By Julie Souza (MA ’23)

Conversations about politics with family members are one of the hardest to have. You are at your most vulnerable, arguing the fundamentals of your beliefs with the people that love and criticize you the most. 

Every morning, I read my extended family’s WhatsApp group chat, but on the morning of the Brazilian presidential election’s first round, I was hesitant to respond. My family members were arguing over a video my aunt sent claiming that former President da Silva was a communist. My aunt followed with a message that read, “Lula will lead us into a communist future and I refuse to support a crook.”

As a first-generation Brazilian-American, I believe my opinion to be unpopular: regardless of which candidate wins, misinformation has damaged the ways we coexist with each other, and I’ve experienced this firsthand with my family members fighting about politics. 

The 2022 Brazilian presidential race is between current right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro and left-wing former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, otherwise known as Lula. Despite my best efforts, I encountered an immense amount of misinformation when researching this election, and unfortunately discovered many of my family members have based their political beliefs upon misinformation. 

I couldn’t find the source of my aunt’s video because it comes from a thread of forwarded messages on WhatsApp, with no record of the initial sender. Instead of addressing particular policies or issues from Lula’s administration, the video warns and scares viewers by creating a hypothetical scenario where Brazil falls into a pseudo anarchist-communist reality because of Lula’s leadership.

It's difficult for me to even understand what this anarchist-communist world looks like, since anarchy is libertarian and communism is totalitarian, but believers of this fear see it going hand in hand. Bolsonaro supporters that paint Lula as a communist assume anarchy will ensue from an uncontrollable population. These voters anticipate that civil disobedience and violence will run rampant because they claim Lula will only be concerned with protecting his own wealth. This fear is based on Lula’s role in the Petrobras scandal.

From 2014 to 2018, Lula, along with his successor President Dilma Rousseff and many other state officials, were accused and convicted of stealing millions of dollars from state-owned oil company Petrobras by taking up to 3% of the budget from company contracts on a rotating basis. Lula continues to claim innocence, and many of his supporters agree. Many Lula supporters in my family are simply anti-Bolsonaro because of Bolsonaro’s anti-vaccine stance, his homophobic, misogynistic, and racist comments, and his sale of the Amazon to lumber and agricultural companies.

In my family’s WhatsApp group chats, any time anti-Bolsonaro messages are sent, there is uproar followed by flat-out denial. Bolsonaro supporters allege misinformation, such as when my uncle so famously said, “Bolsonaro did not sell the Amazon, environmentalist groups are burning it to get more funding for their groups.” 

The reality is that Bolsonaro makes little to no effort to combat misinformation spreading among Brazilians. According to Vox, he denies being a fascist and claims leftists to be the real fascists. On the other hand, he also does not deny any accusations of Lula being a communist. Bolsonaro contradicts himself constantly. He claims to not be a misogynist, but makes vulgar comments about women deserving sexual assault. 

Ultimately, Bolsonaro has benefited from the spread of misinformation, and some of my family members fail to acknowledge it. Any time I attempt to explain how their content is false, they bring up their defenses, and stop listening as they regurgitate the same anti-Lula rhetoric. 

However, Lula benefits from the uncertainty of the Petrobras scandal as well. He seemingly does not concern himself with addressing misinformation spread among social media sites, because his fight for innocence hinges on the deliberation of the Petrobras scandal. Any time I attempt to bring up these points to the Lula supporters in my family, they respond with anti-Bolsonaro sentiments instead of addressing the complexities.

On WhatsApp, one of my uncles responded to the video from my aunt by claiming the content was false. “Don’t send me this shit,” he said. “I’d rather die than vote for Bolsonaro.” 

As a Brazilian-American living in the U.S., voting requires me to physically go to the polls, which I am personally unable to do. But as I consider the realities of voting in this election, I recognize that I do not have the same confidence as my family members, because I am focusing on the impacts of misinformation.

Both candidates fail to address misinformation that has only fueled political and civil division. The polarizing sides are more anti-Lula or anti-Bolsonaro, as opposed to being pro-Lula or pro-Bolsonaro. How can we coexist when competing sides sit in online content justified by their confirmation bias, instead of pressuring those who benefit from this misinformation?

The Brazilian people are in a challenging position. They are in an economic recovery that never seems to end because of events such as the Petrobras scandal and COVID-19, to name a few. 

As I continue to read my family’s group chats, unable to go to Brazil myself to see them in person, I worry not about who will win, but what irreparable damage my family members will inflict on each other in the name of politics. 

Julie Souza (MA ’23) is a graduate student at Columbia's Climate School.