An Ecology of Mind Approach to Far-Right Publics in Brazil

This article brings Gregory Bateson’s ecology of mind to bear on map-territory dilemmas in the anthropological study of populism by examining the protean qualities of far-right publics through their underlying cybernetic dynamics. It does so, first, by making a historical and structural claim about how cybernetics’ nonliberal view of humans as war enemies and animals was carried over to the tech industry’s reliance on models of servomechanistic and crowd behavior. Second, it provides an ecological account of far-right publics in Brazil based on longitudinal, mixed-methods research on Jair Bolsonaro’s victory in 2018 up until his unsuccessful bid for reelection and the dramatic aftermath of the January 8, 2023, attack on the Three Powers Plaza. From this perspective, Bolsonarism appears as a shape-shifting dynamic oscillating between “moderate” populism and “radical” extremism, maintaining the overall technopolitical system on a paradoxical plateau of schismogenic antagonism. Sheltered in semiopaque digital publics and aided by platform algorithms, Bolsonaro, his allies, and his followers were able to gradually nudge Brazilian democracy toward a threshold of structural change organized around its opposite. I conclude by advocating for the ecology of mind’s potential to open up new avenues for anthropological engagement beyond the discipline and academia.