Rage, dreams, and insubordination: how the far right and digital media mobilize the new platform-based working class

Abstract

This essay analyzes how the global far right has mobilized the new platform-based working class through digital media, in a context of capitalism’s transformation. It argues that, far from being merely manipulated by disinformation, this segment of society is driven by legitimate emotions of anger, aspiration, and insubordination. Drawing on an ethnographic approach informed by my 25 years of research on economic precarity, this essay demonstrates how precarization, worsening living conditions, and the desire for recognition shape ambivalent political subjectivities, especially in the Global South. Digital entrepreneurship emerges as both a pathway to upward mobility and a political snare, dominated by a conservative elite of influencers. The analysis introduces the complementary concepts of precarious entitlement, self-worth, and the CEO myth to make sense of this alignment with the radical right. Finally, it is argued that winning the hearts and minds of the working class requires strong public policies and collective visions of the future that mobilize the same emotions currently fueling authoritarianism.

Keywords:
far right; working class; platformization; social media

Resumo

Este ensaio analisa como a extrema direita global tem mobilizado a nova classe trabalhadora plataformizada por meio das mídias digitais em um contexto de transformação do capitalismo. Argumenta-se que, longe de serem apenas manipuladas por desinformação, essas populações são movidas por emoções legítimas de raiva, aspirações e insubordinação. A partir de uma abordagem etnográfica, fundamentada em minha trajetória de 25 anos de pesquisa sobre precariedade econômica, o texto mostra como precarização, encrudescimento das condições de vida e desejo de reconhecimento moldam subjetividades políticas ambivalentes, especialmente no Sul Global. O empreendedorismo digital aparece como canal de ascensão e armadilha política, dominado por uma elite de influenciadores conservadores. A análise propõe os conceitos complementares de senso de merecimento precário, autovalor e mito CEO para compreender essa adesão à direita radical. Por fim, defende-se que disputar os corações e mentes da classe trabalhadora requer políticas públicas robustas e projetos coletivos de futuro que mobilizem as mesmas emoções que hoje sustentam o autoritarismo.

Palavras-chave:
extrema direita; classe trabalhadora; plataformização; mídias sociais

Introduction^1,2

At the turn of the millennium, the world was in a period of optimism. In 1999, the economist and Nobel Prize laureate Amartya Sen published an acclaimed article in which he argued that democracy was becoming a universal value (see Sen, 1999). For the first time in history we as human beings had chosen democracy as a project for humanity. At the time, humanity had achieved an unprecedented feat-that there were more countries with democratic regimes than with dictatorships.

A quarter of a century later, the picture has shifted radically. The 2024 electoral year was the biggest in history: billions of people went to the polls in more than 70 countries. But billions of those did not vote for democracy. Instead they chose authoritarianism, populism, and the far right - and that’s just looking at presidential and other top leadership races. In a major report assessing the health of global democracy, the point was emphatically made: there is no doubt that we are experiencing a wave of autocratization, with the indicators at their worst since 1985 (Nord et al., 2025). Liberal democracies are now the least common form of regime in the world. Hearts and minds are being won over by a conservative and authoritarian mindset. The victory of the Donald Trump with the support of Elon Musk in 2024 suggests that we are entering a very dark phase, unlike any we have seen.

The democratic promise proved to be more fragile than had been widely believed. What happened in these past 25 years? How could the collapse be so quick, so easy, so brutal? How is it possible that dictatorships and Nazism have been able to rise from the place in history where they belong - the grave - and have ceased to be a source of shame? There is no single, coherent answer to these questions. Making sense of the absurd is not a task that can be finished. Understanding why human beings intentionally decide to hate and kill members of their own kind will always be counterintuitive. Nonetheless, the past ten years have seen major scholarly advances in the effort to explain the reemergence of far-right authoritarianism - one that is fascist in essence and populist in rhetoric.

There are various theoretical approaches to understanding the phenomenon, including, among others, the nationalist, colonial, patriarchal, institutional, elite, and technological perspectives. I align myself with interpretations that place the economy as the center of analysis. The past 25 years, which saw the rise and fall of democracy, was also the period during which I conducted ethnographic research among low-income groups in the Global South, namely in Brazil, China, India, and the Philippines. Based on this experience, I argue that economic precarization is central to understanding the advance of the far right. This political phenomenon cannot be understood without taking into account the worsening living conditions felt by large sectors of the population. This does not mean that race and gender are secondary to the economic factors; rather, focusing on precarization means recognizing its racial, gender, and territorial dimensions.

This essay seeks to illustrate the centrality of precarization through glimpses into my ethnographic journey - many already published elsewhere - drawing on events that have marked my research over the last quarter century. As an anthropologist and ethnographer interested in the lives of ordinary people, my research efforts within the Digital Economy and Extreme Politics Lab are currently focused on the emergence of a new platformized working class since the 2008 economic recession, with special attention to the role of social media and digital platforms in this process. These networks are seen not so much as manipulative but rather as amplifiers of a new political subjectivity. Without understanding what drives this new working class, we cannot untangle the tight knot that binds people to the far right today.

One might ask: why focus on the working class, if - as we know - it is the economic, political, and religious elites who are the ones orchestrating the erosion of democracy to maintain their privileges or impose their fundamentalist beliefs? The higher the income - especially among men, whites, and older people - the greater the tendency to adhere to the far right in various countries around the world. Another might ask: why focus on the working class, if - as we also know - the segment of the population below the poverty line, at least in Brazil, rejects the far right?

