Credit, Maira Erlich/Reuters
Philosopher Paulo Arantes, 84 years old, sees "Janonism" as a trap for the left.
Although he recognizes the importance of the "digital guerrilla" created by deputy André Janones (Rede) for the re-election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), the São Paulo intellectual criticizes the way in which the strategy has become, inside and outside the country, a panacea against the radical right.
For him, the idea that Brazil has found a formula capable of containing right-wing extremism around the world is an illusion.
He argues that, by adhering to the logic of big tech, the left begins to play by the rules of those who control social networks without facing the causes of the advance of the right.
"We discovered the tool that until then was the privilege of the extreme right and we dived into thinking that this is an emancipation, when it is an abdication", he told BBC News Brasil, in an interview held on November 2.
The radical right wave, he says, is still growing. To face it, it would be necessary to understand, in addition to social protection, the desires and frustrations of the workers that this ideology has been able to mobilize.
“The victory of the extreme right in the first round was more overwhelming than Bolsonaro’s threat to be re-elected in 2022 had been,” he declares.
"Everyone dreams of improving their lives, working less, earning more, being less exploited by the algorithm. But those who are fueling these dreams today are the extreme right."
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Arantes defines himself as a "minor remnant of the ancient Brazilian critical tradition". His modesty contrasts with his trajectory: a PhD in Philosophy from the University Paris
Heir to a tradition that brings together names such as Caio Prado Jr., Antonio Candido and Roberto Schwarz, Arantes influenced the thinking of generations of researchers from different areas of human sciences, from sociology to literature, over the last five decades.
Today, however, he questions the limits of this same tradition, whose ideas, he assesses, are no longer capable of explaining the country.
His most recent text, A Cara Feia da Próxima Nação Brasileira, published in the collection Sinais dos Tempos, by Galáxia, seeks to get closer to the academic reinvention he deems necessary.
This is an effort that is difficult to define. It is an essay, but also a sharp, sarcastic oral explanation, which examines the exhaustion of the Brazilian critical tradition and the arrival of a new idea of nation, with an evangelical matrix.
“The origin of the text was a live broadcast from 2024 with researchers and then it took on a life of its own,” he says. "I spent January and February of this year, during the holidays, at home, kicking ass, writing as if I were speaking. In fact, the style was entirely invented for this purpose."
The "ugly face" of the title, he explains, is the Brazil that surprised progressive intellectuals, accustomed to seeing in culture the promise of a fairer country: a combination of resentment, promises of individual ascension and political radicalization that proved to be alive in the demonstrations of June 2013.
Already the "next nation", he says, is before our eyes: a new collective identity, formed around evangelicalism, which gains political strength and approaches the radical right.
From Caetano Veloso to gospel, passing through the films of Kleber Mendonça Filho and Sergio Bianchi, Arantes examines the clash between two ideas of Brazil and the role of culture in this dispute.
In an interview with BBC News Brasil, Arantes guarantees that this is not pessimism: Lula's victory, he states, "bought time" for the left to think about an alternative country project. See the conversation below.
BBC News Brasil — What do the 2026 elections reveal about Brazil's "ugly face" that you address in the essay?
Paulo Arantes — "Ugly face" is not, let's say, a judgment of merit. I try to show that for us, heirs of the critical tradition, the face of Brazil was beautiful: the people, the culture, the music, Carnival, literature and also a bit of political organization, because, after all, the PT is a historical creation. More than 40 years ago, when the party was created, it was unprecedented. It was part of this beautiful thing for us.
Suddenly, she shows another face and scares us. The "ugly face" turns to the Brazilian cultural elite. It showed that it was alive in June 2013 [in the demonstrations of that period] and it grew. In five years, he got to where he is with Jair Bolsonaro. Our surprise was to see that there is a B side to Brazilian progressive history.
Miguel Lago [political scientist], a friend I appreciate very much, said that Bolsonaro's election was the first Brazilian revolution. For the first time, someone emerged who was, in fact, anti-progressive, in the broadest sense of the term. And this, according to Lago, was an extreme right-wing, mass revolution, around a candidate who appeared out of nowhere, without any institutional, party support.
