How has the success of an extreme authoritarian figure like Bolsonaro been enabled by the political field in Brazil? What is the trajectory of the Brazilian left, represented by PT, ‘The Workers' Party’, led now to victory by President-elect Lula? Lula's return to power marks a fresh start for democracy in Brazil, but it also comes at a time of major geopolitical transformations. What are the possibilities and constraints for Brazil in a global political arena marked by the triple crises of the post-COVID economy, climate change, and heightened military tensions? What is the role of the Brazilian judiciary in the fight against corruption?
Guests featured in this episode:
Ricardo Regatieri, professor of sociology at the University of Bahia, Brazil. He also teaches in the Graduate Program in Social Sciences and is one of the leaders of PERIFERICAS – Research Group on Social Theories, Modernities and Colonialities at the same university. Ricardo was a visiting professor at the University of Cape Verde, as well as a research professor at Korea University and a lecturer at Hankuk University, both in Seoul, South Korea.
Ricardo has published widely on critical social theory, modernity and coloniality, and democracy and authoritarian politics, and his latest research project investigates the challenges of dependency and coloniality to democracy and political stability in Brazil within the capitalist world-system.
GLOSSARY
What is the Workers Party (PT)?
(02:14 or p.1 in the transcript)
During the late 1970s, while Brazil was still under military rule, workers in the metallurgical industries (especially in automobile factories) located in São Paulo's industrial suburb of São Bernardo do Campo organized through factory commissions to push for increased wages and improved working conditions. The strike waves that these workers launched in 1978 and 1979 ushered in a form of organizing known as the new unionism and eventually led to the founding of the Brazilian Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores—PT) in 1979 and 1980.These workers founded their own party—under new political guidelines set out in 1979 by the dictatorship—because they saw the main opposition party (the Brazilian Democratic Movement, later the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party), the reconstituted Brazilian Labor Party, and the Brazilian Communist Party as too alienated from the concerns of rank-and-file workers. Thus, on May Day 1979, a group of labor leaders from the metalworkers' unions (who referred to themselves as labor's "authentic" leaders) issued a set of goals. The "authentics," led by Luís Inácio da Silva (popularly known as Lula), formed the Central Workers' Union (CUT) in 1983 to coordinate national labor practices for the unions associated with the PT. source
What was the military dictatorship in Brazil?
(13:42 or p.4 in the transcript)
After overthrowing the reformist center-left government of João Goulart on March 31, 1964 in a coup d’état, the military installed a tutelary authoritarian regime to control civil society and the political system, serving as a political model for similar regimes in Latin America during the Cold War. The military passed arbitrary laws and severely repressed left-wing political groups and social movements while also seeking to accelerate capitalist development and the “national integration” of Brazil’s vast territory. They intended to modernize Brazilian industry and carry out bold infrastructure projects. On the other hand, they faced strong opposition from civil society, led by political groups, artists, intellectuals, and press outlets of diverse ideological backgrounds (Marxists, liberals, socialists, and progressive Catholics). These groups were divided between total refusal to negotiate with the military and critical adherence to the policies of the generals’ governments, composing a complex relationship between society and the state. source
What is the Latin American populism?
(15:05 or p.4 in the transcript)
In Latin America, populism emerged in the 1930s and 1940s with the crisis of the oligarchical social order that combined liberal-inspired constitutions (division of powers, and elections) with patrimonial practices and values in predominantly rural societies. These estate-based societies had relations of domination and subordination characterized by unequal reciprocity. Institutional and everyday practices of domination excluded the majority of the population from politics and from the public sphere, which were kept in the hands of elites. Processes of urbanization, industrialization, and a generalized crisis of paternal authority allowed populist leaders to emerge. Classical populist leaders of the 1930s and 1940s such as Juan Perón and José María Velasco Ibarra fought against electoral fraud, expanded the franchise, and were exalted as the embodiment of the nation’s true, uncorrupted traditions and values against those of foreign-oriented elites. In more economically developed nations such as Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, populist presidents pursued nationalist and redistributive social policies that coincided with the period of import substitution industrialization. Populism also emerged in agrarian contexts. In Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, populism was not linked to industrialization, even though, as in the industrializing republics, it led to the political inclusion of previously excluded electors. source
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SR: Welcome to "Democracy in Question", the podcast series that explores challenges democracies are facing around the world. I'm Shalini Randeria, Rector and President of Central European University, Vienna, and Senior Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at the Graduate Institute, Geneva. This is the ninth episode of Season 5 of "Democracy in Question".
