In the presidential elections, the narrative created by PT members is that only Lula, and no one else, would unify and pacify the country after Bolsonaro’s nightmare. “Union and reconstruction”, read the slogan of the campaign. On social networks, the expression “love won” has flooded the posts of a left that is no longer afraid to say its name.

After the victory of the PT, the expression “love won” was adopted to satirize the method of persecution, which does not exempt from institutional support, against all that does not reflect the left of the PT. Ciro Gomes says so. During the campaign, his reputation was duly destroyed by such reconciling love. If they are able to do this with friends, imagine their willingness to redeem enemies? The love of the PT does not give up politics as war by other means. It is, as I have already written here, a very particular form of domesticated democracy. There is nothing more naive than falling into this kind of rhetoric.

The peace imagined by the current left in power is a peace that makes sense only with the idea that the enemy must be identified, pursued and destroyed. Unfortunately, this way of doing politics is not a privilege of the left in power. However, what emerges on this left in power is vindictiveness. Politics as revenge is nothing new in politics. What is new in our context is the social, institutional and even media support that it remains receives to identify and hunt his witches. Even after beating Bolsonaro at the polls, the impression remains that Lula will not rest until he purges the country of Bolsonarism. The problem is what he means by “Bolsonarism” and, based on that, what he will be prepared to do to destroy it.

To be democratic, political experience must incorporate dissent and contradiction within itself. Bolsonarism has already been defeated at the ballot box. What else does PT want? My question here was rhetorical. I know what PT wants

In a recent speech to the 59th Congress of the National Union of Students, Lula said those present “in four years have experienced Nazism and fascism and have seen how democracy can be destroyed in this time.” He didn’t name Bolsonaro, of course. The message was clear:

“I came back to the Presidency because of your fight with me, to recover this country. You must understand the importance of democracy. You have known, in four years, Nazism and Fascism. They have seen how democracy can be destroyed in four years. We have learned that democracy may not be the most perfect thing, but there is no such thing where we can see plurality. It is in democracy that we see the demonstrations. We will start building more technical schools, laboratories and universities again.

To be democratic, political experience must incorporate dissent and contradiction within itself. Bolsonarism has already been defeated at the ballot box. What else does PT want? My question here was rhetorical. I know what petism wants.

I recently finished reading the excellent The empire of political correctness, Canadian philosopher Mathieu Bock-Côté. For a broader view of what is happening in the world of ideologies, I highly recommend the book. In the last pages, Bock-Côté offers a very good vision of the true value of democracy. I reproduce in full:

“Democracy cannot do without conflict, but it must civilize it to make it creative. Civic conversation is not just civilized discussion, and those who dream of reducing it to that actually want to make it aseptic.. Alain Finkielkraut puts us on the right track: “I have stopped conceiving politics as a face to face between humanity and its enemies”. The whole genius of liberal democracy consists in avoiding the conversion of the adversary into an enemy. It should not be thrown away, but restored. It would be necessary to relearn how to reflect on a real, substantial and even passionate political conflict, but emancipated from the imaginary of civil war and capable of leading men to continue, despite everything, the common work which makes political community possible..”

Indeed, the greatest risk for democracy is to identify political opponents as the embodiment of pure evil. In the public imagination, the terms “Nazism” and “fascism” refer to the presence of this evil, and the trivialization of these terms lends itself precisely to this end. For this reason, when Lula attacks his opponents by calling them “fascists” and “Nazis”, he is not defending democracy – on the contrary, he is helping to intoxicate it.

Infographic Gazeta do Povo[Clique para ampliar]