by Virgínia Fontes*
I am writing this text on 25 October, the day of the second round of the presidential election in Brazil. It pits Lula da Silva — a historic figure of the Workers’ Party, rich in long experience — against Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of a family involved in all manner of malpractices (small and large) and social violence, and who licks Donald Trump’s boots. Like everyone else, I await the verdict of the ballot boxes with impatience.
But at this stage I want to recall what we have already gained over these past twenty days — gains that we must preserve, because they are historical lessons.
Whatever the result, we must remain vigilant and strong.
If Lula wins, the celebration of victory will inevitably be accompanied by fatigue, as well as the temptation to entrust ourselves, once again, to the leaders alone. We have learned that we must no longer allow that to happen! If Lula is defeated, sadness must not turn into discouragement, to the point of making us forget the long road travelled so far. We must continue and deepen what we have learned; this will be essential to defend the entire population against the drift that lies ahead.
What assessment can we draw from these 20 days of a genuine election campaign? What can we retain and what must we preserve? Now, we have learned that professional, costly campaigns financed by considerable resources can prove very advantageous for the dominant classes (including through the purchase of bots and fake profiles, as well as thanks to the favors of the big content broadcasters, such as Meta — Facebook and Instagram, of Mark Zuckerberg —, X — of Elon Musk —, etc.). The dominant classes benefit from the complicity of the big media and the big capitalist owners, Brazilian as well as foreign; they remunerate their “docile militants” — recruited for their campaigns — with money and promises that they know, with certainty, they will not have to keep. These campaigns are not aimed at guaranteeing rights, but at securing privileges for the powerful.
1. Praxis and popular pedagogy in the street
In this second round, we rediscovered that it is the population that is able to support not only a campaign, but also governments. The UFF students reminded us of this through practice: they rose up against the threat represented by the election of a gang leader — whose career is marked by fraud and who threatens, openly or more insidiously, to abolish all democratic guarantees and to subject the country to the dictates of a foreign government. Disregarding the fears and reticence of the official campaign, they launched a popular campaign, in the street, in favor of Lula’s re-election. They thus broke down the dikes — those historical barriers erected by the PT (or at least by the majority of its leaders) to contain the great mobilizations — because the party feared that these vast popular masses would become uncontrollable, calling into question alliances and compromises that troubled it.
The conjuncture was such that the risk of losing the election was immense, threatening to paralyze the party as well as the bureaucratic and institutional machinery of the campaign. This popular irruption brought a breath of fresh air and acted like a lit fuse, spreading throughout the country. This… The mobilization could not be contained — and, fortunately, no one tried to do so. Within a few days, the PT admitted what it had blocked for decades, and agreed to take part in immense popular demonstrations throughout the country. The great majority of these demonstrations were self-organized, with shared leadership, bringing together a myriad of social movements of varying sizes, configurations, demands and struggles. All united in the fight against the process of “fascistization” and in the face of the real threats hanging over each of these movements: deep cuts in rights, the generalization of corruption as a mode of governance, the indiscriminate resort to violence — illustrated by the direct participation of gangs and militias in Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign — as well as indignation at the appropriation, by groups with fascist tendencies, of public space (“the streets”) and national symbols. They rallied openly, massively and actively to Lula’s campaign, while setting strict conditions: the absolute rejection of any fascist drift and the guarantee that popular participation — as well as the rights linked to it — will be preserved, whatever the outcome of the second round of the election.
In the streets, there were well-established popular social movements: those defending agrarian reform (such as the MST), those fighting against the mining industry and the devastating effects of dams, those defending human rights, combating all forms of racism, promoting women’s rights, feminism, gender issues and the struggles against homophobia. But there were also looser and less structured movements: collectives in solidarity with the peoples of Latin America facing the stranglehold imposed by the United States (notably Cuba and Venezuela); supporters of the Palestinian people facing the genocidal Zionist boot; students defending public education; as well as workers and users of the SUS (the public health system) in permanent struggle against the privatization of health, movements against xenophobia and ableism, as well as many others that I could not possibly all name.
The popular pedagogy of praxis prevailed over institutional conservative restraint and over the hushed manoeuvres of closed offices. It is fundamental, and preserving it constitutes a precious asset for our common future.
