Frouxonaro and cuckservatives: metaphors of virile masculinity in bolsonarista digital activism

Abstract

This article focuses on the use of virility metaphors in the political actions of far-right cyberactivists. It examines the attacks exchanged between agents within the far-right, in particular those targeted against Jair Bolsonaro, Brazilian president from 2019 to 2022, by his male followers who share his anti-feminism. It is argued that, in these disputes, metaphors of virility have a dual role: they are a way of interpreting and of evaluating opponents, disputes and men themselves. This role results from the articulation between three elements: i) beliefs and attitudes based on an ideal of virility; ii) a lived experience of being and becoming a man; and, iii), how digital platforms operate. Our hypothesis is that there is an elective affinity between, on the one hand, the form of male socialisation defined as the “men’s house” by Welzer-Lang and, on the other hand, the architecture of digital platforms designed as a competitive, anti-institutional environment in which visibility and reputation are built.

Keywords:
extreme right; digital sociology; virility; men’s house; true man

Resumo

Este artigo tem por objeto o uso de metáforas de virilidade nas ações políticas de ciberativistas de extrema direita. Vamos examinar os ataques trocados entre agentes do mesmo campo da extrema-direita, em particular aqueles dirigidos contra o então presidente Jair Bolsonaro por homens que são seus seguidores e compartilham de seu antifeminismo. Veremos que as metáforas da virilidade têm um papel duplo nessas disputas: como forma de compreender e avaliar tanto adversários e disputas quanto a si mesmos. Esse papel nasce da articulação entre três elementos: i) crenças e atitudes baseadas em um ideal de virilidade; ii) uma experiência vivida de ser e tornar-se homem; e, iii), o modo de funcionamento das plataformas digitais. Argumentamos que existe uma afinidade eletiva entre, de um lado, a forma de socialização masculina definida por Welzer-Lang com seu conceito de “casa dos homens”, e, de outro, a arquitetura das plataformas digitais desenhada como um espaço competitivo e anti-institucional no qual se constrói visibilidade e reputação.

Palavras-chave:
extrema-direita; sociologia digital; virilidade; casa dos homens; homem de verdade

Resumen

Este artículo se centra en el uso de metáforas de virilidad en las acciones políticas de los ciberactivistas de extrema derecha. Examinaremos los ataques intercambiados entre agentes del mismo campo de extrema derecha, en particular los dirigidos contra el expresidente Jair Bolsonaro por sus seguidores hombres que compartían su antifeminismo. Veremos que las metáforas de la virilidad desempeñan un doble papel en estas disputas: ellas son una forma de entender y evaluar tanto a los oponentes y disputas como a ellos mismos. Este rol nace de la articulación entre tres elementos: i) creencias y actitudes basadas en un ideal de virilidad; ii) una experiencia vivida de ser y devenir hombre; iii) el funcionamiento de las plataformas digitales. Argumentamos que existe una afinidad electiva, por un lado, entre la forma de socialización masculina definida por Welzer-Lang con su concepto de “casa de hombres”, y, por otro lado, la arquitectura de plataformas digitales que se diseña como un espacio competitivo y anti-institucional donde se construye visibilidad y reputación.

Palabras clave:
extrema derecha; sociología digital; virilidad; casa de hombres; hombre de verdad

Introduction

When observing the intense activity by former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and his followers-bolsonarista cyber-activists-in socio-digital platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, one witnesses the recurring use of homophobic and misogynist terms, as well as expressions of virility. Such recurrence, constitutive of these actors’ political activism in digital spaces, is not just a rhetorical style, but the expression of a cultural pattern of masculinity.

This article investigates political actions by far-right activists supporters of Jair Bolsonaro made in digital platforms, characterised by the use of categories of accusation structured around virility metaphors. Most studies have looked at the use of those categories by cyber-activists targeted against their opponents, especially against women. In this article, in turn, I focus on attacks exchanged among agents within the same far-right field, particularly those directed against former president Jair Bolsonaro by his own male followers who share his anti-feminism. This empirical choice highlights the way in which virility metaphors operate in these actors’ political struggles as a way to characterise opponents and disputes, as well as to understand and evaluate themselves, thus expressing deeper cultural gender structures.

I also believe that the central role of these virility metaphors among far-right cyber-activists result from a link between certain attitudes and beliefs regarding the meaning of virility, grounded on an ideal and on a specific experience of building and living masculinity, as well as on the specific way that digital platforms work. The hypothesis I will develop at the end of the article is that there is an elective relationship between male socialisation, in a space conceptualised by Welzer-Lang as “men’s house,” and the economy of attention typical of digital platforms’ architecture, by which reputation and visibility are built based on the market model, conceived as a competitive anti-institutional space. I argue that it is based precisely on this relationship that virility disputes become a recurrent political tool within far-right cyber-activism.

The reconfiguration of the right: anti-feminism and ­alt-right as diagnosis, project and action style

Anti-feminism is a clearly identifiable characteristic on posts of cyber-activists organised around Jair Bolsonaro. In a literature review dedicated to anti-feminism, Bonet-Martí defines it as “that counter-movement that arises in opposition to ideas, policies and people that make up the feminist movement (...). In this sense, anti-feminism follows the model of conflict (...) based on the use that both movements and countermovements make of the tactical repertoires provided by the existing technology, the social structure and the historical moment (...)” (Bonet-Martí, 2021, p. 62).

In that perspective, Bonet-Martí identifies a research field framed by what she classifies as cyber anti-feminisms. I claim that the agents and practices examined here belong in that field. It is possible to identify numerous episodes of cyber-harassment against women-feminist cyber-activists or not-perpetrated by Jair Bolsonaro, as well as by his followers. A commonly targeted category are women in partisan politics, and women journalists, but nearly any prominent woman can be a target for harassment. As I will discuss below, harassment is a connective action, important not only in terms of the harm intended towards social media user profiles, but also for the internal organisation of far-right cyber-activist networks.

The definition of these cyber-activist user accounts and of their practices as cyber-anti-feminist also refers to another aspect: the fact that it is possible to identify, in their posts, certain practices, ideas and terms, typical of the digital network segments classified as the “manosphere:” online communities-YouTube channels, Facebook pages, forums and websites-almost exclusively formed by men, in which misogynous and anti-feminist speeches are developed (Ging, Siapera, 2019; Ukockis, 2019; Valkenburgh, 2018; 2019). According to Jordi Bonet-Martí, among the techniques of online harassment against women, part of the manosphere repertoire, there are practices of verbal violence, rape and death threats, exposure of personal data and sexualization of the women targeted by the harassment (Bonet-Martí, 2021, p. 64).

