To mark the opening of the WCEH in Oulu, a truly global gathering of environmental historians, we are republishing José Augusto Pádua’s ICEHO essay from Global Environment (June 2024). Pádua reflects on Brazil’s momentous 2022 election – ‘a time for the historian to close the books and take to the streets’ to make a stand against extremism; and an event that needs to be viewed in a global context of threatened democracy and environmental denialism.
In October 2022, I cancelled a trip abroad and reduced my professional schedule to a minimum. I felt compelled to contribute in some way to Jair Bolsonaro’s defeat in both rounds of Brazil’s upcoming presidential election. It was the first time I had taken such a decisive electoral stance. As a veteran of hotly-contested election campaigns in the past, I had regularly accepted the defeat of my favoured candidate as victory for a political project different from the one I supported. In 2022, the situation was entirely dissimilar. This was one of those decisive moments, when action needs to accompany reflection, because the fate of a society is being decided. It was time for the historian to close the books and take to the streets (whether the physical streets or the virtual streets of the internet) to make history. I was reminded of 1984, when I joined demonstrations with more than a million people to demand the end of the military dictatorship and the return of democracy in my country.
This was not only about escaping the political nightmare into which we had been thrown by the surprising election of Bolsonaro in 2018. A single indicator summarises the depths of our torture: more than 708,000 deaths from COVID-19, when the world average for the size of our population would have been 193,000. The denialism, vacillations and errors of the far-right government had sent more than half a million of my fellow citizens to their deaths. The election of 2022 was an urgent and possibly fleeting opportunity to prevent the bad dream from continuing and consolidating. The re-election of Bolsonaro threatened to destroy our democracy from within, in the style of Hungary. The Amazon Rainforest that I study and love would enter an uncontrollable spiral of devastation. A large part of its indigenous population would die. The trend lines were already all too obvious.
The mobilisation to secure the sixty million votes needed to remove Bolsonaro from power was impressive. Countless thousands set aside their normal preoccupations to save our democracy and ‘fight for the soul’ of our society. Animosities and historical conflicts among progressives were set aside for the greater goal. Renowned Brazilian educator Paulo Freire was often quoted, to make the point that it was necessary to unite the dissimilar in order to fight the antagonistic. Several intellectuals and politicians from the moderate right declared their support for left-wing candidate, Lula da Silva. Their support for the government’s pro-business and free market mindset was undermined by the craziness and authoritarianism of the extreme right. First, democratic rationality had to be saved, then differences in economic policy could be discussed.
The convergence was neither perfect nor complete, but we managed to get out of the nightmare. On the night of Bolsonaro’s victory, I had found slim solace in Nietzsche’s aphorism, that if we didn’t die we could come out stronger and learn some fundamental lessons. If Bolsonarism had only been a national phenomenon, a singularity in our history, I would not be reflecting on it in Global Environment. But the victory of the extreme right in the Netherlands, Trump’s possible return to power and, above all, Javier Milei’s victory in Argentina – after our neighbors saw everything we went through! – encouraged me to share some ideas that should be useful on a global level. Social scientists need to think very hard about this highly threatening international political trend.
The first lesson is that right-wing extremism can grow suddenly and unexpectedly, catapulted by the cunning use of new communication technologies. Brazil didn’t seem to be a fertile ground for the far right. When Bolsonaro became a candidate in 2018, hardly anyone believed he would win. After the collapse of the military dictatorship that ruled the country between 1964 and 1984, the country’s political axis moved away from right-wing views. The constitution in force since 1988 is explicitly progressive and has been dubbed the ‘citizens’ constitution’. Since 1995, the dominant political disputes have not been between conservatives and progressives, but between two major social democratic parties: the Workers’ Party (PT) was linked to the unions and new social movements; the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), moved towards the centre and a market-friendly position. Both supported multilateralism in international politics, environmental policies, income distribution programmes and advances in individual rights. Both were committed to the democratic game and the basic acceptance of the market economy, always governing in coalition with centre parties. Especially during the successful government of the Workers’ Party leader Lula da Silva – which in its eighth year, in 2011, received more than eighty per cent ‘good’ and ‘excellent’ ratings in opinion polls – it was ironically commented that there was no longer a right wing in Brazil, since even the most reactionary persons presented themselves as ‘centre’. What an illusion!
Jair Bolsonaro was the catalytic exception. In his 27 years as a federal deputy, in which he passed only two bills, he was always a voice in favour of the most radical right-wing theses. As an army captain, he had explicitly defended the military dictatorship, and its torture of political opponents. However, he was considered a harmless politician because of his mediocrity and isolation, and was always re-elected with the support of the military and police, for whom he advocated better salaries. His rise in the presidential polls caused widespread astonishment. People reassured themselves that, unlike Trump, he was running for a very small party with little legislative representation. In the end, this was delusional (and the pattern has been repeated recently in Argentina).
