Cesar Felício | September 24, 2025

The left's demonstration of strength in the streets last Sunday must be compared with its weakness against the right, both online and offline, over the last decade. The right—in both its pro-Bolsonaro and non-Bolsonaro strands—gave the left a tailwind by lumping together the constitutional amendment (PEC) for the shielding of the state and the urgent request for the bill that could pardon former President Jair Bolsonaro.

A tailwind, as defined by the National Civil Aviation Agency, is a wind blowing in the same direction as the object is moving, a circumstance that allows "the safest crossing of mountain tops and peaks at relatively low altitudes and in turbulent or strong wind conditions." Part of the public, which had been staying at home out of horror of polarization, felt motivated to protest the impunity enacted by the Chamber of Deputies. Otherwise, the turnout would be ten times smaller. "It wasn't just the left," Senator Paulo Paim (Workers' Party-RS), the most veteran leftist in Congress, told this column.

A strong indication of the tailwind is in a survey carried out by the Democracy in Check Institute, at the request of this column. DX measured how amnesty, a banner currently held by the so-called "conservative camp," was appropriated on social media last weekend by the so-called "progressive camp" (the terminology is the institute's, not the column's). The term was appropriated between September 20th and 21st, following a wave of digital activism that hammered out the "Shield PEC" and "Bandidagem PEC" between September 17th and 19th, to refer to the proposal that extends parliamentary immunity to criminal and civil matters.

Read the full article.