The problem is that between the elites and those in extreme poverty - with the middle classes steadily shrinking - there lies a huge mass of billions of workers who are poor or impoverished but still above the poverty line that makes up the majority of the world’s population. In the countries I have recently studied - Brazil, India, and the Philippines - and many others there is ample evidence that this new working class has aligned itself with authoritarianism and constitutes its primary base of support.

Brazil features some striking examples that illustrate the synergy between these sectors of society and authoritarianism. During the pandemic, Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right president at the time, targeted microentrepreneurs and informal workers with his campaigns #BrasilNãoPodeParar (“#BrazilCannotStop”) and #EuVouTrabalhar (“#IWillWork”). According to an analysis by Fábio Malini, for a significant period these campaigns garnered more engagement on Twitter than did the #FiqueEmCasa (“#StayAtHome”) public health campaign (see Pinheiro-Machado et al., 2023b). According to data from the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, more than half of those involved in the attempted coup d’état on January 8, 2023, had been beneficiaries of emergency aid - funds intended specifically for these precarious segments of the labor market.³ In our analysis of support for the coup on Twitter, which included about 90,000 accounts, we identified that a significant portion of the supporters were men who were microentrepreneurs or self-employed (Pinheiro-Machado et al., 2023a).

But what constitutes this new working class, and why does it align with the far right? In the book The Rise of the Radical Right in the Global South, Tatiana Vargas-Maia and I (Pinheiro-Machado; Vargas Maia, 2023) argue that although the far right has a transnational dimension, its analysis should be localized in colonized countries, due to economic, political, and religious factors. For the scope of this essay, it is important to highlight the differences among working classes. In developed countries, the new working class is composed of groups in decline - middle classes that have become impoverished or industrial workers whose jobs have been threatened by the rise of China. In emerging economies, like Brazil, India, and the Philippines, these groups are generally upwardly mobile and have benefited from China’s role in the global economy. These are people who have escaped poverty and seen recent improvements in their standard of living, but whose ascent to middle-class status remains incomplete.

They have been labelled the precariat, the new middle class, the new class C (a Brazilian term for the lower middle class), strivers, new consumers, and aspiring entrepreneurs (Braga, 2017; Kopper, 2022; Neri, 2011; Souza, 2012). To these characterizations I add that these groups are increasingly dependent on the platform economy. Precariously employed and heavily in debt, they feel rage at a grinding routine and fear losing the little they have achieved, while still holding on to dreams of autonomy, achievement, and social mobility. Appealing to these sectors - and reaching where the state doesn’t - are the neo-Pentecostal churches, and more recently, authoritarian populists and a new elite of conservative and libertarian influencers.

This is a working class that doesn’t recognize itself as such. This is a phenomenon as old as capitalism itself, one pointed out by Karl Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire and The German Ideology, where he saw the lumpenproletariat as inexorably reactionary - something I agree with only in part. But Marx was right to connect the lack of class solidarity to certain economic activities. If the phenomenon is old, we do not yet know how it is being transformed by new digital technologies. Our research group’s hypothesis is that the platformization of labor encourages rightward radicalization in two ways: by fueling the rage of the precariat through disinformation, and by exploiting their aspirations of financial autonomy through a new ecosystem of influencers. This essay examines these two vectors - rage and aspiration. But before entering this discussion, we must first pause to consider the role of disinformation in this process.

Beyond disinformation

When talking about social media and the working class, a widely held belief has emerged: that fake news manipulates people and destroys democracy. In this essay, however, I do not follow that line of thinking. Reducing authoritarian voting to ignorance or manipulation is simplistic and morally comforting but has little real explanatory power. As scholars, we must be suspicious of widely accepted truths - such as the now dominant idea that disinformation is humanity’s biggest problem. In 2024, for instance, the World Economic Forum classified it as a global threat, ahead of hunger, climate change, and wars. Indeed, disinformation is extremely dangerous, as it affects elections and public health and promotes hate speech. It is telling, however, that while disinformation is denounced as a cause of these problems, the social conditions that lead so many people to be swept up in the whirlwind of hatred are rarely questioned, leaving the structural factors that underpin such adherence unexamined.

In recent years there has been a surge of projects examining polarization and disinformation. Research designs have grown increasingly complex, incorporating neuroscience, computer science, behavioral psychology, and the social sciences to test how people react when reading certain news items: what they feel, what leads them to “like” a post or to dismiss a lie. We know who funds disinformation; we know how information mobilizes feelings and inflames hatred; we know the forums through which hatred circulates - from Norway to Thailand. Theories such as the filter bubble and echo chambers have come in and out of fashion. But we also know that combating disinformation is a thankless task: the systematic literature review I recently conducted on the topic shows that while there have been advances in countering disinformation, they remain very small, slow, or restricted to specific cases.⁴

We therefore need to ask why responses to the problem are continually frustrated despite the concerted efforts of international organizations, governments, and research councils. For the purposes of this essay, there are two issues that need to be considered.

First, if we ignore the hornet’s nest of economic inequality, the fight against disinformation will remain futile, like pushing a boulder uphill. We are currently seeing the greatest concentration of wealth since at least the Industrial Revolution. These fortunes are not built because the men behind them are exceptionally innovative and visionary, as they would have us believe (or because they possess a millionaire mindset, wake up at 5:00 am, and take cold showers). Instead they are the result of an international financial system that enables the evasion of trillions of dollars in taxes, facilitating the rise of ultrarich elites. According to researcher Aidan Regan,⁵ over the past twenty years, for example, American corporations - including big pharmaceutical companies and tech giants like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft - have transferred about one and a half trillion dollars to tax havens like Ireland. Those who control global tax laws hold enormous political power. They allow the ultrarich to evade democratic oversight, transferring economic power from elected governments into the hands of private wealth (Regan, 2025). This directly contributes to social inequality, the weakening of the state, increasing precarity, the impoverishment of the population, the erosion of the social fabric, and constant resentment.

