When Political Debate Becomes a Spectacle of Personal Attacks

I’m 52, almost 53, and I’ve followed plenty of presidential campaigns. I’ve watched candidates from the right and the left compete for office, voted for candidates on different sides, and learned that no debate gives us all the answers we’d like to hear. Even so, when I sat down to watch Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro on Brazil’s Band television network on October 18, 2026, I had a simple goal: get a better understanding of their proposals and gather enough information to help me decide how to vote. That didn’t seem like too much to ask.

I wanted to know what each intended to do for the country, what they considered a priority, and, above all, how they would explain their choices when faced with difficult questions. There were policy proposals, to be fair. On public safety, Flávio talked about classifying criminal gangs as narcoterrorist organizations and expanding prison capacity; Lula advocated creating a Ministry of Public Security, which would require passage of a constitutional amendment. Those were real differences, and I would have liked to understand them better. But that wasn’t what stayed with me after the broadcast ended. What stayed with me was the sight of two presidential candidates trading insults live on national television. [1]

I came away frustrated and, I admit, taken aback. Not because I expected perfect civility or a conversation between old friends. Politics involves real disagreements, and anyone running for president needs to answer for their decisions and their past. My frustration came from somewhere else: I had tuned in hoping to learn about two possible administrations and come away with two negative portraits—Lula’s, drawn by Flávio, and Flávio’s, drawn by Lula.

Try an exercise with me. Take the debate transcript and two sheets of paper: on one, put only Lula’s words about Flávio; on the other, only Flávio’s words about Lula. No summaries: the exact words that went out over the air. [2]

On Lula’s sheet, Flávio is, first and foremost, a liar from a family of liars: “It’s funny, because lying is the Bolsonaro family’s strong suit”; “He must have prepared himself to lie worse than his father”; “He’s gotten much better at lying”; “I can see a lot of lies in your eyes”; “This young senator seems to have prepared himself with the utmost shamelessness.” He is “the Rio hustler.” He is someone who, according to Lula, “only knows buses from books, because he’s never been on a bus”—and, “besides, he’s never worked.” He is a member of a paramilitary militia: “I want to stay away from the Bolsonaro family. Militia members? I want to stay away.” And he has “a bad pedigree.”

On that same sheet, Flávio is surrounded by suspicious money and crime. “You took 134 million, you lied to Brazilian society.” “Explain to me how you bought a 10-million-real house on a senator’s salary.” He gave “jobs to the sister and the wife of the guy from the Escritório do Crime gang that ordered Marielle’s killing.” And he was asked: “Did that murderer you wouldn’t let be arrested, who killed a 5-year-old child, vote for you?” About the man known as Careca do INSS, Lula said: “Careca is the product of a gang they put together to steal from Social Security.” Flávio’s brother “is on the run in the United States, plotting against Brazil,” and the entire group was supposedly committing treason: “What you’re doing is betraying the country, and you will be tried for it.” Finally, a warning: “Get ready, because on the 25th you’re going to lose your immunity.”

On Flávio’s sheet, Lula is the liar: “All you do is lie”; “You lie [with] such ease in front of the cameras, and behind the cameras you protect your son”; “You’ve been deceiving the Brazilian people for four years”; “Look, your nose is growing, Lula, watch out.” He is corrupt and a convicted criminal: “Besides the lying, your administrations are always marked by corruption, Lula”; “You were convicted at every level of the courts, Lula”; “Do you know how many people here have been convicted or jailed for corruption and money laundering? Only you.” “You have a very serious problem in your DNA.” And he is a thief, complete with a joke: “I don’t have my wallet on me, so you won’t be able to rob me.”

