Gisele goes to war

 

Prima ballerina: Daryna Kirik, the principal dancer in a performance at the Lviv Opera in May. Her mother and grandmother survived the Russian occupation of Bucha.

By Nicolas Niarchos

The Nation

Lviv, Ukraine—Here in the cultural capital of Ukraine, the statues have been wrapped in plastic. The windows and facades of the neoclassical buildings that have led many a writer to describe this city as a “jewel box” have also been covered. This may be enough to protect them from the shrapnel from Russian bombs and shells, but it won’t be enough to shield them from a direct hit. Taken as a metaphor, these veiled figures convey a message: Art and culture are under wraps, at least until the invasion of Ukraine is over.1

In early May, Lviv’s opera house, a Beaux-Arts wedding-cake building that inhabits both the physical and cultural heart of the town, hosted a ballet, the first public performance there since the war began. The ballet—Giselle, a work of 19th-century French Romanticism—had nothing to do with the war, but the fact of the hostilities was never far off. The mother and grandmother of the principal dancer, Daryna Kirik, had survived the horrors of the Russian occupation in Bucha, where residents were shot on the street and war crimes are alleged to have taken place. An announcement preceded the curtain raising: The performance would be halted in the event of an air raid.2

On the opening night at the opera house, there was no alarm, but as Lviv has settled into an uneasy normalcy, punctuated by sirens and the occasional Russian strike, culture has had to adapt, to go underground and huddle in bomb shelters with the city’s residents. That night, ballerinas in white tulle costumes glided onto and off the stage without a hitch, and the director of the opera, Vasyl Vovkun, hailed the event as a triumph of light over darkness.3

Despite the occasional performance or recital, however, institutions like the theater, the opera, and the ballet have shifted onto a war footing. Their buildings have been repurposed as supply hubs and homes for internally displaced people. At the opera, volunteers have made hand-sewn protective garments to be sent to the troops, and the company is raising funds for a front-line medical clinic through paid online concerts. Across town at the Philharmonic, medical supplies are stockpiled for transport to the worst-hit areas of the country. Volunteers in a shuttered library piece together camouflage netting out of strips of cloth.4

What does war do to a culture? I was in Ukraine in March, during a fearful period when every empty concert hall portended doom. Kyiv was under attack, and, so the logic ran, it was only a matter of time before Lviv, too, would have to resist the invaders from the East. The Russians generally bombed in the very early hours, and each day, as the sky darkened, rumors and dire warnings would begin to fly. “Trust me, a friend of a friend at the British Ministry of Defense insists the Russians will target foreign cell phones with missiles.” “My father has heard from military sources that tonight they will strike.” And so on.5

During wartime, the unusual is transmogrified into normality. Sheltering in a disused casino for six hours as air raid sirens echo in the streets is a regular occurrence. Some days in Lviv, I would become emotional when I heard street musicians. I grew worried that people, surrounded by so much war, would lose sight of their culture and therefore themselves. What does art matter when people are dying, starving, and being raped?6

Yuliya Komska, who grew up in Lviv and is now a professor of German studies at Dartmouth, recently wrestled with the same contradictions when thinking about her homeland. In “A Stained Glass in Lviv,” an essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books about the destruction of culture in Ukraine, Komska writes of a nightmare she had, about the destruction of a stained glass window her father made after the fall of the Soviet Union. In the essay, she eloquently explains why worrying about culture is important:7

n war, mourning the loss of art, be it actual or anticipated, is not separate from mourning for the senseless disruption and destruction of human life. To live is to build, to repair, to illuminate, to leave traces in the fabric of time and space. Until an empire’s fist hits it all and smashes it to smithereens. In the face of its onslaught, human life is as fragile as the glass that bears humanity’s loving traces.8

One day in Lviv, I attended a rehearsal at the Philharmonic. At the time, the Philharmonic wasn’t open to the public. In the hallway, boxes marked “tensoplast” and “dermoplast”—bandages and medicine destined for the front—were piled high, threatening to swamp the bust of the Soviet-era composer Stanyslav Lyudkevych.9

In a liver-colored recital room, an orchestra made up mainly of female string musicians played a piece by the Polish composer Witold Lutosławski, “Musique Funèbre pour Orchestre à Cordes.” Most of the men in the orchestra had been conscripted into the Ukrainian military, though two double bassists remained. “They are a problem,” Vitaliy Protasov, the conductor of the International Symphony Orchestra, announced to laughter from the musicians. They did not know when they would be called up to fight.10

Anastasia Pryshlyak, the young manager of the orchestra, told me that art was a way for the musicians to play their part away from the front. “We want to come back to our normal life and play concerts here,” Pryshlyak told me. “For us now, we feel empty inside. But we know that to be able to perform here safely, we need to help there. That is the most important thing.”11

As with any war, here and there had taken on totemic significance. Here was the relative safety of Lviv; there was the front, the war, the place of death. Culture bridges the gap between the here and the there, making both in some way more manageable. After the performance, I spoke with Mariana Stasinchuk, a 29-year-old violinist. “My husband is in the military right now,” she told me. “As long as he’s there, I will be here and do anything I can to support him. There’s no other way I can do it.”12

