just to say that the absentee rate is not too far from the historical trend for federal elections, but I agree with the rest of the description 100%.
On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 9:47 AM Felix Stalder <[email protected]> wrote: > > I just spent ten days in the city and region of Sao Paulo, talking > mainly to artists, academics, activist associated with right-to-the-city > and indigenous movements. This is the limited impression I got from > this. Please correct, add, deepen it with more substantial information > and knowledge. > > > The mood is, little surprise, very dark. Everyone expects heavy waves of > repression coming down, leading to the destruction of entire sectors of > the society and the environment. The signs are everywhere, not just > Bolsonaro's rhetoric during the election campaign, but all levels of > society are already shifting. On the legal front, major social movement, > such as the Landless Movement (MST) and indigenous movements have > already been, or are on the cusp of being, declared terrorist > organizations, removing what ever protection under the law existed and > whatever restraints the security apparatus might have had before. > > The ministry of the environment will be integrated into the ministry of > agriculture, the ministry of labor is supposed to be closed down. It's a > Polyanian "disembedding" of labor and land. > > Street level violence is also picking up. Even in a relatively peaceful, > well-to-do university town outside Sao Paulo, which still voted 70% > Bolsonaro, a prominent gay performer was murdered in his home, within > one week of the election. To the people I talked to, this was not a > co-incidence. > > What makes the mood particularly dark is that most people still have > memory of the previous dictatorship in Brazil, which lasted particularly > long, 21 years, from 1964 to 1985. Memories of people suddenly > disappearing, of repression and of stiffing cultural climate, are still > fresh, at least for those who still have a sense of history, which is > the minority. > > The coalition that brought Bolsonaro to power is mix of the old > oligarchy, corporate interests set on privatization (which will likely > happen at an extreme scale), middle classes who saw the Lula and Dilma > presidency as a threat to their status by creating social mobility for > workers and peasants, but not improving services for them. > > Also, there is a feeling of deep institutional rot, mainly in form of > largest-scale corruption, which not only tarred the Workers Party, but > all but wiped out the established right-wing parties. In addition, very > real concerns with security and violent crime. And, I think very > important, were the evangelical churches that promote an extremely > conservative social agenda. They mobilized the masses and Bolsonaro's > first TV interview after the election was on one of their channels > > About 30% of the electorate chose not to vote, even though it's > mandatory, and this is interpreted as being mainly those who were > against Bolsonaro but couldn't bring themselves to supporting a > candidate from the Workers Party. > > A major aspect of the election campaign was that it was almost > exclusively done over social media, Whatsapp in particular. There was a > total absence of what one might call classic public discourse in which > the different sides would have encountered each other directly. > > Bolsonaro is not an impressive figure, if you see him on TV, and he is > prone to gaffs, so he refused any televised debates and the stabbing in > early September played so much into his hand that quite a few are > convinced that it was fake. > > The medium of choice was Whatsapp, mainly because it's pre-installed on > most smart phone and can be accessed without a data plan. So, for many > people, the Internet is Whatsapp and the "full internet" is for rich > people. This reminds me of the "basic internet" that Facebook wanted to > bring to India, that is free access to nothing but Facebook. While they > didn't succeed in India, they succeeded in Brazil, by being much less > upfront but working with the existing providers, basically subsidizing > them for free access (if I understand this correctly). > > The Bolosonaro Campaign reportedly spent US 12 million on an extensive > fake news campaign, claiming, among others, that his opponent, Haddad, > has raped a child (he was a former minister of education). These > messages, which were highly targeted, Cambridge Analytica style, to > specific groups where spread in part by the social networks of the > churches. It is also believed that the campaign obtained profiles and > contact information from a Facebook hack, which was Facebook announced > in mid September. > > But given the nature of Whatsapp, all of this is really hard to account > for, only Facebook itself can trace the flow of messages through its > network. > > But is another reminder what anti-democratic politics look like. Key to > its success is the destruction of even the last vestiges of the public > sphere. So, as corny as the televised presidential debates are, not > having them makes things even worse. And I wouldn't be surprised if > Trump refused them in the next election cycle as well. The ground work > against the fake media has already been laid. > > There are tensions within the coalition that carried Bolsonaro. It's > mainly around free trade. While Bolsonaro wants to tear down Mercosur, > certain sectors of the industry want to keep it. It's not too dissimilar > to Trumps stance on Nafta. And the solution might be the same. Make some > cosmetic changes, give it a new name, and claim success while not really > disturbing manufacturing and trade. > > Brazil, to state the obvious, is an extremely large and diverse country, > whatever comes will be fought over hard and internal contradictions are > abound in a country as unequal in all respects such as this. But there > is no obvious silver lining in this, not the least because the > development is part of a global trend, rather than a national outlier. > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| http://felix.openflows.com > |OPEN PGP: https://pgp.key-server.io/search/0x0BBB5B950C9FF2AC > > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected] > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: -- --------- arquivos em formato proprietário não são bem-vindos. os docx possivelmente nem serão lidos
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