2. Mass networks
a) Almost simultaneously with the mobilizations initiated by the students, another dike — which kept the campaign in a bureaucratic straitjacket — gave way immediately after the announcement of the first-round results: Janones created the “Lula Army” (Exército do Lula), a WhatsApp channel urgently inviting the population to face the avalanche of false information and the algorithms that serve the interests of groups with fascist tendencies. The central objective was to neutralize the capacity for action of the powerful who support Flávio Bolsonaro, as well as their complicity with the big broadcasting channels (the capitalist owners of the networks). These are supported by actors with considerable financial resources — such as the operators of online betting sites, agribusiness, financial capital and investment funds — not to mention cash, originating, in all likelihood, from money-laundering operations. One can even suppose the contribution of foreign resources, still poorly identified.
The strategy devised by Janones was brilliant: to pit thousands of real people against bots and fake accounts. Everyone had to learn what it means to confront proprietary algorithms. These belong to — and are designed by — companies that, in theory, act only according to market logic and the pursuit of profit; they should therefore, consequently, adopt coherent behavior in the face of these new waves, constituted this time by massive popular participation.
Janones implemented a form of mass popular mobilization parallel to that taking place in the street — without however diminishing the weight of the street mobilization, but projecting this massive force also into the digital space. He took on the mission of teaching how to confront algorithms, while coordinating, towards a common objective, considerable masses of individuals in front of their mobile phones and computers.
This is a major lesson, already acquired, which proved crucial on several occasions when the channel was blocked. At those moments, the “popular army” present on Lula’s networks took matters into its own hands, moving the command centre to other channels and pursuing the actions already underway. If it was necessary to establish an “army”-type hierarchy to counter the hierarchy of algorithms, in practice, many participants were able to become ephemeral leaders, thus defying the frozen world of hierarchies.
b) Still in the universe of networks, another fundamental lesson emerges: the “mega-owners” seek profit, wherever it comes from. Now, they have a political camp; they have demonstrated that they can exert pressure in multiple ways — by invoking, for example, fake “technical problems” to block or restrict the reach of Lula’s campaign, while unduly favouring their own candidate, supported by Trump and the big owners. This is an essential lesson of popular struggle: it is crucial to know how to manoeuvre in the shadows and to combat the algorithm using its own rules. But we must not forget that we are not fighting only against inert algorithms, but against big holders of capital — foreign as well as Brazilian — who are totally devoid of scruples, going so far as to flout so-called “commercial loyalty” when it serves their interests. This can go as far as a form of “confinement” (or lockdown), where capital flees the country, or prefers to renounce any gain rather than recognise popular power. This situation is flagrant and requires, as soon as possible, control over the interference of these owners in Brazilian life. This is what is called the urgency of retaking popular sovereignty. It also underlines the absolute urgency of producing knowledge — always under popular control — in order to invent and set up, without delay, secure communication networks, designed for the peoples and not for the owners.
3. Ant-like work – reinventing fieldwork
This genuine popular uprising in defense of Lula against Flávio Bolsonaro has breathed new energy into other forms of political action. These include groups that strive to convince voters, engaging in discussions in highly frequented places, within families and in the neighborhood. The aim is to debate the central issues linked to each candidate and to rally more people around the defense of acquired rights — threatened with abolition — as well as of popular sovereignty, in the face of the Bolsonaro family’s submission to the government of the United States. This is a revival, still in its infancy, of fieldwork. Previously, this work rested on a lasting presence of party committees and campaign teams within the different territories; a practice that, little by little, was supplanted by the simple institutional management of public policies — necessary policies, certainly, but insufficient. Taken in isolation, they are only legal texts and programs. In connection with popular bases, they become genuine levers for overcoming the challenges and obstacles imposed by a brutal capitalism and by the omnipresence of forces hostile to the people. Moreover, laws and social conquests are then inscribed in a process of democratization, rather than constituting an endpoint. The development of this new fieldwork will certainly take unprecedented forms, distinct from previous ones, without however making them disappear. Presence in the field is not always guaranteed: in many regions, armed groups — traffickers, police, militiamen or bands in the pay of big landowners — prevent militants from accessing places or remaining there. We will have to relearn how to establish this contact in the street, to renew it, and perhaps even to anchor ourselves in the territories through broader welcoming structures, such as popular brigades dedicated to health, food, education, sport or school support. Not to engage in philanthropy — which mainly serves the wealthiest to salve their consciences — nor to conduct religious proselytism, but quite simply to be together. To learn to know one another, to pool our knowledge, our demands, our needs as well as the concrete means of meeting them. We are inventing more mobile and more agile forms of contact; continuity and trust constitute the fundamental levers for building convergences of struggles — convergences already at work, but which must still be deepened.
