In 1954, American social psychologist Leon Festinger and two other colleagues whose followers believed that the world would end at dawn on December 21 of that year.
The leader of the group, called by the authors Marian Keech, was a housewife from Chicago (USA) who practiced psychography and assured that she had received warnings from aliens from the planet “Clarion” about the arrival of a catastrophic flood. Those who had faith in the message, however, would be spared and rescued by a flying saucer at midnight on D-Day.
On the 20th, followers gathered to begin preparations for the rescue – they believed they should get rid of any metal items, such as zippers and bra straps, to join the flying saucer. Calmly, they waited until midnight.
In Keech’s room there were two clocks, one running faster than the other. When one of them indicated the turn of dawn and nothing happened, the followers were convinced that the other marked the correct time. When he also announced midnight and no flying saucer, the group remained silent.
Throughout the morning, those present began to elaborate justifications for the absence of rescue. At 2am, they were already quite agitated. At 4:45 am, Keech said he had received a new message from the “God of the Earth”: the world had been spared due to the great faith of that small group.
The majority of followers believed in the leader’s vision and were ecstatic, calling journalists to tell them the good news.
The researchers observed that the most committed members (those who had left their jobs, ended relationships or donated money before the arrival of the expected flying saucer) had more difficulty facing reality and accepting the falsehood of their belief.
They experienced what Festinger coined: the psychological discomfort that arises when an inconsistency between ideas, beliefs, values and actions is revealed. For example, a person who knows that cigarettes are bad for them, but still continues smoking. To rationalize her behavior, she tells herself that smoking makes her feel relaxed.
Festinger had two hypotheses. The first assumed that, faced with the discomfort of dissonance, the person would try to reduce it, seeking consonance (which is why attempts at rationalization would arise). The second assumed that the person would also try to avoid situations and information that would potentially increase dissonance.
It is in this state that the most fierce supporters of the former president remain, preventively arrested on Saturday (22) after using a soldering iron, as he himself told an agent in a video that went viral on the networks.
One in more than 100,000 public WhatsApp and Telegram groups from November 21 to 23 revealed the reactions of Bolsonaro supporters to the episode. Initially, followers of the former president stated in the groups that there had been no attempt to violate the ankle bracelet, but rather a failure of the equipment, and that Minister Alexandre de Moraes’ decision was excessive.
After the circulation of the video in which Bolsonaro admits to having used the , his supporters began to make efforts to question the evidence, calling into question the authenticity of his voice, his leg or the absence of the burn that “should have been caused by the heat of the iron”. According to Palver, more than 38% of users who spoke about the topic in the groups denied that the former president had tried to violate the ankle bracelet.
The Bolsonaro supporters most committed to the cause start from one belief: Bolsonaro is a myth persecuted by the . When reality broke down the door, and the former president was caught committing a strange and irregular act, which justified preventive detention, these followers went into cognitive dissonance. All they could do was look for fanciful justifications to appease their psychic anguish.
This is not the first time that this phenomenon has been observed among the former president’s most radical followers. It’s hard to forget the collective trance after the defeat in 2022, when coup supporters said it would be necessary for Bolsonaro and the Armed Forces to intervene and annul the election. Each time the deadline came to an end, the group created new justifications to explain why it would be necessary to wait another 72 hours for the miracle.
Bolsonaro’s arrest signals the defense of democracy, but does not nullify the serious social effects of his time as President, when he instilled in the electorate conspiracy and paranoid theories such as supposed fraud in the electoral system, which never occurred.
Just like Mrs. Keech, Bolsonaro’s people broke relationships, fought with family members, lost jobs and began to live isolated from everyone, except other radical voters, as observed in 2022.
Allies of the former president regret the sentence to 27 years in prison. For the most committed supporters, imprisonment to one’s beliefs can be lifelong.