I'm really pleased to welcome on today's podcast Ricardo Regatieri, who is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bahia in Brazil. He's one of the leaders of the research group on social theories, modernities, and colonialities at his university. He was both a Visiting Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, and at the IWM in Vienna, two institutions that have also played a major role in the development of this podcast.
Ricardo has published widely on critical social theory, modernity, coloniality, democracy, and authoritarian politics, and his latest research project investigates the challenges of dependency and coloniality to democracy, and to political stability in Brazil within the capitalist world system. The elections in Brazil this October provide a timely opportunity for us to address several questions about Brazilian democracy.
Bolsonaro may have lost the elections by a relatively narrow margin, but the ominous legacy of his regime must be adequately understood to counter authoritarian populist threats. In this episode, we focus on the characteristics of Bolsonarism, if one may call it that. We also discuss its sociocultural, historical, and economic underpinnings.
I would like to discuss with Ricardo how the success of an extreme authoritarian figure like Bolsonaro has been enabled by, and in turn, has also reorganized the political field in Brazil. This raises questions about the trajectory of the left, represented by PT, ‘The Workers' Party’, led now to victory by President-elect Lula. Not only does Lula's return to power mark a fresh start for democracy in Brazil, but it comes at a time of major geopolitical transformations as well.
Therefore, we'll also talk about the possibilities and constraints for Brazil in a global political arena marked by the triple crises of the post-COVID economy, of climate change, and of heightened military tensions. Ricardo, welcome to the podcast, and it's wonderful that you're able to join me today.
RR: Hi, Shalini. I'm very happy to be here today with you on "Democracy in Question".
SR: So, let me start with the election, Ricardo. 2022 may represent a historical caesura for democracy, not only in Brazil, but also around the world. This year has seen a series of high-profile elections, which were litmus tests for liberal democratic leaders pitted against illiberal, soft authoritarian forces.
As President Obama noted on the last leg of his tour before the U.S. midterms, it was the fate of American democracy that was on the ballot in these elections. Unlike Italy or Hungary, for example, Brazil has successfully managed to avert a swing to the right, and it has ousted Bolsonaro. So, let me begin by asking you to provide a brief analysis of the recent results, and could you say something about the mobilizing strategies between the two rounds for the presidential elections? Because it was a very, very narrow victory for President Lula. What were the decisive factors that secured him this victory?
RR: Yes. As you said, the margin was very narrow, it was narrower than expected already in the first round, and very narrow in the second round. Lula won by 2 million votes. That's very little for an electorate as the Brazilian one is, large the way it is. So, I would say that the key factors for Lula's victory have been a very broad political coalition.
He already had tried to bring people together during the first round, but the second round still saw this coalition being expanded to the center, and even through the center-right. And another factor is Bolsonaro's rejection among the electorate. Bolsonaro had a high rejection rate, of over 50%, against around 45% of people who rejected Lula. And this has to do with the anti-PT sentiment in the country, but Bolsonaro even had a higher rate of rejection.
SR: So, do you think one of the divides is the urban-rural divide, the Amazonian areas versus the small towns in Brazil where Bolsonaro won, but the Amazon Forest, as well as the large cities, where Lula won? So, is there a divide which we can explain in terms of locality, class background, social ethnic backgrounds?
RR: I would say there are at least three large divides. One is geographical. So, Lula won with a high margin in the northeast of the country and in the north of the country, which encompasses the Amazon, and also the states of the northeast. Whereas Bolsonaro won massively in the center, center south, southeast of the country, which is the wealthiest area of the country.