Now, after the end of the 2026 elections, we are so euphoric with the turnaround of the second round that we forget the true dimension of the extreme right in Brazil. The victory of the extreme right in the first round was more overwhelming than Bolsonaro's threat to be re-elected in 2022 had been. It is a growing wave.
So, what put people out on the streets and made them vote was fear. It was, quite simply, a panic. The same panic that the other side has about so-called progressives. For them, it is a holy war, explicitly, from a theological point of view, at least for some 10% to 15% of "root Bolsonaristas" and evangelicals.
As Rodrigo Nunes, an author I really like, said recently in Folha de S.Paulo, we buy time. We continue to buy time. How long this will last, we don't know.
BBC News Brasil — Lula's victory was celebrated by the international left as a sign of hope. Can Brazil lead a reaction to the advance of the radical right in the world?
Arantes — This is wishful thinking [expression in English that refers to a thought guided by desire]. Even with Donald Trump acknowledging defeat in the midterm elections, after 2028 comes J. D. Vance, Marco Rubio or anyone else in the same vein.
Europe is dying at the hands of the far right. Sánchez [Prime Minister of Spain] should not be re-elected; Marine Le Pen [main name of Rassemblement National, a radical right-wing party in France], isn't even mentioned: if it's not her, it's Bardella [president of the same party]; Meloni [Prime Minister of Italy] is already in power, the AfD [German radical right party] in Germany is already close too.
So everyone is terrified. The progressive world knows that Europe's size has diminished compared to the United States and China. The European Union has emptied itself, Putin [president of Russia] is watching, Ukraine is the tragedy we know, the European Union is divided. NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] is just a war machine, disoriented and preparing for confrontation.
Sometimes, when I go to Europe and talk to friends, especially French ones, for them war is already a reality. So, when they have the noose around their neck, facing general elections in several important countries, Brazil comes and looks like a dam. It is clear that we are a global talim for international diplomacy. And we, who enjoy it, navigate it willingly.
"Of course, we will export our know-how of international solidarity to block the fascist wave, we will export Janones, Lula is the greatest statesman who ever lived in the world" and so on. The political-ideological feel-good is easy to obtain with this. But I think, unfortunately, you can't buy this ball.
Credit, Reuters
BBC News Brasil — Do you believe, then, that the export of the "Janons way" is a self-deception on the left?
Arantes — The left is celebrating this triumph now, in the turnaround of the second round, as if it were a liberation, when we dive headfirst into this blurring of distinction between the online and offline world. People are amazed by this.
Check it out: we learned to use this tool like someone who discovers the existence of a screwdriver and starts using it to unscrew everything.
We discovered the tool that until then was the privilege of the extreme right, which manipulated the fish in the water, and we dived in thinking that this was an emancipation, when it was an abdication.
We embrace this world and we think that simple regulation of big tech will solve it. It's almost a joke for the owners of these companies: "If you frame our algorithm, within 48 hours it will already change shape." It's like wiping ice.
"Janonism" is not something that can be replicated everywhere. I was on live the other day, talking to friends, and a Brazilian who lives in France said the following: "Janones' practices in France don't make sense for a very simple reason: screen time."
Brazil has an average of nine hours of screen use per day. With that time, you can set up an operation like Janones. In France, there is no condition. They have hours less time connected [5 hours and 23 minutes per day, according to a 2025 survey by digital analysis companies We Are Social and Meltwater]. A type of regimentation like this doesn't work.
BBC News Brasil — Your essay links the precariousness of work to the expansion of the radical right. Why do promises of individual advancement mobilize workers more than the defense of social rights?
Arantes — That’s the million-dollar question. Practically every week there is an article, an interview, something trying to answer this. I'm not going to risk giving a recipe. I can list some possibilities, some pious wishes.
An author I really like is the anthropologist Rosana Pinheiro-Machado. She coordinates gigantic research, funded by the European Union, into the relationship between the far right and platform work. He is in Dublin and researches this phenomenon in Brazil, India and the Philippines, countries where there has been a rise of the far right associated with the expansion of these new forms of work.