Second, changing a person’s worldview is one of the hardest things to do. People believe what they want to believe - or may spread a lie they do not even believe. During the floods that devastated Rio Grande do Sul in 2024, I conducted research among groups of low-income self-employed workers and observed the widespread dissemination of fake news. Among these, information circulated that the influencer Pablo Marçal was offering more support than President Lula, along with a doctored image showing a man assaulting a woman in a shelter. This man was falsely identified as the then mayor of Canoas, one of the cities hardest hit by the tragedy, who was a member of Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT). Right away - as should happen in a proper fake news debunking process - a friend of those who had shared the content fact-checked it, politely pointing out that it was false. Their response was laughing emojis - a clearly indication that they did not care whether the information was true. In another revealing example, Alves-Silva (2023) noted in his thesis that participants in WhatsApp groups defending the use of chloroquine during COVID-19 the pandemic were less concerned with the veracity of the information than with what the false information symbolized in terms of their ability to participate in interpreting, decoding, and discussing complex biomedical topics, fostering a sense of community, belonging, and personal pride.

Thus, people are not merely reproducers but more often than not active producers. Fake news builds a repertoire that reinforces values, perceived truths, and emotions - reaffirming the sense of comfort in certainty. Numerous studies have shown that people are more likely to engage with rage-based content than with content conveying positive emotions. Fake news fosters communities of belonging through the false magic that has historically served as the binding force of fascism.

With this aside on disinformation, I wanted to draw attention to the problem of disinformation as one aspect of a much larger and much more dangerous constellation - namely, how the major digital platforms, which wield a significant share of the world’s wealth, have created a society that is increasingly reflected in their technological infrastructure, business models, and ideologies, directing and encapsulating our lives, our rage, our desires, our intimacy. From here, this essay focuses on the two sides of the same coin: the reactive/negative and active/positive emotions of the new working class, and how social media mobilizes these emotions, which, in the end, function as a glue binding people to a reactionary political agenda.

Rage

I begin this section with an analysis of the historical roots of the production of rage in Brazil. The formation of Brazilian society was marked by a continuous marginalization of the low-income groups who, despite being productive, were historically kept within the informal economy, excluded from state protection and denied full recognition of their citizenship.

During the truckers’ strike in 2018, when my research partner, Lucia Scalco, and I were conducting fieldwork at a picket line, a truck driver shouted: “Nobody cares, nobody cares about us.” He added: “Brazil is a train off its rails.” The sense of abandonment and chaos so rawly expressed in the phrase “nobody cares” hardens into resentment and a demand for military intervention. At the camelódromo (informal street market) at Praça XV in Porto Alegre, where I spent five years conducting ethnographic research (1999-2004), I often heard that the state was only about extraction or repression: bribes, inspections, police batons, humiliation. In the favela Morro da Cruz, where Lucia and I also worked for many years, we heard the same refrain: “Politicians only climb the hill during elections. And the police only come to shoot.”

It is the revolt of those who live in a country marked by the structural violence of continuous marginalization. Marginalization, above all, implies systematically keeping people invisible. Denying someone’s existence is perhaps the most brutal form of dehumanization. Historical marginalization - as shown by key thinkers such as Durham (1973), Kowarick (1975), Oliven (1980), Oliveira (1981), and Perlman (1976) - divides the nation into a hierarchy of modern versus archaic, sustaining the self-illusion that there is only one Brazil: developed, European, white, inhabited by people living in gated communities. This imaginary excludes, exploits, abuses, humiliates, tortures, and kills the poor and the racialized - constantly reminding them that “they do not count as people.” Brazil is a country where citizenship is divided between those whose humanity is readily acknowledged and those who must struggle for it.

In this process, the state, politics, politicians, government, and even democracy itself are equate with cynicism, dysfunction, corruption, and violence. For vast swathes of the lower classes, the sense of having been abandoned by the State lies at the root of antipolitical sentiment, which long pre-dates the polarization we see today. What extremist populists do is capture this cauldron of revolt and convert it into an anti-system narrative. This operates in ways that, at first glance, may seem irrational. One would expect, for example, that a population devastated by a climate crisis would not elect denialists - but often that is exactly what happens. The perpetrators cause the tragedy, avoid engaging in recovery, and later exploit the fact that calamities create fertile ground for anti-system sentiment. It is at the height of the pain, with the wound still open, that these same perpetrators find space to grow.

The revolt against the state often flows into adherence to libertarian politics - which, in the current context, has aligned itself with the far right. People increasingly yearn for freedom - not necessarily to become the “bosses” but to break free from the system’s grip. Paradoxically, this pursuit of autonomy coexists with a desire for a figure of authority with a “firm hand.” Yet the grip of this firm hand often turns out to be loose: letting things slide, deregulating everything, allowing anything to go. When citizens lose faith in the rule of law, public power, institutional politics, democracy, and even bureaucracy, what they most want to see is someone - preferably a man - tweeting that he is destroying everything. There is a segment of the working class that increasingly wants total deregulation - believing that “don’t interfere with my earning a living” is the best solution. This is not new either. The first time I heard someone say “I want to work, but the government won’t let me” was in my fieldwork in 2002, when the Brazilian government conducted a major operation to curb street vending. I heard it again in the field during the debate over the regulation of app drivers (such as Uber drivers) in 2024 - and again as a response to the false rumor that Pix transfers (for instant payments) would be taxed. The recurring narrative is that the state always seeks to obstruct, never to protect.

