Dear friends,
It has been a big week for North South watchers. We have significant electoral outcomes in two countries we covered this year, Brazil and Serbia (they are not the same thing, more on that later), and we have developments here at the mother ship. So I have decided to resurrect the numbered news letter format.
1. Lula did it again, just like I said he would. I am half joking because my “prediction” after the shock of the first-round results was not based on anything but a feeling (and experience covering elections in Brazil).
However, I do think we should take a step back and look at the big picture; we don’t need to draw too many “lessons” from the last three weeks, in which what actually took place was a reversal and another reversal. The latter was a remarkable, exciting, and world-historically significant reversal. The moment of celebration for the Brazilian left and its friends abroad is real and well-deserved. But we are more or less back where we started. At the beginning of October, we expected Lula would win by a little bit and get smashed in Congress.
OK, right, yes, they made some Reels. Yes, they mobilized “the youth” (?) which is a romantic category in liberal politics that makes a good media story, but is concretely just one of the groups of voters needed to win elections.1 And yes, I went to a huge rally, just one week after I attended a pre-first-round Lula march that felt rather uninspired. The energy on the streets between the two rounds was truly electrifying, just like the increase in numbers was a real surprise. Yes, I joined the “Exército do Lula” mega-WhatsApp group (as an observer! I did not do foreign electoral interference, o brasil é dos brasileiros) and all my friends became really active in encouraging each other to go out and flip votes.
But it is worth remembering that the actual work of virando votos largely consisted of talking to an aunt who didn’t vote the first time and convincing her it was best to avoid an all-far-right government. I still believe that any battle that takes place on platforms owned by Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk can never really be won.
The larger story is that the Partido dos Trabalhadores has won every presidential election this century, except for the contest in 2018 — when a corrupt right-wing judge put the PT candidate in jail. The reality is that, as Rodrigo Nunes wrote before the first round, the fact that a monumental figure like Lula could even come close to losing to a man like Flávio Bolsonaro is a real problem. And the rest of the first-round results have not been overturned. The Bolsonarista extreme right will have a more coherent party, and stronger Congressional bloc, than it ever has before.
Unfortunately, what sticks out to me now is not the turnaround. The anomaly here, the real story considering the larger context, is that they fumbled the first round. Then, there is the very awkward question of the sixty million Brazilians who voted for Flávio, a man whose passports were revoked after a surprise defeat, and who is now in Miami claiming he is the legitimate leader of Brazil. A luta continua.
2. At North South Notes, we are proud to announce a set of “partnerships” with more traditional outlets around the world. Publishers like The Intercept Brasil and CTXT.es have published our work in Portuguese and Spanish, and we have other partners lined up for Indonesian, German, hopefully Arabic, and more. Other pieces already came out with Boitempo and Brasil de Fato.
When we say “partnership,” that means that we pay for reporting and original analysis and then simply give it to respected outlets to publish in translation, free of charge. This is in line with the general mission of this publication, in that we have no interest in hoarding traffic or restricting the work to an anglophone audience. Our subscribers pay to produce good writing, and we believe they want to get it out into the world.
3. In May, I published a diary in the London Review of Books on “the students” in Serbia. I still think it is a good guide to the history of that movement. At the time of my last two visits, they were working through a delicate and innovative transition from “spontaneous” and decentralized mobilization to the type of movement that could put forward representation and seek to take power. But on Sunday, they actually won, and Vučić immediately promised to step down. This is a truly remarkable outcome.
The Serbian case has two things in common with Brazil. First, the countries offer small-d democrats around the world a moment of relief; elections will continue to matter, for a few more years at least. Second, the question of actual governance will be a difficult one.
Other than that, they are almost perfect opposites. Brazil’s PT is one of the last real parties of the twentieth-century type playing a major role in global politics. It was born on the left and is still embedded in this ideology, but has a long record of pragmatic and moderate administration. A vote for Lula was a vote for stability.
In Serbia, what is most striking is the experimental nature of a movement born less than two years ago. Most of the candidates were elected precisely because they have no experience in politics. The student movement certainly does not present itself as left-wing or anti-nationalist. It is an ideologically pluralist network of university plenums committed to anti-corruption and institutional renovation.
I have been texting all week with friends, students, and sources in Serbia who are shocked and elated and rightly feel they are making history. But no one has any idea how this is going to go. How could they? That is the point.