Brazilian media titan Globo bowed its ambitious doc series “Extremists.br” to market audiences in Berlin last month alongside a slate of equally promising emerging concepts. With sights now set on France, the telenovela and docu-centered powerhouse readies for buyers at Series Mania.
Directed by journalist and documentary filmmaker Caio Cavechini (“Marielle – The Crime That Shook Brazil”), the project examines Brazil’s far-right movement, from the sociology of its radical idolatry to the underpinnings of corrosive propaganda campaigns that urge it on, shining a torch on the country’s highly divisive political climate.
With unnerving ease, the eight-part series captures how readily a captive audience takes to fastly-spread tall tales, with original and nuanced thought thrown out the window as devotees cling to their dogmas, waging war with cut and paste battle cries while the vivid green and yellow flag of their country hangs around their shoulders, representative of a certain painted-on patriotism.
The Globoplay Original, produced by the company’s journalism arm,examines the lives of those adjacent to the faction through interviews with the contingents’ defenders, defectors, sociologists and an agent provocateur that develops carefully-orchestrated chaos.
Cavechini spoke withPvNewon demystifying the turbulent coalition and the future of a global political arena tied to fast-disseminating online faslehoods.
When plotting the trajectory of the series, how did you choose which participants would be involved?
We attended numerous demonstrations of the extreme right over two years, in dozens of states in Brazil. The search for characters in the documentary took place in these environments. But, there were other ways: some researchers crossed data from public WhatsApp groups and identified the phones that most triggered content to guide discussions. We called hundreds of these “influencer” cell phones.
It’s important to note that in an environment of extreme competition in streaming between platforms, including disputes over famous criminal cases, in “Extremists.Br” there was a very risky bet by Globoplay and Globo’s Journalism: investing in a current affairs documentary in which anything could happen. New characters emerged, new events surpassed the previous ones, the radicalism sown by the highest authorities in the country germinated in distant places. It’s a very complex web and its portrayal required constant changes in the editing of the episodes. Even in the case of sociologists and specialists, their analyzes often ended up being dated, given a new fact of local reality.We recorded over a thousand hours of material.
A healthy skepticism that holds government accountable should be something normal, to ensure the populace is taken care of rather than the profiteers. Do you feel that our institutions are partly to blame for increasing the divide, pushing the atmosphere from honest questioning of their actions to violent uprising?
The beauty of democracy is being able to question power, monitor its abuses, charge for its deviations. Periodically, voters can decide whether these deviations are reason enough to change incumbents or not. This healthy debate has been completely distorted by new communication tools and I can’t see the world’s governments as the first to light that fuse. The radicalization of large portions of the population was only possible with the flourishing of a parallel public sphere, backed by social networks. They’re spaces of permanent mobilization, of reiteration of fear and urgency.
Of course, conspiracy theories and violent speeches need some ballast in real dissatisfaction – which will then be manipulated and distorted. I think it’s important to also include the responsibility of economic power in the erosion of that public trust. We’re living through an economic crisis and a climate crisis – not to mention that we have just emerged from a global pandemic. Inequality is a palpable phenomenon and the future for many people does not look promising. The extreme right knew how to hijack the public debate to offer answers that were easy to assimilate, with appealing language, which fit very well into the business model of the big platforms.
Brazil’s president Lula de Silva mentioned instating a law that would punish speech designed as misinformation. Do you think it’s wise to place the power of judging what is and is not ‘fake news’ into the hands of those in power? How do you feel that might affect your work?
I think it’s necessary to differentiate the political initiative from calling for a regulatory effort on who will exercise that power. Autocrats don’t need big legislative debates about disinformation to implement censorship. Bolsonarism itself, which on the one hand was a defender of freedoms by rejecting laws such as “fake news,” on the other hand interfered politically in state bodies, historically independent of governments, to restrict the circulation of information and attack opponents.
Government-led surveillance of the media doesn’t need new laws to kick in — and it’s clear that it has the potential to destroy the foundation of my work and the foundation of our democratic society. But, in proposing some regulation on disinformation, we’re not talking about a superficial solution. We’re talking about a necessary debate in the face of a new reality, a very harmful one, which no one has discovered the formula to deal with. This debate involves the checks and balances of democracy, where there are judges, higher courts, the possibility of surveillance by the legislative power and follow-up by independent bodies. Not facing the challenge of regulation is only in the interests of the big platforms’ business model – and we’re witnessing how this virtual “anything goes” can have consequences in the real world.
As you finished the project, did you feel hopeful for the future of politics in Brazil, and around the globe? Or, is there a sense that our disconnection from one another, and attachment to an internet full of pointed algorithms, has taken us too far to return to a more human approach to our disagreements?
It’s difficult to spend two years immersed in the parallel and violent reality of the extreme right, realizing how widespread this discourse is in Brazilian society, and leaving feeling hopeful. The electoral defeat may not have reduced mobilization capacity, just look at the large number of elected parliamentarians who appealed to the same distortions, using these algorithms. So, I think the next few years will still be quite turbulent.
But just like chasing stories is what moves me, listening to them, understanding them, being surprised by them is what transforms me. I still believe that, in the same way that falsified narratives hijacked public debate, a joint effort of education, communication and discoveries can give us back the coexistence with the different.
