scholarly journals Producing Antipetismo: Media activism and the rise of the radical, nationalist right in contemporary Brazil

2019 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Davis ◽  
Joe Straubhaar

When examining the decline of the leftist Partido dos Trabalhadores and the ascension of the right-wing extremist Jair Bolsanaro of the far-right Partido Liberal Social to the 2018 presidency, political scientists David Samuels and Cesar Zucco have argued that this shift is best understood not through positive characteristics of Bolsonaro’s candidacy but through antipetismo [‘anti-PT-ism’], an intensely personal resentment of the Partido dos Trabalhadores. We assert that popular right-wing Facebook groups and networks formed around the communication network WhatsApp-fueled antipetismo by channeling anger originating in the 2013 nationwide protests away from a variety of social, political, and issues and toward a villainous depiction of Partido dos Trabalhadores leaders and valorization of anti-Partido dos Trabalhadores activists like Bolsanaro, as well as some focus on his own conservative, nationalist agenda. To interrogate this assertion, we propose two specific lines of research. The first is a qualitative textual analysis of the social media accounts of two of the most active anti-Partido dos Trabalhadores groups: Vem Pra Rua and O Movimento Brasil Livre. Through close reading of the materials distributed on these sites, we will illustrate how they channeled general unrest into a specifically partisan attack. The next line of research and case will be an examination of the role of mainstream news networks (namely TV Record) and WhatsApp by those campaigning for recently elected president Bolsonaro for a continued negative campaign against left candidates, specifically the Partido dos Trabalhadores, using fake news items like the supposed ‘gay kit’ that was being circulated in schools by the Partido dos Trabalhadores and others on the left to persuade children to become gay. When possible, we will analyze examples of the materials that were circulated that have emerged in the press coverage and will examine the processes that were used to target and persuade people to forward the materials created for the campaign.

2009 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 70-82
Author(s):  
Jolita Linkevičiūtė-Rimavičienė

Straipsnio tikslas – nagrinėti specifinį spaudos vaidmenį viename iš visuomenės raidos etapų: kuriantis naujai socialinei struktūrai, pilietinei bendruomenei ir jai aktyviai dalyvaujant pirmoje viešosios srities raidos pakopoje. Lietuvoje, kaip ir kitose posovietinėse šalyse, kuriose totalitarinės ideologijos dominavimas deformavo tiesos ir identiteto sampratas, keičiantis visuomeninei struktūrai, psichologinio saugumo poreikis ir lūkesčiai, kuriant geresnę ateitį, buvo susiję su spauda, tuo laikotarpiu atlikusia kompensuojamąją funkciją. Įvykiai Rytų Europoje, buvusioje Sovietų sąjungoje iki 1990-ųjų skatino ginkluotus konfliktus. „Dainuojanti revoliucija“ Baltijos valstybėse tyrėjų vertinama politinės raidos modelio aspektu. „Nacionalizmas be žiaurumo“ suvokiamas kaip fenomenas, sąlygotas baltų istorinio ir kultūrinio paveldo, palyginti su agresyviu serbų, kroatų, kaukaziečių nacionalizmu, pasireiškusiu išsivaduojant iš sovietinio „tautų kapinyno“.Neginkluotą nacionalinį pasipriešinimo judėjimą ir skirtingų visuomenės grupių Lietuvoje, Latvijoje ir Estijoje dialogą organizavo ir rėmė laisvėjanti spauda. Visuomenės informavimo priemonių, kaip įtakingos socialinės jėgos, analizė; spaudos, mobilizuojančios, koordinuojančios ir drąsinančios žmones atvirai reikšti savo nuomonę, vaidmens identifikavimas bus naudingas tolesnei tyrimų, nagrinėjančių Lietuvos atgimimo spaudą ir jos raidos etapus 1988–1991 metais, eigai. Visuomenės teisė gauti informaciją yra politinė, spaudos sąsajų su pilietine visuomene kontekstualizavimas svarbus kaip teorinis pagrindas, tiriant medijų funkcijas bei uždavinius demokratėjant visuomenei ir palankios piliečių sąmoningumui vystytis kuriant aplinką. Ši tema nėra tirta, XX a. devintojo dešimtmečio Lietuvos žiniasklaida apžvelgiama tik istoriografinės analizės aspektu, nepakanka dėmesio laisvėjančiam žiniasklaidos diskursui ir jo įtakai vertybių kaitos požiūriu.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: visuomeniniai pokyčiai, spaudos vaidmuo, spaudos laisvė, žurnalistinė atsakomybė, viešoji erdvė, piliečiai.Media, change and civil societyJolita Linkevičiūtė-Rimavičienė SummaryThe purpose of the article is to attract attention to the role of press and its meaning in the context of civil society in one of the developmental stages of democracy. After the social structure had changed in Lithuania, as in other post soviet countries where the totalitarian ideology deformed the concepts of truth and identity, the need and expectations of psychological security to create a better future were directly related to the press.On the grounds of political philosophy, the imperative of public space as an imperative of a basic democracy institution which appears when the members of community create and support it, is analyzed. Analyzing the way in which the press as one of the governmental blocks participates in the maintenance of public space because of itself and represents the citizens, shows the level of public discussion quality and community information. The right of society to receive information is political since the awareness guarantees the realization of universal freedom; the purification of press links with civil society is important as a theoretical basis when examining the role of media in the periods of societal changes.