The INSO opera was rehearsing for a solidarity concert that had been organized across the border in Warsaw. Lutosławski’s haunting rhythm swelled in the hall. Afterward, Protasov said to me, “It’s important that we try to find something in our souls—” before trailing off. “Now, with weapons, it’s impossible, and it’s impossible to make plans… It’s difficult to say what will come out of music.” He paused, then alighted on a simpler answer: “It’s a good possibility to not read the news and to think [about] what we have. It’s, it’s like a help.”13

Art inspires us to live: The opera house in Lviv and the director of the opera, Vasyl Vovkun, who once served as Ukraine’s minister of culture.

One night I visited the shuttered opera. A friend of Vovkun’s had come to say goodbye. Goodbyes in Lviv these days often mean that people are leaving the country, heading across the border, joining the great human stream seeking asylum in Europe. Oleh Orishchenko was traveling in the opposite direction; he was going there, back to the war.14

Outside, people were quick-trotting to their homes. It would soon be 10 pm—curfew—after which soldiers would scour the streets for Russian diversanty: saboteurs, real and imagined. Vovkun greeted Orishchenko in his office with a bear hug, his eyes brimming with tears.15

A powerfully built man in his 60s with a silvery beard, Vovkun once served as Ukraine’s minister of culture. He and I had been discussing culture in Ukraine for just over an hour. His office at the opera house connects via a small passageway to a private box overlooking the stage, which at that point was dark. He spoke of his longing to have a performance and his worries about the audience’s safety.16

Vovkun wanted to convey to me that Ukraine was under siege not simply by Russia’s military but culturally, in line with a tradition that for 300 years has negated Ukraine, its art and its history. That night, we spoke about Tchaikovsky’s Ukrainian roots, Pushkin’s calumnies against Mazeppa, and Peter the Great—don’t even mention him. “He was a chauvinist, and he was the first person against the independence of Ukraine,” Orishchenko said, chiming in. It might seem odd that Ukrainians continue to spend time litigating the legacy of an 18th-century Russian monarch while Grad rockets pulverize their cities. But they do, passionately. For this war is also one about history and culture.17

Ukrainians like Vovkun will emphasize the Europeanness of Ukrainian culture. A small European Union flag stands at the edge of his desk, and a certificate from the pope (Vovkun is a Greek Orthodox Catholic by religion) adorns a wall in his office. The Russian position, on the other hand, denies that Ukraine or its culture even exists. A friend in Moscow told me the other day that even people he spoke to who were against the war didn’t believe Ukraine was a real country.18

As the journalist Anna Reid recently wrote in an essay for Foreign Affairs about the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine’s history, “according to Putin’s logic, all divisions between Russia and Ukraine are the work of Western powers.” The logic, she says, holds that “Ukrainians and Ukraine, in other words, aren’t just naturally part of Russian; they don’t even really exist.”19

Musique funèbre: Apart from the double bass players, who were still waiting to be called up, all the men in the orchestra had been conscripted.

What did my time at Lviv’s cultural institutions teach me about the necessity of art? During other wars—in Yemen, in Congo, in the Sahel—I have seen how art can heal shattered communities, how it has the power to transport people with no hope into a world of imaginative possibilities. I saw in Ukraine how art might preserve human connection in a time of intense isolation; how it can bridge the divide between the mundane and the terrifying in war. Or maybe the function of art was less grandiose, as Protasov, the conductor, suggested: that it merely offers a distraction from the moment.20

Certainly in Ukraine it seems difficult for culture to find its own space. The war is all-consuming; many Ukrainians I spoke with said they felt suffocated, petrified by the sheer impending doom of the invasion. Reminders of normal life are hard to come by: a package from abroad, a beer and a note smuggled across the border from a friend on the other side. People yearn for the return of art in their lives: An internally displaced teacher misses giving piano recitals to her friends; a photographer longs to shoot scenes without soldiers and tank traps.21

Perhaps the best answer to this conundrum has to do with art’s role as a vector for collective memory. Petro Antyp, an artist and sculptor who is originally from Donetsk, believes that this is one of art’s most important functions. With about a half-dozen volunteers, he said, he is gathering “all the possible information on art pieces that have been damaged.” He is informing lawyers in Paris and the United States, drafting notes to submit to UNESCO like a crisis investigator preparing a brief on the destruction of life for the International Criminal Court. He hopes this work will let the destroyed collections of today say something both about the past and the world that is to come.22

When we met in Lviv, Antyp’s mourning was tempered by hope. In the midst of the current destruction, he hopes something will be restored, a way of looking at Ukraine’s art not “through the eyes of Moscow” but on its own terms. He hopes to restore the Ukrainian-ness to the memory of artists like Kazimir Malevich, who was born to a Polish family in Kyiv but is often thought of as Russian.23

