By LUIS FERNANDO VITAGLIANO*
Our fragmented party system allows outsiders to easily enter the system with clear goals of personal gain
When a discredited Donald Trump was rising in the Republican Party primaries in 2016 and no one really believed in his rise, an article became famous for anticipating his victory. It was not a prediction, but an analysis that presented “five reasons why Trump will be the next president”[I] by Michael Moore for Huffington Post and argued in favor of the political strength that Donald Trump was acquiring and that many of us did not see.
The fifth reason pointed out by Michael Moore may help to explain the Pablo Marçal effect of the São Paulo elections and the political moment of the municipal elections: let's call it the “Jesse 'Body' Venture effect”, the performative former governor of Minnesota.
In 1998, candidate Jesse Ventura, from the Reform Party (a kind of independent party without expression in the USA), won the election for governor of the State of Minnesota with 37% of the votes, leaving his competitors from the Republican party with 35% of the votes. and the Democratic Party with 28%.
Jesse Venture, when the result of his victory was announced, said something that sounds familiar to Brazilian ears in times of the rise of the far right: “We are going to shock the world. Let’s stop the political games played by Republicans and Democrats and do what’s right for the people.”[ii] Criticism of the political system, invocation of authenticity, of “stopping the political game”, whatever these words mean in terms of content are among the mannerisms of anti-politics candidates who gain a lot of audience during election campaigns and are terrible administrators.
The unlikely Jesse “The Body” Ventura was an actor, professional wrestler, wrestler (those choreographed free fights) and television presenter. He had fame, popularity and that typical revolt against the political system, with firm and encouraging slogans. Politically he was inexperienced, had no social base or forms of political organization, had not been a candidate for anything and apparently got involved in politics more out of vanity or lack of options than out of interest in participating in collective public life.
Jesse Ventura pioneered the anti-establishment, anti-media, anti-career politician[iii]. The result of the Jesse Ventura administration, as well as his rise, is part of this well-known and ignored pattern: he appears as a great novelty that will solve all the problems of politics, he carries out a confusing and failed management so as not to be able to contradict subsequent expectations and not get re-elected.
Jesse Ventura was not elected based on cult figures fake news or with the help of social media algorithms, it had the internet as an ally and innovations in television advertising and, above all, it knew how to attract attention. His great allies were his previous fame and virulent anti-politics speech – the internet gave him a bigger stage that someone outside traditional institutions would not have previously had.
Using this story and reminding last minute analysts that the internet is a driving factor, but not the cause of the political rise of outsiders of antipolitics is important because it shows real cause and effect relationships, and not the justifications imagined by the misunderstanding of the situation.
Explicitly stated: Pablo Marçal's rise in São Paulo's municipal elections has an element of content (speech) and explosive communication capacity and social networks are elements that add to this in a satellite way. Although form and content may converge and feed off each other, the issue here is the type of narrative that focuses on issues of anti-politics rather than everyday management.
Pablo Marçal's speech is adjusted to frustrations with politics and uses social networks and digital communication as his main asset to support a popular feeling that politics is something dirty and harmful when he proposes to do politics without politics. In relation to this strategy, we are dealing with an attempt to capture a consolidated feeling, very present on social media and, in this sense, difficult to dispel.
The most efficient way to deal with this is not to win the debate online. Because there is no time to reverse this in less than two months. Furthermore, what is posted on social media is not always what is considered at the polls. Therefore, it is important to direct the debate towards politics and draw attention to the concrete consequences of actions. This is because there is a certain childishness in the elections that gain focus on social media: everyone wants the benefits without considering the costs. Therefore, it is important to promise less and show more of the effects of management choices.
It is necessary to recognize that the internet used from digital tools of big tech It is not a space of democracy, but of oppression of diversity by the volume of publication (which we cannot even call a majority). In this environment, Pablo Marçal knows how to turn his bizarre ideas into dominant ones.
It is the first time that the Bolsonaro family has met someone who overcomes their lack of limits in the fight for digital attention. In fact, an element of engagement is precisely being stupid to become engaged and thereby gain volume. The volume makes internet machines understand that content as true.
Aware of this mechanism, Pablo Marçal does not need to have an argument or reason, he needs to have engagement. But anyone who considers this a lack of argument is mistaken. Let's go back to the Jesse Ventura case. The quickest way to engage is to preach anti-politics. This makes it possible to draw attention and generate controversies that fuel the debate in the direction that the outsider wants.