On that same sheet, Lula’s legacy is “nothing but poverty and debt,” a list in which there are “record numbers of women murdered,” “record numbers of women beaten,” “record numbers of businesses closing,” “record numbers of industries leaving Brazil,” and “record crime.” Flávio summed it up: “Nothing but bad records. And he’s the record holder for lying, too; he’s already been convicted several times by the Superior Electoral Court for fake news.” The government “has turned into a marketplace for backroom deals,” where retirees “are being robbed,” and “the money that may be supporting your son could be your money as a retiree.” The son “is over there in Spain now,” and Flávio also left this hanging: “If Lula’s son beat his own wife.” Lula “made guns available to drug traffickers,” received “votes from rapists and armed robbers,” and was “elected by acclamation in the prisons.” His friend is “Ortega, from Nicaragua, a dictator.” The Workers’ Party is the “party of backstabbers.” Lula “is dragging Brazil through the mud” and, in short, “is Brazil’s problem.” At one point, Flávio summed it up: “This is disgusting.” And he gave his opponent an assignment: “Get a little piece of paper and a pen and write this down: corrupt, corrupt.” [2]

Read the two sheets one after the other. One candidate is a liar from a family of liars, a hustler, a militia member, someone who has never worked, bought a 10-million-real house on a senator’s salary, protects a murderer, and betrays his country. The other is a liar, corrupt, convicted, a thief who steals from retirees, a dictator’s friend, elected by prisoners, someone around whom you’d better hide your wallet. Those aren’t my words. They were two candidates for the presidency of Brazil talking about each other on national television.

If I took both sheets at face value, I would come away trusting neither of them—not because I had examined evidence, but because each had spent the evening running a negative campaign against the other. I had sat down to learn about proposals and got up with a collection of insults in my memory. With every question that ended in another accusation, the debate moved further from what I had come looking for. [2]

There was, however, a scene that unsettled me even more. While Lula was speaking, Flávio repeatedly appeared behind him in the camera shot, making disapproving faces and gestures. I was trying to follow the argument of the person who had the floor while receiving another message at the same time, this one without words. It was as if the picture itself had opened a second debate, competing with the first.

I later learned that this hadn’t been improvised. According to Folha de S.Paulo columnist Mônica Bergamo, campaign strategist Duda Lima had instructed Flávio to move closer to Lula so he would appear on camera while his opponent spoke. O Globo reported that the appearances had been rehearsed with the campaign team to produce short social media clips. The tactic recalled Donald Trump moving around behind Hillary Clinton during a U.S. debate in 2016. This was no longer just about disagreeing with what was being said; it was about competing for the viewer’s attention while the other person tried to explain himself. [3]

Lula noticed the gestures and complained to the moderators: “If he’s mocking me, I want a right of reply, because I’m not a clown; he’s the clown here.” Flávio shot back: “I’m no clown.” And the debate had to be interrupted. But what stayed with me most was the moderation. Adriana Araújo and Eduardo Oinegue were moderating, and both had to intervene to curb interruptions and keep the room under control. During the closing statements, Adriana even stopped the clock to ask the audience to be quiet. [4]

Anyone reading only the transcript might imagine routine reminders about the rules. What struck me, though, wasn’t the wording. It was the tone: firm, sharp, the voice of someone already irritated at having to repeat the same instruction. For a moment, I thought of a teacher trying to get a class of restless children back into their seats—and there stood the president of Brazil and another candidate for the presidency. The comparison may sound disrespectful. But respect that night didn’t seem to be a priority for either of them—neither for each other nor for the people watching.

Adriana was simply doing her and Eduardo’s job: enforcing the rules. What was astonishing was that two presidential candidates needed to be reined in so firmly. Nor were the candidates alone in this. The audience traded chants of “Lula” and “mito”—“legend,” a nickname used by Bolsonaro supporters. During one of Flávio’s remarks, Janja repeated “Lies, lies,” and Flávio’s allies called for her removal from the studio. Nikolas Ferreira shouted at Sidônio Palmeira, Lula’s campaign strategist, to be quiet and gestured for the first lady to be silent. Sidônio got into a backstage argument, and newly elected legislator Lucas Pavanato called for him to be ejected. Adriana herself later acknowledged that the audience had disrupted the debate. The confrontation had spilled beyond the two lecterns. [4]