With what remains from the war, he believes he can create something that can be a repository for the memory of this time. “After the war, I plan to make an art project by leaving destroyed buildings as they are, under glass,” Antyp said. The project has allowed him to think of a world without the invasion, one in which the lessons of the terror inflicted upon Ukraine are remembered. “We will write on the glass the quantity of people that have died and the heritage that has been damaged. People would be able to remember what Russian occupants did to us.”24

After he arrived at the opera house that night with Vovkun, Orishchenko announced that he had decided to return to Kharkhiv. He would bring with him humanitarian supplies. He had been in Lviv for only three days. Turning to me and my translator, overwhelmed by this news, Vovkun said, “We are in a peaceful place, but Oleh is going back to the war, bringing humanitarian help.”25

Orishchenko solemnly took from his pocket a yellow armband, a symbol of the Ukrainian resistance worn by volunteers, and wrapped it around his sleeve: “The occupants have used prohibited bombs”—thermobaric bombs, which though not specifically proscribed by international law can cause mass civilian casualties—”that exploded near the theater. There were four or five places they hit very near to the theater. Thanks to the people who stayed in the theater all the time, they were able to stop the fire.” Now he wanted to relieve them. It had taken Orishchenko three days to get to Lviv on jam-packed roads, he told me. He wondered how long it would take to get back.26

Armenian brandy, left over from before the war, appeared. The Ukrainian government had prohibited the sale of alcohol during wartime—too many fresh volunteers manning checkpoints—but the occasion called for a toast. “I pray that you survive tomorrow in this difficult situation, because tomorrow you are leaving, tomorrow you won’t be able to sit here with us. I really love you. I really respect you,” Vovkun said, raising a glass. (Vovkun, who has remained in touch with Orishchenko, reports that he managed to reach Kharkhiv safely.)27

After the glasses had been drained, a troupe of young singers entered to ask Vovkun’s permission for something. The director asked them to perform for us, but they politely declined. They didn’t feel like singing, they said, when people were dying in the East.28

Office Space : The surreal workplace satire of Severance.

 

By Vikram Murthi

In the waning decades of the 20th century, the American labor force experienced myriad, well-documented changes that systematically disempowered workers across all economic sectors. Long-standing unions were either busted or saw their membership radically decline; wages stagnated even as the GDP grew at a steady clip; and politicians waged successful campaigns to cut taxes on capital gains. Income and wealth inequality skyrocketed, and higher profits emboldened employers to exploit workers even further. If workers had became alienated from the products of their labor during the Industrial Revolution, by the dawn of the 21st century they had became psychologically alienated from the labor itself, as its only ostensible purpose is self-perpetuation.

“Living to work” instead of “working to live” became the modus operandi for many, especially after upward mobility had long since ceased to be an achievable goal. Now not only is an American what they do, but their place of work is a “home,” even as it provides them with fewer protections and asks more of their time. “When you’re here, you’re family,” preached the famously cheesy Olive Garden slogan, but it chillingly doubles as the motto for the American workplace.

The premiere of the Apple TV+ series Severance benefits from good cultural timing, as many people have started to reevaluate their attitudes toward work and the workplace in the wake of Covid-19. There’s now a premium, however small it may be, placed on decoupling job satisfaction from one’s overall well-being. Fittingly, the premise of Severance asks: What if you could medically guarantee that you will never take your work home with you? In the series, one of the world’s largest corporations uses a surgical procedure to separate their employees’ work and nonwork memories, essentially splitting them into a work self (an “innie”), who “wakes up” every time they enter the office, and a personal self (an “outie”).

The series’ protagonist, Mark Scout (Adam Scott), works for Lumon Industries in the Macrodata Refinement division, having undergone the severance procedure after his wife died in a car crash. Severance opens with Mark trying to ease a newly severed coworker, Helly (Britt Lower), into the workplace after she wakes up on a conference table with no idea who or where she is. She’s set to replace Petey (Yul Vazquez), Mark’s best friend at the company, who was fired under mysterious circumstances; we quickly learn that Petey’s work and personal memories have been “reintegrated” via a controversial backroom procedure. A disheveled Petey eventually gets in touch with outie-Mark to inform him that Lumon, naturally and obviously, is not what it seems.

Created by Dan Erickson, and with Ben Stiller as executive producer, Severance uses its high-concept, Twilight Zone–like premise to explore dystopian corporate overreach. The series necessarily demands an immersive world rife with mysteries, and thus Erickson and Stiller have molded it to be artificial and stuck out of time, like Hell designed in the image of a Big Tech company. In fact, while Severance has been acclaimed for its “puzzle box” plotting—i.e., opening various narrative cans of worms to retain viewership—it is first and foremost a feat of production design. The interior of the Lumon offices eerily, effectively resembles what a prison would look like if an architect had designed it to evoke a mid-20th-century office building.

