As the results of the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections arrived on the night of 4 October, José Henrique Bortoluci – whose book Geração Democracia (Generation Democracy) follows Brazilians born, like him, as the military dictatorship was dying – sat down to reckon with what looked like a resurgence of the far right.

In 17 numbered theses, Bortoluci reflects on why Lula’s project, despite the historic gains it brought Brazil’s poorest, has lost its appeal for so many voters – and how an extreme, indeed revolutionary form of individualism has taken hold in its place. His urgent and unsparing text originally appeared in Portuguese in Revista Piauí.

1. Over the last ten years, the far right has managed to carry out a radical cultural revolution in Brazil; simultaneously, the Centrão (“big centre”) – the loose bloc of non-ideological parties that has long held the balance of power – implemented a series of reforms that permanently altered the rules of the political and institutional arrangement established by the 1988 Constitution.
   
   
2. These two forces combined to form a disproportionately powerful alliance, a political colossus capable of producing the kind of social transformations that our history has seldom witnessed. The convergence of these internal movements came about in an international context and in a media environment that supplied valuable raw materials.
   
   
3. In the cultural sphere, the right developed an extensive knowledge of mass communication alongside new programmes for community formation: an aesthetic, a convincing utopia in which individualism was the pathway to the transformation of lives. A true Gramscian revolution that orbited images and values, and was guided by faith, family and individual prosperity.
   
   
4. This vision is seductive and far-reaching, regardless of its cynicism, its collusion with the most brutal forms of plunder and dispossession, its appeals to violence, its rollback of rights, and its commitment to perpetuating inequality. It would be a mistake not to analyse why this worldview appeals to most of the population – how it offers some hope, some notion of progress and some instruments for dealing with life’s challenges.
   
   
5. The ‘every man for himself’ individualism promoted by this reactionary amalgam, along with its vision of life as a war in which only the strongest prevail, casts our history of social violence and environmental devastation in a new light. Brazil has in recent years seen the metastatic growth of a kind of ‘Garimpo¹ capitalism’, a mixture of ‘Vorcaro² ethics’ and paramilitarism that has penetrated deep into public institutions. Consider fixed-odds sports betting,³one prominent facet of this political economy: it simply prospects the lives and incomes of families that were already economically dilapidated.
   
   
6. While the different right-wing factions were forging this revolution, we progressives once again ran out of steam.
   
   
7. The dominant centre-left, in its governing and its speechmaking, basically only mentions policies that have long become routine (many of them implemented almost 20 years ago), or bills that only marginally altered the state of affairs. This is partly due to the considerable success of victories such as the Bolsa Família,⁴ the increase in the minimum wage and the expansion of the higher education network. These were crucial public policy breakthroughs but they are by now taken for granted by the majority as guaranteed – or worse, viewed as insufficient.
   
   
8. Following the Bolsonaro government’s coup attempts and the 2023 Eighth of January attacks, the only high-calibre political weapon to enter the democratic skirmish was the consolidation of an aggressive and personality-driven Supreme Court, embodied by Justice Alexandre de Moraes – a strategy that was notoriously contradictory from the start, and which has now been shown to be mistaken. Over time, the Court’s starring role as a saviour of democracy allowed the right to present itself as persecuted. Eventually the judiciary’s legitimacy was called into question, when the links between Moraes (and other ministers) with Vorcaro came to light.
   
   
9. Developments on the progressive side, however fundamental or just – the strengthening of the feminist movement, the gains of the anti-racist and LGBT+ struggles – have been unable to produce political majorities or generate popular images of a future relationship between the private lives of citizens and the collective life of society. Yet these two forces remain indispensable. They demand that we reevaluate the left’s achievements, its limits, its tactics, its repertoires and its ability to mobilise.
   
   
10. To undo this situation, alternatives must be created that match the political-cultural revolution launched, with such astounding success, by the rival camp. A radically new and convincing vision of the future is needed – one that possesses corporeal immediacy, flesh and bones, the substance of real life and the energy of dreams.
    
    
11. We must weave together previously untested forms of solidarity and come up with a transformative political offer. We must stop taking things for granted. We must be willing to listen to the majority, in its immense diversity. We must develop a new vocabulary (we will not be heard if we always insist on imposing our own lexicon) and observe the new initiatives that are already underway in different communities and movements.
    
    
12. As for the arts, we need to look beyond the tiny stage with its endless rotation of the same stars, young and old. The next step forward will not come from those artists and protests that play to the familiar and predictable tastes of the dominant left, no matter how great their past achievements and no matter how good the intentions of select younger members.
    
    
13. This diagnosis stands, no matter what the outcome of the presidential elections. A Lula victory in the second round is crucial because it would prevent an even greater acceleration of this ongoing revolution; this is where democratic energy should be focused over the coming weeks. But it will not show us a new way forward or establish new foundations. We may win sometimes, but the tectonic plates of social devastation, the dismantling of rights and the ascension of unabashed vulgarity will not stop.
    
    
14. The future is a political fiction that we are writing today. I keep coming back to two words: responsibility and courage. The responsibility to investigate the recent past and evaluate the advances we’ve made (of which there have been many), but also to think beyond the existing solutions, the consolidated strategies, the familiar speeches and the tried and tested public policies. The courage to admit that everything we built in the past and that we are building in the present falls short of the mission that history has assigned us.
    
    
15. This ethical stance can be seen as a gestures of respect towards the struggles and victories of the past but, above all, it is a nod to defeats suffered on other occasions. Investing in a future of justice and equality, in the face of so many obstacles, is a way of honouring our dead and those who were defeated in past struggles; these comrades await, at the slow pace of history, the moment of their redemption.
    
    
16. The construction of this new project will take years, perhaps decades, and will not be carried by a lone individual, or a single party, or one movement. This is a task that involves many sectors of society – a wide range of expertise, experience and investments. It demands the audacity to engage in the toughest of political disputes, even when this results in short-term defeats.
    
    
17. This is an enormous responsibility. It is the great political mission of our lives.

1. Small scale informal sector mining, traditionally of gold and traditionally in the Amazon region, often predatory, illegal and exploitative.
2. Daniel Vorcaro, a Brazilian businessman and banker arrested in November 2025 on multiple charges of bank fraud, corruption and money laundering. He is believed to have built a massive network of corruption, including economists, politicians and judges.
3. The Lula government has just outlawed most forms of online gambling.
4. A conditional cash transfer model that successfully reduced levels of inequality and hunger, as well as closed the historical rural-urban gap.