Bolsonaro provokes a state of permanent crisis to keep the myth alive
From time to time, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro issues a series a series of statements on Twitter urging the next generations to carry forward the “seed” that many had planted to prevent “the evil that came so close to destroying our country.” Putting himself as a kind of savior, willing to “break the cycle of hypnotized mass,” the president went on to fabulate a real holy war against literally demonic forces. “Flaws, we all have, but the malice formed to destroy is innate and organized by one side only.” The starting point was the recurring allegation from Olavo de Carvalho that the academic environment has been “massacred by left-wing ideology.”
As they always do, these statements have provoked thousands of offensive exchanges between followers and opponents on social networks. But the point I would like to address is not about the content of the message, but on its form: by manipulating a language loaded with that Manichean symbology, Bolsonaro turns his back to the political debate to throw the social imagination into the abyss of mythology.
Times of widespread crisis as we see today, offer a fertile ground for the flourishing of political mythologies. There is much talk about the postmodern individual, who would be able to displace his cultural identities in the globalized world, etc. But in practice, collectivities do not endure periods of perplexity. When the real or imagined challenges of a nation seem confused to the point of becoming inconceivable, the social imagination is in charge of interweaving narratives already present in the culture to cover up this uncertainty with intelligible stories.
A simple, coherent narrative, if only imagined, always seems more convincing than those abstract analyzes fraught with ambiguities, if nots, and complex variables. The quality and even truthfulness of the facts is irrelevant if the fabulation shows an uncomplicated system of causes and effects and creates a sense that reality makes sense. People prefer verisimilitude to truth. As Yuval Harari very well recalls, humanity is a product of animals that have learned to tell stories. Our own thinking occurs through narratives. Even to explain the universe we assume that we must “tell a story”.
Myths project our unconscious true dynamics. Our deepest childhood fears, as well as our most unconfessed desires, are the raw material of these stories. Our unconscious speaks through myths. These are the reason why, political myths are present, to variable degrees, in all historical moments. These mythologies are not forged only in archaic societies. From popular reigns to despotisms, from dictatorial regimes to democratic societies, all rulers seek to use these resources to impact the social imagination.
In mid-nineteenth-century Brazil, for example, the emperor’s mythification was accomplished, among so many resources, through lavish ceremonies, majestic clothing, the luxury of the palaces, and the magnificent paintings that sought to represent him with a glorious aura. At the end of the century, at the dawn of the republican period, ideologists concerned with legitimizing the regime strove to investigate in Brazilian culture those figures that could be mythified in the name of the new times. The narrative that turned Tiradentes into a martyr was recovered and celebrated in this context. The press was crucial in spreading these symbols.
Later on, in the Estado Novo, Getúlio Vargas manipulated the imagery of his time with great awareness. He has extensively used radio and film in an efforts to attribute to himself such powerful mythology that still remains in the social imagination today. The military dictatorship of 1964 was also prodigal in mythologies. Through the press and television control, in addition to innumerable civic rituals, rulers sought to nourish the myth of national unity by concealing social contradictions through devotion to the symbols of the homeland. In turn, the opposition movements, including the armed struggle, fabled a heroic imaginary to legitimize their causes.
In spite of passion of Tancredo Neves passion, in redemocratization, it was Collor who later appeared as a modern hero capable of leading Brazil to the promised land of globalization. Later on, Lula himself, in his own way, was also represented as a hero who overcame the challenges of life until he became the new father of the nation. In addition to the classic political mobilizations, the Internet, through blogs and independent sites, was an important field of meaningful disputes in that period. And finally, in the age of social networking and WhatsApp, an unlikely hero has been built to counter a set of anachronistic conspiracy theories that for years had been spread out without any control on these platforms. We are in full process of fable a whole cosmology.
The hero as saviour
The mythology of the savior hero is one of the most popular narratives because it is easily identifiable. The struggle of good against evil is the central theme of the great religions of mankind. This scheme of thought is deeply rooted in our imagination. If a society in crisis is led to personify its complex problems into a scapegoat, the one who presents himself as an antagonist is automatically elevated to the status of savior. And of course, the more threatening the enemy, the more urgent the hero becomes. In other words, the value of the warrior depends directly on the perversity attributed to the villain. Therefore, tainting political antagonists with depictions of extreme evil is a disguised mean of attributing to oneself inversely proportional virtues.