The warm yet ominous look of Lumon goes a long way toward lending credence to the Macrodata Refinement division’s revolt against its corporate overlords, who include the protagonists’ immediate supervisor, Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman), and acting boss, Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette). Over the course of Severance’s debut season, Mark, Helly, and their fellow workers—the profane, smugly content Dylan (Zach Cherry) and the fastidious rule-follower Irving (John Turturro)—wake up to their employer’s nefariousness and reject the severance procedure. After this, they begin to feel the walls of their ostensibly safe workplace closing in on them. Though the series often bites off more than it can chew, Severance succeeds when it squarely focuses on Mark and his coworkers’ slow radicalization. Like many labor activists of yore, they’re spurred to take down the system by a piece of literature. Only it’s not The Communist Manifesto that wakes them up but, rather, in one of the best jokes of the year, a pretentious self-help book, the kind whose cover would make your eyes glaze over in a bookstore.

espite Stiller’s involvement, which includes directing two-thirds of the season’s episodes, Severance isn’t a comedy, at least not in the traditional setup-and-punchline sense. Minor bouts of surrealism occasionally puncture the series’ sober tone, but it still retains a serious disposition appropriate to the disturbing nature of the premise. Yet this doesn’t mean the show is humorless. A lot of Severance’s best elements could be described as structural or even architectural comedy: Dark gags involving design and philosophy comprise the show’s foundation, which underscores the emotional substance of the characters who tread its ground.

Case in point: Mark’s pompous, touchy-feely brother-in-law, Ricken Hale (Michael Chernus), whom both Mark and his sister Devon (Jen Tullock) regard with eye-rolling acceptance, gives a copy of his new book, The You You Are, to outie-Mark. Before he can read it, it’s confiscated by Cobel, who poses as Mark’s well-meaning next-door neighbor to keep an eye on him outside of work. She brings it into their shared office space, where innie-Mark unexpectedly finds it and then hides it from his bosses. He and Dylan secretly read it in their spare time and start to absorb its corny if well-intended maxims. In one episode, we hear a string of excerpts: “A society with festering workers cannot flourish, just as a man with rotting toes cannot skip.” “What separates man from machine is that machines cannot think for themselves. Also, they are made of metal, whereas man is made of skin.” “Bullies are nothing but Bull and Lies.”

The You You Are’s laughable prose would be roundly mocked by outie-Mark, but innie-Mark and his compatriots find genuine inspiration in a book that preaches worker liberation, however clumsily, through New Age vernacular. Severance underscores this gag by implicitly contrasting it with the teachings of Lumon’s founder, Kier Eagan (Marc Geller), who dispenses his cult-like, conformist rhetoric via a workers’ handbook that doubles as a bible. The series thankfully doesn’t hang a lampshade on the contrast, but the joke is that Eagan’s proselytizing, while more refined and better written than Hale’s, is infinitely more insidious. In one episode, Irving recites two quotes from the handbook: “Be content in my words and dally not in the scholastic pursuits of lesser men” and “No workplace shall be repurposed for slumber,” which translate to “Don’t listen to outsiders” and “Never nap at work.”

Severance’s most effective bit, however, is the labyrinthine design of the Lumon building itself, specifically intended to confuse and trap the workers within. Mark and his colleagues spend most of their time in the Macrodata Refinement section—a massive low-ceilinged room whose sterile atmosphere uneasily clashes with its homey decor and kitschy, anachronistic technology—but their floor is made up of endless, identical white hallways that seemingly lead everywhere and nowhere. Lumon forbids them to map the office, and though they are aware of the existence of other departments, it’s unclear how many or exactly where they are. As director, Stiller pulls off a neat trick in a late episode when he briefly tracks Mark and Milchick down a hallway, but as the two take a right, the camera moves left. The white wall fills the entirety of the screen for a brief second, until Milchick enters from the right. Stiller’s camera, still tracking left, eventually catches up with Mark, but the disorienting effect speaks volumes: Even we don’t know in which direction they’re going.

Severance literalizes many similar Dilbert-esque jokes about office culture. It’s impossible to leave the building before quitting time. The “break room” is a torture site. The work that Mark and his colleagues do is comically meaningless—dragging and dropping random sets of numbers on a computer screen—which is fitting because “Macrodata Refinement” is so vague as to mean nothing. The team ostensibly works for depressingly banal perks: finger traps, dance breaks, crystal cubes, egg and melon bars, a “waffle party” that’s also a burlesque show. They’re cheap distractions to stop Mark and the others from asking what many white-collar workers have asked in their own lives: What exactly do we do here?

ollowing in a long line of conspiracy-driven shows, Severance asks more questions than it answers, teasing clues about Lumon’s influence and its toxic objectives. It’s somewhat impressive how much runway Erickson gives himself for future seasons. For example, the series has only started to touch on how the severance procedure impacts the outside world. Mark lives in a Lumon-subsidized town that’s clearly being surveilled, and the company’s political influence, which extends to state senators who want to combat public distaste for the procedure, has yet to be explored. Mysterious figures, like an unseen “board” that communicates approval or displeasure through a surrogate, remain unexplained. Late-season twists indicate that Lumon has been hiding considerable collateral damage from the public. We don’t even yet know how many other floors, departments, or workers lie within the company’s building.