2019 ◽  
pp. 104-127
Author(s):  
Arie W. Kruglanski ◽  
David Webber ◽  
Daniel Koehler

Chapter 6 examines what motivated the interviewees to join extreme right-wing groups and organizations. Analyses revealed that the most common soon-to-be-extremist was someone who was socially frustrated, although there were no consistent culprits responsible for their distress. It turns out that individuals joined the extreme milieu because they viewed it as place where they could find significance and acceptance—where they could be seen as idealistic revolutionaries and belong to a group that gave them purpose. Analyses further revealed the social network component of radicalization, in that the vast majority of those interviewed were introduced to Far Right organizations through various social connections. Specific analysis is applied to understand how the social aspect of radicalization occurred and the role of the hate music scene in facilitating this process. Connections are drawn to previous work with both Far Right and other extremists that addressed those processes.


Author(s):  
Himanshu Jha

This Chapter examines the processes around state and society, traces the role of social networks outside the state realm, and conceptualizes these processes as the complementarity of state and society, where strong ideational linkages led to the formation of an ‘epistemic network’. These processes played a significant role in the final phase of the enactment of the Right to Information Act. The period covered in this chapter coincides with the latter half of the second phase. This chapter establishes that mainstream politics converged with the emerging socio-political processes led by the elite within the social movement, judiciary, the press, bureaucracy, and the academia. This convergence needs to be viewed as one of state–society synergy, where the collective ‘epistemic push’ of actors from both within the state and society ‘tips over’ the institution from ‘secrecy’ to ‘openness’.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Jutel

This article examines the centrality of affective media production to contemporary American populism with a case study of the right-wing broadcaster Glenn Beck. The rise of far-right media and Donald Trump in social media spaces demonstrates the convergence of the economic and political logic of affect. In soliciting the affective and collaborative labour of users, affective media necessarily deploys discourses of social transformation, autonomy and critical knowingness. Beck’s show exemplifies this logic with Beck functioning as a leader of the Tea Party movement who perform ‘free labour’ for Fox News and Beck’s own media empire, while experiencing this as a form of revolutionary education. Where this audience movement speaks to the political ontology of affective media is in the return of a fetishistic ‘symbolic efficiency’. In foreshadowing Trump, Beck articulates an antagonistic division of the social with a populist community of jouissance and individuation both threatened and constituted by the rapacious enemy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 089124162110411
Author(s):  
Hilary Pilkington

This article considers the implications of the mainstreaming of ‘right-wing extremism’ for what, and whom, we understand as ‘extreme’. It draws on ethnographic research (2017-2020) with young people active in movements routinely referred to in public and academic discourse as ‘extreme right’ or ‘far right’. Based on interviews, informal communication and observation, the article explores how actors in the milieu understand ‘extremism’ and how far this corresponds to academic and public conceptualisations of ‘right-wing extremism’, in particular cognitive ‘closed-mindedness’. Emic perspectives are not accorded privileged authenticity. Rather, it is argued, critical engagement with them reveals the important role of ethnographic research in gaining insight into, and challenging what we know about, the ‘mind-set’ of right-wing extremists. Understanding if such a mind-set exists, and if it does, in what it consists, matters, if academic research is to inform policy and practice to counter socially harmful practices among those it targets effectively.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Piotr Mirocha