This set of practices constitutes a violation of the platforms’ rules and is a crime. In this sense, the political use of these manosphere practices, that is, their use before a larger audience and in the dispute to impose themes to the public debate, will demand a series of specific precautions. Those will be discussed in the following sections, but can be shortly listed as: the use of anonymous accounts and their multiplication by a single user in a way that, when an account is suspended for violating the platform’s terms of use, there are other accounts available, previously known by the cyber-activists network; the ambiguity of messages; the humour; the use of memes and resorting to the so-called “dog whistle”, which misappropriated common symbols to build shared and recognizable meanings among network members.

In this research field, Nagle (2017) offers a fundamental description, in the US, of the shift of anti-feminism, from the manosphere, to a broader political struggle. The author describes the way an anti-feminist cyberculture was progressively built in game forums through harassment against women within the communities, turning these forums simultaneously into a space to socialise conservative ideas, a laboratory of rhetoric techniques and trolling practices and a space for the far-right movement known as alt-right to recruit activists.¹ In this sense, disputes around virility, and anti-feminism as a value, both present in these online communities, added to the terms and tactics created in these spaces, such as cyber-harassment practices, were shifted to the mainstream political struggle (Nagle, 2017).

According to Nagle, as a movement that transforms the conservative field in the US, the alt-right movement has two main targets. The first is summarised in the expression “political correctness,” which includes concerns about the advancement of feminism, the LGBTIQ+ rights agenda, about the supposed demographic decline of European civilization, cultural Marxism and islamization. The second target, and most important for the argument that I develop in this article, is the traditional conservatives, criticised in the expression “cuckservatives,” for their subtle Christian passivity, and for metaphorically offering, as we will see later, their women/nation/race to the non-white foreign invader. In this sense, as the self-assigned name alt-right suggests, these cyber-activists appear as an alternative, for the conservatives, to the so-called traditional right.

As we can see, if it is true that, as well as in the US case addressed by Nagle, the agents that I investigate in Brazil are clearly anti-feminists. It is also true that anti-feminism does not fully cover the way gender and sexuality issues organise their politics in the US or in Brazil. First, their targets are not exclusively women, but also men, allies of feminism or not. In fact, besides men from minorities, such as gays, black men and immigrants, alt-right targets include conservative white men, as long as they are considered weak in the struggle against these minorities. Secondly, understanding these agents and their practices solely within the frame of anti-feminism fails to understand how both of them express gender structures that constitute a specific experience and a cultural model of masculinity and, therefore, reflect and reproduce more broadly accepted attitudes and beliefs.

In this sense, an extended reference to Michael Kimmel’s investigations on masculinity models in the US, on the relationship between dominant and subordinate models of masculinity, is absent from Nagle’s text. Kimmel , in his discussion on hegemonic masculinity and, especially, when he refers to the the American far-right’s appropriation of poor and middle-class white men’s-the “angry white men”-resentment, he highlights the economic and cultural changes taking place in the US, apparently related to the social ascension of minorities (Kimmel, 1997; 1998; 2013). In Angry White Men, Kimmel shows how resentment is gendered and involves the failure to realise cultural models of masculinity.

Within this article’s scope, where I examine Brazilian agents that adapt vocabulary and practices of the American alt-right movement into their own political struggles, I do not believe that it is possible to automatically transpose Kimmel’s hypothesis on social change, minorities and white resentment, to explain the adhesion to the far-right of Brazilian cyber-activists. Thus, I will focus on Kimmel’s suggestions of cultural models of masculinity to understand how these agents conduct disputes around an ideal of virility among men. I will do that later, after presenting to the reader how I observed user accounts and posts.

Observing posts

This investigation’s starting point is the observation, from 2017 to 2021, of the posts of a series of user accounts on the platform Twitter, attacking leftist agendas, politicians and activists. The accounts were initially selected based on the frequency they exercised digital harassment in replies to posts by accounts of feminist women on the platform. After that, I identified and listed other associated accounts that I have followed on a weekly basis since then. These profiles share themes, digital action techniques and the use of certain terms with the American alt-right, and became actively involved in Jair Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign, in 2018.

As pointed out by Leitão and Gomes (2017), one of the ways to conduct observation on Twitter consists of following conversation threads. These happen as a perambulation guided by “a back and forth transient ethnographic sensibility, wandering through paths among a multitude of images and messages [that] may be fruitful when activated by the observation of platforms characterised by intense transit and ephemerality” (Leitão and Gomes, 2017, p. 46). What we observe on Twitter is a category of communicative action-the post-made by a digital persona-the profile-whose public identity we may or may not know. In gamer communities and other forums, it used to be a common practice to use as a digital persona’s profile picture an image that did not photographically identify the user-the avatar-and a nickname different from from the user’s legal name. With the predominance of social network platforms such as Facebook, those practices were left behind in favor of what I called “identity convergence,” that is, the requirement that the user’s online presentation made their public identity visible (Ramos, 2015). However, anonymity remained a rule for digital personas in the case of users who migrated from forums to act as cyber-activists, who post content that may result in punishment - accounts banned from the platform, political persecution, administrative or even legal charges.

This systematic perambulation reached a tipping point when, in 2020, the first news about the Federal Police investigation of an “organised group that spread fake news and hate speech towards public figures and institutions, including members of congress, senators and ministers of the Supreme Federal Court, acting coordinately [in digital platforms]” went public (Inquérito 4781, STF, p. 3).² In his statement, federal representative Alexandre Frota testified to the existence of a series of anonymous accounts that operated on Twitter as part of the so-called “Office of Hate” and, subsequently, informed their nicknames, some of which were in the list that I followed regularly.

Based on that, I refined my observation of those accounts, following some of the associations identified in the police investigation, their posts on Twitter and their conversations when they directed me to other platforms, especially Facebook and YouTube. My entire observation was made in public spaces of the platforms and public posts were captured even if they were deleted by their authors later on. As well as the Federal Police, I also have not identified the profiles’ civil identities. However, this has never been a huge concern in my research, since my focus is on identifying and understanding patterns of discursive actions. Nonetheless, there is another ethical and political reason that has led me to maintain the profiles anonymous in this article.