Rapid sociological changes, underestimated by political analysts, have been offered as explanation Bolsonaro’s rise. Agribusinesses which grew enormously in recent decades, in states far from the coast, acquired unexpected political influence and became pillars of Bolsonarism. The same can be said of the huge growth of Pentecostal Christianity in all regions of the country. Ironically, many of the more than thirty million people who were lifted out of poverty by Lula da Silva’s social policies, which enabled them to acquire computers and smart phones, joined Pentecostalism and, subsequently, Bolsonaro’s conservatism. This has generated much reflection on the Brazilian left. But Pentecostalism is barely present in Argentina where Milei triumphed. The big factor in the victories of the far right seems to be what American political scientist Ian Bremmer calls the ‘digital order’. Bolsonarism triumphed in 2018 through a brilliant use of social media and an impressive spread of fake news. Tens of millions of biased or fake messages arrived on the screens (mainly via WhatsApp) of a population experiencing this phenomenon for the first time, and largely unable to distinguish false from accurate information. Through this technological manipulation, a long-serving and mediocre politician was reconstructed as an anti-system outsider and a political messiah. The two big social democratic parties were brought to their knees by this novelty, and failed to react effectively.
The second lesson is that right-wing extremism cannot be defeated in rational debate. This is not a call to give up rationality and science. But it is to dismiss hope of changing in the short term the minds of those captured by the digital order of the extreme right. Bolsonarism maintains its large information bubble through social networks. Between twenty and thirty per cent of the population use these right-wing networks as their basic source of information. When informed debate occurs (as in parliament), transcripts are edited and manipulated for broadcast on rightist propaganda. There is no search for consensus. Because science is considered suspect ,there is no way to check the veracity of arguments. Resistance will have to connect with the uncaptured sectors of public opinion, especially those who are undecided, using a firm defence of the values of science and civilisation to isolate the extremists.
Knowledge produced by universities, a priori assumed to be dominated by ‘communists’ and ‘drug addicts’, is typically described as ‘narrative’. Thus, convictions can be defined according to the interests of the moment. Brazil’s electoral system, for example, is one of the most efficient in the world. The ballot boxes are all electronic. There is an electoral judicial system, run by a rotation of federal judges, which unifies procedures and counting nationwide. Even after decades without any evidence of fraud, these ballot boxes have been attacked for being electronic. The same thing happened in Argentina, where voting is done on paper, and in the United States, with paper ballots by mail. The concrete evidence is irrelevant. What matters is the strategy of disrupting and discrediting the ‘narrative’ of opponents and thus democratic politics.
Contradictions are not a problem for right-wing extremism. English philosopher Roger Scruton taught that classic conservatism developed in reaction to the excesses of liberal individualism in the Enlightenment. Today’s ‘conservatism’, whose visions and slogans circulate internationally, is a confusing amalgam of contradictory traditions. Bolsonarism presents itself as an uncompromising defender of the excesses of individualistic freedom. On taking office, hisgovernment tried to increase speed limits for cars and to abolish the legal requirement that infants ride in safety seats. At the same time, it obsessively denied freedom of sexual choice and clamped down on ‘immoral’ artistic production, to appease its religious supporters,
The supposed quest for individual ‘freedom’ was also manifest in environmental affairs. The rights of entrepreneurs who exploited the Amazon rainforest – such as gold diggers, loggers and ranchers – were defended vigorously against the ‘abuses’ of the environmental authorities. This position served both ideological and pragmatic ends, as local economic elites regularly contributed to electoral campaigns. But endorsing the ‘freedom to destroy’ also marginalises larger planetary concerns – such as the role of the forest in mitigating climate change that harms humanity as a whole. These arguments are answered with denialism, and dismissed as ‘narratives’ that have not been fully proven. The fate of the Amazon is reduced to a merely local territorial dispute.
The scale of environmental damage under Bolsonaro is easily calibrated. Between 2004 and 2014, PT governments reduced annual deforestation in the Amazon, by 84 per cent. Between 2003 and 2009, Brazil established almost three-quarters of the world’s new protected areas. By constitutional mandate, lands traditionally occupied by indigenous populations were reserved for their exclusive use (although title remained with the state). Almost a quarter of the Amazon rainforest was demarcated as indigenous land. Another 25 per cent was afforded protection of various types.
The Bolsonaro government saw these initiatives ‘freezing’ the possibilities of economic development. It resurrected a geopolitical vision from the military dictatorship, in the 1960s, and insisted that the Amazon region needed to be occupied and exploited, to guarantee national claims in the face of international competition for its water, mineral and biodiversity resources. Another tactic questioned the data produced by science. In 1988, the Brazilian government promoted the creation, through the National Institute for Space Research, of an internationally praised system for monitoringdeforestation with satellites. A sub-system for the detection of deforestation in real time, called DETER, helped the accurate implementation of policies to combat forest destruction. In 2019, when the data charted an upsurge in deforestation, the government accused its own institute of falsifying the data and being manipulated by international NGOs. In the four years of the Bolsonaro administration, almost sixty per cent more forest was cleared than in the preceding four years. Clearly, the intensity of deforestation in the Amazon depends on the federal government. When there is a willingness to crack down on illegal deforestation, as happened between 2004 and 2014, the agents of destruction and land speculation in the region back off and direct their energies towards urban economic activities. When the signals go in the opposite direction, these interests seek to make up for lost time and wreak havoc on the forest.
