By LUCAS PAOLILLO*
With the attack, Trump becomes stronger: more present in the media, forever linked to the history of a state and safer to change skin between the legitimate and the illegitimate
Since July 13th, nothing else has been said: no retina has been left untouched by the images of Donald Trump's rally in the city of Butler, Pennsylvania. The event was seen literally by the whole world: the bang, the hand on the ear, the squatting, the lifting, the red fluid and the triumphalist pose with the security suits. As a pedagogy, a true filmic flurry.
If the exhaustive exposure of images were not enough, and this is just the beginning, the global media complex brought into play, as one could imagine, the trade of opinions and hasty versions. With them, from top to bottom, the subject gained circulation by word of mouth. On major broadcasters, opinionated television news stars pray the chant of accommodating official positions. On the networks, dirty videos reverberate a thousand and one monetized pranks. E la nave va.
For us, mere mortals lost in the labyrinths of image and opinion of excited society, the political panorama of the world changed from one day to the next. An unavoidable issue was imposed and, with it, a noisy and convinced plebiscite of accelerated opinions. In the end, this piece, typical of the integrated form of the show, as Guy Debord would say, yielded some of its dividends.
In another geological era, Mário de Andrade even spoke, in a letter to Alceu de Amoroso Lima, about the somewhat quixotic impossibility of wanting to contain a flood with one's hands. Adalgisa Nery, in a column for the newspaper Last minute, reported an “American incontinence to judge without considering”. The involuntary echo of both phrases appears in the writing as an illustrative crutch: signs of an explosive combination.
In this way, everything happens as if we were, together with the already fifty-year-old dollar-backed hegemony, under the fate of a flood of incontinence.
Aware of the risk of composing the amplification of this choir, the notes that follow are not intended to be more than, to some extent, prophylactic.
At the suggestion level, it is worth remembering that the analysis of political events is less fruitful when designing responses than when analyzing effects and results. Choosing to keep this in view in cases like this can help to remove empty controversies from the scene and suggests inclinations towards more reliable identification attempts. Even if well-calibrated speculations don't go wrong.
As Betinho suggests in his ABC schemes on conjuncture analysis, understanding events first requires a sketch of the physiognomy of the elements on the scene. Only later does the representation of the conjectures become clearer. In the small volume, the method begins with the survey, continues with identifications and only then culminates in the exercise of representation. Hence the results: “Representation also reveals the basic attitudes we have about the different social forces that act in the political struggle and how much we are or are influenced by dominant information and ideology”.
As the event surrounding Donald Trump is recent, and the resources available to understand it are quite limited, assuming, for now, that there is little to be said can be a good start.
More than, say, speculating whether Capitu betrayed Bentinho or not, that is, whether the attack was real or not, let us instead look at the evidence of the match: the media dramatization of the possibility of extermination of political leaders creates repercussion effects strong. Arbitrarily or accidentally, as he was not killed, this ball fell into Donald Trump's lap. Given the volubility of the extreme right in the face of such conjunctions, there are relevant elements to observe and reflect on.
For now, let's look at some highlights about the event in Butler.
Change in exposure and engagement pattern
As we sought to establish, the attack generated a media effect. Given the nature of the scene, it is above all an effect of broad scope and interest. In general perspective, this is not the first time that we have had an attack against a candidate for the presidency of the Republic in the organic core of the system. The same can be said about the impact of the repercussion on public opinion. There are those who attribute Ronald Reagan's strong victory in 1984 to the attack he suffered in 1981.
However, there is something very specific to our time that allows us to place events like this under suspicion, as if they were scenes created to order. Maybe it is. Maybe not. In Brazil, after the stabbing episode in 2018, Jair Bolsonaro changed the level of his candidacy's relationship with advertising: the attack gave him not inconsiderable hours of exposure on the main news programs. Not as someone who, say, inaugurates a bridge while yawning on a gray day, but who is presented as an unfairly wounded controversial bearer of hope.
On the networks, the buzz made the case a trends (trend). Situations like this change the design of electoral processes. Still thinking about the Brazilian case of 2018, while candidates like Geraldo Alckmin invested all their money in the demoralized election time, Jair Bolsonaro profited from hours and hours of intense engagement due to the astonishment resulting from the incident.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, is not a newcomer, but a former president: he is known and time will provide the ruler and compass on how this interfered in the way he attracted or removed his supporters from the couch. The new situation could have a favorable impact, for example on the mobilization for popular votes (which, it is worth remembering, are not mandatory in the USA). After day thirteen, Donald Trump will be talked about more – and from a new position.
Creating historical trauma in a swing state
There are states in the United States that historically tend to offer predictable majorities, something that Brazil also does in its own way. There are more Republican states, like Texas. There are more Democratic states, like California. Still others, such as Pennsylvania, where the attack in question took place, are known as swing states ou purple states, that is, they are locations where a real dispute for votes is expected in each presidential election.
In the 2016 election, for example, the state voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. In 2020, on the other hand, it gave Joe Biden a majority. The creation of a historical trauma like the one that recently occurred in Pennsylvania opened the door to generate short, medium and long-term effects in the state. There is, therefore, a tendency for focus groups to fluctuate. Audience effects. So today there is a question mark in the open profile of the state in dispute.
Therefore, we can assume from the outset that, although we have not defined its practical effects in this sense, the event of the 13th left an indelible mark on the state's political identity. Fifty years from now, if there are still world or American elections left, someone will be able to claim or criticize Trumpist positions with references to what happened there. Until further notice, Pennsylvania will be marked as a state in which Trump suffered an attack.
Movement from illegitimate to legitimate
The agendas surrounding official policy have spilled over into monitoring. Acceleratedly, one day the attention is on one thing, another day, another. Therefore, it is difficult to place the events. Which explains the short memory surrounding Jair Bolsonaro's excesses throughout his four years in office, added to the eighth of January.
From the branch to the headquarters, Donald Trump is no different: the change of attention after the attack also interferes with the way his actions are remembered or evaluated. For a few years now, at the same time that he has become normalized in the Republican camp, Donald Trump has been the target of, let's say, delegitimizing accusations.
This is the case of the condemnation for the prank with actress Stormy Daniels, the disapproval for the stance of denying electronic voting machines, or for the relationships he maintained with the supporters who entered the Capitol. In one way or another, part of public opinion and institutions invested (albeit little) doses of discredit in his person. After the attack, however, the exact opposite happened: to some extent, the institutions felt obliged to provide him with notes of support and opposition public opinion elevated him to a tolerable position.
In the incessant dynamic of producing public facts, the attack therefore gave it legitimacy. What will this oscillation of legitimacy entail, as he decides to change his position again and head towards the opposite pole? Once again, Donald Trump is calling the shots.
For example, Donald Trump's vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, was quick to blame Joe Biden's government for the failure in the security system that allowed the shooter to act.
With the attack, Donald Trump became stronger: more present in the media, forever linked to the history of a state and safer to carry out chameleon-like skin changes between the legitimate and the illegitimate. But what this will lead to, the data is still rolling.
*Lucas Paolillo it's dPhD candidate in Social Sciences at Unesp-Araraquara.
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