One of the motivations of trolls is to build a reputation with the network of profiles with which the agent identifies, by catching attention in the network of opponent profiles, thus disturbing their operation. Thus, one of the oldest forms of anti-feminist trolling was to pretend to be a feminist woman and join emailing discussion lists to make absurd and/or insulting statements that disturb the communication flow. The disturbance was perceived as a prize that built reputation and admiration among peers. Although these far-right cyber-activists say that anonymity and trolling have been reconfigured as an alt-right struggle tactic against authoritarianism, the intent to build reputation continues to be the fundamental reason for their actions. Hence, I was not surprised when I witnessed one of these accounts bragging about having their nickname listed in the Supreme Federal Court investigation, as well as, later, about having become the object of scientific investigation in papers and academic articles. This is the reason why, in this article, I try to break this cycle of validation of trolls by adopting a second layer of anonymity for anonymous profiles, and I will only identify figures that do not resort to anonymity.

During this research, I have also followed some profiles that present their identity and occupy a leading position in Bolsonaro’s militancy. Jair Bolsonaro’s sons who hold political office: Flávio Bolsonaro, senator; Eduardo Bolsonaro, federal representative; and Carlos Bolsonaro, city council member; as well as the late public intellectual Olavo de Carvalho. As these agents publicly dispute the direction of this far-right cyber-activist movement, their posts are widely known and disseminated and are appropriated in these virility disputes, and are therefore examined in this article.

Masculinity, cultural models and metaphors

Guided by the methods of the American alt-right, the user profiles that I followed emulate ideas, esthetics and performances of the global far-right and the American one in particular. They make an effort to adapt a series of terms, symbols and practices of the American alt-right into the Brazilian reality (Casarões, 2022). A short glossary of the terms that they adapted is presented below:

Beta: alt-righters are obsessed with masculinity conceived in terms of virility, realised in relationships of conflict and dominance among men. This is expressed in the recurring use of the categories “alpha” and “beta male”. The alpha males are virile leaders, and the beta males are portrayed as weak, emasculated men. We must bear in mind that these categories are most frequently used in contexts of accusation. User exchanges reveal a self-derisive environment, i.e., there are more attacks on the lack of virility than its affirmation. Hence, the use of the term Beta is more recurring.

Cuckservative or cuck: the term “cuckservative,” originated in the alt-right, is a combination of “conservative” and “cuckold,” is used to describe Republicans as emasculated or “sold out.” “Cuckservative” is a generalised accusation and, as we will see below, a matrix for local terms such as tight pants and prudence and sophistication.

Chad: the stallion, in Brazilian adaptation. Different from the Alpha, he does not lead, but follows his will and desires freely. In the manosphere vocabulary, the term Chad identifies those men who are the favourite objects of envy for being naturally attractive, intelligent, successful with women and materially. The category is used in a self-derisive way to reinforce the idea that, without some type of rebellion or transformation, the men in these communities settle for an inferior position and do not have the women they desire or think they deserve, since women are superficial, interested only in beauty and money-as they do not look like the chads. In the Brazilian adaptation, when accounts make a political use of the term, the issue of success with women remains in the background. The category is used to identify the winner in struggle, he who imposes his will without any concerns. Thus, in the contests between Jair Bolsonaro and Federal Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, Bolsonaro’s losses resulted in his being nicknamed Alechad.

The categories above show that masculinity models focused on virility are central to how political struggles are understood in this ecosystem. This understanding can be summarised in three fundamental ideas: men are the protagonists of politics; politics itself is the result of the struggle for domination among men; and the result of that contest is at the same time the product of and the measure of the virility of those involved. It is important to highlight that these models have a reflexive and self-critical dimension. The use of this repertoire is not restrictive; in a somewhat thoughtless way, they examine themselves and others, and evaluate their interactions and their results in terms of virility.

These observations take us back, to sum up the theoretical discussion introduced above. According to Kimmel, masculinities are socially built on two inter-related fields of power relationships: the relationships between men and women, and the ones between men and other men; i.e., male dominance operates not only as the power of men over women, but also as the power of some men over other men. These relationships among men unfold into two other dimensions: on one hand, masculinity is always at risk, it can be lost or reduced according to the result of a struggle. On the other, the consciousness that it is at stake in power relations is greater among those defeated in virility struggles (Kimmel, 1998).

Virility struggles are part of a cultural model of masculinity dubbed by Kimmel as The Real Man. Let us see:

According to Kimmel, there is one institutionally valued model of masculinity, the Good Man; and another, a type of practice model, the Real Man. In a 2018 interview, he illustrates this with a conversation he had with military cadets:

Here’s what they said (now this is West Point): “Honor, duty, integrity, sacrifice, do the right thing, stand up for the little guy, be a provider, be a protector.” Sacrifice, that was one of the first things that they said. Give to others, be generous, responsible; that’s what they said it means to be a good man. Now, you and I would probably say, Well, actually, that’s what it means to be a good person, and I completely agree with you. However, they, those guys, experienced it as gendered.

So, “Where did you learn that?,” I asked.

And they said, “Well, it’s everywhere. It’s our culture, it’s Homeric, it’s Shakespearean, it’s the Judeo-Christian heritage.”

I said, “That’s fine, okay. So, that’s what it means to you to be a good man. Now tell me if all of those traits-integrity and honor and responsibility and sacrifice-tell me if those show up for you when I say this: ‘Man the F up, be a real man.’”

And they said, “Oh no, that’s completely different.”

I said, “Well, what is that?”

And they said “Tough, strong, never show weakness, win at all costs, suck it up, play through pain, be competitive, get rich, get laid.”

I said, “Okay, that’s what it means to be a real man? Where did you learn that?”

And they said, in order, “My father, my coach, my guy friends, my older brother.”

(Kimmel; Wade, 2018, p. 238)

The alt-right glossary above is the expression of the prevalence of the second model in the American imagination. However, since the aim of this article is to understand how Brazilian user profiles adapt alt-right themes, studies on Brazilian masculinities are relevant.

