June 2013: anti-politics marks a cycle that runs until 1/8 – 6/3/2023 – Power

About 10 meters long each, two strips of bright yellow fabric stood out among the thousands of posters that occupied Avenida Paulista on June 20, 2013.

The first, trivial, demanded tax reform, one of the countless demands of those journeys. The second pleaded nothing; it had only one statement in black letters: “My party is my country”.

While the five words expressed an anti-political sentiment common to many protesters, they seemed, at the time, doomed to historical insignificance.

The rejection of traditional institutional channels, however, gained strength in the years that followed. A decade later, it reached its probable peak with the coup attack on Praça dos Três Poderes, in Brasília, on January 8th.

“These two events may mark the beginning and end of a cycle”, says political scientist Cláudio Gonçalves Couto, a professor at the Department of Public Management at FGV Eaesp (São Paulo Business Administration School of the Getulio Vargas Foundation).

“June 2013 was the moment when the floodgates of anti-politics in the strongest sense opened in Brazil”, says Couto, who maintains the YouTube channel Outside of Politics There is No Salvation”.

According to him, the negation of politics as a whole and of parties in particular implies the refusal of pluralism, since these are the instruments of dialogue in representative democracy.

The 2013 movement was followed by demonstrations for the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff (PT) and the election of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in 2018, both animated by the investigations of Operation Lava Jato.

“Lava Jato has a very strong anti-political discourse”, says Couto. “This environment began to be produced in June 2013 and opened space for the radical right. The swan song was in January 2023. I think the cycle of anti-politics ended there. At least that’s what I hope”, he says.

Not only does anti-politics bring the episodes closer together. For sociologist Angela Alonso, columnist for Sheet, it is possible to identify other similarities, such as the absence of centralized coordination, the use of violence and the purpose of reaching the seat of Powers. But there are important differences.

“In June, there was no talk of taking power per se, nobody had a coup speech”, says Alonso, who is a professor at USP, a researcher at Cebrap (Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning) and author of the recently released “Treze – A Street Politics from Lula to Dilma” (Companhia das Letras).

Furthermore, the repressive forces acted differently. “In 2013, the doors were locked and very well policed. In 2023, access was facilitated”, says the sociologist.

Last year, she and journalist Paulo Markun launched the series “June 2013 – O Começo do Avesso” and the documentary “Ecos de Junho”, in which they seek to show connections between the journeys of ten years ago and the rise of the more radicalized right in Brazil.

Alonso argues that among the diverse groups that took to the streets in June 2013 was what she calls a “great patriot camp,” which used national symbols and included those fighting for lower taxes and less redistributive policies, against abortion and against the corruption.

“The one that brought the most people in early June is the morality agenda. Afterwards it becomes difficult to divide, because there are many organizers and many agendas”, says the sociologist.

For her, these right-wing leaders were mobilized in 2015 and 2016 around the impeachment; then, giving electoral support to Bolsonaro, of whom a portion became die-hard fans.

“It is from a small fringe of the patriot camp that the invaders of January 8 came. They are people who share the same values, who consider themselves threatened by the left and feel protected by themselves, with their weapons”, he says.

Rosemary Segurado, who is a professor of social sciences at PUC-SP (Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo), also points to June 2013 as a window of opportunity for the emergence of extreme right-wing leaders.

“In the midst of that process, groups emerged that embodied an ultra-conservative agenda — it is not even conservative, it is reactionary, because it even defends pre-civilizing aspects”, says Segurado, co-author of the book “Political Leadership in Brazil: Institutional Characteristics and Questions” ( Loyola, 2022).

The consolidation of this group on the political scene, she says, led to the election not only of Bolsonaro in 2018 but also of deputies and senators with no commitment to democracy.

“The traditional right was swallowed up by this type of leadership that, throughout 2022, created a favorable environment for January 8 to happen. They wanted a coup, but they didn’t succeed”, says Segurado.

Contrary to these approaches, social scientist Jonas Marcondes Sarubi de Medeiros says he sees glaring discontinuities between June 2013 and January 8, 2023.

He claims, for example, that surveys have shown very different sociodemographic and political-ideological profiles among people who took to the streets ten years ago, those who demonstrated for impeachment and those who supported Bolsonaro.

Although there is no comparable survey in relation to this year’s coup action, Medeiros says that data from court cases reinforce the idea of ​​differences.

Researcher at Cebrap and co-author of the book “The Bolsonaro Paradox” (2021, Springer), Medeiros studied the symbolic universe of patriots from October 30, 2022 to January 8. “I also don’t see any continuity with June 2013. They are different imaginaries”, he says.

“In June, there was a demand to democratize democracy, to deepen the values ​​of the 1988 Constitution. In the case of the patriots, people mobilize to subvert, abolish the Constitution, in a feeling of nostalgia for the dictatorship”, he says.

Medeiros also argues that not even in the anti-political sentiment are the moments comparable. “The issue is the policy parameter. If it is institutional policy, all anti-politics are the same”, he says.

“In June 2013, there was a political struggle through non-institutional channels, an alternative politicization. In 2023, it was a coup campaign, with the previous delegitimization of Electoral Justice.”

For Medeiros, although it is possible to identify a cycle of protests in the last decade, it is important to fight linear causalities in interpretations, as if it were written in stone that, given June 2013, Bolsonaro would be elected. “It was a political process full of contingencies,” he says.

Contingencies —things that may or may not happen— also draw the attention of Rodrigo Nunes, professor of philosophy at the University of Essex (England) and author of the book “Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal” (Ubu), to be released on the 13th.

“Some say that June 2013 is Bolsonarism in germ, as if everything that came later was contained in those journeys. Others say that there is no connection between the two moments. Both positions seem absurd to me”, he says.

For Nunes, there was a dispute over the legacy of those demonstrations. “And the right wing won it hands down,” he says. “But that this happened is contingent. It is perfectly conceivable that June 2013 would have led to something else if there had been a better PT response, for example.”

For him, there is yet another similarity: “Both moments are inserted in a broader historical context in which we have mass movements without traditional mass organizations, due to the possibilities offered by the internet”.

Nunes considers that frustration with institutional policy was the driving force behind the two events separated by ten years and that the occupation of spaces of power represented, in both cases, an aesthetic gesture of desacralization.

“But with a very important difference in degree. On January 8, the desacralization goes much further, with depredation and the extreme act of defecating on top of these spaces.”