Brazil's left arrived late to digital communication and became 'cringe,' says Jones Manoel

Brazil's left arrived late to digital media, and when it tries to speak to young people, it can come across as “cringe.” That is the diagnosis offered by historian Jones Manoel, a PSOL candidate for Brazil's Chamber of Deputies in Pernambuco and one of the few progressive figures to master the country's social networks.

In an interview with the podcast A Máquina, published by Folha's Café da Manhã during the election period, Manoel said the problem goes beyond digital communication. “The message of the left today is very focused on the past and offers few alternatives for the future,” he said.

He criticized the way progressives cite historically low unemployment without examining the quality of the work involved. “Most progressives say: ‘we have the lowest unemployment in history.’ In other words, the progressive is saying that someone spending 12 hours on a bicycle delivering iFood is employment, and that is fine,” he said.

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The message of the left today is very focused on the past and offers few alternatives for the future.

Manoel identified three reasons why the right engages more effectively online. First, he said, communication platforms are not neutral and that big technology companies have an explicit political side. He cited reporting in The New York Times and academic research that, in his view, show algorithmic governance favoring far-right content.

Second, he said the right and far right entered social media first. He recalled hearing about Olavo de Carvalho, the Mises Institute and the Liberal Institute as early as 2012, while the first successful Marxist YouTube channel emerged only in 2017, after Dilma Rousseff's impeachment. Political parties and social movements on the left, he argued, still resist digital communication.

He also linked the left's difficulties to the expansion of internet access in Brazil. The Workers' Party had governed for a long time when internet use surged, he said, and became identified with the existing system. Brazil's left-wing parties are also controlled by family political networks, he argued, while the decentralized nature of the internet challenges those established structures. Manoel presented his own rise through YouTube as an example of how digital media can open space for someone without a political family background.

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Most progressives say: ‘we have the lowest unemployment in history.’ In other words, the progressive is saying that someone spending 12 hours on a bicycle delivering iFood is employment, and that is fine.