She began working with the idea of aspirational classes. This leaves some Marxists with their hair standing on end, out of pure prejudice, because they have nothing to put in its place. They continue talking about informal work, the precariat, and they want to bring the entire world into the CLT. It won't solve anything. The world of work has changed, industry no longer absorbs this entire population, not even in China.
The concept of precariat, formulated by Guy Standing, also no longer covers everything. Today, precariousness has become widespread. See the debate about the end of the 6x1 scale. Everyone is celebrating a kind of civilizational redemption, two days off for family, culture, leisure. But this change concerns formal work. A huge portion of Brazilian workers are outside this universe.
What Rosana calls aspirational classes are workers with dreams, projects for advancement, expectations of improving their lives. When these aspirations are frustrated, they produce resentment, and this resentment can be mobilized by the far right. It is not an entirely new phenomenon. We saw something similar in interwar Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.
But there is important news. Her find looks like a Columbus egg. These workers, especially those who work on platforms, spend their day connected. Between one race and another, between one delivery and another, they are on social media, subjected to a bombardment of influencers, coaches, sellers of meritocracy, courses and promises of enrichment. An entire cultural industry dedicated to selling what they can hardly achieve.
It's the famous "be your own CEO" that everyone laughs at. But this is decisive, and no one is paying attention. People believe that they are their own people, that they are working on their own, building something. And they spend hours consuming content that fuels this expectation. When the business fails, it is entirely their fault. You weren't competent, you didn't try hard enough, you didn't have merit. And there's a line of a hundred people waiting to take your place.
So, what does Rosana propose? It is necessary to dispute this imagination, these aspirations. Everyone dreams of improving their lives, working less, earning more, being less exploited by the algorithm. But those who are fueling these dreams today are the far right.
The solution would be to change the record of this conversation. Put ten thousand Janones on the networks shouting "urgent, urgent, urgent", get this rubbish out of the way and present other possibilities, based on the concrete experience of these people, capable of feeding a different social imagination. That's what Rosana is betting on.
BBC News Brasil — Does the left then need to include the population's desire for entrepreneurship in its programs?
Arantes — This idea is starting to appear in other places as well. I recently read an interesting article by Pedro Erber in Folha de S.Paulo about the relationship between entrepreneurship, the extreme right and the State. He is a professor of literature and philosophy in Japan and a research associate at Cornell University.
The argument goes like this: these aspirational classes tend to the extreme right when their dreams fall apart or when they believe that something is stopping them from realizing them. The extreme right convinces them that the obstacle is the State, public policies, regulations. The less State, the more privatization and competition, the better, because that way the best will win.
But Erber makes an interesting observation. He says: I'm not against entrepreneurship. This is left-wing prejudice. Everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, they want their work to be successful and recognized.
The left retains a kind of Jurassic memory of collectivism, in the worst Soviet-Stalinist sense. When someone says they are "CEO of MEI", instead of scoffing, think a little. There is a legitimate aspiration there, which needs to be understood.
The example he gives is very simple. Imagine a manicurist who lives in the suburbs, saves her savings, takes out a loan and opens a small salon. She is undertaking. But the business could fail. Due to the doctrine that was sold to her, if this happens, it is because she was not competent, had no merit, did something wrong.
But when it breaks, who will help it? The State. She has SUS and can have access to social security benefits and public protection policies. Who offers this on the market? Nobody. The market doesn't care.
So, what begins to appear is a rediscovery of the welfare state, an invention that dates back to the 19th century, to the history of European socialism. The possibility of undertaking and taking risks depends on the existence of a collective protection structure. Without it, individual failure can mean complete ruin.
In Europe, this issue is also reappearing. There is a demand for the reconstruction of the French, Italian and German social state. People are realizing that, without these guarantees, society becomes unsustainable. Repression will not be enough to contain conflicts.
So, when you ask me what the way out is, maybe this is it. A popular enlightenment process. But not that Enlightenment enlightenment, of reaching out to workers and saying: "You're shooting yourself in the foot by voting for the extreme right. Don't you realize that you're being exploited?" That's not how it works.
The penny needs to drop from your own experience. The person discovers that, in that hellish competition, if they get sick or lose work, they are out of the game.