According to Miriam Grossi (Grossi, 2004), the dominant definition of masculinity in the West as well as in Brazilian culture has the male as an active principle. Regarding a second aspect widely present in Brazil, this principle can be meaningful both in its sexual aspect and as a producer of gender. That is directly related to the possibility of penetrating another body that, regardless of its gender, is feminised precisely because it is penetrated. Thus, there is a path of specifications that begins with the general meaning of male as connected to action, and moves towards the definition of action as a specific sexual act: penetrating the orifices of another body with the penis. Then there is one last specification derived from that: the action of penetration has the power to ratify or rectify gender, masculinizing the one who penetrates, and feminising the one penetrated. The author mentions yet another aspect of the “hegemonic model of masculinity in our culture: activity does not regard only to sexuality; it is also positively perceived as aggressiveness” (Grossi, 2004, p. 6).³

We will resume the relationship between masculinity, penetration, virility and violence below, but here we want to preserve the fact that, if it is true that gender is not what derives from a sexed body, the body and the forms of action over it configure the support over which symbolic gender differences are produced. Thus we will see posts that assign to political struggles the capacity to virilise or feminise their agents. This attribution is expressed in the metaphors employed to name both agents and their political struggles. Thus, before examining the posted texts, memes and images selected and read based on their metaphors, some observations on my analytical use of those so-called figures of speech.

Lakoff and Johnson (1980), as commented by Gustavo Silva (2021, p.164), argue that metaphors have a fundamental role in “structuring language, thought, perception and human action.” That said, metaphors work not only as figures of speech, but also as a mechanism to structure cognition by building frames of intelligibility in every field of human action and interaction. In this sense, the two themes of the accounts investigated in this article, masculinity and politics,⁴ can be studied based on the metaphors mobilised to understand them.

Arguing that cognition is structured through metaphors sheds light on its analytical potential to address patterns of action and intelligibility, particularly in politics. However, on the other hand, Lakoff has been criticised by anthropologists for inverting the relationship between cultural models and metaphors, since cultural models substantiate metaphors which, in turn, organise comprehension and not the other way around (Silva, 2021, p. 166). The interesting aspect of this criticism is that it preserves Lakoff’s methodological contribution-to understand how metaphors make processes intelligible. It requires, however, that we examine the cultural models that structure the metaphors.

Thus, it seems appropriate to depart from Lakoff’s assumption that political speech is predominantly metaphorical. The use of metaphors is far from being limited to so-called populist politicians, but is the general rule in political debate. Secondly, metaphors are not limited only to a technical purpose, of simplifying the presentation of complex ideas, but it structures political understanding, as expressed in political discourse (Lakoff, 1995).

My analysis of the posts consisted in examining misogynous and homophobic metaphors employed by far-right cyber-activists insofar as I have verified their structural function in these agents’ political speech. However, I agree with the critiques of the radicality of Lakoff’s argument. Therefore, I conduct the exam of the posts based on the hypothesis that the metaphors I analyse are structured by a specific cultural production of masculinity that shapes far-right cyber-activists’ understanding of political struggles as virility struggles.

Virility in politics: sexual metaphors of domination in action

“Frouxonaro: an accusation by the left wing reaches the far-right

Images of strength and virility are the type of features that Jair Bolsonaro mobilises in the construction of his public image. Hence, it is not surprising that his critics have attacked the candidate for his refusal to go to the presidential debates in 2018, using the expression Frouxonaro.⁵ An advanced search on Twitter shows that this expression started to be used in October 2018 by left-wing critics.⁶ The following image shows that mobilisation:

Figure 1
#Frouxonaro ran from the debate

The first shifts in the use of this expression from the left to the right came with the intensification of the critiques against the Supreme Federal Court among Bolsonaro supporters at the end of 2019. Initially, the critiques were directed towards senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the president’s son, for supporting neither a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry (CPI, in Portuguese), nor a request for the impeachment of ministers of the Supreme Court. He was called Flávio Frouxonaro.

However, tension escalated among supporters of then minister Sérgio Moro, by the end of 2019 and into the first semester of 2020, the expression began to be used against the president by a morista portion of his supporters, for what was perceived as a deeper weakness in promoting conservative agendas. At that moment, the term went to the right-wing side, but it was still circumscribed to Sérgio Moro’s supporters.

It was only after the middle of 2020 that the term became part of the lexicon of an important group among the president’s supporters: the followers of the public intellectual Olavo de Carvalho, who directed an increasingly systematic critique against the predominance of military officers and jurists in the direction the government was taking. Besides this critique, as shown in the tweet below, in the same year of 2020, the acceptance of Covid vaccines by the Bolsonaro government (though delayed), particularly the Corona Vac brand, worked as a motto for the accusations of frouxonarismo by cyber-activists:

Figure 2
(Post) frouxonaro bails. so far nothing new. After that, even so, he is criticised. So far nothing new again. (CNN Breaking News headline) Bolsonaro changes [his] tone and speaks of “union” in the presentation of Covid-19 vaccination plan.

This shift of a criticism originated in the left wing to a broad use by the rightwing implies a subtle but important move. What for the left was an irony attacking the virile performance of Jair Bolsonaro was repurposed by the alt-right, inscribed within a broader criticism directed against the traditional right, accused of being too “civilised” and incapable of defending conservative values in a war situation between civilizations. That is precisely what we will see unfolding in the critiques against Bolsonaro’s lack of virility.

Sexual vocabulary and the adaptation of alt-right critiques against the established right

Two main characters in the bolsonarista universe are unavoidable when we think of adapting the alt-right American critiques to Brazil. Those are: Olavo de Carvalho and Carlos Bolsonaro, the president’s first son, known as “01,” also the leader of his digital communication operations. Olavo brought in the model of dirty-language rhetoric-full of sexual references, particularly anal references-as a key tool for political communication. One example among many others is seen in the tweet below:

Figure 3
Here comes Piçol [PSOL] behind the country's arse

Carlos Bolsonaro, in turn, tries to adapt the American alt-right by coining nicknames, frequently sexually charged, to identify his father’s political enemies. Such nicknames work largely as a category of identification and accusation within the Olavista segment of bolsonarista digital activism. In the following tweet, for example, Carlos Bolsonaro attacks their former ally Sérgio Moro:

Figure 4
(Post) Prudence, sophistication, biography and much, but much method! (Journal headline, by O Globo) `There are good people in the Centrão', says Moro about considering [an] alliance with any party.⁷

