Lack of dialogue in polarized election is bad for democracy, says anthropologist

Despite the Brazilian population traditionally identifying itself as a peaceful and harmonious society, episodes of political violence have been increasingly frequent during the 2022 presidential campaign.

For American anthropologist Benjamin Junge, the political radicalization seen in the country is a reflection of the lack of dialogue between people with different points of view, which can become a lasting problem for the country’s democracy.

“In a functioning and healthy democracy, the moment to vote should be preceded by thought, dialogue, information — and all of this is compromised at that moment”, he says, in an interview with Interest Nacional.

Junge is one of the organizers of “Precarious Democracy: Ethnographies of Hope, Despair and Resistance in Brazil”. The work examines how ordinary Brazilians lived and understood the drastic changes that the country went through between 2013 and 2019. Part of this assessment involves the discussion about the view that this population has on the country’s politics.

His work analyzes how these political divisions create problems even within Brazilian working class families. According to him, society has always had contradictions and authoritarian and hierarchical tendencies, but this has been exacerbated and legitimized by the discourse of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in the last four years.

His book mentions how Brazilian political tradition used to lead to arguments, but not violence. Now we are seeing an increase in cases of political violence in the country. Do you think there is a change in the way people are behaving because of politics in Brazil? It is an empirical fact that homophobic, gender, and racial violence in Brazil has been on the rise since 2018. And there is more to the situation than that, as there was homophobic and race- and gender-based violence before that.

The issue is that it was not so visible and there was no public discourse that legitimized it. This is one of Bolsonaro’s many terrible legacies. He is not entirely to blame, as this already existed in less developed forms before 2018. But he has intentionally tried to legitimize it, with a harsh and authoritarian discourse that comes from above in society. This discourse was embraced and internalized by many ordinary people, generating conflicts even in family groups.

And now Brazil comes to the elections with a more genuinely polarized society. Some of this polarization has existed before, as in the 2018 election, but it has intensified further in the way Brazilians on both sides of the ideological continuum articulate their concerns, frustrations and hopes. This particularly focuses on two themes — security and corruption. The curious thing is that the two sides in dispute agree that these points are problematic, but they adopt very different postures in relation to them.

How this context can impact on social relationships and policies? This is already a political problem in the country. The idea that conservatism is a new phenomenon in Brazil does not make much sense. It is about the continuity of an authoritarian culture that inhabits society. Brazil is a deeply authoritarian and hierarchical society. Now, the issue of violence is different, as people can be intolerant without necessarily attacking and killing each other. And this has been growing, even as Brazilians continue to identify themselves as pacifists in a harmonious society.

Social networks had a very negative force in democratic discourse. People publish their views, but there is no more dialogue. And the pandemic has accelerated that. This context has reduced arguments even in families, and they are important for democracy.

There’s a particular kind of resentment, disenchantment, skepticism that takes over people’s minds when they experience a better life and then lose it. The focus of my research is on the popular classes, which experienced some kind of upward mobility in the first decade of the 20th century, but who, like everyone else, in the second decade, were left in a state of precariousness.

I try to understand the political sentiment of this population. This group never developed a more elaborate feeling about politics, or solidarity.

A lot of what happened was a very consumerist vision of poverty reduction. And the left paid the price for that, because many of those people who benefited from PT policies turned against it when their situation was precarious. And the way these people came to deal with that was in part through moral discussions about gender, sexuality and religion along generational lines. It is a deeply ambivalent feeling.

How do you think this situation will look after the elections? What we are seeing is the ending of dialogue, which is bad for democracy. In a functioning and healthy democracy, the moment to vote should be preceded by thought, dialogue, information — and all this is compromised at this moment, when families do not talk to each other.

The first step is already contaminated. If you go outside the family, it’s even harder to get that dialogue and get people talking to others who disagree with them. The position of many of Bolsonaro’s voters reflects a kind of frustration or a certain difficulty in embracing a multicultural society.

This is the big question that Brazil will have to solve. Will it be the egalitarian society envisaged in the 1988 Constitution? This is not reflected in reality. It is a challenge to create a multicultural society. I am not optimistic about the situation in the country after the elections. Whatever happens, the election will not bring families that have ideological tensions closer together. This is bad, and whatever the outcome of the October elections, this problem is not going to be solved.

An interesting point is that his work deals a lot with the idea of ​​”family”, and this is a subject that is at the center of the speech in support of Bolsonaro. How do you see this process and the place of the idea of ​​family in society? Brazilian? For Bolsonaro supporters, the last four years have been a chance to restore an old vision of patriarchy in which a man’s role in society is to provide for, care for and protect his family. It is an old notion of the role of man in society, which has become stronger among Bolsonaro supporters and will persist even if Lula wins.

The problem is that in many of these families there are people, especially younger ones, who do not have this worldview and do not want to be protected, cared for, women who do not want to be treated as minor citizens. So the generational question is fundamental. Young people who grew up in the years of progress, did not know the dictatorship and experienced a period of growth and optimism, with the embrace of a multicultural society, with racial visibility. That will not change after the elections.

This is a disputed issue around the concept of patriotism, as if Brazil were a homogeneous country. Brazilians have an incredible ability to carry contradictions, to celebrate and have fun even with ideological and political differences. It’s nice that people can still somehow get along with each other, even if they strongly disagree. On the other hand, it is problematic to act as if all is well when, in fact, there are real issues and divisions, especially along generational lines, that must be discussed.