Everyone who studies political communication knows the scenario: first comes the event, then disagreement over its interpretation, and finally competition over narratives that make sense of the facts. Those who believe that political events are objective and independent facts, the meaning of which cannot be grasped due to inattention or bad faith, are naive.
No matter how much the state, the press and experts try to make reliable diagnoses, what remains is the result of the social and political struggle to explain what happened – and the narratives that remain in the collective memory.
When the shooting stopped in the Benha and Alemão compounds, the real battle for political communications began. Two weeks ago, nothing sparked public controversy as much as conflicting interpretations of the operation.
It was a “massacre” and a failure, without a doubt, for the traditional left and progressives in general. This was clearly another episode of black “genocide,” as the identity left said and mourned. The third reading does not hesitate to say that the public authorities finally did something against the criminals who make the lives of the barren residents hell. Better late than never.
Three readings, two irreconcilable, rooted in different rationalities. The first two dominated the press, specialized debate, and progressive environments in general; Third, the digital environment and popular perception.
What was new about the case was the speed with which surveys picked up and measured conflicting interpretations: days later, we already knew that public opinion was on the side of those who saw criminals – not black people or victims – killed by police and believed that the time had come for public authorities to use their power against organized crime.
This was perhaps the first time that an interpretive conflict of this kind had been measured in real time, and this measurement was taken into account by those vying for public perception. The other new thing is that the winning position was not that of the progressives, who usually have advantages in the dispute relative to public opinion, as advocated by journalists, intellectuals and the most visible part of institutional politics.
Few may have noticed, but when the highest authority in the country, the president, appeared to endorse the interpretation of what happened as a “massacre” and defend the framing of the operation as a failure, his position had already become an outdated one in the public perception.
Why insist then? First, because the competition for perception never ends. Surveys are photographs. Collective memory is a film in progress. The narratives will decide what is recorded until the elections.
Second, because polarization allows each group to live in its own moral bubble, without caring what the other group thinks. “Law and order” has always been right-wing agendas; The left, faithful to tradition, continues without saying much beyond old abstractions about structural injustice. The left still doesn’t like police, guns, or a state that kills. At the extreme, it incorporated the modernity of the necessity of replacing violence with intelligence.
Identity holders remain self-centered. They do not see poor people, bandits, factions, law, crime, or anything other than “black bodies” or “peripherals.” If even environmental disasters can be explained by racism, what about the police operation in the “Black Zone”?
Conservatives have always been fascinated with law and order, and the right has no problem using legal violence against criminals. They believe that crime is a choice, that punishment is a duty, and that protecting honest citizens is the central task of public authorities.
Each group will continue to believe what it has always believed, cling to its own premises, and become convinced that what the other side claims cannot even be taken into account. And they might continue that way, were it not for an existing hurdle: each side’s electoral prospects could be affected by their convergence with public perception on the issue of security.
The bad news for the left comes from opinion polls conducted in recent weeks: when it comes to getting along with the average Brazilian, it is at a disadvantage. The distance from how the population judges crime – and how the state should deal with it – is enormous. Yelling “massacre” and condemning “genocide” will not be enough. The question is whether you want to — or will be able to — speak the moral language of the country, a language in which justice seems like punishment, and authority remains synonymous with protection.
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