The authoritarian builds little, tears down a lot, and cynically presents himself as outside the state’s inefficient machinery. Authoritarian populism offers this frustrated group a narrative - false and simplistic, but effective. Just recall one of Trump’s first speeches in his second term, targeting precisely this group, in which he claimed he would cut millions of “useless” taxpayer-funded welfare programs and return 20% of the money to “you, the American taxpayer.” In terms of state policy, 20% is negligible - but it resonated with the logic of indignation. Authoritarian populists soothe egos, point fingers, and shift responsibility away from the economic system to vague, diffuse notions of corruption - “the system” - or onto other groups, usually weaker and more vulnerable. In developed countries, the scapegoat is typically the external enemy - the immigrant; in colonized countries, we are taught to hate ourselves - the internal enemy.

So far I have discussed the historical roots of state absence and marginalization, which create fertile ground for anti-system revolt. Now, I want to reflect on how rage, hatred, resentment, and fear operate in everyday life. When we talk about disinformation, it is important to zoom out and look at the foundations upon which this rage is built. More than understanding how it circulates, we must understand why it exists. Perhaps, in our eagerness to find answers to new and complex problems, we’ve forgotten about simple, effective methodologies based on listening. As Claudia Fonseca would teach in her ethnography classes, it’s about sitting on the curb, sharing a coffee, and listening. In my current research - and also in previous work with Lucia Scalco - I have avoided focusing exclusively on radicalized far-right groups. Studying those who seem most radicalized and extreme - like the person dressed in green and yellow calling for Xandão’s⁶ head - is important, but it can be limiting. The broader, more complex, and more widespread phenomenon lies with non-radicalized voters: ordinary people with eclectic political orientations who are generally not very interested in politics. It is these people who make up the majority.

Amid a wave of studies centered on big data, I have argued that we can only understand online rage when we look at life outside social media. It is in the small everyday realities of communities, in personal and family trajectories, that hatred gains meaning - and this meaning mainly stems from what the literature refers to as perceived inequality (Franc; Pavlović, 2019), that is, a perception of injustice or a feeling of being deprived of power (Abbas et al., 2025). Abbas and colleagues (2025) show, for example, that daily humiliations are a key factor in radicalization processes.

In their daily life the average Brazilian worker experiences constant struggle, frustration, and small humiliations - often challenging their sense of dignity and personal honor. Their workday can stretch to 15 hours, including long commutes on crumbling public transportation - only to reach the end of the month and have to contend with ever-shrinking purchasing power. For much of the population, life is divided between the days when there is a gas cylinder at home and the days when there is not. The bus is late when there’s a storm, another bill arrives, and the money meant to fix a broken refrigerator instead is used on an urgent dental visit. Debt, lack of credit, despair - this is the daily reality. These are the same people who, at the bus stop, are mugged and robbed of their cell phones, often still being paid off. They are those who suffer most from urban violence, uncertainty, and the failures of the state.

Over my years of research I have come to understand that people do not feel hatred toward, for instance, a vague idea of a Black trans woman. Behind generalized anger, there is always a lived, concrete reality. Rage does not emerge in a vacuum: it is directed at a neighbor, a cousin, someone with a name and a face. I have heard endless complaints from people who are poor - but not poor enough to qualify for social benefits - about Bolsa Família (social welfare benefits), racial quotas, and ProUni (university scholarships for the poor) - “handout scholarships” that they say reward people who haven’t earned them. Ironically, most of the complainants had themselves applied for those same programs. “I’m struggling, and my lazy cousin has it all.” This is where a shift toward an alternative worldview is born - a perspective shaped by patriarchal logic, where resentment may also be tied to a man’s perception of losing his power: seeing his partner gain financial autonomy, or his teenage daughter begin to question things. This leads to a feeling of of losing one’s moorings - the collapse of certainties that once structured the world. Fascism offers a means of reorienting and patching up the fractured ground.

In this way a divided world starts to take shape - economically, politically, morally - gradually filling up with a patchwork of fake news, memes, stories, images - anything that seems to explain or give meaning to the everyday injustices people perceive. Thus, a repertoire of explanations develops, reinforcing the idea that something is deeply wrong, feeding a simmering cauldron of radicalization. This establishes a continuous cycle of reaffirmation whose primary aim is to find reasons and culprits. And everything hardens into place. Social media masterstroke is that its business models and technological infrastructure enabled the emergence of what João Magalhães (2019) called a “new regime of algorithmic visibility.” This is the idea that in order to have a civic voice - to feel like one matters - the other must be silenced: the real other, the imagined other. It is in this context that Magalhães proposes the notion of bottom-up authoritarianism: it is not only the state that imposes power, but ordinary citizens themselves, using social media to produce and reproduce silencing.

Precarious entitlement

To delve deeper into this system of accusing and assigning blame, our team developed the concept of precarious entitlement (PE). PE goes hand-in-hand with another key idea for understanding Brazil: that of self-worth, to which I will return later. PE is one of the least understood - and also one of the most definitive - psychological drivers for explaining adherence to the far right in Brazil. PE is the feeling of being superior to those immediately below in the social hierarchy. And here, the “immediately” is crucial: we are talking about concrete, close social relationships experienced in everyday life.

