The municipal results confirm it: Brazil has lost contact with the left. If you create new models and do not abandon paternalism, you will surrender the “every man for himself” camp on the right. Brazil's municipal council elections in early October spelled disaster for the left. The center-right emerged as the big winner, with Gilberto Kassab's PSD at the helm, followed by the PL and the Republicans, whom the left classifies as far-right. In this category are names such as Darcio de Freitas, governor of São Paulo.
The PT, for its part, seems weak in ninth position. The decision makes us think that the loss of meaning of the party that began in the 2010s continues to advance.
He defeated his teammate Guilherme Boulos (Psol) in São Paulo in the second round next Sunday (10/27). Apparently, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, realizing that he had no chance of winning the controversy, left Paulos to his own devices in the campaign.
While on the right several candidates are emerging for the 2026 presidential elections – governors such as Freitas, Romeu Zema (MG) or Ronaldo Cayado (GO) – and new figures of national importance such as Pablo Marcel in São Paulo, the left does. . I don't see a new leadership figure. Although the current third term should be the last, everything points to a new candidacy for Lula, who is about to turn 79 years old.
“Every man for himself” defeats collectivism
In an interview a few days ago, Finance Minister Fernando Haddad – who lost to Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 – accused the left of not creating a new model for the future. After the global financial crisis of 2008, no “utopian horizon led by the people” could be outlined, either in Brazil or globally. Haddad said the Brazilian left urgently needed “new oxygen.” But where does it come from?
In recent reports, Vladimir Safatil, a philosopher at the University of São Paulo (USP), paints a similarly bleak picture: the left “cannot say anything about the periphery,” and in Brazil it will “die” if nothing changes soon. The right will return to power in 2026. With its “every man for himself” it will dominate the current spirit of the times. Meanwhile, on the left, in the shadow of the dominant Lula, renewal is unlikely.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man, in stark contrast to Catholic discourse, with this “every man for himself” universe of the Pentecostal churches, with their promise of prosperity. To enter the kingdom of God a person must be above collective individual interest. It was from this Catholic working class context that the PT emerged at the time, as well as the social democratic PSDB, which was already a few steps ahead of the PT in the dissolution process.
Social democracy's promises of prosperity have failed. In the absence of opportunities, the neighborhood's young people are now taking their destiny into their own hands, whether trying their luck as a pizza delivery driver, Uber driver or influencer. Obviously, the left has no way of gaining a foothold in this universe.
Too dumb to know what they want?
In his most recent book, The Poor Rightist, sociologist Jesse Sousa attempts to explain this emptying of meaning. He considers racism to be the engine of the “moral turn” in Brazil, which propelled the center right and the extreme right to power.
Thus, the perpetually oppressed poor allow themselves to be manipulated by right-wing discourses to support a policy that, ultimately, worsens the oppression they experience: the poor choose their executioner, the “cockroach”, “slipper” option.
Behind Sousa's conclusions is, in fact, the thesis that the poor are too stupid to notice the manipulation of the right. The paternalistic thesis is that the poor who do not vote should not be considered “of age”, as leftist intellectuals hope. It is the same sense of moral superiority behind calls to prevent beneficiaries from participating in online gambling with their Bolsa Familia money.
“The voice of God is the voice of the people,” said Lula's campaign jingle in 2006. But the policy seems to be valid only as long as “the people” vote left. This left-wing paternalism, combined with arrogance, was instrumental in alienating ordinary citizens from reality. Until we recognize this, the left will cede the field to the right.
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Thomas Mills moved from his Protestant parents' home to the most Catholic country in the world almost 20 years ago. He has a master's degree in political science and Latin American history and has worked as a journalist and photographer for 15 years at the KNA news agency and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper. He is the father of a daughter born in 2012 in El Salvador. After a decade in São Paulo, he lived in Rio de Janeiro for four years.
The text reflects the opinion of the author, not necessarily that of DW.