This caginess can be frustrating, in the sense that it’s a toss-up whether the answers to these questions will ever satisfy. It’s tempting to read this type of opaque plotting as protracted wheel spinning, and in its worst moments and digressions Severance does feel like it’s stalling for time. But as is the case with most television in this vein, the journey tends to be more rewarding than the destination. In the beginning, the series was compelling because it withheld basic information about its very premise, and when viewers were finally provided with enough to feel grounded, its direction and performances became the draw—at least save for Arquette’s, whose acting choices slowly grate more and more over the course of the season. Severance doesn’t reinvent the wheel narratively—there are the expected reveals and twists that arrive at their prescribed moments—but it follows through on familiar motions with enough energy to qualify as lively.

The glaring issue with the series is not its lack of answers or specificity but rather the more existential query: why any corporation would offer the severance procedure in the first place. Severance more or less asks viewers to take it on faith that Mark’s decision to sever his memories as a byproduct of grief passes muster despite its shaky emotional reasoning. (Would any halfway intelligent person agree to accept the incoherence of self so that they would only experience sorrow half the time?) A similar leap is asked of the viewers when it comes to his co-workers, whose decisions to sever are only hinted at but appear to be similarly trauma-motivated. Even from the perspective of the most hyperbolically evil corporation, the benefits of having complete control over its employees hardly outweighs the enormous liability of dissent catalyzed by anyone asking any questions about the company or pushing back on the merits of severance. Lumon resorts to psychological torture and a covert surveillance operation to keep its workers in line, and yet for that very reason it prompts suicide attempts and outright disorder. From a credibility standpoint, the company’s medical intervention just doesn’t seem like the safest bet when there’s such a high likelihood of anarchy.

Granted, crying foul with regard to plausibility in fiction, especially when it comes to the shortsightedness of corporate entities, might be foolhardy. But if the series wants to tackle the exploitation of labor, even in its own exaggerated way, it usually helps when the authoritarians’ methods of oppression make sense—logically and emotionally. Severance can have its characters ask “What are we doing?” and “Why are we here?” all it wants. It would be better for the show to ask itself, “Why do I exist?”

NATION 

The Question Menacing Brazil’s Elections: Coup or No Coup

 

 

 

Jack Nicas and André Spigariol

Jack Nicas and André Spigariol, correspondents in Brazil, spoke to more than 35 judges, generals, diplomats and government officials to understand the risk to Brazil’s election.

BRASÍLIA — A simple but alarming question is dominating political discourse in Brazil with just six weeks left until national elections: Will President Jair Bolsonaro accept the results?

For months, Mr. Bolsonaro has attacked Brazil’s electronic voting machines as rife with fraud — despite virtually no evidence — and Brazil’s election officials as aligned against him. He has suggested that he would dispute any loss unless changes are made in election procedures. He has enlisted Brazil’s military in his battle. And he has told his tens of millions of supporters to prepare for a fight.

“If need be,” he said in a recent speech, “we will go to war.”

With its vote on Oct. 2, Brazil is now at the forefront of the growing global threats to democracy, fueled by populist leaders, extremism, highly polarized electorates and internet disinformation. The world’s fourth-largest democracy is bracing for the possibility of its president refusing to step down because of fraud allegations that could be difficult to disprove.

Yet, according to interviews with more than 35 Bolsonaro administration officials, military generals, federal judges, election authorities, members of Congress and foreign diplomats, the people in power in Brazil feel confident that while Mr. Bolsonaro could dispute the election’s results, he lacks the institutional support to stage a successful coup.

Brazil’s last coup, in 1964, led to a brutal 21-year military dictatorship. “The middle class supported it. Business people supported it. The press supported it. And the U.S. supported it,” said Luís Roberto Barroso, a Supreme Court justice and Brazil’s former elections chief. “Well, none of these players support a coup now.”

Image

People preparing for a motorcycle ride in Salvador, Brazil, held in support of Mr. Bolsonaro. Credit...Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

Instead, the officials worry about lasting damage to Brazil’s democratic institutions — polls show a fifth of the country has lost faith in the election systems — and about violence in the streets. Mr. Bolsonaro’s claims of fraud and potential refusal to accept a loss echo those of his ally Donald J. Trump, and Brazilian officials repeatedly cited the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as an example of what could happen.

“How do we have any control over this?” Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator and Mr. Bolsonaro’s son, said in an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Estadão in reference to potential violence. In the United States, he said, “people followed the problems in the electoral system, were outraged and did what they did. There was no command from President Trump, and there will be no command from President Bolsonaro.”

This month, more than one million Brazilians, including former presidents, top academics, lawyers and pop stars, signed a letter defending the country’s voting systems. Brazil’s top business groups also released a similar letter.

On Tuesday, at an event with nearly every major Brazilian political figure present, another Supreme Court justice, Alexandre de Moraes, took office as the nation’s new elections chief and warned that he would punish attacks on the electoral process.