PE manifests itself in small, everyday hierarchies, always involving comparisons with those just below on the social ladder. It’s the Uber Black driver who sees himself as superior to the UberX driver, who in turn considers himself better than motorcycle couriers. It’s the street vendor with a license who looks down on their unlicensed counterpart. It’s the person living on a “good” street in the city’s humble outskirts who thinks they are more worthy than those living in the alleyways. It’s the cleaning lady with a professional Instagram profile who sees herself as more qualified than other cleaners. It’s also the longtime members of social movements who accuse the newer generations of not being as committed or morally correct as they are. In all these cases, the feeling of superiority is anchored in concrete experiences and close comparisons, making PE a mechanism of social differentiation at a microscopic level - yet one with immense political potential.

Common sense would tend to ask: “But why is there no class consciousness? Why don’t people realize they’re all in the same boat?” The answer is not to be found in a lack of solidarity - quite the contrary; there is deep solidarity within the working classes. The issue is that Brazilian social fabric has always been frayed by marginalization. Thus, the system of moral judgment, pointing the finger at those just below in the hierarchy, doesn’t come out of nowhere. In a society that stigmatizes poverty and associates it with filth, idleness, and moral deficiency, there is a genuine fear of being lumped in with the “outcasts.” No one can stand the idea of being excluded from society. No one wants to be a victim. Yet, at the same time, there is a firm belief that this “outcast” exists - and so the discourses around “bums,” “freeloaders,” and “victims” are continually reproduced. After all, this is how we were taught to think.

Faced with this reality, many people look away, seek out someone even more vulnerable - and point the finger. It is an almost automatic reaction, a desperate attempt to shed the unbearable burden of stigma. Passing on this burden can be seen, in a way, as means of self-preservation: “I’m not the outcast - they are.” Also central to this process is fear: the fear of losing the little one has. And it is often precisely this “little” that fuels a sense of moral superiority. PE is also key to understanding the phenomenon that sociologist Gabriel Feltran (2020), in his sociology of everyday conflicts and power regimes, termed bottom-up militarism: the widespread desire among young people from urban peripheries to pursue careers in the police and military. These young people long to be respected as people, to be feared, and never to be confused with criminals, outcasts, or bums.

In the end, PE is a spark onto which the far right pours fuel. Using empty rhetoric, it conveys a seductive and direct message: “You are deserving. The problem is those others.” The “others” are generally the poor, indigenous people, blacks - those cast as obstacles to progress, as usurpers of a space that isn’t rightfully theirs, as recipients of that which they do not deserve. This is a narrative that reaffirms a sense of entitlement, feeds resentment, and deepens entrenched social divides.

Dreams

One of the main gaps in current scholarship on the far right is the excessive focus on reactive emotions, such as hatred, rage, frustration, fear, and resentment. This focus is understandable, since the far right is, essentially, about violence. However, understanding the triggers of rage is not enough - we must also examine the other side of the coin. Ideologies do not rest solely on negativity. At the core of adherence is enchantment. Hatred defines the lines of exclusion - those outside one’s circle: politicians, outcasts, those just below. But within the circle - always particularist, never universalist - what holds fascism together (what Karl Polanyi [1935] called magic) are active, or positive, emotions: pride, belonging, hope, loyalty. Therein lies fascism’s power to mobilize.

Self-worth

Much has been written about love for family, for country, for Jesus. But less is known about aspirations. In the context of the new working class, alongside the sense of precarious entitlement and disparagement of the other (the reactive emotions), the idea of self-worth takes on a central role. I define self-worth as the pursuit of dignity and recognition in a fractured society. This pursuit can take two forms. The first is collective: it occurs through the reclamation of stigmatized identities by means of social struggle and consciousness-raising. The second, more common in contexts marked by social fragmentation, is the pursuit of individual recognition - an effort to prove one’s worth in a world that denies belonging.

This brings us back to the amplifying role of social media. Through its technological infrastructure and ecosystem of power, social media activates self-worth like never before. Juliano Spyer (2017), discussing the legacy of slavery, argues that social media networks play a part in empowering the working classes to seek visibility and assert themselves. The sense that barriers to interaction are lowering is conducive to imagining new ways of living. People reinvent themselves in their imagination, in a symbolic process in which they are transformed from a “nobody” into a “somebody.”

When we look at this new working class - which we also call the aspirational classes - I dare say that rarely in history have people dreamed so much. This movement is perhaps comparable to the romanticism of the 18th century, which sparked a true revolution in the ability to imagine other worlds and futures (Campbell, 1987). On platforms like Instagram, with their influencers, a sense of closeness and intimacy is forged: suddenly, that luxury car, that million dollars, start to become part of people’s dreams. But the new working class did not reinvent its desires on the networks - this process had already gained momentum in the 1990s with the expansion of evangelical churches and in the 2000s with the inclusion-through-consumption policies promoted during the Lula era. What social media does is to amplify this capacity to dream to unprecedented magnitudes.