“Prudence and sophistication” is one of Carlos Bolsonaro’s most frequent expressions. According to Zanini, it serves to ridicule right-wing politicians, especially those who define themselves as liberal, and who are critics of bolsonarista radicalism. This framework includes São Paulo governor João Dória and the leaderships of Partido Novo and the MBL (Movimento Brasil Livre (Free Brazil Movement, in English). Zanini attributes the creation of the term to a satirical YouTube channel called Brasileirinhos (Little Brazilians), successful among the president’s supporters. The channel has two actors dressed as clowns or wearing masks, who star in the skits. According to Zanini: “The videos use a nonsense language but its content is unmistakably pro-Bolsonaro. In a video from January 5, 2020, the expression “prudence and sophistication” was used to mock liberals. In it, men dressed as 1980s businessmen show their clothing styles in front of an orange wall. “Liberals: Prudence and sophistication”, begins the video. And it continues: “They are cautious about their stance. They turn their backs to fanaticism. Like an invisible hand. Polarisation? No!,” says the narrator. The video ends with a phrase that later became a bolsonarista meme. “Liberalism. You dig?” (Zanini, 2020).

As we can see, the video and its appropriation by Carlos Bolsonaro reveal an effort to adapt the alt-right argument about a feminised right that “turns its back” and “likes an invisible hand.” It is not difficult to note the reference to juvenile sexual games in which masculinity is put at risk by the exposure of male buttocks to hand rubbing.

The politician who became the main target of this kind of mockery was the then governor of the state of São Paulo, João Dória, who received the nickname tight pants. Here too the feminising sexual connotation is revealed by the Dória’s trousers as supposedly resembling female or gay clothing style. A tight fittings reveals the buttocks as an object of desire, in contrast with male clothing, which should be loose to prioritise comfort and convenience, and not the exhibition of the buttocks.

Kássio Nunes' appointment and the critique of the government legal apparatus in June 2020

After a series of criticisms against the Federal Supreme Federal since the beginning of his mandate in 2019, in June 2020, Bolsonaro revealed his indication for a vacated mandate in the court. His choice of Kassio Nunes Marques was broadly criticised by bolsonarista digital activism, regarded as a concession to what they have pejoratively called the legal and political establishment.

Therefore, the critique of prudence and sophistication seen above, used by Carlos Bolsonaro against Moro, begins to be used by bolsonarista cyber-activists against the Bolsonaro government itself. That is what we can see in the image below, taken from the post of one of the cyber-activists mentioned in an inquiry by the Supreme Federal Court. In it, the then General Secretariat of the Presidency, Jorge Oliveira, and the then Attorney General of the Union, André Mendonça, appear in front of a presidential photograph where Jair Bolsonaro has been replaced by Alexandre de Moraes, Supreme Court:

Figure 5
Sophistication / Prudence

Among digital bolsonaristas, the images of the president informally hugging ministers Dias Toffoli and Gilmar Mendes were regarded as particularly insulting. Based on those reactions, we will continue to analyse the movement that adapted the American alt-right vocabulary to the Brazilian context.

Nagle identifies a category of accusation that alt-right activists mobilise against the mainstream right: “cuckservative.” As we saw above, the term is a contraction of two others: “conservative” and “cuck.” The latter is short for “cuckold,” a sexual fantasy in which the man offers his wife to another man to have sex with her, while he watches. In the American imaginary, this sexual fantasy is frequently racialized, with the couple being white, and the other man black. Thus, the alt-right uses a sexualized male identity to criticise conservatives. In an adaptation effort, expressive groups of Brazilian far-right use, in words and images, a vocabulary associated with the term cuckservative to criticise the traditional right. Various references to emasculation, homosexuality, and cuckoldry, are used in political clashes and in their evaluation. We will see how it was specifically the cuck which became the basis for the metaphors that marked the critical turn of bolsonaristas against Bolsonaro’s government, to the extent that the president failed to fulfil his promises of institutional rupture.

A good example is the first tweet below. The original message, below the response, is a sentence tweeted by Olavo de Carvalho in 2017 that criticised the traditional right, using his characteristic style, full of anal and homophobic references. Since then, the sentence began to be frequently repeated by bolsonarista digital activists. In 2021, it was reoriented, that is, used by far-right cyber-activists to criticise the Bolsonaro family.

Figure 6
(Response) I farted on his dick is Bolsonaro's family motto. (Original tweet) Everything the right-wing wants is to give up the arse and brag about it: “I farted on his dick.”

Based on this metaphorical matrix-being the “passive” one in sexual intercourse, or allowing one’s wife to be penetrated by another man-images are produced and are broadly disseminated by the coordinated action of creating Twitter hashtags, like the following:

Figure 7
The hashtag #BolsonaroTraitor is already third in the trending topics, followed by #LetToffolimilk[cum]OnYou. Curving to the big deal's embrace, so many times anticipated by Crusoé, O Antagonista, #AntagonistaTalk. Now part of the fandom is grumbling, as if it came out of the blueº

The same happens in references to the situation of cuck, such as in the tweet below:

Figure 8
(Post) “Please Your Honor, could you stop doing that? If it is not asking too much, you know. Oh, no? You're not gonna stop?... Ok, ok. That's trueº Yeah. You're right. Sorry to bother you. Wanna have dinner with my wife?” (Headline) “Government ministers travel to São Paulo and meet Alexandre de Moraes” (Other highlights) Federal Supreme Court; dissemination of fake news; organising anti-democratic activities.

The nomination of Kássio Nunes is understood through the metaphor of Bolsonaro’s sexual submission to the Supreme Federal Court in the figures of the ministers Dias Toffoli and Alexandre de Moraes. We know that, within the American far-right, milk is a symbol of white supremacists. The adaptation by the Brazilian far-right, by turning the noun “milk” (from here on, leite) into the verb “to milk” (from here on, leitar) alters the metaphor.⁸ Here, ejaculation is understood as marking the submission of a woman or man to another man. The term has frequently been used to harass cyber-feminists, by ironically asking: “posso leitar?” (let me milk on you?). What is original here is that these categories are used not only to disqualify political opponents, but to explain political relationships and criticise opponents within the far-right. Bolsonaro’s frequent clashes with the Supreme Federal Court, which are often followed by his retreat and peacemaking, are explained through metaphors that classify the president’s behaviour as devirilized, an expression of cuckism.

