Finally free of the madness of Bolsonaro?

Four years of madness are nearly over. Lula da Silva has prevailed over President Jair Bolsonaro, taking 50.9% of the vote. Barring a dramatic turnaround — the dreaded coup that has hung over the country for months, for example — Lula will, on January 1, be Brazil’s new President.

It wasn’t easy. The past month has been a distillation of the Bolsonaro era. There’s been rampant misinformation. (Lula’s campaign had to confirm, in response to wild rumours on social media, that he “had not made a deal with the devil nor has he ever talked to Satan.”). And of course, there’s been the threat of political violence, seemingly blessed from the top.

At last, for the sake of our collective mental health, we can say that Bolsonaro has been beaten. It is not that the country is strongly aligned with Lula and the centre-left politics of the Workers’ Party, which governed the country for 13 years, ending in 2016. It’s more that the past four years under Bolsonaro showed us how low a nation could go, and we’re desperate to emerge from the swamp of political despondency.

There’s a lot about the administration I won’t miss — its murderous neglect, its deep-rooted corruption, its fanaticism. One of the greatest reliefs will be no longer having to participate in crazy discussions. Brazil, at last, can get back to a semblance of sanity. It’s hard to believe how much public debate has shifted. Nine years ago, Brazilians took to the streets in favour of free public transport. Now we spend much of our time asserting exasperatedly that virology actually exists and climate change is not a globalist hoax.

We are afraid to take to the streets in protest and give the government a reason to attempt a coup. We think any civilian in a passing car may be armed. We know that wearing red will be seen as a political statement. (A Brazilian Catholic cardinal was recently taken to task over his traditional red clothes). We do not dare discuss the news with our neighbours, for fear of what they might say.

The truth is that Brazilian society has always been dominated by conservative forces. None of the advances of the past two decades have come easily — the social welfare programme Bolsa Família, affirmative action in universities and the public sector, or same-sex marriage. They were all met with derision from most conservatives. But these were battles fought between the centre-left and the centre-right, which were then both sufficiently reasonable to engage in democratic debate. That changed when Bolsonaro arrived on the national scene. Gradually at first and then suddenly, a repressed right-wing extremism burst.

Day after day, the integrity of public discourse has been liquefied by conspiratorial claims, turbocharged by social media and encouraged by Bolsonaro. We have been obliged to waste our time publicly refuting the theory that vaccines contain nanobots or that, as he put it, the Amazon rainforest “cannot catch fire.” All that energy, which could have gone to demanding a better public healthcare system or a stronger response to climate change, was instead swallowed up combating lurid nonsense.

But Bolsonaro gave us no choice, right up to the election. There is little doubt that he aimed for autocracy and would seize any opportunity to remain in power; the need to defeat him became an absolute necessity, taking precedence over every other concern. That explains the breadth of the coalition around Lula’s candidacy, which included even previous opponents from the centre-right. The electoral contest was reduced to a binary: for or against Bolsonaro.

In truth, it isn’t that simple. For one thing, there is no tangible solution for how social networks seem to push citizens to extreme positions, deepening polarization. For another, politicians endorsed by Bolsonaro are now an established part of the political landscape – in governor’s offices, in the Senate and in the Congress. Bolsonaro may leave office, but Bolsonarismo is far from over.

That poses serious challenges for the incoming administration. Not only will an emboldened far right be a constant thorn in Lula’s side, but it will also force him to rely on the parties of the centre, opening the way for the — often corrupt — exchange of favours that has marred Brazilian democracy since its inception. NYT