Nothing will be the same tomorrow.

The ideas behind what we conventionally call Bolsonarism – fascist ideas – are persistent, many of them centuries old, and will continue to exist, but to a large extent this spirit will seek new bodies to inhabit. Like in Guillermo Del Toro's horror fantasy, The Strain, evil spreads like worms emerging from decaying bodies to those in better condition.

From this perspective, we will see the current vanguard of Bolsonarism disintegrate in a shorter time than the alarmist prevailing opinion suggests, especially because it is not organic, but rather ad hoc. It is leaderless, losing its central command and watching the common areas of interest that were abundantly nourished by the Brazilian state dwindle away.

On one hand, the “evangelical” corporations, a very strong base of this movement and its propagation, have become large oligopolies dependent on the state, whether through direct financing for the businesses they operate, such as agribusiness, where they have invested, or through TV channels or agreements with states and municipalities. On the other hand, the so-called “Bolsonarist” parliamentary base, so widely touted in the press, will, in its absolute majority, be co-opted by the workings of the new government, because in Brazil the “ideological” parliament accounts for less than 15 percent of the seats. The rest are there to manage family businesses, as highlighted in a recent survey by The Intercept Brasil, or to support the lobbying channels maintained by the sponsors of candidacies and campaigns.

The capitalist development of Latin American socio-economic formations is conditioned by the movement of capital in imperialist countries, yes, but this logic is dialectically reversed in the national sphere, where the market becomes chronically dependent on subsidies, transfers, policies, decrees, and benefits generated by the state. This is why the maxim "if there's a government, I'm in favor" arose in Latin America, and not in Europe or Asia.

The relationship between the state and the market is one of pressure and counter-pressure, but even Brazilian rent-seeking, which has a strong commanding voice on the planet, cannot be sustained in Brazil without the visible and blatant hand of the state, whether guaranteeing indecent interest rates, altering the exchange rate to serve the interests of volatile capital, or maintaining laws that guarantee its predominance, greed, and expansion. Agribusiness and the industrial sector also depend on the state, in multiple ways.

Therefore, continuing in "radical opposition" to the new government will not be a task for many. Nor will it be easy. In fact, it will only be carried out as a means of exerting pressure in search of support. The unraveling only happens when governments publicly demonstrate their fragility and disintegration, which will not be the case for Luís Inácio Lula da Silva and the camp he galvanized.

Former Bolsonaro minister Tarcísio de Freitas was elected governor of São Paulo and is seen by much of the press as the landlord who will shelter the Bolsonarists evicted from the comfort of the presidential palace. This is unlikely. A bureaucrat from Dilma's government and a regular in the public machine, Tarcísio will adapt to the new way of life like a fish changing tanks. The dangers we must deal with will not come from this reciprocal relationship between structures and machines or between characters labeled the day before yesterday, but from the way the broad alliance that brought Lula to power for the third time will be maintained over time and will resist its own contradictions. The secret to success will be political management. The more efficient the new government proves to be in this sphere, the less chance we have of seeing a conservative field as broad as the one we saw emerge, fueled by Lava Jato and foreign interests, resulting in the sadly remembered 2016 coup.

What I am saying is not that the ideas that animate Bolsonarism do not need to be combated, or that we do not need to rethink our many mistakes from 2002 until now, or even that this does not constitute a serious danger to democracy and especially to the left and its agenda. What I am saying is that the actors in the next confrontation will not be the same as those we see now; they will change. As the battlefield itself must change.

The shock the country experienced immediately after the elections, with the surge of dozens of interventionist demonstrations calling for a coup d'état and the closure of institutions while brandishing slogans "for freedom," is part of the fervor sponsored by a trillion-dollar, centralized propaganda machine that will now no longer be in the hands of the fascist horde. The swift defection of the nefarious Jovem Pan showed that this camp is not as cohesive as previously thought and that ideology, for them, has a price. 

The coup-mongering activists live in a parallel world where facts have no importance. For them, news is true or not depending on the source that publishes it. It is the bonds of trust within the group, socially created among the members of a sect, that determine whether or not a dog will be included in the diet of those who voted for Lula. In this sense, we are not fighting a political group, an "ideology" (an organized set of ideas and apprehensions, a causal logic supported by data or facts). In the serious wing of Bolsonarism, what we are facing is a messianic sect that expresses itself through politics and that will continue to exist, now fragmented, without the centralization and heavy investment that resulted in volume and unity of discourse. These groups exist in many countries and generally continue their gray existence in an institutional underworld of conspiracy theories and exclusive channels from which they cannot escape.

Dialectics teaches us that everything changes, that nothing remains the same. Bolsonaro's personal leadership has succumbed to his lack of a sense of direction and is about to expire, partly because his radicalized base will soon realize it has been left behind. The family Bolsonaro referred to was only his own. And the people who are in the streets and on social media will soon need new leaders, who inhabit their minds like the worms in The Strain.