I came away wondering what had changed. I remember earlier campaigns, more restrained debates, opponents who maintained a certain bearing even when they disagreed. But memory tends to be kind to the past. Fierce confrontation is nothing new. In 1989, Collor’s allotted television campaign broadcast featured Miriam Cordeiro, Lula’s former girlfriend and the mother of one of his daughters, accusing him of being racist and of trying to persuade her to have an abortion; Lula was granted a right of reply a few days later. And history offers much older examples of accusations, caricatures, and hostility in public life. Perhaps what is new is not the conflict itself but how it is presented, exploited, and distributed. [5]

It would also be a mistake to think this confrontation happens only in Brazil or belongs to a single political camp. During a debate in 2022, Jair Bolsonaro told journalist Vera Magalhães: “You are a disgrace to Brazilian journalism.” Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, called Lula a “ladrón y presidiario” (“thief and convict”) in 2026. Among left-wing leaders, Hugo Chávez told the UN General Assembly in 2006, referring to George W. Bush: “Ayer vino el Diablo aquí” (“The devil came here yesterday”). In 2024, Nicolás Maduro called Milei a “malparido nazi fascista” (“Nazi-fascist bastard”).

These are different episodes, with different contexts and degrees of seriousness, but in all of them the insult takes the place of the argument, whatever the political camp. That night on Band, the two sheets show that neither candidate held back. [6]

A gesture becomes a short video. An aggressive remark spreads across social media in minutes. A careful explanation asks for several minutes of attention. Which of the three do you think will end up on your phone?

The question matters because it moves us beyond the idea that everything comes down to the candidates’ personalities: there is also an environment in which certain behaviors gain visibility while others all but disappear. And that environment isn’t made up only of algorithms.

That was when I began thinking about voters—including myself, sitting there in front of the TV. It’s easy to point a finger at politicians, but they aren’t speaking into a vacuum. They are speaking to people who approve, reject, share, argue, and vote. Some are excited by a show of strength, and there are probably others as tired as I am of confrontations that explain very little. It would be rash to treat the loudest voices as representatives of everyone.

A few days later, some signs pointed in that direction, though they were limited. Flávio’s campaign began considering fewer provocations and more room for policy proposals in the next debate after qualitative research indicated that undecided voters were uncomfortable with the aggression. Separately, a group of 12 viewers with different political preferences, interviewed by the press, also criticized both candidates’ lack of proposals. These are distinct qualitative assessments, neither of which allows us to speak for the electorate as a whole. Still, it is telling that a rehearsed attention-grabbing strategy was already being reconsidered in light of the initial reactions. [3]

The Band audience offered a clue. One side chanting “Lula,” the other responding “mito”: this wasn’t a discussion about public safety; it was cheering for a team. And why might someone experience an attack on their candidate as an attack on themselves? Social psychology offers some insight. When a political position becomes part of our identity, disagreement stops being about government policies and becomes a struggle between “us” and “them.” A sense of injustice, attachment to the group, and the belief that acting together makes a difference all help mobilize people—the same mechanisms that have sustained peaceful movements and social progress. The problem begins when group identity comes to demand that the other side be discredited. Then insulting an opponent stops sounding rude and starts sounding loyal. [7]

Social media didn’t invent this behavior, but it gave it fuel. Researchers at the universities of Cambridge and New York analyzed about 2.7 million U.S. political posts on Facebook and Twitter and found that each word referring to the opposing group increased a post’s odds of being shared by 67%. Speaking badly of the other side gets more traction than speaking well of your own. Now remember what O Globo reported: Flávio’s appearances behind Lula were rehearsed to produce social media clips. You don’t need to have read the study to know the mechanism; you just need to know what goes viral. Another study found that people tend to perceive political messages online as expressing more outrage than their authors report feeling. In other words, beyond encountering hostility, we come to see more hostility than is actually there—and react to that perception. These studies cannot explain Brazilian politics on their own, but they help us understand why, after a night like that, outrage seems to be everywhere. [8]

