The presidential campaign hasn’t even officially started yet, but it has already led to the busiest weekend in Brazilian politics since Jair Bolsonaro’s (PL) hit four years ago.
On Saturday (9) the president’s supporters gathered on the Esplanada dos Ministerios in Brasilia to defend the guns of the population. This is not for weapons, this is for freedom, they shouted, a slogan that seeks to give a noble air to the call to Bolsonaro to resist any scenario in which he must leave power.
More or less simultaneously, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) publicly congratulated in the act of Diadema (SP) a member of his party who nearly killed a political opponent in 2018 by beating him.
The message of the ex-president also had its own appearance – loyalty to a comrade who personally sacrificed himself in the name of the cause. But the call to the red tribe was different: do not be afraid of aggression coming from the other side, and respond accordingly if necessary.
However, nothing could compare to what happened in Foz do Iguacu (PR) on the night of the same day, news that exploded on Sunday morning (10).
According to police reports, the Bolsonarist threatened a PT member who was celebrating his birthday, got into a gunfight at his party and was retaliated against. Lula’s supporter died, Bolsonaro’s supporter was seriously injured.
The first signs after the crime in the city of Parana were not very encouraging. On social media, PT members have placed the blame for the incident squarely in Bolsonaro’s lap, not unlike what supporters of the president do when they accuse PSOL, the party to which Adelio Bispo has been linked in the past, for the 2018 attack.
The vast majority of the Bolsonarists, a not entirely discreet group on social media, have done worse by ignoring what happened in the city of Parana.
The silence is an eloquent signal that they consider this fact to be something ordinary, perhaps even desirable, in the context of the electoral war that the country is going through. After all, playing into trouble is the president’s biggest line of attack. Bolsonaro himself spoke only at the beginning of the night and is going to attack from the left.
Bolsonaro’s intimidating verbosity in recent years is undoubtedly the main reason for the stoking of the climate of hyperpolarization that took hold in Brazil in the middle of the last decade. In this environment, mundane events become deadly, especially if both sides are armed.
As the Minister of the Federal Supreme Court observed with restraint, the logic of what happened in Foz do Iguaçu is not much different from a fight between neighbors that ended in tragedy.
The risk, now a little more real than before Saturday’s events, is that these one-off episodes will escalate into an organized action over the next few months with a seal of approval on top. The next step in this ascent is daunting.
This Sunday there were several requests for calm and harmony (10) to prevent similar situations from happening again in the coming months. Perhaps because the air is already too heavy for some coexistence pact.
This dangerous weekend is unlikely to be the worst of this campaign when it ends back in October.