The left's mistake was to demonize entrepreneurship. People can continue to undertake, but they need to know that if they fail, they will have a second chance. Because the State takes care of you. Not God, but the State. It takes care through public policies, rights, Social Security, public health. And that requires paying taxes, accepting regulations, defending public services.
Credit, Getty Images
BBC News Brasil — Do you believe that the significant election as federal deputy of Jones Manoel, a historian and communist activist, shows that there is a space for a radical left in Brazil?
Arantes — I met Jones Manoel during the pandemic, when I was locked at home for almost a year because of my age and they gave me a tablet as a gift. Looking for things on YouTube, I stumbled upon this figure by chance and paid attention.
I found it interesting: articulate, intelligent, with a classic leftist vocabulary, but without using these references in the wrong way. Although I found it a little too dogmatic.
He liked things by Domenico Losurdo [Italian Marxist philosopher], who I know well. Losurdo is uneven. There are good history books, there is a good book about the United States, but then things go from bad to horrible, until you reach Stalinism. Then you can't follow it anymore.
But he caught my attention. In a sense, it fascinated me a little. When I saw it, I thought: if I met this guy at a time when I was involved in social movements a lot — ten, 15 years ago — I would bet on him as a militant, as someone who will be fruitful.
I saw that, in conversations, he was very spontaneous, fluent, jovial, in a certain sense foul-mouthed, irreverent. I started following him. Later, talking to other people, I saw that he had a significant biography. His father was a bricklayer and was murdered. He comes from the outskirts of Recife. But I started following him and saw that he started to get involved in party foundations that later dissolved. I thought: I saw this movie a long time ago and this is not a good start. After that, I hung up.
Suddenly I saw that he was at PSOL and I followed him again. I noticed that, with each sentence, he was always selling some product. Generally, left-wing products, books, advertising and such. Then I discovered that this was part of the so-called "webcommunism".
As he is an undoubtedly charismatic person and his public performance is very good, he has a chance, with the upcoming elections, supporting his score, to increase the vote. He could, in two years' time, be a competitive candidate for Mayor of Recife. He became known, two years later, for the government of Pernambuco.
His agenda today is more conservative than when I started following him. It is about restoring the social state, which he himself was against. He was anti-PT, he was anti-Lula. Remember? All of his political activism was against the Lulist bureaucratic accommodation, which had been integrated into the system.
He may be a walking metamorphosis. But his talent is undeniable.
BBC News Brasil — In the essay, you dialogue with young evangelical researchers who identify the emergence of a new nation project, with a religious matrix, while the one imagined by the Brazilian critical tradition is exhausted. How did their work come into your horizon?
Arantes — What surprised me, and I want to emphasize this, is that these young people sought me out. They were beginning to read, on their own, without any guidance, a world that was not theirs: the Brazilian critical tradition. They started reading Antonio Candido, Roberto Schwarz, myself and other authors, in an entirely self-taught way.
The first thing I read from them was an article by researcher João Marcos Duarte about the documentary Fé e Fúria, which takes place in Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte. I realized that he was already mobilizing this critical tradition, although I still didn't know it very well. He started like this: pick up a book here, another there, talk to someone and read.
Then they started talking to each other. It's a group of half a dozen people. And they began to notice a similarity between what was happening in the evangelical universe and the diagnosis I was making about the exhaustion of the Brazilian critical tradition.
Although they themselves did not participate in these large mobilizations, such as the March for Jesus, they realized that a new nation was being imagined. They were realizing that, through these marches and the political success of evangelical denominations, a new collective was beginning to become aware of itself.
Our critical tradition also sought to imagine a place for Brazil in the world, a nation that could overcome its historical contradictions. There was a dream of reconciliation, of national formation, which manifested itself above all in Brazilian culture.
They started saying: look, something similar is happening, but in the most unexpected place possible. On our side, in the evangelical universe, a new nation is also being dreamed of. It is not a homogeneous block, obviously, but there is a collective imagination in formation, directly guided by God.
But he is no longer the Catholic God who participated in the formation of Brazil, with all the religious syncretisms that so fascinated the modernists. He is the God of the Protestant tradition, from Luther onwards. It's something else.
