Polarization is everywhere. WhatsApp groups have become a challenge. You join a group to discuss Santo Agostinho’s work, and after a week, you start receiving hourly stickers, videos and “alerts” about Lula or Bolsonaro. Nothing against it, this is the right of the people. In a sense, even trivial. Lula’s thighs, the smoke from the tanks in Brasilia, the final blow from I don’t know by whom – it all seems to amuse our political daily life, but maybe it shouldn’t be.
This has a more complicated side. Aside from breaking friendships and partying (New here to show), obsessive polarization poses a problem for the country’s governance. This creates an atmosphere of uncertainty that discourages investment, discourages minimal consensus on reform, and, most importantly, affects the functioning of institutions by creating incentives for their owners to enter a game they should never enter. Not even for that, we prepared to attend two more days of rallies, one “in defense of freedoms” and the other “against fascism,” a high-level exercise in favor of a political toxin rarely found in these places.
Polarization serves as a kind of market. Faced with the development of digital media, part of the media is abandoning the journalistic distance and starting to serve the niches of public opinion that guarantee a loyal audience. Warrior journalist, blogger, youtuber are gaining a place on multiple digital platforms. The rule is simple, as I’ve read these days: “if you don’t,” if you can’t awaken the instincts of a political tribe, “you won’t have an audience.” It’s the same with politicians looking for easy consequences. And to a lesser extent for magistrates, police or prosecutors, communicated to opinion leaders. The economy of polarization was created. For a large number of people, helping to set the circus on fire has become a good thing.
We already know a thing or two about hyperpolarization. First, it always overflows, forcing the logic of politics to flood other areas of life. Classrooms, art exhibitions, labor market. And the friendship, of course, begins to shake, because on the 7th João goes to Paulista, and on the 12th to Katharina. Hence the exaggeration. Scarecrow-style debate. The idea that the other side is “unacceptable,” and we are “democracy itself,” as I have heard, is curiously of two kinds: one governmental, the other anti-governmental, and both of them were quite cocky a few days ago.
We also know that acute polarization is far from a basic phenomenon in society. Its ecosystem is that of a noisy minority that sets the tone for public debate, especially on the Internet. Digital democracy has become a gigantic negative selection mechanism. Rather than selecting thoughtful leadership people who want to reach consensus and solve problems (which is surprising: this is what politics was invented for), he tends to reward the jester or “great moralist.” The senator who seals the CPI, the deputy who blows up the STF (assuming he is not arrested), and so on.
The result is a mediocre public debate. The most important issues of public life do not fit into the logic of “all or nothing”, and only a small political world is interested in going against something or in favor of something just because it helps or hinders the government. There are usually good reasons for and against any relevant policy. You need to make changes and listen to different people. It makes no sense to treat these things as religion. Strikingly, the topic of print voting had its pros and cons, as did the idea of basic citizenship income. Unhealthy polarization crowds out the subtleties and attention to the adverse consequences of any decision. And this makes most of the press uncritical, as it confuses critical meaning with the adoption of a political agenda that in general boils down to endless variations of the same insults.
Obsessive polarization strains institutions, but it is essentially a problem of the political culture of our democracies. We live in peace, but it seems that it is the aesthetics of war that sets the tone for our political world. Hence the renewed interest in the work of Karl Schmitt. Its gloomy structures, built during the difficult years of the end of the Weimar Republic, seem to hang over current politics. The idea that political life “is essential life” is a disbelief in the softness and abstraction of liberal democracy. Hence the idea that it is enmity, not dialogue, that determines the meaning of politics. Not a single sweet word from Joe Biden about turning enemies into opponents. A natural element of politics is the friend-foe relationship. We define ourselves as a political community, knowing exactly who our “other” is, and the limit of all this is war, not the law.
Continues after advertisements
“There is a culture that belittles the values of the liberal tradition.”
From this point of view, liberal democracy with its respect for pluralism, individual rights and all the trappings of a system of checks and balances becomes something of a fantasy. Obviously, we are not at this point, among other reasons why we are not in Germany in the 30s, but clouds are hanging on the horizon. We are faced with a culture that belittles important values of the liberal tradition.
Half a century after Schmitt’s accession to Nazism, Norberto Bobbio held a conference on Mitezza in Milan. Serenity or “moderation” as a desirable virtue in a democracy. Bobbio was a European sage. At least I saw him like that when I was young. He went through everything, through fascism, through reconstruction, and no one did more than he did for the culture of democracy at the end of the century. His argument, later embodied in the book, anticipated a time when there was no more shooting in the streets, but the ways of war, its methods and its intolerance seemed to survive. And it was not good.
Hence his somewhat utopian sermon on Mitezza. The dignity of ordinary people who do not want power for power. The horizontal virtue of people who look at each other at eye level, as equal in legality and rights. A “weak” virtue, says Bobbio, is by definition “meaningless,” again unlike Schmitt, reminding us that politics is not everything, that it has limits, and that power belongs not to the people, but to the right. And finally, the aesthetic virtue: gentleness, not arrogance. Mitezza does not rule out criticism and controversy, but loves to say things in the subjunctive mood, as I once heard from Richard Sennett, offering a space for rapprochement with another. Not as an enemy that defines me, but as an opportunity for a meeting that is always renewed.
We are far from that, and nothing suggests that Bobbio’s mild liberalism in the bleak environment of our polarized democracies will defeat the ruthless shadow of Karl Schmitt. In any case, I am not fighting a short-term battle. Some fatigue from screaming is already beginning to make itself felt. I hear voices speaking in moderation and common sense. The violation of rights practiced by government agencies begins to cause some discomfort. Everyone can choose how to act and make the difference. In any case, the lessons of history are at our disposal, and I have no doubt that we are learning gradually.
Fernando Schuler is a political scientist and Insper professor.
The reviewers’ texts do not necessarily reflect the views of VEJA.
Published in VEZHA on September 8, 2021, issue No. 2754.
Continues after advertisements
