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The article reported that Lula’s comeback victory was not based on personal charm, but on successfully bringing the election campaign back to people’s livelihoods and policy comparisons, while avoiding the culture wars and identity conflicts under Bolsonaro’s leadership.
brazil President Lula overturned the defeat against adverse circumstances and achieved victory. Rodrigo Pérez Oliveira, a history professor at the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil, believes that the key to victory had nothing to do with the “resurgence of the left” or “personal charisma”, but rather a more structural explanation: Lula won because he pulled the election from the quagmire of the “culture war” back to the battlefield of “the livelihood needs of specific people”, a neo-fascist tone.bolsonaro Ism (Bolsonarismo) The most speechless place.
In particular, important policy issues such as public security, the economy, and international relations were marginalized in the first round by identity and value issues such as gender identity, ethnic relations, religious belief, and moral reckoning with the political system.
As a result, congressional elections are becoming more and more like mirror politics: people vote for candidates who are like them and have similar identities, and are becoming intolerant of people with different positions and identities. The identity politics of the right and the left reflect each other, provoke and reinforce each other.
In Taiwan’s political context, this is a stratospheric cognitive war, what Brazil calls the “culture war”. What Bolsonaro has created is not a camp run by an “interest exchange” but a “redemption journey”: supporters believe they are fighting against “the structurally corrupt and corrupt 1988 Republic.”
1988 was the year Brazil ended its military dictatorship and implemented a new constitution. This constitution established systems such as democratic elections, social rights, federalism, and judicial independence and is considered the cornerstone of Brazil’s “re-democratization”. In the narrative of Bolsonaro’s supporters, the so-called “1988 Republic” was a system that was democratic in name but in reality controlled by certain political elites, bureaucrats, judicial and media groups, especially the Supreme Federal Court (STF).
During Bolsonaro’s administration from 2019 to 2022, the STF took repeated actions to block his key policies, including the pandemic response, the electoral system, the role of the military, etc., essentially “demoralizing the revolution of Bolsonaroism.” In Bolsonaro’s political imagination, the PT and the Supreme Court are entangled in upholding a system that must be overthrown.
This observation explains a paradoxical phenomenon: why did Flavio once deny any dealings with Vorcaro, a banker involved in the fraud, but this was later confirmed by a recording that not only did they call each other brother, but they directly asked each other for millions of rupees to raise money for their father’s biopic, but their support remained unchanged? The author’s answer is cold: “This ideological structure is enough to keep at least 35% of voters loyal, no matter what.”
This is the most extreme form of the “loyalty test”: when politics becomes a moral jihad of “save the country vs. destroying the country”, facts, political achievements and policy details lose all meaning – because they are no longer used for judgment, but only to confirm whether you are on the side of justice or the side of evil.
Lula shifted the focus of the campaign from the cultural war to the level of practical interests. Lula’s “strengthening communication strategies, promoting popular bills, and mobilizing supporters on social media to win over moderate voters” is precisely “bringing the battlefield back to real interests.”
More importantly, it provides a framework for understanding “loyalty-tested” elections: When an election campaign is dragged into a culture war, voters are forced to take sides; When election campaigns return to people’s livelihoods, voters regain the ability to “compare political performance”. Lula’s victory is not so much a victory for the left as it is a victory for “people’s livelihood issues” over “identity politics.”
It also echoes a more general lesson: The most effective battlefield for cognitive warfare is never facts and data, but values and beliefs. Whoever calls the poll “How are you?” But can bring it back. There will be initiative. If you fall into the cognitive framework of pitting opponents, taking sides, and choosing sides, all elections, large and small, will degenerate into loyalty tests, and the choice will inevitably be ill-fated.
Summary FAQ
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The author believes that the key is not the resurgence of the left or Lula’s personal charisma, but rather that he shifted the election campaign from the culture war back to the livelihood issues of specific people such as public security, the economy, and international relations, allowing voters to re-compare political achievements.
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Because this is not an alliance of pure exchange of interests, but a set of redemption narratives turning politics into moral jihad to save the country from a corrupt system, which is enough to keep at least 35% of the voters extremely loyal.
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The article warns that if the election campaign is set as a framework for opponents to take sides and choose sides, it will become a test of loyalty, and facts, data and political achievements will lose their impact; Only by returning to people’s livelihoods can voters have room for comparison.