Here’s an example. In 2024, Miguel Rivera, a lecturer at Ateneo de Manila University, and I interviewed a young man in Manila, in the Philippines, whose family, for generations, had only two means of making a living open to them - working in construction or, with luck, joining the army. Today, thanks to the world of digital entrepreneurship, he sees himself doing opening a small business selling fried chicken snacks. His story echoes that of many men we interviewed in Brazil, whose future seemed limited to either crime or construction work. We were struck by the number of young people we spoke to who are pouring themselves into opening their own burger joints. The prospective owner of “Dogão,” for example, currently a ride-share driver working 15-hour days, has already been in jail and has lost loved ones to crime. It is remarkable that this young man is able to imagine a new future for himself. The problem lies in the emotional and financial consequences of this process, especially when the dream clashes with the reality of precariousness and the absence of structured support to turn that desire into a sustainable business.

This is where the far right comes in and seizes that imagination of the future. And it does so by means even more efficient and visceral than mere manipulative disinformation - because it strikes at the very core of people’s capacity to dream when their lives have been marked by suffering.

Our research group’s most significant discovery to date has been to reveal, name, quantify, and qualify one of the most profound transformations in contemporary Brazilian society: the mass migration of the labor market to Instagram - a private platform, with specific corporate interests and unfathomable algorithms (Pinheiro-Machado et al., 2024). The phenomenon is clear: digital entrepreneurship has exploded in Brazil. It is now almost impossible to maintain a small business without an Instagram presence. Legions more are dreaming of becoming influencers. Brazil is currently the country with the highest number of influencers in the world, with one in every ten people identifying as such.⁷ On top of that, millions of Brazilians are trying to generate extra income through digital means, part of a truly global army of e-commerce sellers on platforms like Shopee.

The problem is that this is essentially a pyramid scheme. A person starts by wanting to sell a product or offer a service but is soon swallowed up by the logic of the platform - which I like to call a medieval pyramid with a liberal veneer. Instagram pushes its users to grow, encouraging them to sell mentorships, promises, and magical formulas for success. This digital market now already encompasses at least 25% of Brazil’s economically active population - a conservative estimate from our research group, given that Meta does not release key data. In other words, one in every four Brazilian workers is trying to build a business within the platform - working for it, paying for it - in a mass migration toward a new type of unregulated and invisible labor.

The activity on Instagram could be simply an economic phenomenon tied to legitimate entrepreneurial dreams. But it is not. Above all, it is a political phenomenon. With a significant portion of the working class looking for new ways of generating income - expanding the reach of their food stall, manicure services, eyelash studio, or handicrafts - they have no choice but to learn how to use digital tools to grow and gain visibility. And that is when they fall into a political trap. Training for digital entrepreneurship is now dominated by an ecosystem of coach-influencers who are in full command. Currently it is nearly impossible to undertake digital entrepreneurship without some form of interaction with this network. This is a field of influencers who hold a symbolic monopoly: they got there first, cornered the market, and remain virtually unchallenged. These coaches teach not only how to use the platforms but also how to cultivate the so-called “millionaire mindset” and to “break free” from a poverty mentality that, according to them, is what drags people down. At the top of this structure sit a few dozen big-name influencers and millionaire coaches who use displays of wealth as their chief claim to authority. Just below them are hundreds of thousands more coach-influencers who also claim to be earning millions. The problem with this field, which today dominates the large-scale training of digital entrepreneurs in Brazil, is that it is homogeneous, devoid of dissenting voices, and deeply conservative.

For two years, we tracked the daily discourses and presentations of this network. For the most part, these influencers are white, heterosexual, trim, fitness-oriented couples with many children. Motherhood is presented as a woman’s main mark of worth. Abandoning one’s family of origin and community friendships - seen as poor and limiting - is framed as a necessary step toward success. When you’re in a couple, these investment influencers claim, wealth multiplies. They are rich and followers of Christ, some practicing the faith in earnest and some using Christ’s name as means of projecting moral superiority. They promote a false idea of meritocracy, and not only do they oppose the Consolidation of Labor Laws (CLT), Brazil’s cornerstone of labor legislation, they are leading figures in one of the greatest campaigns of delegitimization of the CLT ever seen in Brazil. This network depicts being a formal worker as something shameful - a marker of failure, of being “screwed,” a “loser,” a nobody. They also scorn formal university education: they reject university while readily selling their own courses. These courses manufacture a faux sense of intimacy with the audience by narrating personal journeys to wealth - from their days of taking the bus to the moment they bought their Ferrari. The message is unequivocal: “If I made it, you can too - you just have to work hard and, of course, invest in my course.”

What makes this process especially cruel is that this discourse strongly appeals to women at the bottom of the social pyramid, submerged in exhausting routines of caregiving and domestic labor. For many of them, domestic work has long been - and still is - the main job option available, a profession characterized by low wages, exploitation, and often humiliation.

In our qualitative and quantitative analysis of these influencer networks, we thoroughly examined the political profile of the 612 top coaches and influencers in the country. The result is striking: nine out of ten are aligned with the far right. This means that today, as nearly a quarter of the economically active population turns to digital entrepreneurship to boost their income, they end up immersed in a network of conservative, libertarian, and far-right discourse - an ecosystem that operates uncontested. This is the hidden Brazil that took many analysts by surprise in the last elections in São Paulo, with the resounding success of a coach-influencer candidate.

These coach-influencers emerge from the vacuum left by the state. The absence of public policies, quality education, technical training, and basic services enables them to become points of reference. Brazilians are thirsty for qualification, advancement and opportunity. And these influencers operate on the principle of populist accessibility: they speak the same language, share personal experiences, and present themselves as equals.

