1980s, today it is a social democratic party that seeks to work within the system.
A big factor is that the PT has failed to inspire hope it can bring positive change. While Lula is well-positioned in the polls, Alves believes it is not guaranteed he will win. While corruption is prevalent across the political spectrum, “a lot of working people came to associate the corruption scandals with the effects of the global crisis”, and blamed PT corruption for unemployment and poverty. “At the same time, there were some corruption scandals” involving PT parliamentarians, said Alves. Add to this the high levels of structural violence that exist, then such a movement has “dangerous implications”.īolsonaro has also been able to rely on antipetismo - or fear of the PT - to win support: “There are some people who are very scared of the PT because towards the end of the PT government, the global economic crisis created a lot of problems in Brazil. Weaponising misogyny and racism, he has been able to “bring the worst out of working people”. In this “alternate reality”, Bolsonaro and his supporters are presented as “the true defenders of freedom”.īolsonaro’s ability to build such a movement is rooted in the deep structural racism and economic inequality that exists in Brazil, Alves said. She explained that Bolsonaro’s movement seeks to challenge the system and the “powerful”, but “in a very dangerous way” that is, “by creating a narrative that those with power in society today are the poor, women, Black people”. Speaking to Green Left, Sao Paulo socialist councillor Luana Alves said this was Brazil’s “most important presidential elections of the past decades, because Bolsonaro does not just represent the far right in Brazil he represents a new kind of dangerous movement”.Īlves is a member of the radical anti-capitalist Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) and an activist with the Socialist Left Movement (MES) tendency within it. In Rio de Janeiro later that day, Bolsonaro said the left had “to be weeded out of public life” and anyone deemed to not be playing within the rules of the constitution would be brought to justice after his re-election.
Brazilian socialist: Like Trump at the Capitol, Bolsonaro wants to create ‘institutional turbulence’
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