The cultural concepts of Wschód (East) and Zachód (West) are products of contemporary, modern Polish languaculture, one that significantly shapes contemporary social and political discourses. A reconstruction of the cognitive definitions of these concepts, along with their profiles, can thus lead to a better understanding of the two kinds of discourse. In accordance with the principles of the cognitive definition, couched within the framework of the Lublin Ethnolinguistic School, the analysis is based on data from dictionaries, texts, and questionnaires. Four major dictionaries of Polish have been surveyed, as well as questionnaires conducted for the 1990 and 2000 editions of the Axiological Lexicon, along with a random selection of texts from the National Corpus of Polish, from internet editions of the press, from belles-lettres, and essays. After a detailed analysis of the systemic data, facet-based cognitive definitions of the two cultural concepts are constructed. For the concept of Wschód (East), the facets include location, economy, reasons for going East and returning, the role of East for Poland, the characteristics of its inhabitants and of the East as space. In the case of Zachód (West), instead of inhabitants and space, the relevant facet is that of values. The last part of the article prosents the profiles of these concepts, which correlate with ideological orientations in the press and in politics: the liberal profile (the West is good, it is associated with personal freedom, human rights, democracy and the rule of law; the East is negative, it ignores the rule of law and standards of liberal democracy); the right-wing profile (the East is evaluated similarly to the liberal profile, whereas the West is portrayed as Poland’s “moral debtor”); the Catholic-national profile (the East is a threat, the West is characterised by materialism and a degradation of values); the everyday-living profile (the West is wealthy, the East is poor).


2006 ◽  
pp. 54-75
Author(s):  
Klaus Peter Friedrich

Facing the decisive struggle between Nazism and Soviet communism for dominance in Europe, in 1942/43 Polish communists sojourning in the USSR espoused anti-German concepts of the political right. Their aim was an ethnic Polish ‘national communism’. Meanwhile, the Polish Workers’ Party in the occupied country advocated a maximum intensification of civilian resistance and partisan struggle. In this context, commentaries on the Nazi judeocide were an important element in their endeavors to influence the prevailing mood in the country: The underground communist press often pointed to the fate of the murdered Jews as a warning in order to make it clear to the Polish population where a deficient lack of resistance could lead. However, an agreed, unconditional Polish and Jewish armed resistance did not come about. At the same time, the communist press constantly expanded its demagogic confrontation with Polish “reactionaries” and accused them of shared responsibility for the Nazi murder of the Jews, while the Polish government (in London) was attacked for its failure. This antagonism was intensified in the fierce dispute between the Polish and Soviet governments after the rift which followed revelations about the Katyn massacre. Now the communist propaganda image of the enemy came to the fore in respect to the government and its representatives in occupied Poland. It viewed the government-in-exile as being allied with the “reactionaries,” indifferent to the murder of the Jews, and thus acting ultimately on behalf of Nazi German policy. The communists denounced the real and supposed antisemitism of their adversaries more and more bluntly. In view of their political isolation, they coupled them together, in an undifferentiated manner, extending from the right-wing radical ONR to the social democrats and the other parties represented in the underground parliament loyal to the London based Polish government. Thereby communist propaganda tried to discredit their opponents and to justify the need for a new start in a post-war Poland whose fate should be shaped by the revolutionary left. They were thus paving the way for the ultimate communist takeover


2020 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 656-676
Author(s):  
Igor V. Omeliyanchuk

The article examines the main forms and methods of agitation and propagandistic activities of monarchic parties in Russia in the beginning of the 20th century. Among them the author singles out such ones as periodical press, publication of books, brochures and flyers, organization of manifestations, religious processions, public prayers and funeral services, sending deputations to the monarch, organization of public lectures and readings for the people, as well as various philanthropic events. Using various forms of propagandistic activities the monarchists aspired to embrace all social groups and classes of the population in order to organize all-class and all-estate political movement in support of the autocracy. While they gained certain success in promoting their ideology, the Rights, nevertheless, lost to their adversaries from the radical opposition camp, as the monarchists constrained by their conservative ideology, could not promise immediate social and political changes to the population, and that fact was excessively used by their opponents. Moreover, the ideological paradigm of the Right camp expressed in the “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality” formula no longer agreed with the social and economic realities of Russia due to modernization processes that were underway in the country from the middle of the 19th century.


Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Faris ◽  
Hal Roberts

This chapter focuses on the role of the dominant player in conservative media, Fox News, during the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency. It looks at three case studies to illustrate how Fox News used its position at the core of the right-wing media ecosystem repeatedly to mount propaganda attacks in support of Trump: the Michael Flynn firing in March 2017, when Fox adopted the “deep state” framing of the entire controversy; the James Comey firing and Robert Mueller appointment in May 2017; when Fox propagated the Seth Rich murder conspiracy; and in October and November, when the arrests of Paul Manafort and guilty plea of Flynn seemed to mark a new level of threat to the president, Fox reframed the Uranium One story as an attack on the integrity of the FBI and Justice Department officials in charge of the investigation.


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