As an anthropologist, the question I must ask is: to what extent does this discourse truly influence ordinary people? The mere fact that influencers dominate the market does not necessarily mean that people buy into what they say. But our computational analysis of more than one million accounts of aspiring digital entrepreneurs shows the rapid and broad spread of what we refer to as the aspirational pyramid. Even with fewer than a thousand followers and still in the phase of taking courses to “unlock wealth,” these individuals already present themselves as mentors - and the phrase most often used in their profiles is: “I teach you.” The content they produce emulates the wealthy aesthetic of the major influencers: sleek imagery, luxury cars, motivational captions, and punchy slogans.

Our qualitative research also reveals the real impact of this ecosystem on everyday life. Many followers approach these coach-influencers with skepticism, but many others begin to nurture vivid dreams - not only of a comfortable and independent life but also of the possibility that they could really become millionaires. These dreams often stand in stark contrast to the precariousness of their lives. We found many marginalized women nurturing “dream boards” filled with images of huge houses, trips, and imported cars, as taught by the influencers. At first glance, this ecosystem does not present itself as political - not like the explicit fake news against Lula, for example. It is dressed up as a lifestyle. And that is exactly why it is so effective. When the far right conquers hearts, minds, and inner lives, its political durability becomes more deeply rooted and sustainable than any electoral victory. The fundamental issue here is the veiled politicization, which ultimately revolves around values. And the most important of these is money - lots of money.

The discourse of individual enrichment is anchored in self-worth: it touches at the core of a society where no one wants to be a “nobody,” and where the struggle to be recognized as “someone” is legitimate and urgent. It reverberates especially among the working classes who don’t want to work for a boss - in a country whose legacy of slavery and historical marginalization has produced lousy, low-paid, and often humiliating jobs.

The CEO myth

In our analysis of the database of over one million aspiring digital entrepreneurs - many low-income Christian mothers - something caught our attention: one of the most frequent terms appearing in their biographies was “CEO.” Confectioners, cake makers, masseuses, manicurists, shopkeepers - many presenting themselves as CEOs. What I, along with my colleagues Marina Frid, Jessica Matheus, and Wagner Alves-Silva, call the CEO myth reflects a profound transformation at the base of Brazilian society, especially within this new working class that has turned away from the dream of a traditional formal employment. Some of this group now dreams of being in charge, of getting rich. This new working class wants deregulation, rejects state control, and reacts with outrage at the mere - and false - suggestion of “taxing Pix.”

The big question - one that gets to the core of popular support for conservative and libertarian values - is: what lies behind a segment of society that wants to be CEO? There are two possible answers - the glass half empty and the glass half full. And they are not mutually exclusive. The glass half empty reading is the easiest - and also the most prejudiced: where these people are referred to as “MEI CEOs” (referring to Brazil’s micro-entrepreneurs) or “the right-wing poor.” Seen from the outside, through eyes blind to the reality, one might conclude that this is the triumph of the Elon Musk paradigm: a society that dismantles rights and regulates nothing, where everyone is left to fend for themselves. Technofascism, then, is not only found in the upper echelons or the architecture of platforms but also at the bottom, in the everyday life of those who are just trying to survive - and that may be where it is most troubling. But there is also the glass half full. And here things are more complex. The desire for a dignified life is revealed in the adoption of labels that evoke pride, respect, and self-worth. There is the CEO from Musk’s world - but there is also the CEO from the marginalized world. The title of CEO serves as a symbol of authority, dignity, and agency for people who often have worked their entire lives as street vendors in the rain, in the cold, unseen. These people want to be respected and admired. They want to be comfortable. And this does not mean they want to be Elon Musk. (Though perhaps they also do - because these processes are not mutually exclusive.)

Alongside the CEO myth, there is the deep desire not to have a boss - something very common among app drivers, for example. In Brazil, it has become common to say that these workers have internalized the “neoliberal rationality,” as if they had adopted neoliberalism as a worldview. My colleague Ianaira Neves (Pinheiro-Machado; Neves, forthcoming) and I, in our paper “The Ambiguous Revolts,” contest this explanation, which seems to us hasty and disconnected from reality. Based on extensive research with app workers - motorcycle couriers and drivers - we argue that the desire not to have a boss is, in fact, a cry of revolt against subordination. And this is positive in a society that has historically sought to subordinate and humiliate the poorest. This person who does not want a boss is not new. They already appear in the ethnographies of Alba Zaluar (1985) in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, and in the book Family, Gossip and Honor by Claudia Fonseca (2000), in the favela Vila do Cachorro Sentado in Porto Alegre the 1980s. This was never “internalized neoliberalism” but always the desire to buck authority.

The problem is that it’s now the far right that is capturing this potential. It distorts, reconfigures, and hijacks it, turning a legitimate desire into adherence to a conservative and libertarian project. In a society where the state is perceived as absent, it is not surprising that the ideal of “every man for himself” should attract support - after all, that is what does happen: everyone fends for themselves, each in their own “hustle.” Of course, we should not romanticize this. Legitimate defiance of authority can easily slip into a rejection of democracy. In a society where no one wants to work for a boss, there is a risk of also dismantling the collective structures through which rights are won - the very structures that underpin the modern democracy. Moreover, there is a paradox in this desire for autonomy: it coexists with the veneration of influencers and pastors, and, in some cases, even a desire for military intervention.

Through a pessimistic lens, this can be seen as contradiction and an authoritarian impulse; through an optimistic lens, as a desire for greater state presence and expanded public policies. And perhaps it is both. The point is: societies are full of contradictions, just as political values are ambiguous. And that’s not a problem. On the contrary: it is precisely there that the potential for contestation lies. If this momentum can be steered in one direction, it can also - with courage, listening, and strategy - be steered in another, driven by the same emotions that move the working class: revolt, insubordination, dignity, and dreams.

