The Movimento Brasil Livre and the New Brazilian Right in the Election of Jair Bolsonaro

• Author: Marcelo Burgos Pimentel dos Santos,Claudio Luis de Camargo Penteado,Rafael de Paula Aguiar Araújo
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221146767
• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Date: 01 January 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221146767

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 248, Vol. 50 No. 1, January 2023, 237–253

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X221146767

© 2023 Latin American Perspectives

237

The Movimento Brasil Livre and the New Brazilian Right

in the Election of Jair Bolsonaro

by

Marcelo Burgos Pimentel dos Santos, Claudio Luis de Camargo Penteado,

and Rafael de Paula Aguiar Araújo

Translated by

Nick Ortiz

The Movimento Brasil Livre (Free Brazil Movement) has been one of the main propo-

nents of the new Brazilian right since its emergence after the June Days of 2013. Through

the strategic use of social networks, it has promoted a conservative agenda similar to those

seen in other parts of the world. An examination of its mobilization strategies focused on

its communicative power, its capacity to produce engagement, and its network mobiliza-

tion shows how the use of information and communication technologies influenced the

emergence of new political actors on the Brazilian right.

O Movimento Brasil Livre tem sido um dos expoentes principais da nova direita

brasileira que é um movimento que surgiu após as Jornadas de Junho de 2013. Através do

uso estratégico das redes sociais, ajudou a expandir uma pauta conservadora em con-

sonância ao que ocurre em diferentes partes do mundo. A presente pesquisa avalia as

estratégias de mobilização do movimento com enfâse no seu poder comunicativo, capacid-

ade de produção de engajamento e poder de mobilização de rede para indicar como os usos

das tecnologias de informação e comunicação influenciam a emergência de novos atores

políticos no campo da direita brasileira.

Keywords: Information and communication technologies, Movimento Brasil Livre,

New Brazilian right, Jair Bolsonaro, Social networks

Information and communication technologies produce social and political

change in contemporary societies. They also establish new dynamics in inter-

personal relationships and between citizens and political institutions. As a

result, organized civil society has created new practices that, in turn, have gen-

erated new political and social processes focused on civic participation (Castells,

2008; 2013; Subirats, 2011). The digital space provided by the Internet has

become important for organizing events and for the mobilization and dissemi-

nation of information produced by civil society movements. There are many

Marcelo Burgos Pimentel dos Santos is a professor of social sciences at the Universidade Federal

de Paraíba and a former visiting fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London. Claudio Luis de

Camargo Penteado is a professor at the Universidade Federal do ABC and in its graduate program

in human and social sciences. Rafael de Paula Aguiar Araújo is a professor of social sciences at the

Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. Nick Ortiz is a writer, researcher, linguist, and

translator with experience in translation relating to Latin American history and politics.

1146767LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X221146767Latin American PerspectivesSantos et al./THE MOVIMENTO BRASIL LIVRE AND THE NEW RIGHT

research-article2023

238 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

examples of political movements that are organized, planned, and dissemi-

nated through various Internet channels, among them the Arab Spring, the

Indignados in Spain, the various Occupies around the world (Castells, 2013),

the 2013 June Days in Brazil, and the movements behind the impeachment of

Dilma Rousseff.

This article analyzes the political performance of the Movimento Brasil Livre

(Free Brazil Movement—MBL) through its activities in cyberspace. More spe-

cifically, it evaluates the strategies of network political mobilization used by a

proponent of the new Brazilian right that, through the use of information and

communication technologies, organized several mobilizations in a campaign

that led to the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. We examine three dimensions of

the movement: its communicative power (Castells, 2009), its capacity to produce

engagement (Coleman and Gøtze, 2001), and its network mobilization power

(Ugarte, 2008). We adopt the definitions of “right” and “left” proposed by

Heywood (2015), who considers the left as more likely to accept interventionism

and collective projects and the right as favoring the individual and the market.

From this perspective, the left is associated with fraternity, equality, protection of

rights, social progress, internationalism, etc., while the right champions author-

ity, hierarchy, order, tradition, nationalism, and other conservative ideas.

Although the reemergence of the Brazilian right in recent years expanded

democratic spaces by introducing more voices and discourses into public space,

this did not lead to an improvement in the quality of democracy (Diamond and

Morlino, 2005). According to data from the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (2015–

2020) Democracy Index, democratic values have shifted in much of the world

since the 2008 economic crisis, leading to the emergence of various protest

movements. In the case of Brazil, this study identifies dissatisfaction with dem-

ocratic institutions. In the period analyzed, Brazil was classified as a failed

democracy, dropping from forty-fourth to fifty-second place in the overall

ranking. It lost points in three areas, the functioning of government, political

culture, and civil liberties, revealing a loss of confidence in democracy in the

country. Political participation was the only area that saw an increase, apparent

in the greater involvement of social minorities in political processes and the

emergence in recent years of right-wing groups such as the MBL. However, the

increase in participation relating to the right did not reflect a respect for democ-

racy. The discourse in this field was often critical of democracy and endorsed

authoritarian and autocratic practices (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018). Contrary to

what many optimists argued at the beginning, the Internet has not lived up to

its liberating potential, partly because of the inequality of Internet access and

the differences in the cultural hubs used by different groups. This article shows

that there are worldviews that support values, interests, and beliefs that con-

tradict the initial optimism (Curran, Fenton, and Freedman, 2016).

NEW POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DYNAMICS

The Internet made possible the creation of a new associative and civic

arrangement supported by virtual communities. This led to the creation of

“new identities, new spaces, and new public spheres that increase political