4. Media, investigation and reliable research networks
This whole set of popular activism has transformed the social reality in this country, a phenomenon visible in the media: journalists from the big traditional press, who fight to preserve an ounce of autonomy in the exercise of their profession, have benefited from the popular support necessary to impose certain subjects within their editorial offices. As is well known, the big Brazilian media are not only conservative, but openly right-wing; they have long defended, on a daily basis, an economic program based on drastic cuts in social rights (budgetary austerity), while insisting on a discourse focused on “security” that leads to an intensification of police violence, in disregard of legislation. Not to mention their complicity with the online betting sector, as illustrated by the case of the Rede Globo channel. Despite this profile, the mobilizations in the street and on social networks have opened breaches in these media owned by private groups, even allowing what should nevertheless be the daily norm: investigative work based on sources, information that is not reduced to the “voice of the owners”.
Better still, this has given considerable impetus to a practice that is always indispensable on a daily basis: the increased dissemination of media content of excellent quality — investigative work supported by sources, arguments and in-depth research, assuming opinions and positions. These media refuse to be reduced to a simple mirror of the adversary (which relays corporate propaganda); they rely instead on crucial analyses of the issues that marked these elections. The most striking example is undoubtedly the YouTube channel Revelando, which offers exhaustive reports, conducted with seriousness and rigor, highlighting realities that everyone knows, but that the big media pretend to ignore. There is today a multitude of online media that have regained real importance, such as Intercept Brazil, Agência Pública, Brazil de Fato, Come Ananás, O Joio e o Trigo, De Olho nos Ruralistas or ICL, not to mention many other platforms offering more concise analyses, such as A Terra é Redonda. Guaranteeing the sustainability of a media outlet attached to the seriousness and rigor of solid information — capable of criticizing sources “sold” from abroad and of analyzing in depth duly contextualized data — remains a challenge and a mission for all of us.
5. Parties, parliament, social struggles and rights
Since the 1988 Constitution, no election has mobilized the population on the scale we are witnessing today: on one side, a base with fascist tendencies, supported by considerable economic resources; on the other, a popular mass engaged in a fierce struggle, precisely against the privileges of the groups that direct and orient Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign, as well as against a proposal for change that is nothing but an imposture.
The mobilization, in the street as on the networks, has already transformed, in 20 days, the prospects of our struggles. The first lesson is that we must above all not demobilize; voting is not enough. It is indispensable that the population follow and monitor, day by day, what is happening within the parliamentary bodies — from the municipal and state levels up to the Chamber and the Senate. For this, our elected representatives must relearn how to rely collectively on popular movements, consolidating verified information. It is a matter of informing permanently, not only about the interests of the dominant classes — which conceal themselves behind the most diverse parliamentary manoeuvres —, but also about the resistance and opposition that these same dominant groups mount against any popular conquest.
Parties are necessary, even essential, because they make it possible to federate a great diversity of struggles within national political programs and international perspectives. But that is not enough. They must reconnect with the street, join the real struggles — whether economic, social, environmental, cultural, urban, rural, indigenous, feminist, anti-racist or against homophobia — in daily life. These struggles are disruptive; we aspire to more than capitalism can offer, and we need it. These struggles, which we are relearning to wage, constitute the necessary condition for confronting this accumulation of crises by changing course. It is a matter of breaking with development models that are running out of steam — which in reality serve only the employers — in order to move towards deeper advances: wage improvements, new and more solid rights and, above all, experiments that go far beyond the logic of capital. One can cite, for example, agroecology, urban communes, as well as a multitude of other initiatives already concretized.
6. Unions and associations
These organizations have also joined the struggles, although in an uneven and less visible manner. Now, workers’ unions have been under attack for decades. On the one hand, from the employers, who look after their own employers’ organizations while attacking, criminalizing and discriminating against any form of workers’ association. Employers have always sought to impose docile unions on employees, resorting to violence and blackmail, but also to seduction, even to the purchase of certain union leaders.
