“Coup! – the rigged electronic voting machines defrauded the will of the people and elected Lula.” Bolsonaro’s thesis, an adapted copy of Trump’s narrative on electoral fraud, is factually false and politically coup – but, at least, it does not attribute to voters a chronic inability to distinguish their interests. The left goes down this path when it formulates its thesis for failure in the municipal elections.
“We lost because of parliamentary amendments, which distort the political system and elect the right.” In its left-wing version, the cheating theory illuminates a real curve, which is the capture of the public budget by the parliamentary majority, but hides the structural phenomenon. The rise of the right in municipal elections began in 2016, well before the inflation of parliamentary amendments, and continues even under a left-wing federal government. It is an alibi intended to salt the soil in which an honest debate about the political directions of the so-called progressives would germinate.
The “centrão” is no longer what it was, as some rare lucid analysts have recorded. It remains opportunistic and physiological, as always, but it has become increasingly ideological, embracing extremist discourses manufactured in the field of Bolsonarism. His triumph represents, in fact, a victory for the reactionary right. The defeat of the left should not be interpreted as an anomalous event, but as a sign of a fundamental mismatch between “progressive” narratives and the expectations of the electorate.
Do people not know how to vote? The left’s inclination to attribute its failures to popular ignorance has a long history. How many times has the PT invoked the specter of a “fascist middle class” to justify electoral failures in São Paulo? However, as changing people is an obvious impossibility, “progressives” would need to face the painful task of changing their interpretations.
The economic policy of Lula’s initial two terms cannot be replicated in the current international situation. Brazil has changed. Extreme poverty has receded. Lulista social policies, based on direct income transfers, do not correspond to the desires of the new and heterogeneous middle class. The left offers answers from the past to the challenges of the present. The mismatch paves the way for the secular religion of “entrepreneurship”, a reactionary reply to the paternal State of the left.
The “progressives” – and not just those linked to the left – imported identity policies from the USA. They replaced the concepts of people and class with processions of “minorities”, especially racial ones, renouncing the promotion of universal public policies. In this step, they facilitated reactionary identity discourses, which call for unity (patriotic or religious). The resulting ideological war is a fundamental factor in the electoral march towards the right. The bankruptcy of racialism gained another number: 83% of elected black mayors belong to center or right-wing parties.
The theory of cheating, more than a mere intellectual mistake, serves as a tool used by leaders engaged in the mission of self-preservation. It’s about covering up your fiasco, avoiding a harsh political review. The self-delusion of “progressives” is an unwitting offering to the reactionary right.
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