Throughout the week, two international events stood out in the digital debate mainly due to the parallels that users draw with the elections in Brazil. The Brazilian left exploited the news that the population began to turn to donkey meat as a way to avoid hunger and inflation. In the United States, after a strong reaction, it was erased by curing a sick person.
The two episodes had strong repercussions in Brazil. According to data from , which analyzes more than 100,000 public Telegram groups in real time, Trump alone concentrated more than three quarters of the volume, demonstrating both the centrality of the president in the Brazilian political discussion , which generated a very negative reaction in several groups in society, both on the right and on the left.
In the case of Argentina, the episode gained relevance mainly among left-wing groups, which are exploiting the crisis in the neighboring country to point out what they call the failure of the right-wing project, seeking to establish associations between the Argentine president and Donald Trump and Bolsonaro.
Of the messages about Milei, 9 out of 10 are negative, and almost always with a direct link to Brazil. A large part of the messages that mention Milei also mention donkey meat, and a relevant portion associates the episode with the candidacy of and the support of .
Regarding Trump, around two thirds of the messages attack him, with a focus on the photo of Christ, classified as blasphemy even by journalists from his own base. Trump’s defense, around a quarter of the messages, focuses on playing videos with speeches from people around the president, such as the counselor, who compared the trajectory of Jesus with that of Trump, and Congressman Troy Nehls, who alluded to a “second coming of Jesus Christ”.
In the WhatsApp groups analyzed by Palver, messages and videos portray the president of the United States as representing the antichrist, in addition to demanding a formal position from Brazilian evangelical leaders on the topic.
It is interesting to note that the two episodes stopped being international facts and became political ammunition within the Brazilian electoral context. Donkey meat gained prominence because it summarizes, in a simple way, what the opposition tries to say about the economic project of Bolsonarism. It’s the kind of metaphor that the left rarely produces, but whose engagement is quite high and spreads quickly within groups.
On the other hand, there were few messages of explicit support for , a fact that is part of the strategy, since engaging in the debate means giving popularity to a topic that is quite negative for the right and that is unlikely to produce arguments that are simple and effective to understand. Milei’s famous expression “Viva la libertad, carajo” was used as a way to suppress the debate, but also in an ironic way when reproducing images about the consumption of donkey meat.
For the elections, there are important lessons in these cases, which must be used by campaigns, especially against Flávio Bolsonaro, who relies on economic discourse and evangelical issues.
Milei shows that the cost-cutting narrative becomes empty when there is no meat on the plate. In Trump’s case, the lesson is that the use of religion for political purposes can produce the opposite of expected effects and raise doubts even in the most faithful electorate. In an election year, each support or association with other politicians or issues must be studied rigorously, as errors in constructing the narrative can be very costly at the polls.
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