The second round campaign began with the agitation of the “support” of politicians and people known to the candidates. Mostly political gossip, the topic has all but died. For at least a week now, the dominant conversation has been religion, as indicated by certain mud temperature measurements on social media and as heard in journalistic commentary or the like.
The 2017 video of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in the Freemasonry temple, his “Satanism”, Lula da Silva’s (PT) “Letter to Christians”, Bolsonaro in the CÃrio de Nazaré, Bolsonaro and his fanatics rioting Catholic ceremonies in Aparecida were the news of the religious quarrel.
The matter boils in different ways underground in the networks, say researchers who measure the height of these tides of garbage. After the riot caused by moneylenders at the temple in Aparecida, “Bolsonaro Não é de Deus” was one of the topics at the top of the Twitter ranking.
And so we come to the tenth of the twenty-eight days between the first and second rounds of voting.
The subject of “religion” is not only guided by Bolsonaro’s campaign. He went on to organize Brazilian politics. There is an evangelical party, in the broadest sense. The politicization of the Supreme Court, which has been going on for more than a decade and was already degrading enough, degenerates into religious politics because of Bolsonaro. Catholics and Evangelicals vote more than ever in overwhelmingly opposing directions.
The secular political forces, until recently dominant or majority (now, it is doubtful), were not able to invent a reaction to this movement, from several fronts, to frame politics by religion. The attack is stimulated, but not entirely determined, by Bolsonarism and the conservative or reactionary torrent in which it navigates.
The leaders of the religious company, of parliamentary benches and even less worldly leaders organized a targeted political bloc, which influences a large part of the faithful, has a political-moral program, sometimes adheres to Bolsonaro and launches anathemas over politicians who judge deviants and over believers who don’t walk the straight line. This is the evangelical party, “lato sensu”.
The movement is so strong that it rewrites the recent past. Since last Wednesday, at least, it has been leaked to newspapers that a part of the PT command had convinced Lula to publish a “Letter to Christians”. It was the only way out so far to avoid political-religious stoning.
Aside from the demagogues that almost any politician makes with almost any specific electorate, religion has never been a subject of PT or Toucan governments, by the way, even less has there been any religious persecution or anything remotely similar. Now, Lula has to participate in a media auto-da-fé. So it will be with any candidate who opposes Bolsonaro’s reactionary sect or money-making Pharisees.
The blasphemies and other indignities, such as the filth that bolsonaristas promoted in the church of Aparecida this Wednesday, served to stifle the renewed promise of a coup (the manipulation of the composition of the Supreme). So far they take the place of any other political conversation, at least until that noise wears off.
How to deal with the Bolsonarista conversation agenda is the question. Bolsonaro did not govern, he campaigned for his reactionary revolution and parasitized what was left of the state’s function. Bolsonaro, even less than any other candidate, does not discuss government policy plans in the election — he also parasites on democracy. At least in the media, he’s been successful, as he was on 7 de Setembro. Opposition and democratic forces have not yet invented a way to change the conversation.
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