But also, in this part of the country, in the southeast, in the south, in the center south, in some capitals, like in São Paulo, which is the largest city in the country, Lula won. Whereas in the countryside, smaller towns, we're talking about countryside here, I don't mean necessarily farms, but small towns in the countryside, Bolsonaro had much more votes.
Another divide is the class one. So, poorer people voted massively for Lula, whereas the middle classes and the upper classes voted for Bolsonaro, all over the country. Across the geographical divide, you'd have this class divide. And the last one is religion. Bolsonaro was able to bring to his side the evangelical Christians, through pastors that have been supporting him. And this based on the creation of a sort of moral discourse, promoting what has been called moral panic. So, comparing or bringing the idea that the left is on the side of the devil.
SR: So, let me ask you to extricate a little bit further this point about the role that the church has played. Because the various evangelical churches obviously were an important factor in Bolsonaro's earlier win, and this time also, the rather large support that he got among the upper and well-to-do middle classes. So, while these upper and well-to-do middle classes have gravitated towards the right, the evangelical Christian churches seem to have gained for Bolsonaro voters from the lower income segments, who were traditionally supporting Lula's party, The Workers' Party, PT.
So, was there an ideological elective affinity between Bolsonaro's reactionary agenda and the hyper-conservative agendas of these churches, thinking of the peculiar theology of some of these neo-Protestant churches, which promotes stability anchored in this worldly salvation, through hard work and material success, which did somehow prove to be attractive to those whose interests, among the poor, I'm thinking, of those interests would not otherwise align them with Bolsonaro and the rich?
RR: So, it's a very interesting point, because if you take these middle and upper classes, you have this convergence, as you notice, with poor people that are evangelical, the case being that among poor people in general, Lula wins massively. So, I would highlight some factors. As you mentioned, this theology of prosperity plays a role.
And ironically, I think it came to grow, to gain momentum, still during The Workers' Party governments in the early 2000s, it has to do with this upward social mobility promoted exactly by the social policies of The Workers' Party. And then, this ideology proves to be very individualistic. So, the idea that if I do well, if I manage to move upward, I don't have to look around, I don't have to care about other people as well. So, this idea of social upward mobility, based on consumption.
This is one factor, I would say. And Bolsonaro, he preaches this idea that the state shouldn't be there, that meritocracy is what matters. If you really work hard, you don't need the state to help you. If people ask, demand the support of the state, they are making themselves victims. It's a part of victimization. He likes very much to use this idea. So, Black people victimize themselves, poor people victimize themselves, and we should stop that. That's Bolsonaro.
But the conservative, the moral conservative agenda plays another role. You'd see people in Brazil going to churches in the peripheries, and being afraid of Lula legalizing the drugs, of Lula being supported by drug lords, of Lula going to legalize abortion, of Lula not being a Christian, but believing in or going to ceremonies of Afro-Brazilian religions. The gender issue as well, the idea that you should protect the boys and the girls to continue being boys and girls, and not become transsexual. Now, there is another threat that Bolsonaro spread out in his culture war internet machine.
SR: So, in a sense, you have a copy of the U.S. culture wars being imported, and you also have a copy then of a Trumpian reaction, that the election must be stolen if Bolsonaro doesn't win. And for me, it's quite interesting how, in a society which is so different from the United States, all of these North American right-wing cultural politics and ideologies can resonate so well, especially among the poor. Do you have an explanation?
RR: I think there is a migration or intertwining of these leaders worldwide, in terms of exchanging experiences and learning the something that your approach of soft authoritarianism highlights. But in the specific case of Bolsonaro, Bolsonaro's son, who is sort of responsible for the ideology, let's put it this way, he has close contact with Steve Bannon.
SR: Oh, I see.
RR: Yeah. So, he takes part in this conservative conference that started as a conference among the Republican Party under Ronald Reagan, but nowadays became a platform for leaders like Bolsonaro and Trump. So, I think there is some learning from the cultural war Trump had started before in the U.S. There's also contact with people like Viktor Orbán, Matteo Salvini. They are also close to Eduardo Bolsonaro, this son of Jair Bolsonaro, who is a federal representative.