Vacchina and the submission to tight pants

The use of sexual metaphors to qualify certain political relationships as sexual submission among men (cuckism), was especially intense in the critiques against the purchase by the federal government, at the beginning of 2021, of the Corona Vac vaccine, which had been previously ridiculed by Bolsonaro and his followers as Vacchina. The purchase was made together with the state of São Paulo. Governor João Dória, nicknamed “tight pants” by the far-right, was mentioned above as the favourite target of criticisms against the traditional right. Sexual metaphors were activated to interpret his retreat, as we can see in the following tweets:

Figure 9
Dória pushed for 2bi to the MS (Ministry of Health) a vaccine that he can't deliver. The media tries to blame it on the “extremism” of @ernestofaraujo. Pazuello's incompetence made Dória rub his dick on @jairbolsonaro's face, and it turned out bad for the minister that the generals want to take down.

Figure 10
So what??? What's funny?? What's funny is him putting Bonoro and cia to suck dick???? Get over it, bro!! Jokes about tight pants are old news!!

Figure 11
GO FUCK YOURSELF, LOOSER!!!TIGHT PANTS MADE YOUR DAD, HIS MINISTERS AND YOU (THE SONS) TO SUCK A FAGGY DICK, AND NOW YOU WANNA “DEFEND” A SHITTY VACCINE?? YOU KNOW WHAT'S MY BIGGEST SORROW?? KNOWING THAT YOU, AFTER BEING KICKED OUT OF POLITICS, WILL DIE A FUNÇA [public servant] WITH MY MONEY!

Journalists’ interpretation of Bolsonaro’s political style, made of radicalizations followed by withdrawals, is metaphorized by these cyber-activists as emasculation and sexual submission to the Supreme Federal Court, as in the next tweet:

Figure 12
Has Alechad humiliated Broxonaro [Limp+Bolsonaro] today? Yep. We have worked with zero days without Alechad humiliating the Eunuch.

If conflicts and political relationships in the bolsonarista universe are regarded as male sexual disputes, sexual metaphors work as categories of accusation and intelligibility. Thus, if politics is metaphorized as war by the far-right (Rocha, 2021), these metaphors are built around a cultural model of reasserting masculinity as sexual submission of men to men. It is based on this model that Bolsonaro’s failure in his supposed struggle against the system is understood as sexual submission to the men of the legal and political establishment, and the one portrayed as the man imposing his virility is Alexandre de Moraes. That’s the reason why Alexandre de Moraes was tagged with the nickname “Alechad” by the bolsonaristas. bolsonarista

Throughout the article, I have argued that Brazilian far-right cyber-activists turn sexuality into a mechanism of understanding and judging political struggles, which operates as an organisational principle of their actions in digital networks. In other words, these agents metaphorize political disputes-often within their own niche-as sexual disputes among men. The following sections link several ideas presented throughout the article in order to argue that these metaphors are grounded on a cultural model and on a lived experience of constructing masculinity. I also argue that they become even stronger in the digital context precisely because there is an elective affinity between the experience of constructing their masculinity as lived in what Welzer-Lang has called the “men’s house,” and the disintermediation environment characteristic of digital platforms.

Institutional disintermediation, digital reintermediation, and anti-structural tendencies of digital platforms

It is not possible to fully understand the way these far-right activists act without understanding how the architecture of digital platforms structures social spaces. In fact, one of the main concerns of the vast contemporary literature about social transformations derived from the generalisation of digital communication technologies has been to understand how specific architectures and algorithms operate as a network with human actions and interactions producing effects in subjectivation and sociability modes. Politics is one of the fields most influenced by these transformations. Thus, there is broad literature about the transformations of electoral politics based on the generalisation of digital platforms (Ramos, 2019; Bennett and Segerberg, 2012; Gerbaudo, 2015; Treré, 2015; Gerbaudo and Treré, 2015; Machado and Miskolci, 2019; Bülow and Dias, 2019; Cesarino, 2020).

This article focuses on a specific thesis about the impact of the digital: the architecture of the platforms produces mechanisms of institutional disintermediation and digital reintermediation that affect regimes of truth and modes of subjectivation. In other words, digital communication technologies, organised into platforms, increase the communication capacity of the users’ actions, while at the same time they become a fundamental space to validate the truthfulness of public speech, since their statements are qualified by the audience itself. This process weakens the journalistic, scientific and administrative institutions as producers of knowledge, as well as their claims of authority within these institutions.

This architecture affects the way agents are perceived and perceive themselves, the way they justify their actions and the repertoire of actions to which they resort. That is shaped by a neoliberal governmentality that not only reifies users as individuals, but also treats them as enterprises in a competitive regime that has attention as its scarce asset. In this competitive environment, in which algorithmic mechanisms of dissemination and audience measurements are intrinsically connected, the articulation between human actions and machine activities that organise sociability and subjectivation processes in digital platforms is translated into a fundamental analytical pair that connects algorithmic curatorship with digital entrepreneurs.

In this sense, I understand the cyber-activists studied here as digital entrepreneurs who accumulate reputation and audience as capital in an online struggle for attention. Their sensationalist, insulting style is, literally, a tactic to capture attention both in the networks they oppose and in those they belong to, by capturing emotions and sensations such as indignation and the sense of ridicule. They express one of the fundamental aspects of the alt-right, which is not only the large presence of digital entrepreneurs, but a specific style of making politics suitable to the anti-institutional architecture of digital platforms.

Cesarino addresses this architecture as favourable to anti-structural associative movements. According to the author, the populist political movement of Jair Bolsonaro’s cyber-activists on WhatsApp and Facebook groups or on Twitter’s filter bubbles presents anti-structural characteristics in the terms defined by Victor Turner (Cesarino, 2020). Some of these characteristics are present in the cyber-activism studied here.

The first one is that, in these movements, the markers that distinguish agents according to positions within the social structure are suspended. Online anonymity, as seen before, a characteristic of part of the investigated accounts, conceals information regarding the user’s identity, thus allowing the operation of general principles of identification as stated in the course of the interaction itself, and in the struggle against the group they oppose.

Which takes us to the second characteristic pointed out by the author: building a sense of community established in contraposition to an opponent field. The actions of cyber-activists are conceived of as community actions, that is, based on the idea of a “we”, understood as a moral collective. Hence, the accusation directed towards Jair Bolsonaro, who is seen as a failure in the clashes against the establishment, expresses feelings of collective shame, which explain the emotional intensity expressed in the cursing seen in the posts.

