The return of language
247 editor and columnist Gustavo Conde analyzes Bolsonarism in light of linguistics and predicts its gradual 'erasure' in the face of the power of language and history; he says: "Fanaticism is intimidating. It ends up being seductive to embody a fanatical idiot, immune to facts and indifferent to arguments. There is a powerful effect in all of this (...) Bolsonarism is this. It is a field of discourse in which its followers are strengthened in proportion to the denial of reality. That's why the flat Earth, that's why the 'Gay kit,' that's why the erotic baby bottle."
From the Count's Blog - Fanaticism is intimidating. It ends up being seductive to embody a fanatical idiot, immune to facts and indifferent to arguments. There's a powerful effect in all of this – clearly fraudulent, but an effect nonetheless.
Bolsonarism is like that. It's a field of discourse where its followers grow stronger in proportion to their denial of reality. That's why the flat Earth theory exists, that's why the "gay kit," that's why the erotic baby bottle.
All these elements are capsules of anti-meaning that 'protect' a legion of intellectually disadvantaged people from the obligation of having to retrain themselves and seek some kind of meaning for their own lives.
Giving meaning to life takes a lot of work.
It must be very comfortable to be a Bolsonaro supporter. The lack of obligation to think has its charm, its share of untimely glamour. It's a kind of Brazilian 'nirvana'. Instead of performing a frequency-based mantra to reach mental climax, they perform a discursive mantra – 'Lula is in jail, you idiot' – to reach boorish climax.
Climax is climax, let's face it.
It is undeniable, however, that this process of deliberately denying reality is a defensive strategy to appease the severe subjective incompleteness that inhabits such self-merciless beings (after all, while they savor the sensation of temporary strength, they annihilate themselves as beings possessing desire).
What kind of desire should one have in the face of the indefensible human grotesqueness that emerges from the moral flabbiness of a Jair Bolsonaro? A desire to kill? A desire to kill oneself?
Bolsonaro supporters will inevitably be rescued back to civilization as soon as their idol of excrement dissolves into the digital imagination that remains to them.
Language has this democratic character of forgiveness. It tolerates even the annihilation of meaning at times. But, strictly speaking, such processes make it self-immune, returning to the users who have strayed from its system the lost humanity – which takes on a pedagogical character in the face of the implacability of history and of human language itself.
In this sense, Bolsonarism is dying. Its grand finale is its own unequivocal, measured, and self-consented burial. Its apotheosis is the collective amnesia ready to be generated by such shame: "I never trusted Bolsonaro" is the still-raw statement being gestated in the merciless oven of social history.
Like Nazism and Fascism, Bolsonarism was born pointing towards its aftermath, towards the cycle of "we will never let this happen again." Today, only those who are not ashamed at the mere mention of socialism feel ashamed.
Disliking socialism is one thing. Having a sexual panic attack about its discourse is quite another.
Thus, the social shield of Bolsonaro's tolerated stupidity is losing its density in the face of the sword that desires meaning and open confrontation.
None of the digital platforms that subsidized the emergence of this suicidal way of speaking surpasses the greatest platform of all: human language.
'The return of language' - which is being heralded at this moment in the face of overcoming the collapse of its established protocols - may be the most interesting political experiment since the Second World War, allowing us, perhaps, a new attempt at collectively overcoming trauma.
This time, however, more than a return to civilization, we may see a return to established linguistic practices, to argument, to conviviality, to culture, to boldness, to the semantic-political immersion that differentiates us from the 'animalized' societies advocated by Bolsonaro's ideology.
Fanaticism intimidates and kills. But history and language are still stronger than its saboteurs.
* This is an opinion article, the responsibility of the author, and does not reflect the opinion of Brasil 247.