Plus, there is, let's say, to the extent that it can exist, something more like a native route, which is this self-entitled philosopher. He says he's a philosopher, but he has no proper education, and philosophy allows him to have value, who also, let's say, translated global topics of conservatism and traditionalism into the Brazilian reality and Brazilian history. I would say you have exchange, on the one hand, and on the other hand, a more, like, local elaboration of topics that have to do with the Brazilian colonial past, past of slavery and past of military dictatorship.
SR: So, Ricardo, do you think it would be fair to say this was ultimately a contest between two kinds of populism, a more inclusive left populism, Lula's kind, that has had considerable appeal to Latin American electorates, not only in Brazil, but also elsewhere, versus a new authoritarian populism that posits a part of the people as being "the people," and it excludes then several demonized minorities as not really belonging to the Brazilian nation?
RR: Yeah. This is a very interesting question. I think Lula is pretty much a leader playing by the book. He's very charismatic, but I don't think this makes him automatically a populist. Whereas regarding Bolsonaro, if we think about discussions going on nowadays about authoritarian populism and so on, and then taking Trump and taking Bolsonaro, they have lots of similarities, you know? Then I think maybe you could see him enter the family of new right-wing authoritarian populists.
But, in the end, for me, the model of populism is Latin American populism from the '30s and '40s. And I think that in that case, you had authoritarian leaders. They at some point made democracy disappear. And I don't think it's the case of Lula or The Workers' Party, let's say. They have a different origin politically, and what they have done so far doesn't point towards populism.
SR: So, let me come to another aspect, which, in the run-up to the election, was causing many people to wonder what role the Brazilian military would play in case Bolsonaro lost. Bolsonaro had been praising military dictatorship and the use of brute force. And if I recall right, he said something like he would prefer to survive in a military regime rather than die in this democracy, etc. So, what can you tell us about the long shadow that the military casts on modern Brazil, and how important is the entire network of the armed forces in enabling someone like Bolsonaro's rise to power?
RR: Well, he was campaigning in 2018, when he won the election that year, he stated that what he wanted for Brazil was that Brazil were like it was 40, 50 years ago. That means before the end of dictatorship. So, I mean, his own version of conservatism has to do with the fact that he wants to go back to a time, of course, this time is always idealized, a time in which democracy had not been there yet.
His whole political program, we could say, putting it in a nutshell, is remove all the annoying aspects and structures and ways of proceeding that democracy has brought to Brazil in the past almost 40 years. So, he came from a military career that ended, not ended well, because he was expelled from the army.
SR: Right.
RR: But since then, he became a politician, and since then he has voiced the interests of the army, in terms of salary, in terms of better conditions. And even though he was there, he had been there all these years, since the '80s and the early '90s, voicing against democracy, and supporting the rehabilitation of dictatorship, he seemed to be an outsider, a crazy person, a crazy voice. And the way democracy evolved in Brazil, everybody thought that such a backlash would never take place.
The process that took Bolsonaro to power somehow sheds light on the fact that Brazil never came to terms with the dictatorship and its legacy. Nobody was punished, no perpetrator was punished. There is no process of punishing people like you had in place like Argentina, which for South America is paradigmatic. During the process that led to the new constitution of 1988, which role should the military have? The idea was restricting their power and influence as much as possible. But with Bolsonaro, we see that this past of military power is still, like, haunting the country.
SR: So, let me ask you something about another influential actor in Brazilian politics. Do you think the support of business interests who were backing Bolsonaro, did they play a role in garnering support for him, particularly because they were interested in removing the regulatory and the protective obstacles, which stand in the way...in their way?
We see that, of course, with respect to Bolsonaro's policies allowing them free access to the Amazon Forest, but also of rolling back the welfare state. So that I'm wondering if Bolsonaro's ideological campaign, which was directed at so-called internal enemies, so communists, homosexuals, etc., do you think part of the reason it gained tacit acceptance was because it channeled popular discontent and diverted it from his policies of fiscal austerity, which would really have hit the poor badly?