Regarding the current difficulties of the left in dealing with this situation, which allows the appearance of influencers first-time candidates, allow me the reader to make a very personal comment regarding this debate: what impresses me most is that after at least eight years of the impact of the use of digital platforms by the extreme right, progressive forces are still faced with the difficulty and strangeness in dealing with digital campaigns proving to be true dinosaurs in technology.
Anyway, dealing with these profiteers is increasingly common in times of internet growth. The formula that associates institutional fragility with the reach of digital platforms allows for a perverse effect on democracy: profiteers posing as democrats. In Brazil, with social media, the candidacy of Dória's, Bolsonaro's and Marçal's may be increasingly common.
More sophisticated political systems place sieves between the selfish pretensions of outsiders and the ability they develop to bypass institutional collective representation and venture individually into the public space. Our fragmented party system allows outsiders to easily enter the system with clear goals of personal gain. In general, the oldest and most consistent democracies have a long tradition of dealing with adventurers.
In short, what produces a Pablo Marçal is not his debatable mannerisms as a manager, but the strident context of digital sub-celebrity forged on the internet and which breaks the filter of institutions, but the current crisis of representation that is not capable of responding to popular demands concrete. The political response to the advancement of social networks does not have to be eminently in social networks, but in concrete reality, in the good defense of proposals based on diagnoses that have an impact on everyday life.
Pablo Marçal doesn't have to be beaten on the internet. He has to be defeated in the vote. Does this go over the internet? In a sense, yes. But not with the same type of campaign he runs. You don't need to be more engaged than him. You need to have more objectivity than him. Network popularity does not always convert into vote popularity.
Being a coach can fascinate a legion of people. A part of her may even get confused thinking that the same abilities that make a coach virtual rich, would make him a good mayor, but this correlation is not right, nor consensual and, when people are invited to reflect, easily dismantled. Just see that these adventurers generally don't get re-elected, because they run a poor administration.
So, one thing is politics. Which will define who will represent certain ideals in the electoral dispute in São Paulo. It seems clear that the representative of progressive, left-wing and center-left proposals are represented in Guilherme Boulos' candidacy. It is important to know whether Pablo Marçal's media interference will be enough to put him in a position to compete for right-wing space in the municipal dispute. This is a problem that neoliberalism proposals will have to discuss, it is up to the left-wing campaign to take a position in relation to the city.
Pablo Marçal is a problem on the right. From people who don't believe that politics is always wrong and companies are always right, from people who don't consider the need for institutions to regulate public space. Nunes is not so different, although he positions himself with less intensity, but he is also an individual with no history and no commitment who runs for public office to gain individual advantages – he offers individual advantages to win the city's budget. If these values overlap with the public value of democracy, Guilherme Boulos or any progressive candidate will not have the slightest chance.
We need to offer alternative proposals and a clear vision of public space. In this dispute that is in the underworld of the main election dispute, we are far behind on the internet, which has become a field for the expansion of devastating ideologies of republican ideals - especially in Brazil where these attacks meet with less resistance and where the right has stridently discussed issues of neoliberalism ; while the left is dwarfed in this dispute. Which is part of the argument that maintains that we are always late in network disputes.
In the end, one thing ends up adding to another and the risk of this campaign in the city of São Paulo is to infect the country with yet another setback through the Jesse Ventura effect, which makes the debate move towards the criminalization of politics, which elects a unprepared and ill-intentioned person for public management and leaves behind yet another disastrous management, which fuels anti-politics and adds to the cycle of destabilization of the country's main city on a path of social, political and economic decadence.
*Luis Fernando Vitagliano political scientist and university professor.
Notes
[I] Translated, the article in Portuguese is available at: https://ihu.unisinos.br/562182-5-motivos-pelos-quais-donald-trump-sera-o-proximo-presidente-dos-estados-unidos
[ii] See the news on the topic in the newspaper Folha de S. Paul, in 1998: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/mundo/ft05119807.htm
[iii] See the report on the 25th anniversary of his victory: https://youtu.be/OiMcPsD73Fc?si=rcSm34scbUHmh_33 and the report about its platform: https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/36-years-ago-former-pro-wrestler-jesse-ventura-wins-the-1998-minnesota-governor-race/
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