Processos formativos de jovens conservadores: discursividade política do Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL)

Abstract

The object of this research, linked to the Education, Society, and Culture research line of the Postgraduate Program in Education (PPGE of PUC Goiás), was the conservative youth of the Free Brazil Movement, in interface with the political field. The general objective was to analyze and understand the online and offline formative processes of the MBL's conservative youth and the constitution of their political discourse in relation to education and other conservative agendas present in contemporary Brazilian society. The specific objectives were: to observe and describe beliefs, values and attitudes, social structures and behavior of the young people researched, understand concepts and sources that inspire the (re)production of the political discourse of the youth collective researched. Finally, we sought to interpret the dispute in the political field and the hegemony of the discourse on the part of this conservative juvenile collective. Through the Arendtian thought, politics is understood as a complex concept, as action and freedom, with its characteristics of courage and publicity. The political field, in Bourdieus' thought, is a microcosm, relatively autonomous within the great social world. It has its own rules of the game of belonging, relations, actions, and processes. Conservatism and liberalism are perceived as pragmatic and immediatist sociopolitical theories and practices. Neoliberalism was understood as the ideology of a particular historical form, assumed by the accumulation of capital. As for youth, it was understood as a social category in its plurality. Its perception of politics and participation in it are equally heterogeneous and express the diversity of possibilities to experience youth. Youth is a structuring element in modern societies that classifies individuals, regulates behavior, and establishes rights and duties. It is a symbolic representation constituted by social groups or individuals considered to be young. It is not just a natural and individual characteristic, but a situation experienced in common by certain subjects. One manifestation of juvenile political participation observed in contemporaneity is the conservative manifestations of juvenile collectives. Thus, the methodological process consisted of a literature review on politics, youth and political participation, (neo)liberalism, and conservatism. To this end, a netnographic research of partially open observation was carried out in WhatsApp groups, Instagram and Facebook pages, and the YouTube channel of the Movimento Brasil Livre. The empirical research also made use of fifty online questionnaires sent to young people belonging to the monitored message groups and ended with semi-structured interviews with five young people, one from each geographical region of the country, and the textual discourse analysis of these interviews. Regarding the results, the research data showed that the young people, participants of the research, have an active political engagement and a clear awareness of belonging to the MBL, from which they absorb its sociopolitical conceptions through a previously designed formative process. If on the one hand they present disparities and heterogeneity in the socioeconomic cultural profile, on the other they expose a discourse channeled towards individual freedom and a rather homogeneous vision of society: they propose a liberal society in the economy and a reduced state in the social field with several conservative proposals