A ACOMODAÇÃO DOS OUTSIDERS ALEXANDRE KALIL E ROMEU ZEMA AO ESTABLISHMENT EM MINAS GERAIS: uma análise das estratégias retóricas e das narrativas antipolíticas na propaganda eleitoral dos líderes mineiros pelo Facebook

Resumo (EN)

By defining the state of Minas Gerais and its communicational and geopolitical ambience as registered, in order to discuss the emergence and use of anti-political rhetoric by contemporary electoral campaigns, this paper develops a comparative content analysis between the electoral campaigns of Alexandre Kalil and Romeu Zema, in two different moments of the trajectory of both Minas Gerais leaders who, today, play a political role in the state of Minas Gerais. First, the analysis of the campaigns focuses on the municipal election of 2016, when Kalil had his first electoral experience, having been elected mayor of Belo Horizonte, affiliated at the time to a small party (PHS) and defeated, in the second round, the then candidate of the traditional political forces, João Leite, affiliated to the PSDB. Kalil had only 23 seconds of the 10 minutes of Free Electoral Advertising Schedule (HGPE) and invested in electoral communication via social networks, especially Facebook. The second case, in this first path of inclusion of outsiders, occurs with the election to the government of Minas Gerais, in 2018, when Zema inaugurates his electoral trajectory by becoming governor of the state, after also defeating the PSDB and the PT, in the dispute against toucan Antônio Anastasia, in addition to PT Fernando Pimentel (PT). Both were outsider candidates, in these first campaigns they followed and intensely triggered anti-political narratives, with strong criticism of traditional parties and politicians. In the national political context, with reverberations in state and municipal disputes, a series of psychological, psychological and social situations and phenomena stand out that yearn for the success of the discourse of denial of politics: the June 2013 Journeys, Operation Lava Jato, with 79 phases from 2014 to 2021, the collapse of the PT in 2016 with the impeachment of then-president Dilma Rousseff, the arrest of Lula in 2018 as a result of Lava Jato and several other political leaders derived from the PT, PMDB and Centrão parties and, finally, the victory of the extreme right in the country, with the electoral success of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, when he won the Presidency of the Republic, defeating Fernando Haddad (PT). In a second moment, the content analysis turns to the 2022 election, when Kalil and Zema ran for the government of Minas Gerais, in a very different political context in relation to the 2016 and 2018 elections, both having already gone through the experience governmental. The anti-political discourse began to be softened even by the insertion of the two actors into the traditional political field, in alliances with conservative or hegemonic parties and leaders. In the case of Kalil, the transformation was more incisive, and the candidate began to refer to the figure of former president and candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT). In addition to making strong appeals to party-political and ideological content, inserting Lula and the center-left front that was in his alliance (PT, PSB, PCdoB), he adopted a progressive discourse in competition with Zema’s neoliberal stance. This strategy stemmed from the original construction of his anti-political, independent and pragmatic character built in 2016 and which, as mayor of Belo Horizonte, maintained even greater consistency. Zema, in turn, joined a more conservative and also traditional political group, but, in his communication strategies, he sought to maintain the “manager” discourse to the detriment of the politician, which brought a certain change in his trajectory. from a media point of view. It should be remembered that, in relation to the political field, it was fully inserted, with the support of federal, state and mayoral deputies and it took advantage of an electoral game addicted to Brazilian politics, which is the use of the administrative machine to guarantee re-election. The research has as its corpus the videos published by the candidates on Facebook in the first round of the elections analyzed and is fundamental, as seen in the first two chapters, in theoretical-methodological approaches in the area of interface between media and politics, especially in line with electoral communication. It brings as theoretical and conceptual reflections, from the symbiosis between the field of politics and the media, passing through the specificities of electoral communication in Brazil, until reaching the debate on anti-political rhetoric, understood as a dialectical movement intrinsic to the very modus operandi of the field of politics. Thus, the work seeks to help in understanding the strategies and persuasive appeals used by contemporary anti-political rhetoric, observing an important regional context, which is Minas Gerais, but establishing parallels with national politics. Through content analysis, 51 videos of the 2016 municipal campaign in Belo Horizonte, shown on Kalil’s Facebook, and 106 videos of the Minas Gerais gubernatorial election in 2018, shown on Zema's Facebook, are analyzed. As for the 2022 elections, a total of 170 videos of the dispute between the two candidates for the state government are analyzed (51 from Zema's campaign and 119 from Kalil's campaign), made available on the candidates' Facebook page. Based on the categorization of the analyzed video segments, regarding political objects or themes, types of anti-political narrative employed, persuasive appeals, rhetorical constructions, among other applied categorizations, it is possible to perceive the limits and paradoxes that anti-political rhetoric is raising to power, as well as understanding some rhetorical paths that anti-politics can take within electoral communication, especially populism and managerialism.