A brief overview of violence and political misinformation in Brazil: Lula’s journey to inauguration
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has returned to the Brazilian presidency for the first time since 2011. Lula was inaugurated on Sunday, the 1st of January, 2023. This new stint on the presidency will be radically different from the last time he governed. This Brazil is one in which inequality has risen, and environmental degradation has been commonplace and political violence has been normalised. In addition to this, the current international dynamics are different due to the ongoing war in Ukraine and the high inflation rates seen around the world. This makes Brazilian politics more volatile and unpredictable, making Lula’s tenure a difficult one from the beginning, especially due to the fact that he does not hold a parliamentary majority. It is important to note why Brazil is going through a period of political violence and why it has intensified.
It's worth analysing why Brazil is in this predicament and how violence has been used to delegitimise Lula’s term. It has been reported that political violence has been on the rise in Brazil, with many of these attacks being perpetrated by supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro. The role of former president Jair Bolsonaro has played in stocking misinformation on election integrity in Brazil and discrediting Brazilian institutions and practices such as voting in a democratic election. For months Bolsonaro had been telling the public about how the election was going to be stolen and how if Lula won, it wouldn’t be legitimate.
In the aftermath of the election, Bolsonaro was reluctant to speak to the press and concede the election to Lula, increasing the fear that Bolsonaro would keep denying the election and further divide the country. Yet on November the 1st, Bolsonaro doesn’t concede but admits to a transition of power. Nevertheless, his supporters started to show their endorsement of Bolsonaro by blocking roads and highways around the country. This has caused disruption around the country and instability. On top of that, there have been a number of reports of backers of the former president attacking police stations wanting a response from the military that way the arm forces would intervene and prevent President Lula’s ascent to the presidency. Bolsonaro’s supporters have made it even clearer by protesting in front of the military headquarters in Brasilia, advocating for a military coup.
On December 28th, 4 days before Lula’s inauguration, there was a bomb threat in the capital of Brasilia, in which the perpetrators wanted to force the military to take action and take control of the country in a time of crisis. Fortunately, the suspects were arrested, and the bomb was found before it could cause any damage. Bolsonaro has recently condemned these attacks, yet that ship has sailed. And so has Jair Bolsonaro leaving Brazil for Mar-a-Lago, Florida, ahead of Lula’s inauguration and potential chaos that could arise from his own past rhetoric.
Bolsonaro’s escape caused a bad reaction even to his electors. Protestors who have blocked the streets and headquarters in his defence felt disappointed and called him a coward. They expected a huge protest against Lula’s inauguration and they believed, or hoped, that President Lula would not be able to take office. They believed in a military intervention against Lula in order to bring Bolsonaro back into power. It can be explained by the great amount of fake news circulating over Whatsapp. The fake news make people believe that there’s a communist threat. For instance, some believe that the poor will invade the houses of the rich and fear “Brazil becoming Cuba or Venezuela” where we’ve seen higher levels of poverty and authoritarian rule. In addition to this, we see anti-LGBTQ+ misinformation being shared where they argue homossexuality being stimulated in kids at school age or that an increasing number of women are having an abortion under the government’s support. Briefly, the fake news make people believe in total chaos and almost an anarchy under the Worker’s Party rule. Some of Bolsonaro’s supporters claimed for an extraterrestrial intervention using their cellphones pointed to the sky and making some kind of signals to the aliens. It happened in Belo Horizonte (capital Minas Gerais) which is one of the biggest states in Brazil.
Some psychologists say that it is not a political issue anymore. Many of these individuals are led by fear and it is arguable that the circulation of fake news and their belief in this has led them to lose their capacity of judgement. We should recall that these threats did not become a reality during Lula’s last government with the Worker’s Party. And 14 years under the governance of Lula and Dilma shows us that Brazil did not become a communist country and that even neoliberal measures were adopted by their Ministers of Finance. Brazil did not fall into anarchy or disorder in the past. People did not lose their houses or had them invaded. The current threats that we see circulating within Whatsapp groups, did not become a threat in the past.
It is important to emphasise that fear is a common weapon used by the far right governments to manipulate people and that this is not something unprecedented in history. In addition to this fear, there are also the religion and armed citizens and this is the perfect mixture to disasters. When passions are mixed with weapons we have chaos. That can be noticed in the assassination of Marcelo Arruda who was the account officer of the Worker’s Party and was celebrating his birthday two months before the elections when he was shot to death by a far right supporter. The reason for the assassination was the theme of his birthday party which was “Lula and Worker’s Party”. This same movement could be found a few days before Lula’s taking office when many bomb threats were investigated by the police.
Looking at Lula’s inauguration, it was calm and peaceful. We didn’t see any physical reaction from Bolsonaro’s supporters, however, they did react over the internet. As President Lula said in his inauguration, a divided country is not good for anyone and that he is going to govern for everyone and not only for his supporters. Brazilian people have to get together and build a great country again in order to make his famous quote in COP27 become true in the near future: “Brazil is back”.