It is a worrying signal about the direction of travel in Brazilian politics that an online lifestyle coach with zero political or administrative experience but a criminal past standing for a micro-party linked to organised crime has emerged from nowhere to shake up the race to govern the country’s biggest city.
São Paulo’s mayoral election next month had been shaping up to be an uninspiring choice between the incumbent Ricardo Nunes and his left-wing challenger Guilherme Boulos. But then coach Pablo Marçal threw his signature M-embossed baseball cap into the ring and turned a two-way contest into a three-way dogfight.
This is remarkable given that Nunes is backed by the São Paulo state governor and has the endorsement of former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, while Boulos is the candidate of sitting president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But despite a lack of endorsements or the backing of a proper political party the 37-year old Marçal, running as a sort of alt-right anti-politics outsider, has managed to leverage his millions of followers on social media to the point that his candidacy has dominated the race, catapulting him up the polls.
As the race enters the final stretch before a first round of voting on October 6th Marçal, whose campaign is driven by little beyond his polemical personality, still faces a battle to finish in the first two slots that would advance him to a run-off. But regardless of where he eventually places, his eruption into the race says important things about the continuing volatility of Brazilian democracy.
Most importantly it clearly shows that the ousting of Bolsonaro – himself once the outsider, anti-system candidate – from the presidency in 2022 with the return of Lula has not extinguished the anti-political animus that now motivates significant parts of Brazilian society. Marçal is not a pure-blood bolsonarista. His emergence has disrupted Bolsonaro’s own political calculations, causing tension between the two camps.
The former president’s son Carlos has publicly referred to the coach as a “retard”, using the language so beloved of the Brazilian far-right. Instead of Bolsonaro’s natural heir Marçal represents the emergence of the next generation of anti-system politicians, only now, unlike with Bolsonaro – a political low-life for three decades before he became president –, coming straight from the wild west of Brazil’s social media universe with no political background.
All politicians understand the increasing importance of social media in Brazilian elections. But Marçal’s whole public persona was incubated there. He is a natural at the emotional engagement that drives interactions. His rivals are also all on socials but in comparison their presence has the vibe of a digital campaign director hovering over them.
Another part of his appeal is his wealth, which is where Marçal’s social media persona intersects with the growing political power of Brazil’s evangelical movement. He has become a social media behemoth selling expensive motivational courses by promoting himself as a successful entrepreneur, though his fortune – the largest ever in the race – has raised eyebrows given how quickly it was accumulated and the fact he was previously convicted of financial fraud.
But after a lost decade of economic stagnation and a public sphere laid waste by a lack of investment, many young Brazilians are increasingly embracing a radical – at times libertarian – entrepreneurial vision for their lives. For many it does not matter so much how Marçal became rich, just that he is. This also taps into the prosperity theology of Brazil’s politically influential neo-Pentecostal churches, which have most openly embraced an entrepreneurial vision of society.
Prosperity theology teaches that riches in this life are a sign of God’s favour. Marçal’s successful career for evangelicals is a sign from God and helps explain why he polls so strongly among them. Marçal himself does not identify as evangelical but says he was brought up in a Pentecostal church and it shows in his language.
When he speaks of his political opponents remorselessly “persecuting” him, for an evangelical audience he is placing himself on the right side of a larger battle between good and evil. As he once told a church congregation: “The more God blesses you, the more you are persecuted.” In this context the police investigation into him for money laundering only reinforces followers’ belief in him as a righteous outsider fighting against a corrupt system.
That may be, or he may not have entirely left his criminal past behind him. It is striking that he is running for a party whose leaders have been caught on tape bragging about their contacts in São Paulo’s criminal underground, which is increasingly seeking to transform profits from crime into political influence.
But whatever the truth about Marçal or his eventual fate, the fact he is in the mix to administer Brazil’s biggest city points to the future challenges the country’s traditional polity faces from a new generation of disruptive political outsiders.