“Freedom of expression is not freedom to destroy democracy, to destroy institutions,” he said. His reaction, he added, “will be swift, firm and relentless.”

The crowd stood and applauded. Mr. Bolsonaro sat and scowled.

Mr. Bolsonaro, whose representatives declined requests for an interview, has said that he is trying to protect Brazil’s democracy by strengthening its voting systems.

Among the officials interviewed, there was broad disagreement over whether the right-wing president was driven by genuine concern about fraud or just fear of losing. Mr. Bolsonaro has consistently trailed former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist, in opinion surveys; if no one wins a majority of the vote on Oct. 2, a runoff is scheduled for Oct. 30.

Image

Mr. Bolsonaro trails the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the polls.Credit...Dado Galdieri for The New York Times

Yet there are increasing hopes for a smooth transition of power if Mr. Bolsonaro loses — because he now appears open to a truce.

His allies, including top officials in the armed forces, are about to begin negotiations with Mr. de Moraes about changes to Brazil’s election system designed to address the president’s security critiques, according to three federal judges and one senior administration official close to the planned talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are confidential.

The idea is that Mr. Bolsonaro would back off his attacks on the voting machines, these people said, if election officials agreed to some changes requested by Brazil’s military.

“I have full confidence in Brazil’s election system. That also doesn’t mean it’s infallible,” said Ciro Nogueira, Mr. Bolsonaro’s chief of staff. “I’m sure, as the president says, the people will have their say.” And on Saturday, Mr. Bolsonaro seemed to suggest at a rally that he would accept the results of the election.

Yet Mr. Bolsonaro has made similar comments in the past and agreed to a similar truce last year — and then continued his attacks.

Those attacks have had an effect. Since June, Brazilian Twitter users have mentioned Brazil’s voting machines more than inflation or social-welfare programs in relation to the election, and roughly as much as gas prices, which have been a major point of political debate, according to an analysis by researchers at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation Communications School requested by The New York Times.

Image

Supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro in Salvador, Brazil.Credit...Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

A poll last month showed that 32 percent of Brazilians trusted the voting machines “a little” and 20 percent did not trust them at all.

At the same time that many of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters are convinced that the vote can be rigged, many more also have guns. Mr. Bolsonaro made it much easier for civilians to purchase firearms under looser restrictions for hunters, and now more than 670,000 Brazilians own guns under such rules, 10 times as many as five years ago.

Inside his administration, Mr. Bolsonaro has been increasingly pulled between two factions.

One side has encouraged the president to stop attacking the voting machines because they believe the issue is unpopular with the more moderate voters he needs to win over and because Brazil’s economy is rebounding, helping his chances of re-election, according to two senior advisers to the president.

They said the other group, led by former military generals, has fed the president misinformation and urged him to keep warning of potential fraud.

Election officials last year invited the military to join a committee to improve the election systems. The military suggested a series of changes, but election officials said they could not be implemented in time for October’s vote.

But military leaders are still pushing for one specific change: for the voting machines’ integrity tests to happen with real voters, instead of in simulations.

Image

For months, Mr. Bolsonaro has attacked Brazil’s election officials as aligned against him. Credit...Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

The military is concerned that a hacker could implant malicious software in the voting machines that would recognize simulations and stay dormant during such tests, allowing it to evade detection.

An election-security expert said such a hack is conceivable but unlikely.

Mr. de Moraes, the new elections chief, has signaled that he would be open to changes in the voting systems, though what might be achievable by Oct. 2 is unclear.

Mr. Bolsonaro has long been at odds with Mr. de Moraes, who has led investigations into allegations of disinformation and leaks of classified material that implicate the president and his allies. Mr. Bolsonaro has criticized Mr. de Moraes as politically motivated, and said at a rally last year that he would no longer abide by his rulings, a statement he later walked back.

So Mr. de Moraes’s ascent to lead Brazil’s electoral court was expected to further aggravate tensions.

But in recent weeks, he and Mr. Bolsonaro have begun chatting on WhatsApp in an effort to mend their relationship, according to a person close to the president. When Mr. de Moraes hand-delivered an invitation to his inauguration as elections chief this month, Mr. Bolsonaro gave him a jersey for Corinthians, Mr. de Moraes’s favorite soccer team. (Corinthians is the archrival of Mr. Bolsonaro’s favorite squad, Palmeiras.)

With tensions running high, Brazil’s leadership decided to make Mr. de Moraes’s inauguration on Tuesday — usually a procedural event — a demonstration of the strength of the Brazilian democracy.

Image

Motorcycle caravans have become common at events in support of the president across the country.Credit...Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

In a modernist, underground amphitheater, the heads of the Brazilian Congress, Supreme Court and military joined five of Brazil’s six living presidents for the ceremony, including Mr. Bolsonaro and Mr. Lula da Silva.