These young people therefore perceived an asymmetry between two nation projects. It's what they call passing from one dream to another. On the one hand, the dream of the Brazilian critical tradition, which has been exhausted; on the other, a new national imagination, which is organized based on evangelicalism.
BBC News Brasil — You make fun of the fact that Caetano sang a praise with pastor Kleber Lucas. What bothered you about the gesture?
Arantes — There, honestly, I was quite friendly with Caetano. It could have been much tougher, but I know that my evangelical friends like Kleber Lucas. I think that's an obscene marketing ploy. Even if Caetano has an evangelical son, that doesn't alleviate anything. So much so that his audience was shocked.
As my evangelical friends tell me, gospel is not music, it is praise, it is prayer. Of course there are businesspeople, there is a gospel industry, which is one of the biggest sellers in Brazil. But there was a convergence of conveniences on both sides, in the name of a reconciling spirituality that is totally fake.
For me, from an aesthetic and artistic point of view, that is kitsch [a term that designates a popular style considered to have bad artistic taste or low quality]. And Caetano on stage, singing that trust in God... For God's sake, it can't be done.
This, in fact, confirms everything that seemed like prejudice and that Roberto Schwarz dealt with very delicately in his book, in that passage about the arrival of Caetano and Gil in Salvador, coming from exile, which I made a point of quoting at length in the essay.
[Note: In "Verdade Tropical: Um Percurso de Nosso Tempo", Schwarz criticizes Caetano's celebratory account of his festive reception in Bahia, in 1972, after exile. For the critic, the image of reconciliation transforms the historical experience of repression into a narrative of reparation and covers up the fact that the dictatorship remained in power.]
BBC News Brasil — In the essay, you recover literary and cinematographic works that anticipated the dismantling of Brazil, but you also point out the limits of a criticism that continues to repeat this diagnosis. What paths remain for art and criticism?
Arantes — I also hit the ceiling, about 15, 20 years ago. But I hadn't found the cue. It came when Professor Ivone [Daré Rabello] told me: "We can no longer bear this story of Brazilian critical tradition. We are always finding what we want to find." Any work you examine, you find the same theoretical devices, the same categories. It's an indefinite loop. How to break this?
Well, changing the subject, among other things. Starting to study this new phenomenon, this Brazilian revolution that was Bolsonarism and everything that comes with it, such as religion, this new millenarianism. But on one condition: do not start repeating all the critical theory about fascism, Nazism, authoritarian personality. No one can stand the trillionth essay on Theodor Adorno or Walter Benjamin.
We need to start studying the new Brazil we have before us, without prior bibliography, so to speak, avoiding that jargon as much as possible. Change vocabulary. Obviously, you can't give up everything, but you have to try.
There are interesting attempts to relativize this tradition. See João Pace's work on Kleber Mendonça Filho's cinema. He realized something fantastic: Kleber transformed the Brazilian critical tradition into a cinematographic genre.
Just as there is the Western, the mystery, the psychological drama, there is now this genre. You add another chapter, another film, another thesis. It may be very well done, but it's still the same genre. It's what João calls a thrift store cinema. The critical tradition became a museum, an object of prestige, of cultural consumption.
It's a nuisance for us, because that's what we work with professionally. We did our doctorate, we teach, we research this tradition. But we need to live with the perception that it itself has become a museum object.
Now, when you ask me what the way out is, realize that I'm misleading you, because I have no answer. I don't have. I know what I don't want to do.
BBC News Brasil — You use artificial intelligence with a lot of humor in the text. How did you start using it?
Arantes — Oh, I love it! I'm a kind of recent ex-analog, a Jurassic. I started using artificial intelligence for a very simple reason. I have a library across the street and, often, to prepare a text or a speech, I would need to cross the street to look for a book I had already read. So I started asking ChatGPT and Gemini: "In this book, in this chapter, what is the author's argument?" And he gave me the answer.
I thought: oops, this artificial intelligence is being demonized for nothing by the left. I started reading about the subject and realized that it can be a tool for intellectual work. When you say nonsense, we are the ones saying nonsense. It condenses the average of world platitudes. But every now and then it produces interesting results.