In Bolsonaro’s speech, Haddad participated in a criminal organization that distributed gay kits in schools and acted to brainwash children into communism. Sérgio Moro himself, voluntarily or not, is often represented as a kind of national hero fighting against Lula and PT. There are countless memes of admirers and supporters who represent them as superheroes who save the country from “communism.” It is no less symptomatic that Bolsonaro also named an astronaut as the Ministry of Science and Technology — another representative of the pantheon of national heroes to be worshiped alongside the generals.
Many reasons explain why Bolsonaro was called a “myth” by his followers. The first is the most common: in the Internet slang, “myth” is a term equivalent to the concept of “slay”. When someone performs an action or utters a speech considered unusual, extraordinary or exemplary, followers say that the idol “slayed”. Bolsonaro became popular precisely because of his prejudiced threats against gays, social movements, feminists and human rights. For Bolsonaro’s followers, their hero becomes a myth when they “humiliate” feminists, LGBT activists and left-wing activists in general.
But in a deeper layer, the obsessive metaphor does not fail to reveal a veneration that goes beyond mere ideological affinity. In this sense, followers see him as a legitimate representative of certain values and morals. So, more than a political representative, Bolsonaro becomes a model of conduct. If the heroes of fables also assumed the pedagogical role of inspiring virtuous actions, the recognition that Bolsonaro achieved the status of myth seems to legitimize this characteristic.
The stabbing that struck him during the campaign brought an unexpected element to his mythology: martyrdom. From this moment on, the candidate was represented as the one who literally gave his blood as a sacrifice for the country. The survey charts showed that this event was crucial to his election. Although it is necessary to analyze to what extent this imaginary influenced the elections, the myriad of memes that represent him as a hero points to the willingness of the partisans to attribute characteristics of this nature to their idol.
The faces of the myth
Myths are polysemous by definition. This means that the same myth can be interpreted inversely according to the interests of the interpreter. The messages of the myths are not closed: on the contrary, they are adaptable, flexible and change over time. Prometheus, for example, can be seen as a warning about the dangers of human arrogance to the divine forces ruling nature; or, on the contrary, as an inspiration of rebellion for those who rely on human overcoming through the intelligence of scientific progress. Myths are rich precisely because of the possibility of multiple translations. Meanwhile, it is enough to see how Jesus Christ himself is also summoned to defend antagonistic political guidelines. So much goodness and so much violence were perpetrated on his behalf! That is because each society extracts from the myth the messages that suit itself, reversing the poles of good and evil according to their economic or ideological interests.
Obviously, it must be clear that the political mythology perspective does not explain everything. In order to understand the situation that led Bolsonaro to the presidency is necessary to evaluate a set of historical, social, cultural and political factors. Historians need time to evaluate all this dynamics. In any case, History is in process and we can never assume that it is possible to predict the future consequences of the political dynamics of the present. But the political mythology perspective, as I show in this series of videos on my YouTube channel, helps us to understand the speeches that have been fashioned to support the passions and hatreds of bolsonarism.
As we have seen, times of crisis are fertile for mythologies. Perhaps this is why Bolsonaro has to cause constant crises to keep the spark of the myth alive. But history shows that medium- and long-term risks of this type of ignition do not make up for the short-term benefits. It is a misconception to create historical expectations from the fantasy of salvation that religions and mythologies promise. As soon as the faithful followers realize that the leader’s fabulations cannot be fulfilled in real life, the situation tends to reverse itself, so that the mask of the hero, melted and deformed, will be cursed by the very worshipers themselves. Let’s wait and see.
(Translator: Rosana Vivian Schulze)
André Azevedo da Fonseca
Professor and researcher at Centro de Educação, Comunicação e Artes (CECA) at Universidade Estadual de Londrina (UEL).