The third lesson is that the resilience of democratic institutions was fundamental in limiting the social and environmental damage caused by the Bolsonaro government. But it could not stop these effects so long as Bolsonaro held office. Only his political defeat allowed their mitigation.
The checks and balances in Brazil’s constitution were essential to limiting some of Bolsonaro’s most damaging moves. But the executive branch has a monopoly on implementing policies. There was no need for Bolsonaro to abolish environmental agencies. New leaders worked to inhibit their activities, by prohibiting intense monitoring and pardoning environmental criminals. Increasingly discouraged and demoralised, the employees of these agencies restricted themselves to basic bureaucratic tasks. Similar patterns were evident in various sectors of the former government. Although the Supreme Court ordered the removal of illegal gold diggers who had invaded several indigenous lands in the Amazon, the orders were carried out in desultory fashion, just sufficient to avoid disobeying a court order.
On the other hand, the Bolsonaro regime’s prioritisation of ideology over concrete reality thwarted the pragmatism necessary for good government. This was very clear when dealing with the pandemic. It’s hard to understand the political rationality of opposing vaccines and defending chloroquine. But this elevation of ideology over understanding is characteristic of right-wing extremism. In the end it contributed to the defeats of both Trump and Bolsonaro. In Brazil, Bolsonaro could not prevent the purchase and production of vaccines, despite delaying their initial import. But he defended the right of people not to get vaccinated and not to wear masks, and publicly aligned himself with these positions.
A fourth lesson that can be drawn from this sorry recent history is that those who confronted Bolsonaro had to be bold and creative. It is now becoming clear that Bolsonaro attempted a coup d’état against the 2022 election result. This only failed due to the strength of institutional resistance, especially the refusal of the military commanders to go against the constitution. Well before that, since 2020, the strong performance of the Federal Supreme Court generated a lot of controversy in political and legal circles. When the president began to attack the Court, accusing it of preventing him from governing, his followers adopted aggressive attitudes, including threatening judges with death. The answer was to use a legal rule that had never been used before, which allowed the Court to open its own investigation when there were strong threats to the judiciary and democracy. As a result of this initiative, federal police and some federal prosecutors began to investigate, arrest and repress extreme right-wing agitators, leaving the government furious, stunned and deeply weakened. Some analysts opposed the Supreme Court’s proactive stance. Others responded that the exceptional situation called for exceptional actions provided for by law. Many said, in an opinion that I share, that the bold action of the Supreme Court was fundamental to saving democracy in Brazil. Had something similar happened in Italy and Germany in the early decades of the twentieth century, some now maintain, democratic institutions could have prevented the advance of Nazi-fascism. Extremists always count on the weakness of the democratic state. But the rule of law has the tools to defend itself appropriately, provided there is the will and conviction to do so. In 2023, as a kind of proof of what has just been said, the Superior Electoral Court declared Bolsonaro ineligible for executive or legislative positions for eight years as punishment for his factually baseless attacks on the functioning of the electoral system.
Boldness also manifested itself in the actions of parties and individuals. In 2022 Lula da Silva and Geraldo Alckmin, who contested the second round of the presidential elections in 2006, agreed to join forces to confront right-wing authoritarianism, with the latter as vice-presidential candidate. It was as daring a move as it would have been for Obama and Bush to join forces against Trump. This great political conciliation, in pursuit of a greater goal, encouraged politicians and parties from the centre and moderate right to join the broad front for democracy. At the same time, Progressive and left-wing forces learned to make better use of social networks, with some of their influencers adopting sensationalist methods to attract audiences in the virtual world, where seriousness and sobriety don’t usually generate popularity.
A year after the start of the new government, the situation is quite positive. Contrary to the apocalyptic preaching of the far right, which suggested that Brazil would become a Venezuela if the anti-Bolsonaro slate triumphed, conventional economic indicators have improved since Bolsonaro’s time. Inflation and unemployment have fallen and the average value of shares on the stock exchange has risen by around twenty per cent. The most important thing, however, is that strong environmental and social programmes have once again been implemented. The deforestation in the Amazon fell by half in 2023. There was also strong action against the invasion of indigenous lands in the region, especially those of the Yanomami, whose humanitarian tragedy of disease and death had been irresponsibly ignored by the Bolsonaro government.
For all that, Bolsonaro still has a high level of support. A large part of the population continues to be captured by the extreme right’s very efficient use of social networks. Although their dominance is no longer as hegemonic as it was in 2018. It is important to remember Guy Debord’s prediction, in 1967, about the emergence of a ‘society of the spectacle’ where ‘all that once was directly lived has become mere representation’.[1] In part, this seems to be true. At the same time, we must always recognise that the real world continues to exist and that the far right has no real answers to contemporary problems. Denying climate change won’t solve the global ecological crisis. Letting the free market work does not solve the global crisis of inequality between and within countries. Denying pandemics, including those that are likely to come again in the future, doesn’t solve the structural elements that facilitate extreme public health crises. Thus, fake news and denialism lack sustainability. In this I find hope.
José Augusto Pádua is Professor at the Institute of History of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
[1] Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (Zone Books, 1994).
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