This is directly related to the third characteristic, which consists of a general levelling of these agents and the mobilisation of cultural structural elements to construct their sense of community, this idea of a “we”. Cesarino explores the symbology of the idea of motherland (in Portuguese, pátria, fatherland) in this construction. Here I identify, among the cyber-activists I have investigated, this same motherland symbology, but gendered differently.⁹ In the alt-right perspective, it is a female entity that must be protected by a male action. In this sense, masculinity is the cultural structural element that organises these agents’ common experience. Thus, the struggle for the defence of the motherland mobilises the idea of the Good Man, that we introduced earlier, and his alleged failure to defend the motherland from the attacks by the establishment is understood as moral failure, codified as cuckism, according to the model of the Real Man.

Finally, the concept of anti-structure allows Cesarino to understand the resource, in the anti-structural spaces she investigates, to the reversal of the indicators through which social hierarchy and social structure are symbolised. It addresses the powerful religious symbolism of this reversal in the dictum “God does not call the qualified, He qualifies the called”, which became a motto to Bolsonaro’s campaign among Evangelicals. This reversal disqualifies education as an indicator of the position of higher income classes.

The instrumental use of religion is not present among the cyber-activists I investigated, but there are many examples of anti-structural inversion applied to what they pejoratively call elites, Great Men incapable of acting as Good Men. The first one is a reference to the clothes that mark these positions: suits and ties, reversed as tight pants, an indicator of femininity in those elites. The second is the abundance, as we saw, of anal and genital references in the posts, not only as a speech style, but as a way to make political struggles intelligible and to understand and to judge. Thus, political negotiation, which presumes the domain of technical knowledge and speech, qualities of educated men, is reversed in the form of sexually symbolised contests. There are no agreements or technical reports, only will, imposition and submission.

The internet as the alt-right playground - elective affinity between the men's house and the anti-institutional sociality of digital platforms

Above we saw, in cyber-activist posts, the use of nicknames, insults with sexual connotations, tactics of violent communication that resort to affections, and two-way messages. We also saw that these tactics are effective for communication on digital platforms. This efficacy becomes visible in the relationship between posting and algorithmic activity, on one hand, and in the two-way message on the other. The sexual use of the term leitar, explained above in its full meaning, well exemplifies these two dimensions.

Since digital communication does not occur in a supposedly homogeneous public space, but rather it runs simultaneously through different networks, broadening the audience of a post-going viral-depends on the link between the reaction of agents in multiple networks, and the algorithmic curatorship of those reactions. Insults aimed at opponents are made as coordinated actions by multiple accounts, and they are used to elicit emotional responses that generate reactions capable of reaching across different networks and making the post the target of an amplified algorithmic activity. On the other hand, the existence of multiple networks is simplified in the model of conflicting interaction between two networks: one of allies, and another one of antagonists, and it substantiates a two-way communication, where they use irony, insulting jokes, dog whistling (when a common symbol is misappropriated with a specific connotation for the referential group), among others.

One noteworthy example of dog whistling is the use of glasses of milk by American white supremacists. The Brazilian appropriation, leitadas, is intentionally used by cyber-activists acting as trolls, in a way that the very knowledge of the concept of dog whistling by opposing networks ensures that the message be received with outrage, derived from the suspicion of supremacism, which will increase the offensive power of the sexual message. Trolling and mockery are used to produce indignation in opposing networks and improve reputation in the shared networks. Both effects result in the algorithmic expansion of the circulation of messages. These tactics, appropriate in the dispute for attention in digital platforms, become, then, a fundamental part of the political practice of this alternative right.

However, it does not seem to me that these tactics originate in the platforms. I believe they derive from experiences of communication and interaction prior to the use of the internet, based on certain cultural models. In the case of the cyber-activists studied here, I argue that their tactics derive from a juvenile experience of constructing masculinity, in which verbal aggressiveness and the use of double meaning are generalised. In that sense, before becoming a characteristic of gamer communities and of the alt-right movement, trolling was already a characteristic of juvenile masculinity. To develop this argument, I will resume the discussion on the theory of the social construction of masculinities.

Kimmel’s definition, presented above, of the Real Man and the Good Man models acquired an important development with Welzer-Lang’s (2001) concept of the “men’s house”.

According to the author:

I described how the education of boys in single-sexed spaces (schoolyards, sport clubs, cafés…, but more generally the places to which men self-assign exclusivity to their use and attendance) structures the male as a paradox, and instils in young men the idea that, to be a (real) man, they must fight the aspects that could associate them to women. I have proposed, referring to Maurice Godelier’s works, naming these places and spaces as the “men’s house” (Welzer-Lang, 2001, p. 3).¹⁰

The concept allows us to progress by understanding the social production of the real man as an experience inscribed into bodies, affections and language that is realised in social spaces. In this sense, the concept of men’s house names is not one model of masculinity, but single-sexed social spaces that shape behaviour and gender identification, particularly important during adolescence. In these spaces, bodies and affections are marked by symbolic, physical and sexual violence targetted at purging female traits in boys and, at the same time, constructing the female position among them as an experience of subordination, because it is subjugated. Thus, it is the learning space of gender positions as subject positions marked by violence and domination. In this sense, male domination does not operate only among men and women, but also inside male sociability, fabricated as a chain of authorities, in which masculinity and power circulate, both articulated as virility.

From the discussion about the men’s house, Welzer-Lang draws another concept: that of Great Men, who “have privileges that are pursued at the expense of women (like every man), but also at the expense of men” (Welzer-Lang, 2001, p. 7). Now, the concept of great men takes us beyond adolescence and puts us before the articulation between male dominance and class inequality, since the position of the great man connects to the accumulation of cultural capital and of income (Vale de Almeida, 1995; 1996; Cornwall and Lindsfarne, 1994). The literature shows that despised traits in the adolescent environment of the men’s house, such as school achievement and intellectual work, as compared to manual work, for example, later become indicators of inequality among men, and characteristics of the Great Men. Simultaneously, manual workers who carry traits valued in the men’s house, such as courage and risk at work, are feminised due to their condition of clientelistic dependency.

My argument throughout this article has been that, based on this experience at the Men’s house, and on the way it structures the model of the Real Man as a normative ideal in bodies, affections and language, the cyber-activists studied here understand the political disputes and transactions through metaphors of sexual contests that reinstate virility. That is why it is necessary to examine the disputes among men within the far-right networks, to reveal the structural role of a certain model, and the masculinity experience in this process.

