Rhetoric of Helplessness: Affective Dynamics in Left-Wing Populism as a Response to Far-Right Discourse in Brazil’s 2022 Presidential Elections

In Brazil, the 2022 presidential elections reaffirmed the deep political polarization that has been evident since the June 2013's riots (Jornadas de Junho). Two political projects dominated the national stage mobilizing passions (Mouffe 2019; 2022): one from the centre-left, expressed by Lula’s candidacy, and the other from the extreme right, represented by Bolsonaro’s candidacy for reelection. Our main objective is to explain how affects were articulated in left-wing populist discourse in reaction to far-right rhetoric to propose progressive forms of identification (Stavrakakis, 2024). We argue that the aftermath of COVID-19, combined with the rise of the far-right politics, may indicate a form of national identification shaped by a shared experience of helplessness. In political science, helplessness can be conceptualized from various perspectives. Wilhelm Reich (1932) says that helplessness within the religious context causes the subject to “the need to be consoled, supported and helped by others” (1932, p.167). For the author, fascism feeds on the “impotence of the human masses and [their] situation of helplessness” to advance an ideology of the presence of the ‘führer’, that is, of a divine figure who would come to save them (1932, p.245). Similar to the concept of helplessness, Candida Yates (2021) revisits the term left behind coined by Ford and Goodwin (2014) to show how Donald Trump applied it during the 2016 US election. According to Yates, Trump invoked the term to argue that millions of workers have been forgotten by the Democrats, generating material inequality and anxiety. For Yates, the concept of being left behind is affectively powerful, evoking feelings of exclusion, neglect, abandonment, and being overlooked by political leaders who are supposed to care for their people (Yates, 2021). In contrast, Brazilian philosopher Vladimir Safatle argues that “the affects that opens us to social bonds is helplessness” (p.42). Safatle proposes rethinking politics from the perspective of helplessness, understanding this affect as a specific form of vulnerability capable of producing new social forms and not as an affect that produces fear (2021, p.50). For him, “every political action is initially an action of collapse, and only helpless people are capable of acting politically” (Safatle, 2021, p.50). The capacity of helplessness to produce recognition would allow the circulation of other affects, such as courage, “by converting violence into a process of change of state” (Safatle, 2021, p.55). In light of this discussion, our main argument is that helplessness became a collective affect during the Brazilian elections through the candidates' rhetoric. This leads us to ask: What type of helplessness emerged during the elections? The one that Safatle defends as a mobilizer of active political identities, or the concept of left behind, which transforms the vulnerability of helplessness into passivity? What other affects circulate along with helplessness? Or something different than that? To explore these questions, we analyse Lula’s second-round electoral programs (HGPE), his victory speech on Av. Paulista, and his three inauguration speeches, understood as a response to far-right discourse.