I admit São Paulo has a better skyline, but nothing beats the sunrise in Presidente Prudente-SP 😍 #nofilterneeded
An hour-and-a-half away, in Presidente Epitácio on the Rio Paraná, we also have what was voted "the most beautiful sunset in Brazil". We were lucky enough to visit a few weeks before social isolation
In my recent @jacobin article, I suggested some socio-spatial categories that can help us understand Brazil’s political polarisation. These are fundamentally linked to social class, but refracted through varying economic, social & political geographies 🧵 jacobin.com/2022/10/brazil…
NB. These are broad-brush categories that need further refining. There are certainly more subcategories operating at smaller scales. This is just a first attempt at mapping these categories, which unavoidably rests on a somewhat crude strategic essentialism
In the article I used 1st round data, but the presence of additional candidates complicates the analysis and comparisons between 2018 and 2022
So here is a summary of these different categories based on the clearer 2nd round data (figures are of valid/counted votes)…
Emotionally exhausted after such a tense count & main feeling right now is relief. But also intensely aware of how many factors contributed to this tiny margin & how easily it could gone the other way. Not to minimise Lula's achievement, but there's zero room for complacency.. 🧵
Yes, Bolsonaro is the first Brazilian president not to achieve reelection. Yes, he threw state and private resources at his campaign on an unprecedented scale, in many cases illegally. Yes, he even conspired to suppress the vote on election day. And he still lost!
But he was also unlucky in some ways. He got hit by a pandemic one year into office, which would have been a huge challenge even for a competent/well meaning president. Yes, his response was absolutely criminal, but that makes it even more shocking that this election was so close
Some instant takes on the Brazilian election and some emerging geographical patterns…
Well, it’s not what many were expecting. Lula broadly performed as the polls indicated, but Bolsonaro performed far better. This is likely down to a “shy bolsonarista” vote... 🧵
While I’m surprised by the scale of the error, the phenomenon itself doesn’t surprise me. It may be that in the wake of the pandemic and growing anger about his presidency some 2018 Bolsonaro voters were reluctant to openly admit it that they planned to vote for him again
It may also be that some of that rejection was “soft” and that Bolsonaro benefited more (and Lula less) than we expected from a squeeze on the smaller candidates. In other words, voters polarised between the two main camps so that the 1st round ended up looking more like a runoff
Watching Brazil's crisis unfold "on the ground" during fieldwork in the peripheries of Rio & São Paulo, it's always struck me the that the public debate about Bolsonaro is completely detached from the reality of these places. Many myths badly need correcting
Here are a few...
1. Antipetismo is deep and widespread
Antipetismo has had deep roots among the middle classes since at least 2005. Among the poor it is a recent & shallow phenomenon, largely linked to the economic crisis and the electoral cycle (ie. anti-incumbent sentiment during a crisis)
2. Everyone cares about corruption for the same reasons
Wealthy economic liberals care for ideological reasons bc they think corruption = the capture of an overgrown state. By contrast, the poor care largely bc they see it as symbolic of the state's failure to provide services
Interesting, as always, from @leninology on anticommunism without communism (ACWC). What particularly drew my attention was Jodi Dean's idea that "anticommunism is a pervasive ideology of capitalism, as it serves to demarcate what is acceptable and what is off the table"
Ie. Anticommunism (AC) is a means of policing the political spectrum in capitalist societies. During the Cold War, in the West, this occurred by both apocalyptic demonisation, but also competition with actually existing communism via managed capitalism with some redistribution
So what does it mean if AC is now a dominant mode of politics in societies that do not actually face a communist challenge? I believe it means this ideology now polices a far narrower spectrum, which will not tolerate any systematic proposal to manage capitalism for social ends
This is an important point. Authoritarian nationalists in different countries are scaling up attacks against the Left & university autonomy (which they see as the same thing), but there are importance differences in the themes & the enemies they identify
In the US, Trump’s attack on “critical race theory” makes sense in a national context where race is a central/explicit political fault line; & where meaningful anti-racism is mainly coming from the streets & is more plausibly attributed to university depts than to the tepid Dems
It is also no accident that the bogus antisemitic conspiracy theory “cultural Marxism” emerged here– it is ofc where most of the Frankfurt School ended up, & religious fundamentalists & the far-right have long used it to explain everything frm shifting gender norms to immigration