From my point of view, the difference between the Good Man and the Real Man nearly doubles, institutionally, the distinction between Great and Small Men. In this sense, when leadership positions in institutions are gendered in terms of masculinity, the demand the qualities of the Good Man. Conversely, outside that milieu, it is within interpersonal relationships among men-small or great, it does not matter- that the qualities of the Real Man may prevail. In other words, in leadership positions within institutions are the Great Men, and within the realm of interpersonal relationships every man may eventually conduct himself according to the model of the Real Man.

One question remains to be answered: how did this model of the Real Man, present in the sociability of the young male, become effective in political disputes made in digital spaces, to the point of becoming an easily recognizable alt-right style and, as we have seen, a style of agents central to the public debate of the Brazilian far-right, like Carlos Bolsonaro and Olavo de Carvalho?

It is important to highlight that the men’s house, as theorised by Welzer-Lang, identifies a social space that has anti-structural attributes. It is, therefore, equivalent to the anti-structural spaces of the digital platforms seen above. It is simultaneously levelling and internally hierarchical. Levelling in as much as it is accessible to every boy, who is there as an individual despite his origin. And hierarchical insofar as, internally, there are differences between men and young men, veterans and beginners, as well as for passing through different spaces/stages that, inside the men’s house, correspond to unequal social positions. Thus, inequality is produced by actions and relationships in the course inside the men’s house through virility contests, and it is not given as an external condition to masculinity, such as class or colour, for example.

Another crucial aspect is that the usual experience at the men’s house is built from an anti-institutional position. We can think about the relationships between young men and the school. The solidarity of the men’s house is built outside of the school-on the streets, for example-but also inside of it, against the school’s authority. In this sense, the elements that ensure school progress-good grades and good behaviour-are reinterpreted as signs of submission to school authority and, as such, are feminising. Playful sociability and mockery frequently have as targets those who come out as submissive to the school’s institution, the nerds. However, that is not only about criticising the young men who invest in education, but criticising the school itself. In this sense, the path through the men’s house builds modes of anti-institutional perception and action.

In conclusion, the juvenile experience in the men’s house serves as a structural model for the far-right to act, understand and judge political disputes such as virility contests, to the extent that the struggles lived in the men’s house are simultaneously anti-institutional and value the construction of reputation among equals. Digital platforms offer, in fact, elements of anti-structural spaces, at least for those agents who operate there as digital entrepreneurs, constructing their identity and reputation competing for attention and validation in human and algorithmic networks. Thus, insofar as these cyber-activists act as digital entrepreneurs, the juvenile experience in the men’s house offers them an structure of interpretation and action that allows them to act in these anti-institutional spaces, the digital platforms, using juvenile male tactics adapted to the digital, in order to compete, get attention and build reputation. At the same time, they represent themselves as warriors against the establishment.

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• 1
  According to Fragoso (2015, p. 129), “Internet trolling consists of provoking one or more participants in an online environment (forum, mailing list, game) with the intention of inciting disagreements and confrontations, through impertinent behaviour, inferiorization or ridicule.”
• 2
  According to Guimarães, the “Inquiry (INQ) 4781, known as the Fake News Inquiry, was opened on March 14, 2019 by the then president of the Supreme Federal Court (shortened to STF, in Portuguese), Dias Toffoli, dedicated to investigate crimes involving the dissemination of fake news and defamation against the court and its ministers. Eight days later, the investigation rapporteur, minister Alexandre de Moraes, ruled to block the accounts that attacked the STF in social media. The profiles analysed in the operation participated in digital mobilizations that took hashtags against STF to the top of Twitter’s Trending Topics between November 7 and 19, 2019. Users, frequently anonymous, used hashtags such as “#STFVergonhaNacional” (STFNationalShame), “#STFEscritoriodocrime” (STFCrimeoffice) and “#ImpeachmentGilmarMendes” (Guimarães, 2020, p. 11).
• 3
  The author reminds us that “one of the most humiliating forms of violence in prisons is the sexual violence to which great part of prisoners are subjected, particularly by other inmates, cellmates. The use of sexual violence is fundamental in the ritualistic process to incorporate a new inmate into the institution, as it teaches the newcomers the hierarchy of the cell through the feminizing aspect suggested by the sexual act with anal penetration” (Grossi, 2004, p. 8).
• 4
  Lakoff analysed political differences between liberals and conservatives in the US as different ways in which the State is metaphorically understood, based on his argument about the role of metaphors. According to the author, the left and right wings refer to the family as moral ground to metaphorize government. For the left wing, the government is thought of as a “caring father”—who protects and offers possibilities to citizens, whereas for the right wing the State is the figure of the “strict father,” who teaches discipline and respect for authority (Lakoff, 1995).
• 5
  Revision note. In Frouxonaro, the first two syllables of the former president’s surname (Bolso-) are replaced by “frouxo,” literally meaning “loose,” “bland,” “soft,” in Portuguese. Figuratively, when referred to a male person, it is a derisive term, meaning weak, cowardly, inconsistent, also suggesting lack of sexual strength, impotence.
• 6
  The expression would return to be used on Twitter by left-wing critics in January 2019, when the president cancelled a press conference at the world leaders conference in Davos.
• 7
  Revision note. Centrão (big centre) is a powerful block of traditional right-wing parties with a large territorial constituency that makes up a permanent establishment in the Brazilian congress.
• 8
  Revision note. In bolsonarista jargon, a sexualized use of the word leite (“milk”) prevails. In Brazilian pornographic slang, “milk” (leite) means “cum” (semen) and “milking” (leitar) means to cum (to ejaculate) onto someone; a semantic field unequivocally different from the figurative meaning of the verb “to milk” in English as to extract benefit from someone by deception. For clarity, in this translation we will keep the original term in Portuguese.
• 9
  Revision note. The author here refers to the literality of the land’s male gender in the standard Portuguese term “pátria” (fatherland), in relation to which “motherland” represents an inversion.
• 10
  Original in French, here translated from the Portuguese version quoted in this article.

• Translation

  Isabel Hargrave

• Technical Revision

  Juliana Valente e Horacio Sívori

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  04 Dec 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  22 June 2022
• Accepted
  06 Sept 2022