On the other hand, they are weakened by the bureaucratization of their own leadership bodies. In the complex interplay of relations between workers and employers, these leaderships end up adopting an almost invisible posture in order to survive pressures; they then become merely a simple interface — what is called, in Brazil, a pelego — a legal entity that is solicited only during conflicts, dismissals or to defend specific causes.
The pressure for them to turn into “companies” for managing conflicts and dismissals has been considerable. It has come, thirdly, from a part of the intelligentsia itself (including a fringe that claims to be left-wing) — an elite that believes itself to be above and outside the world of ordinary mortals, that decrees that the category of “workers” belongs to the past and that refuses to take part in a struggle for economic interests.
Yet, more than ever, the economic interests of the great majority are at stake. Recently, many associations within the world of work have been formed to wrest fundamental economic conquests. But they have also mobilized for economic rights going beyond the framework of the employment relationship alone — like the BPC (Benefício da Prestação Continuada, a social allowance) — or within collectives ensuring the defense (including legal) of health, education, transport, culture, etc.
A genuine structure for coordinating struggles is proving more necessary every day to guarantee the implementation of the reduction of working time; for a law, once passed, remains exposed to attacks and requires our vigilance to be defended. This reduction of working time must benefit all workers. Likewise, the improvement of incomes must target the mass of workers without contracts, focusing not on high salaries, but on the lowest. This upsets the employers. And this is precisely what we have done over the past twenty days.
7. Our banners: anti-fascism, popular sovereignty and democratization
In the street as on social networks, the rejection of the processes of “fascization” and of submission to the Trump government appeared with striking obviousness, as did the will to defend rights and democratization. And this, it seems, in that precise order. The anti-fascist struggle encompasses all these dimensions: it denounces the current role of Trump and the American government, rejects any form of dictatorship and defends a vast range of rights as well as democratization, including environmental issues. Finally, and not always explicitly, the anti-fascist struggle is an anti-capitalist struggle. Anti-fascism is not homogeneous, it has no hierarchy, nor even a single organization; it does, however, require praxis and daily practice.
As has been the case in the United States and in other countries, anti-fascism tends to be criminalized and banned. Many do not believe that we are confronted with fascism; that is why they keep silent or criticize the anti-fascist position. Yet a large part of the population will probably oppose fascism, even without pronouncing its name.
This is the essential combat to be waged, although it is forced to conceal itself and cannot show itself openly, because of the many prohibitions weighing upon it. It constitutes today the heart of our struggles, and it is within it that all the considerable advances made over these past 20 days converge. It acts as a vast umbrella, capable of sheltering many battles.
In summary of this long reflection, while we still await the verdict of the ballot boxes: whatever the result of the elections, we have already gained a great deal in 20 days of intense struggles, organized collectively.
- In the street: the importance of field struggles, in the face of enemies, but also in the face of bureaucracies and the inertia of central powers.
- On the networks:
a) Millions of people acting in concert can confront algorithms, turning them to our advantage.
b) The networks: the big owners have demonstrated that they are capable of distorting the market and of using their economic weight to manipulate and rig the algorithms they themselves created. We must go beyond their grip. - The reinvention of fieldwork.
- Media, genuine investigations, verified and reliable research: multiplication and dissemination.
- Parties, parliaments, rights and social struggles.
- Workers’ unions and popular associations.
- Anti-fascism, popular sovereignty, permanent democratization.
* Virginia Fontes. a taught at the Fluminense Federal University of Rio-Niterói and is a researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. She is also the author of numerous works, including the famous “Impertinent Reflections: History of Contemporary Capitalism” published in 2005 and “Brazil and Imperialist Capital” published in 2010, considered a reference work on the thought of V. Lenin and A. Gramsci.
* Virginia Fontes. a taught at the Fluminense Federal University of Rio-Niterói and is a researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. She is also the author of numerous works, including the famous “Impertinent Reflections: History of Contemporary Capitalism” published in 2005 and “Brazil and Imperialist Capital” published in 2010, considered a reference work on the thought of V. Lenin and A. Gramsci.
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