RR: Exactly. That's a very difficult thing for us to grasp, because upon the disaster in managing the pandemic, the COVID pandemic that killed almost 700,000 people in this country, upon the economic chaos, even the middle classes lost their power of consumption, with all that, it seemed to be more reasonable that Bolsonaro wouldn't have so much support, but he did in the end.
Regarding business, it's also a contradictory issue, I would say, because on the one hand, yes, of course, getting rid of labor rights, having to pay less to workers, is in the interest of business. On the other hand, destroying the Amazon Forest, as was the case during his term, creates problems for selling Brazilian commodities abroad, for selling meat, for selling soy for the European market, for example.
So, Bolsonaro seemed to be completely relentless about the consequences that destroying the Amazon Forest and planting soy, and raising cattle where the forest was before, would have in the long term. It's really hard to understand what was th e plan for the future. And then we really see that there was no plan. The plan was basically destruction. But the fact is that business has been always on his side. In Brazil, the goal for businesses is always to have someone more conservative politically. So, that's their goal. And anything else, it depends on the situation for them to see how much they would accept that.
SR: So, another factor, I think, which we can see in many of these struggles to push back against authoritarian tendencies has been an independent judiciary, which has tried to at least protect, if not further deepen constitutional democracy, so that many of these soft authoritarian illiberal regimes have tried to capture courts, or to thwart them by varied means. What is the role of the judiciary in the fight against corruption? Or is it enmeshed in the political power games in Brazil, in a network of cronyism? Or has it stood outside and taken a neutral role, or has it actively tried to protect democratic rights?
RR: So, again, in this case, I would say that the answer is not straightforward. It's a bit mixed. Because, on the level of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court has actually worked as a guarantor of constitution in Brazil in the past four years. It worked hard to guarantee the constitution, and to stop Bolsonaro in many cases. He started his first government trying to persecute political opposition, especially in the universities, and the Supreme Court put an end to that right away.
So, I have to say it worked well. But also, on the other hand, the parliamentary coup that took Dilma Rousseff out of power in 2016, and eventually led to Bolsonaro's election in 2018, there were parts of the judiciary that were really politically active, and they created this operation, which was the operation supposedly aimed at fighting...
SR: Corruption?
RR: Corruption, exactly. But that was, in the end, an operation against The Workers' Party, creating a mediatic lawfare campaign that enhanced this anti-Worker Party sentiment that already existed among Brazilian middle classes and upper classes, and eventually led to Dilma Rousseff's impeachment without having any proof against her. Lula was also arrested afterwards without any proof. So, you did have parts of the judiciary involved in politics, but nowadays, the whole thing that took place is largely seen as unfair.
SR: So, how do you explain this dramatic reversal in the fortune of Lula, and a rapid restoration of his earlier mass popularity, and his party managing to regain its popular appeal despite all of these attacks and cases of corruption, and also probably a lot of expectations that he raised, which he could not really fulfill? So, what happened finally to turn the tide against Bolsonarism?
RR: Well, I believe that if Lula were not running against Bolsonaro, Bolsonaro would probably have won. Lula is a unique figure in the political landscape of Brazil. He is a mass leader, he is charismatic, and his figure goes much beyond PT. He goes beyond the party itself. And I think that with all these attempts to discredit him, he never actually lost the confidence of the poor people in this country. That's exactly why he was arrested under this mediatic lawfare campaign, to not run the elections of 2018, because he would be a major contender to Bolsonaro or to anyone else.
Regarding the expectations, I really think that expectations are high, and as you mentioned, very, very, very hard, or even it's impossible to fulfill all of them. And Lula is a very good negotiator. He managed to put together a very broad coalition. And of course, in the next month, there will be defections of this coalition. There will be interests that won't be fulfilled. And I think that he is a very skillful politician, and he'll work to minimize the conflicts that will take place, and he'll have to make choices in terms of fulfilling the promises to the population, to the voters.