Cameras zoomed in on Mr. Bolsonaro next to Mr. de Moraes at the head table, a rare sight. They whispered to one another, sometimes chuckling, throughout the event. Then Mr. de Moraes got up for his speech. Before the event, he had warned Mr. Bolsonaro that he wouldn’t enjoy it, according to a person close to the president.

“We are the only democracy in the world that calculates and publishes election results on the same day, with agility, security, competence and transparency,” he said. “Democracy is not an easy, exact or predictable path. But it’s the only path.”

The room gave him a 40-second standing ovation. Mr. Bolsonaro was among the first to stop applauding.

Afterward, the two men posed for a photo. They did not smile.

 

THENEW YORK TIMES

Racismo indecoroso

 

As cassações do vereador negro Renato Freitas e do prefeito indígena Marcos Xucuru desnudam o revanchismo da casa-grande.

p or Fabíola Mendonça

Negro, periférico, advogado, mestre em Direito, vereador eleito em Curitiba em 2018 com 5.097 votos. Este é Renato Freitas, 38 anos, que carrega em sua biografia numerosos episódios de racismo e teve seu mandato cassado, no dia 5 de agosto, por ter participado, em fevereiro deste ano, de um protesto em frente à Igreja Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Pretos, no Largo da Ordem, região central da capital paranaense.

O ato era para denunciar a xenofobia e o racismo que motivaram o assassinato do congolês Moïse Kabagambe, no Rio de Janeiro, atividade que aconteceu simultaneamente em várias outras cidades brasileiras. Enquanto o protesto acontecia do lado­ de fora, dentro da igreja o padre Luiz Hass celebrava uma missa e, ao término da celebração, os manifestantes, inclusive Freitas, adentraram na igreja. Este foi o “crime” que tirou do vereador do PT o mandato que lhe foi consagrado pelas urnas. “Crime”, por sinal, bem mais brando que o praticado pelo deputado estadual por São Paulo, Fernando Cury, que apalpou os seios da colega Isa Penna no plenário da Assembleia Legislativa e não perdeu o mandato. Ou do deputado bolsonarista Daniel Silveira, autor de ameaças aos ministros do Supremo Tribunal Federal e incontáveis ataques à democracia, mas a Câmara faz vistas grossas. 

Fazendo uma analogia com outros ca-
sos recentes, a cassação de Freitas torna-
-se algo ainda mais inusitado. Em maio
passado, a Assembleia Legislativa de São
Paulo cassou o então deputado Arthur do
Val, o Mamãe Falei, depois do vazamen-
to de áudios sexistas do parlamentar, afir-
mando que as mulheres ucranianas, refu-
giadas de guerra, “são fáceis porque são
pobres”. Em junho do ano passado, o en-
tão vereador Doutor Jairinho, do Rio de
Janeiro, perdeu o mandato por envolvi-
mento na morte do menino Henry Borel,
de 4 anos. E o que dizer do também vere-
ador carioca Gabriel Monteiro, acusado
de estupro de vulnerável? A Comissão de
Ética da Câmara pediu por unanimidade
a cassação do parlamentar, mas a decisão
depende de aprovação no plenário.

 
A rígida punição aplicada ao vereador
de Curitiba vai contra o posicionamento
oficial da Igreja Católica, suposta vítima
do ato que teria sido liderado por Freitas.
O padre Luiz Hass não só saiu em defesa
do parlamentar como esteve presente na
sessão de cassação e sentou na primeira fi-
la ao lado do réu. A Arquidiocese de Curi-
tiba inicialmente registrou um boletim
de ocorrência contra o protesto, mas, ao
perceber a instrumentalização política do
ato, voltou atrás. Durante a tramitação do
processo, a entidade entregou ao Conselho
de Ética da Câmara um documento colo-
cando-se contra a cassação, considerando
a punição desproporcional ao ocorrido e
ainda elogiou o ativismo de Freitas contra
o racismo e na defesa da população negra.
“A manifestação contra o racismo é legíti-
ma, fundamenta-se no Evangelho e sem-
pre encontrará o respaldo da Igreja. Perce-
be-se no vereador o anseio por justiça em
favor daqueles que historicamente sofrem
discriminação em nosso país. A causa é
nobre e merece respeito”, diz um trecho do
documento. O padre Júlio Lancellotti, re-
conhecido pela defesa dos excluídos, tam-
bém saiu em defesa de Freitas.

 
“Tecnicamente, não há objeto da cas-
sação, porque não houve invasão da igreja.
Canonicamente, não existiu a interrupção
do ato litúrgico nem a profanação do espa-
ço sagrado. Também não proferiram ne-
nhuma palavra contra a fé nem houve de-
predação”, diz Lancellotti, acrescentando
que a cassação é fruto do racismo estrutu-
ral. “A motivação é de ódio aos pobres e de
um racismo que não suporta um vereador
periférico questionar a hegemonia branca
que manda em Curitiba. Não há razoabi-
lidade. É uma cassação montada em cima
de fake news, ódio, racismo e aporofobia.”

