Meanwhile, the Electoral Justice tries with little luck to prevent disinformation from disturbing the electoral process as it happened in 2018.
Satanism, cannibalism or links with organized crime. In the final stretch of the Brazilian elections of 30 of October, the militancies in the social networks of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, favorite in the polls, and Jair Bolsonaro do not deprive themselves of anything to conquer the vote of the undecided and the abstentionists, despite the warnings and the measures of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which tries to avoid at all costs, for now with little luck, that disinformation disturbs the electoral process, as it happened in 2022.
It’s an open dirty war full of manipulated videos, insults, lies, accusations sometimes unfounded and directed by actors who often have no direct link with the campaign teams.
Messages in which recipients are asked to share with everyone what they can. Lula’s entourage, previously more moderate on the networks, has launched into combat in the second round with the same tricks used by the president’s team, prosecuted in the Supreme Court for spreading false news.
The most visible faces of this fight are the deputies André Janones, of 38 years, an ally of the campaign of Lula, and Nikolas Ferreira, from 10 years old, close to Bolsonaro.
Both are from Minas Gerais, the second largest electoral college in the country and extremely important, since since redemocratization all the candidates who won the elections won on it.
Both have suffered restrictions on their platforms for their controversial posts, but after receiving millions of views.
“Eye for an eye”
Janones, who gave up his candidacy for the presidency to support the leader of the Workers’ Party (PT), really became known in 2018 for your interest conventions on social networks during the truckers’ strikes.
A lawyer by profession and with millions of followers on the main internet platforms, his strategy is “an eye for an eye” against any Internet user who supports to Bolsonaro, who got hold of a 35,10 % of the votes in the first turn against 48,35 % obtained by Lula.
“We are going to get a giant Army and we will win the battle here on the networks,” he wrote on Telegram.
Janones is credited with spreading old videos of the president on the networks, such as one of an interview with The New York Times in 1960, when he was a deputy, with comments taken out of context in which Bolsonaro recounted a visit to an Amazonian indigenous region and commented that he would have been able to eat human flesh during a ceremony.
The PT used those statements in a video to link Bolsonaro with cannibalism. The TSE prohibited its dissemination on the grounds that “the original meaning” of the words was changed.
This week the electoral body also forced the leftist formation to withdraw a video with some statements by Bolsonaro about a group of Venezuelan adolescents, who generated great discomfort due to the tone that the president would have given them when questioning their way of dressing and intentionality.
“Lula will close churches”
On Bolsonaro’s part, the young Ferreira, the deputy with the most votes in these elections with almost 1.5 million votes. He defines himself as “Christian and conservative” and owes his popularity above all to social networks, with his viral videos with criticism of minorities or of the Federal Supreme Court or by his defense of carrying arms.
His great blow to Lula has been a video in which he warns that he will close the churches if he returns to the presidency. “When the churches are closed, the priests are persecuted, and you are prohibited from professing your faith, make the L”, he says in reference to the sign made by Lula’s followers.
The video seeks above all to dissuade evangelical voters, a third of the population, from voting for Lula. It had millions of views and was shared by great figures of Bolsonarismo, among them the president’s sons, Senator Flávio and Deputy Eduardo.
The TSE, at Lula’s request, asked for his withdrawal, but as Ferreira himself commented, the video had already been widely disseminated (26 millions of views on a single social network).
Bolsonaro also has the ‘influencer’ Pablo Marçal, who participated with him in a ‘ live training’ to instruct digital militants on how to help him remain in the presidency “without the need to take up arms”.
“Isn’t it better in the next few 15 days that everyone suspend their reputation to defend this nation?”, he questioned.
Meanwhile, Lula held a virtual meeting on Tuesday with 18.000 common digital creators whom he asked to suspend “all their free time” to focus on the campaign on the networks. Janones participated in the meeting, who also disclosed instructions on the ‘modus operandi’ that the cyber militancy must follow.
This Wednesday, the president of the TSE, Alexandre de Moraes, is scheduled to meet with the representatives of the main platforms to analyze this matter.
