“Unfortunately that is the picture of today’s time,” said somebody in my timeline, about Bolsonaro. “Our people is racist, homophobic, sexist, and have elected someone who represents just that.”
Naturally, the reality about our elections and our society is far too complex to understand Bolsonaro as merely the victory of prejudice. Actually, there is an infinite number of elements to be discussed on that election. It is true that there is a great deal of racism, etc., in our society – we have always known that, and that is why social movements against those problems exist. Racism, etc., did exist before Bolsonaro, and it did exist when Lula and Dilma were elected. Some will say that things got worse now, because racists, etc., are not afraid anymore to verbalize their horrendous thoughts. However, coming from a conservative environment, I should say that verbalizing racism and sexism was never a problem. In fact, it became an issue when anti-racism, anti-sexism, etc., movements managed to her their voice to the general population. And now that racists, homophobes, sexists are being called out for what they are, being able to be sexist without being called a sexist became a political demand.
But, as I said, that is only one of the many things to be discussed on the election of Bolsonaro. I will refrain at the moment to raise so many others that are on my mind. For this post, I should raise what I believe is the most important element for Bolsonaro’s election: the use of social media. Social platforms, such as Facebook, are not shy to sell our personal data so that paid personalized content come to us. That is very weird when it comes to commercial products: that pair of shoes you talked about with a friend suddenly appears for you in your timeline. Most importantly, that became an incredibly effective political tool: now it is possible to divulge different messages about a politician to different people, according to whatever they find more important. That is when two different things appeared to me about Bolsonaro’s supporters. One of them was an image like this:
It kind of makes sense that supporters of the ultra-conservative right wing are in favour of strict immigration policies, right? But then, internet quickly found out that a Brazilian man who is accused of transporting illegal immigrants into the U.S. is a Bolsonaro supporter.
I do not know much about that person, beside the fact that he received money to transport illegal immigrants. There may be many reasons for him to support Bolsonaro: he might hate homosexuals, or be in favour of less gun control, or maybe he just wanted to look more manly. Most probably, however, fighting illegal immigration was not an important issue for him, as it was for my friend who shared Trump’s image above. They would probably not be on the same side if that was the matter at issue.
At the end of the day, due to the personalized content that we receive in those platforms, what each candidate represents has become more and more fuzzy. Each voter has a personal – and fuzzy – reason to choose Bolsonaro. And they could be against each other if each of their real intent became clear. This means that whatever Bolsonaro seems to represent may actually not be as strong as it looks.
The Cycling Researcher 