Closing thoughts - and ways forward

Finally, although the political landscape is deeply troubling and complex, my perspective is not - and has never been - defeatist. Quite the opposite. In my engagement with the public debate, I have sought to draw on what Paulo Freire and bell hooks called the pedagogy of hope. Both teach us that there can be no transformation without hope. And here it is important to say: hope is not optimism. Hope, as these authors argue, requires a harsh, raw, realistic - and often indignant - diagnosis. I began this essay by saying that perhaps we are the only species that consciously brings about its own demise. But it is also true that we are the only species capable of reinventing itself nd deciding, at any moment, which path to take - and who we want to become.

Democracy is a concrete utopia (Dinerstein, 2015). But we must honestly acknowledge that the models of democracy Brazil has had so far have failed - and failed profoundly. No other country kills more trans people than ours. We lead the world in femicide. We continue to systematically annihilate Black and Indigenous populations. Faced with this reality, the question is not whether we believe in democracy - but what kind of democracy do we want to rebuild? And, in my view, we have no other choice: we must clearly and courageously denounce the economic, social, and historical inequalities that shape our country. This denunciation must be at the heart of political action and democratic imagination. And so I close this essay with six points that are less academic but that I hope will foster reflection and the concrete development of political and democratic action.

1) Reclaim rage, insubordination, and dreams. Not giving in to amnesties is fundamental in the pursuit of justice. Regulating the media is as well. But today, the most urgent battle is for hearts and minds - for emotions that are legitimate, powerful, and nuanced. It is an outrage that the far right continues to hijack the most potent emotions of transformation. We must reclaim rage and the shape of our future. The multitude is far more complex and diverse than we imagine. There is real diversity in what people care about, and everyday life is full of contradictions. The figure dressed in green and yellow (to signal patriotism) is an ideal type - and does not represent the heterogeneous masses. Indeed rage must be mobilized: against corruption, against the absent state, against parasitic platforms. Insubordination against the boss must be turned into an ally. Dreams must be mobilized. If there is a group of people within society that want to be in control of their own destiny, we need to offer them a vision of a future they can feel they are somebody - not through individualism, but through collective belonging.

2) Return to face-to-face interaction. We must reclaim social media, occupy the rotten ones, create new ones - and more than that: we must take the fight door to door. And also understand that there are people we won’t try to win over right now. We must let go of them - until they become a minority.

3) Learn from those who resist. Brazil is indeed becoming more conservative, more punitive, more libertarian - but it is also becoming more feminist, more anti-racist, more LGBTQIA+. Like it or not - call us identitarians if you will - it is women, LGBTQIA+ people, and anti-racist movements who are active online and in communities, and who make up the electoral majority holding back the advance of authoritarianism worldwide. Within the broad picture I’ve described, it is women - especially Black women - who stand out as the most skeptical of disinformation and influencers. Their position is the most precarious - they bear the full brunt of all the structural abuses of economic and social inequality. But hey know two things with clarity: first, that no miracle will make them rich; and second, that, so far, it has been strong public policies - like Bolsa Família - that have truly improved their lives. When I talk about the battle for hearts and minds, it is to them that we must look. The answers are all there.

4) Generate decent jobs. Despite everything that’s been said, it is not true that people no longer want CLT jobs (formal employment). They have learned to get by in the informal economy with a certain autonomy - but everyone wants paid holidays, a year-end bonus, and security. People do not want lousy, low-paid jobs. What they want are good jobs.

5) Do entrepreneurship differently. Entrepreneurship shouldn’t be a dirty word. The world of work is being transformed by automation and precarization. In this context, it is urgent to offer new and robust entrepreneurship training programs, but from other perspectives: focusing on collective action, feminism, Afro-entrepreneurship, and economic justice.

6) Expand the state.There are no miracles. There are improvements. And real progress come from strong fiscal policies promoting full, decent employment and fairer wealth redistribution. Policies like these change lives. And they change political positions. They are the best antidote against hatred and disinformation. The far right wants to destroy the state. Those who fight for democracy want to expand it: expand it until the day no citizen is treated as a nobody - and everyone can enjoy the dignity of feeling like a someone.

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• 1
  This essay was originally presented on March 31, 2025, in the Salão de Atos, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil, as the university’s Aula Magna (Annual Lecture).
• 2
  A significant part of the research discussed in this essay was funded by the European Union (ERC, WORKPOLITICSBIP, 101045738). However, views and opinions expressed are those of the paper author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
• 3
  See Qual […] (2023); Pinheiro-Machado et al. (2023a).
• 4
  This review included research articles published since 2016 on the fight against mis/disinformation.
• 5
  See Democracy Challenged (https://democracychallenged.com/blog/).
• 6
  Green and yellow are Brazil’s patriotic colors. Xandão here refers to Supreme Federal Court justice Alexandre de Moraes.
• 7
  Data from Factworks for Meta, via Youpix (Youpix; Brunch, 2022). See also Youpix (2023) and Creator […], (2023).

Data availability

The research data are available in the body of the document.

• Editors:
  Ruben George Oliven - https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3556-6955
  Arlei Sander Damo - https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4368-6754
  Jean Segata - https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2544-0745

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  04 July 2025
• Date of issue
  Aug-Dec 2025

History

• Received
  24 Apr 2025
• Accepted
  15 May 2025