report of Sheet This Wednesday (15) informs that Lula’s digital popularity dropped because he left the scene when he caught Covid. I have never advised a political campaign, but I suppose that the verb to fall, in this context, is uncomfortable.
My imaginary research institute concluded long ago that Brazil is not on Twitter and Facebook is a hobby for the elderly. If the abominable center, the coup milicos and the hideous barricade in the Planalto do not combine the force of the hatred they feel for Brazil to gag the majority of voters, it is mathematically likely that a politician who respects the Constitution will go up the ramp in January.
A new book doesn’t mention Brazil, but it serves as a painful reminder of this year’s political indigence. Our election was framed in clichés like “neither one” or the sebastianist illusion of the bionic third way. The problem is that neither the so-called polarization patriarchs leading the polls nor the parade of misses on the third way catwalk produced a single new idea.
The word radical is taboo in politics, but how to shake Brazil out of this nightmare without new and radical ideas?
Author Gal Beckerman examines a selection of social movements from the 17th century to the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter in “The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas” radicals). The chapters on events that we follow live are very illustrative of the self-deception of militancy in the digital age.
In 2011, a high-speed revolution had among its leaders Wael Ghonim, a Google executive who called via Facebook the demonstrations that filled Tahrir Square, in Cairo, and led to the fall of Hosni Mubarak. The dictator fell, and within a few years, Egypt returned to being a police state, only more repressive.
As Beckerman reminds us, we know that the medium affects the nature of conversation. History shows that, in order to have the power to disrupt the status quo, an idea needs to be incubated in a small space, with intimacy that allows interlocutors the freedom to express themselves without reprisals, with time to refine their thinking.
The Egyptian spring brought together by jet a sarapatel of political groups that would not have met in the square before. What happened, right after the “victory” of democracy? The authoritarian Muslim Brotherhood has broken into the presidential palace, with its 25 years of experience in hiding organizing a hierarchy of power. Those who had experience of torture prevailed, not young people marveling at the social network.
What defines success on the social network is immediacy, conflict and superficial drama — and none of these serve to build democratic solidity. The nature of platforms like Facebook is an obstacle to staying focused, organizing thoughts, planning strategies and choosing leaders.
In the recent Black Lives Matter, Beckerman shows how activists frustrated with the limits of the social network founded an alternative group, in an attempt to “slow cooking” in politics. But as they emerged from the network’s bubble of self-confirmation, the new group found that most voters disagreed with the banner of strangling the police budget and extinguishing police departments, something any barbershop-goer could have told them.
I don’t know if Lula needs digital popularity. I know we really need new ideas.