SR: So, let me ask you finally a question on Lula's foreign policy. If you recall, when he first came to power, that was sort of around a lot of global discourse on the left of alternative globalization, and he became kind of the figurehead of an idea of a multipolar world, crystallized in the cooperation of the BRIC countries, so Brazil, Russia, India, China, as a counterweight of sorts to U.S. American hegemony. That constellation seems to carry much less weight today.
Russia has engaged in a war of aggression. China has decided to mount a global challenge to North American U.S. economic domination. So, this space for foreign policy that Lula now has in a totally different geopolitical constellation, how do you think this will reorient, or it must reorient Brazil's position in the global arena?
RR: Well, at the UN Climate Conference in Egypt, Lula was treated as a pop star. And he stated this sentence that became famous in the past few days, "Brazil is back." I think that Lula will try to reproduce, to follow the steps of what his previous terms have done, in the sense of emphasizing South's cooperation, multilateralism. One example of that, he was elected, like, two weeks ago, and has already proposed the South-South rainforest alignment, alliance with Congo and Indonesia, a new group that has been called B-I-C, "BIC," proposing zero deforestation.
SR: Right.
RR: So, I think that's the path Lula will follow. But, on the other hand, as you said, the situation is not the same. China is much more powerful than it was 20 years ago. The BRICs, as a group, they stopped working after the parliamentary coup in Brazil especially. But I still think that Lula is going to bet on multilateralism in terms of talking to China, talking to Russia. Now, his position regarding the war was that Russia’s provoked, so he's not aligned to the, let's say, Western discourse. So, in this sense, he will counter many interesting positions of the U.S., as was the case 20 years ago. So, I think multilateralism, South-South, and strategic partnerships with other players, not only the U.S. or the EU, are going to be on the table.
SR: So, thank you very much, Ricardo, for this wide-ranging conversation. Thanks very much for this interview.
RR: Thank you very much, Shalini, for the invitation. I'm very glad to be here being able to discuss Brazilian political situation with you.
SR: Let me wrap up briefly my conversation with Ricardo on the implications of the current elections in Brazil. These have received less attention internationally than the American midterm elections. But as we have heard from Ricardo today, its implications have been equally significant. Bolsonaro’s defeat in Brazil is not only a victory for democracy, that resonates far beyond the country and the region, for it also raises important questions about the sociological foundations on which the success of the far-right soft authoritarian regimes, like that of Bolsonaro, are built. Some of these factors are specific, as we have learnt today, to the Brazilian context, historically and geographically. These range from longstanding class divisions to the shadow of the military dictatorship. However, other factors, such as the role of the evangelical churches in disseminating an ethic of individualism and theology of prosperity are more generalizable. These theological ideas resonate well with authoritarian neoliberal styles of governance and thus contribute to the success of the right-wing populist regimes elsewhere, too. Moreover, the partisan nature of some sections of the judiciary along with the use of the discourse of anti-corruption for the purpose of political vendetta also offer us important lessons if we are comparing the political strategies of the illiberal regimes. The functioning of these anti-democratic or soft authoritarian regimes as I’ve called them, also depend on the transnational networks and patterns of borrowing, imitation, and mutual support. As the case of Brazil shows, a charismatic and popular leader like Lula who enjoys mass support and can build successful broad coalitions is able to win elections to defeat extreme right-wing ideological agendas and forces. But it also remains to be seen to what extent Lula can deliver on his electoral promises in the current fraught geopolitical context. Some of his priorities may align him with progressive forces internationally, while others may well lead to confrontation with Western allies. The future of democracy in Brazil seems to be assured for now but its exact direction remains to be seen.
This was the ninth episode of Season 5. Thank you very much for listening. Join us again for the next episode in two weeks' time, when I'll be talking with the Iranian American writer, Azadeh Moaveni, about the history and the impact of the ongoing mass protests against the regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Please go back and listen to any episode you might have missed. And of course, let your friends know about this podcast if you're enjoying it. You can stay in touch with the work of the CEU at www.ceu.edu, and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at www.graduateinstitute.ch/democracy.