There is another difficulty I recognize in all of us, myself included. Go back to the two sheets and answer honestly: which seemed closer to the truth? If the answer came quickly, be wary. We don’t always judge information solely by what it says; who said it and which side that person is on also carry weight. Experiments in psychology and neuroscience find this kind of bias among people with opposing political positions, including in their brain activity as they evaluate arguments on issues such as immigration. That doesn’t justify talking about a left-wing or right-wing brain. It simply suggests that no one is automatically immune to the temptation to welcome an argument from their own side and distrust one from the other. [9]

But it would be unfair to blame voters as though their reactions came out of nowhere. Governments can disappoint expectations, ignore demands, or fail to explain their decisions, and that dissatisfaction looks for an outlet. Sometimes it finds democratic participation and pressure for improvements; at other times, resentment and the promise of someone who claims to know who is to blame for everything. In that environment, a politician may discover that appearing outraged brings them closer to the public than presenting a proposal with conditions, limits, and costs. They begin embodying that frustration, gain visibility for it, and may end up feeding the very feeling that made them appealing.

None of this leads me to conclude that “everyone is to blame,” as though everyone bore the same responsibility. A voter, a head of government, a campaign strategist, and a communications platform do not have the same power. But all can participate, to different degrees, in a self-reinforcing process. People react to what they experience; leaders respond to what they see working; the media make some reactions more visible; and that visibility influences how people and leaders act the next time. Perhaps finding a single culprit is less useful than understanding this cycle.

Thinking about this, I felt I was describing something much older than the internet. In Germany after the crash of 1929, economic hardship, political struggles, and declining trust in institutions created openings for movements that exploited popular discontent. The Nazi rise to power involved many other factors, including decisions by elites and the breakdown of institutions. It cannot be reduced to a simple explanation, much less turned into a direct analogy for the debate I watched. What history shows is that collective frustration, too, can become the object of political competition and organization. [10]

It also shows that other outcomes are possible. In Britain in 1832, protests and resistance to an unrepresentative electoral system contributed to parliamentary reform. It was a limited change that still excluded many people, but it showed that social pressure can find an institutional response. Rome under the Gracchi brothers and revolutionary France offer other examples, which I leave to the endnotes. We don’t need to collect historical episodes; we need only recognize that social tension can take very different paths, and that our choices and institutions help shape those differences. [5] [11]

So I return to that night in front of the television. I still think it is necessary to examine candidates’ pasts, listen to criticism, and demand answers. Confrontation itself is not a flaw in democracy: voters need to know about contradictions, questionable decisions, and well-founded accusations. But a debate should also allow a question to be answered, an accusation to be examined, and a proposal to be explained. When that sequence keeps breaking down, the program may produce plenty of social media clips while still leaving anyone trying to understand something without answers.

Perhaps politicians haven’t simply forgotten how to have a conversation. Perhaps they have learned that, in an environment that rewards immediate reactions, provoking offers advantages that explaining does not always provide. That made me think about the debate’s own rules. What would change if candidates had to return to a question when they dodged it? Or if moderators had clear mechanisms to protect response time and the camera shot of whoever is speaking? I don’t know which formats would work best, and none would eliminate conflict. But asking about the incentives built into the program seems more useful than waiting for candidates to decide, on their own, to behave themselves.

I wanted to leave that debate with a better understanding of two plans for governing the country. I left with two sheets of insults—and, later, thinking about our own behavior as a society. I don’t have a definitive answer to this problem, nor do I believe there is a perfect era we can return to. But I was left with a question: if calling an opponent a militia member and a clown on one side, and corrupt and a liar on the other, attracts so much attention, how much room are we leaving for the ability to explain what someone intends to do for the country?