Little by little, I stopped using it just as an encyclopedia and started talking to the machine. It's really fun. And, if you formulate the question well, the answers go far beyond a book summary or an entry.
It's as if I were supervising a thesis. Imagine a young, brilliant researcher who has read a lot but doesn't know everything. You suggest: "Look, who knows how to connect this with that?" He responds: "Good idea, professor, but I'll need a few months of research." With artificial intelligence, I ask the same question and it immediately establishes connections. It's as if I had a hyperinformed mentee, who read everything from Homer to James Joyce, passing through all the philosophers. Wow, that's a big help! How am I going to throw it away?
So I started testing ideas, interpretations, hypotheses. Sometimes, she responds that a certain idea is not in that book, that it would be necessary to reformulate the interpretation. And I'll think along. Then I start to become a classic Marxist again, remembering my youth: this is a productive force.
But above all, I like philosophizing with machines. Sometimes I'm talking at two in the morning about the relationship between mind and spirit. They don't get tired, they don't sleep, they don't need to eat. So let's get to work!
I am not unaware of the damage that artificial intelligence can cause in the world. There is an ongoing "gangsterization", delinquent practices, invasions, manipulations. But this does not arise from a supposed independence of the machine, from that fantasy of singularity in which it becomes an autonomous agent of evil. The criminals are the human beings themselves who control it.
So I get along very well with artificial intelligence, but I have no illusions about it.
BBC News Brasil — You are often called a pessimist. Do you still have hope in politics?
Arantes — I'm not pessimistic, no! But you condemned me to the platitude. I can answer with stereotypes: as long as there is a person like Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her place and sparked the civil rights movement in the United States, there will be hope. Whenever someone says "no, I don't accept it, I won't do it", there will be hope.
Now, if you are talking about strategic hope, in that old language of mass parties, the State, social classes, leaders and major political movements, I have no answer.
What I can say is where the dementia is right now. It is, for example, in the camp [political vision that divides the world into rival blocs and defends alignment with one of them, such as countries that oppose the United States, such as China and Russia] of a large part of the left. The Latin American left, above all, after being beaten so much, after so many lost revolutions, from the Paris Commune to the end of the Soviet Union, decided that it needs to win once.
And now he believes that China won. China would be the socialism of the 21st century, especially from a technological point of view. So let's be on the side of the winners! It's the grand strategy.
José Miguel Wisnik [musician, essayist and teacher], whom I really like, always called me a catastrophist, a pessimist. A year or two ago, I said maybe it was just a matter of common sense. [Laughs] That's more or less it.
BBC News Brasil — And can individual resistance, such as the gesture of saying "no" that you mentioned, produce any transformation?
Arantes — They can, obviously. There are communities in Mexico that expelled drug traffickers and began to self-organize, gaining some autonomy. These are important, sometimes unpredictable experiences. But this, in itself, does not form a political fabric capable of transforming society.
I can go to Avenida Paulista to protest, saying that the extreme right will not pass. All good. They haven't passed now. But what guarantees that they won't pass soon?
See what happens when someone from the ruling class decides to say no. João Moreira Salles, one of Brazil's greatest personal fortunes, wrote an extraordinary article denouncing businessmen who approached Flávio Bolsonaro. He gave everyone's name and address, so to speak.
É um gesto importante. Ele está denunciando a própria classe. Mas pode fazer isso sentado sobre bilhões de reais. Não vai perder sua posição, não vai deixar de ser quem é. Pode contrariar seus colegas e continuar no mesmo lugar.
E é curioso: quando alguém responde, a discussão acaba girando em torno da história da própria família, dos negócios, do pai banqueiro. Não se discute propriamente o que está em questão.
Então veja a situação a que chegamos. Quem diz "não", dentro da classe dominante, é um dos donos do sistema cultural paulista. Um sujeito que pode denunciar os seus pares sem deixar de pertencer àquela classe.
A nossa Rosa Parks é um bilionário. Ainda bem que ele existe, que faz isso. Mas veja o tamanho do problema.
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