 
O episódio teve grande repercussão no
interior da Igreja Católica e chegou até o
Vaticano. No fim de setembro, Freitas terá
um encontro com o papa Francisco, quan-
do deverá denunciar a cassação e o exter-
mínio da juventude negra no Brasil. Há
também a expectativa de o vereador ser
recebido por organismos internacionais.

 
“Tentaram silenciar nossas vozes, nos as-
fixiar e nos matar politicamente, porque
ousamos fazer com que as pessoas soubes-
sem que a mesma violência que ocorreu
no assassinato do Moïse também ocorre
em Curitiba”, acusa Freitas. Os advogados
do vereador, Guilherme Gonçalves, Edson
Abdala e Antônio Carlos de Almeida Cas-
tro, o Kakay, entraram com uma ação na
Justiça do Paraná, pedindo não só a devo-
lução do mandato de Freitas, mas também
a anulação da inelegibilidade de dez anos
aprovada pela Câmara. O petista é candi-
dato a deputado estadual.

 
Dentre os argumentos da defesa está
o de que o processo não cumpriu o tempo
estipulado pela legislação. Segundo os ad-
vogados, a jurisprudência estabelece que o
processo deveria ter ocorrido em, no má-
ximo, 90 dias corridos. No regimento da
Câmara, consta que esse prazo pode ser
contado em dias úteis, o que para os advo-
gados é inconstitucional. “A jurisprudên-
cia entende que o prazo para fim de cas-
sação de mandato dentro do Legislativo
sempre é contado como decadência, em
dias corridos”, explica Gonçalves. “Eles
querem cassar o Renato desde o início. To-
da instrução do processo deixa claro que
a cassação se deu por racismo. Foi um jo-
go de cartas marcadas”, completa Kakay.

 
O presidente da Câmara, vereador Tico
Kuzma, defendeu o regimento interno e
diz que a cassação por quebra de decoro é
subjetiva. “É uma decisão de interpreta-
ção de cada vereador, que, após analisar as
provas, assim como o relatório do Conse-
lho de Ética, define se o ato foi suficiente
ou não para a quebra de decoro.” O parla-
mentar nega o caráter racista do processo.
Freitas não é o único que se diz ví-
tima de racismo na política. Eleito em
2020 prefeito de Pesqueira, município do
Agreste pernambucano, o cacique Mar-
cos Xucuru jamais conseguiu assumir o
cargo e, no início de agosto, o TSE confir-
mou a inelegibilidade do indígena. Quem
assumiu interinamente o cargo foi o pre-
sidente da Câmara, Sebastião Leite da Sil-
va Neto, que deverá repassar a função ao
prefeito que será eleito em 30 de outubro.

 
Recai sobre Marquinhos, como é co-
nhecido, a acusação de que ele teria es-
timulado uma revolta popular em 2003,
que resultou no incêndio de uma pro-
priedade. Ele nem sequer estava presen-
te no ato. O conflito foi gerado depois de
uma emboscada contra o próprio caci-
que, que resultou na morte de dois indí-
genas. Marquinhos recebia atendimen-
to médico durante a revolta popular, mas
foi condenado por supostamente ter lide-
rado o movimento. “Naquela época, cor-
ria um boato de que o cacique também ti-
nha sido morto e é nesse clima que a co-
munidade xucuru vai incendiar a pro-
priedade”, explica Eliene Amorim, pes-
quisadora da causa indígena. O cacique
foi condenado em duas instâncias e, em
2016, a sentença foi transitada em julga-
do, cravando o nome de Marcos Xucuru
na Lei da Ficha Limpa.

 
“A decisão do TSE reafirma as injusti-
ças e a criminalização que os xucurus so-
freram historicamente. Com base em jul-
gamento que ocorreu há tanto tempo, os
ministros impediram que a principal li-
derança desse povo ocupasse a função de
prefeito, legitimando o preconceito e o ra-
cismo estrutural”, destaca Saulo Feitosa,
estudioso dos povos xucuru, acrescentan-
do que o conflito de 2003 se deu num con-
texto de disputa pela terra e que os agres-
sores não eram os indígenas. Marcos
Xucuru se diz injustiçado tanto pela de-
cisão do TSE quanto por ter sido conde-
nado pelo conflito de 2003. “Por conta da
luta pelo território ainda hoje estou sendo
perseguido, tendo meus direitos políticos
cassados por uma coisa que eu não cometi.
Algumas pessoas não aceitam que os indí-
genas possam ocupar espaços de poder.”
A Articulação dos Povos Indígenas
(Apib), em conjunto com a Articulação
dos Povos e Organizações Indígenas do
Nordeste, Minas Gerais e Espírito Santo
(Apoinme), publicou uma nota em apoio
a Marquinhos e contra a decisão do TSE.

 
Dentre os ministros da Corte eleitoral,
o único que votou a favor do indígena foi
Edson Fachin. O ministro observou que o
caso está inserido “no âmbito de um com-
plexo contexto de conflito étnico, no qual
está em jogo não apenas o bem econômico
nem somente o patrimônio das pessoas”.

 

CARTA CAPITAL