Mister Polarization – 02/10/2023 – Demétrio Magnoli

It is said that Lula has not yet left the stage. In fact, in the electoral campaign, the candidate even avoided the proverbial platform: he sought an alliance with the democratic center, signaled a national pacification, promised to govern for all. It was only after her that the president climbed onto the podium, reigniting the fire of polarization. The discursive strategy was organized around four axes, dotted with factual lies and clamorous contradictions.

1) Independence from the Central Bank

The line defined by Lula was to portray the BC as an enemy: an agent of Bolsonarism engaged in raising interest rates to sabotage economic growth. Gleisi Hoffmann declared that “the BC did not make a peep about Bolsonaro’s budgetary exploits”. Fake news is unpunished: during the Bolsonarist (dis)government, the BC raised the Selic from 2% to 13.75% and, minute after minute, the Copom warned of the “exploits” committed against fiscal responsibility. The BC is Lula’s STF.

2) Privatization of Eletrobras

Lula described the privatization of the company as a crime against the people (“banditry”, no less), announcing that the AGU will sue the Judiciary to revert it. The “banditry”, however, was approved by Congress, with the vote of Lula’s neo-allies. Does the government intend to turn them into defendants? Or will it prevaricate? The president asked, on January 27, that the government’s parliamentary leaders desist from “judicializing the policy”. Apparently, the guidance only applies to others.

3) The nature of the scam

“Coupist acts were the revolt of the rich who lost the elections”, diagnosed Lula, referring to January 8th. Raw demagoguery: there was no lack of poor people in Brasilia’s coup depredations. Bolsonaro obtained 49% of the votes, winning in the Southeast, South and Midwest. Was it the “rich”? In that case, Brazil would leave Switzerland in the slipper.

4) State narrative about impeachment

As president, on a visit abroad, Lula stated that Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment was a “coup d’état”. Hélio Doyle, the new president of the EBC, wants the state-owned communications company to make the revisionist narrative official. The same STF that annulled Lula’s convictions supervised the impeachment, attesting to its legality. According to lulista fake news, the presidents of the Senate and the Chamber and the judges of the STF are coup plotters – therefore, criminals. According to presidential logic, Lula himself leads a gang of criminal coup-mongers, as he gives shelter, in his government, to eminent impeachment supporters, such as Alckmin, Tebet and Marina Silva, among others.

Polarization has a thousand uses. It keeps the militant base warm, replaces rational debate with the exchange of accusations, invents piranha oxen for economic shaves. But especially it manufactures a convenient “enemy of the people”.

Lula’s polarizing rhetoric forms a complete arc. The “impeachment coup” and the January 8 coup attempt are elements of the permanent war between the “rich” against the “poor”. The BC’s independence and the privatization of state-owned companies are just tools of the “rich” in an offensive aimed at preserving social inequalities and perpetuating poverty. Those who are not with me are soldiers in the elite’s war against the people.

Lula gives ten to Bolsonaro in the sport of polarization. It started much earlier, with FHC’s “accursed inheritance”, in his first term, when he continued his predecessor’s macroeconomic policy. He knows how to deplore it without blushing while practicing it. Above all, he knows the art of adapting strategy to the situation.

The president speaks to a nation traumatized by January 8th. Behind their sentences, there is the specter of Bolsonaro. The final goal is to identify the criticism of his government with the Bolsonarist coup. There is no room for more than two: whoever is not with me is with him. This is what Lula means.

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