The return of the fascism zombie
In Brazil, barbarism is not an exception but an old political project
A few days ago I published on my Brazilian blog a text saying that Bolsonaro was an electoral corpse https://jornalggn.com.br/opiniao/o-complexo-de-lazaro/. The result of the first round of the election proved me wrong, as he received 51 million votes.
Lula's success in the first round has a bitter taste, as the match is not yet won. In fact, it has already been partially lost.
It is not possible to explain Bolsonaro's electoral survival by his achievements. The Brazilian economy hardly grew at all. The unemployment rate remains high. A significant portion of the Brazilian population has returned to being miserable and can expect almost nothing from authoritarian neoliberalism. Hunger became a reality again and the pandemic was transformed by Bolsonaro into a weapon of mass destruction to relieve the budget.
Apparently the red wave broke against a wall of anti-PT feeling. Hate is winning over hope as it is regurgitated daily by tens of thousands of pastors in thousands of evangelical churches. The politicization of religion was an important phenomenon in this election. Proof of this was the election of pastor Damares Alves in the Federal District.
General Hamilton Mourão's victory symbolizes the partial restoration of the military's political credibility. Many other soldiers ran for elective positions and some were elected. The damage they will do to democracy will be greater than any civilian president was able to do to the Armed Forces during the 1988 Constitution.
The constitutional system built at the end of the Military Dictatorship was mortally wounded in 2016. Due to the result of the 2022 election, we can say that it is dying.
Some analysts estimate that, having reached the ceiling of his electoral performance, Bolsonaro has no room to grow and will lose the presidential race in the second round. However, even if Lula wins the election, he will not be able to govern with the same easiness that he had since 2002. His enemies in the Brazilian Congress will be many and some of them cannot be appeased with concessions. I say this specifically thinking about Sérgio Moro and Deltan Dellagnol (protagonists of the judicial farce that prevented Lula from running for president in 2018).
By managing to take the dispute to the second round, Bolsonaro revives the coup spree of generals, colonels, admirals, brigadiers, etc. They obviously want to remain in power and will be more and more tempted to illegally harm the opponent and/or the Electoral Justice itself.
In a democracy, political tensions should be dissolved through elections. It seems evident to me that the result of the second round will not do that. If Bolsonaro is elected, he cannot be controlled by anything or anyone. If the power system he helped to build is defeated, it will continue to haunt Brazil led by the zombie captain.
The choices made by the Brazilian Justice System in the past prevented democracy from burying the nauseating remains of the Military Dictatorship. Will what remains of democracy be able to survive for long under the pressure of a cancer that grows within the State with the tireless help of evangelical pastors?
Hatred against the PT can define not only this election. It can even define the fate of those who refused to hate Bolsonaro and who will inevitably be silenced by a new dictatorship if its birth is not aborted.
This abortion, however, will be difficult and painful. The fascism zombie will not be killed if it is not decapitated. The problem is that it now has several heads and some of them are much more cunning and sophisticated than the genocidal captain.
Whatever the outcome of the second round of the Brazilian election, setback is evident. The dark and threatening tunnel that Brazil entered in 2016 has not yet come to an end and everything indicates that it will be very long.