The WhatsApp ‘general’ who helped turbocharge Lula’s comeback in Brazil

André Janones would have had plenty of reasons to be fast asleep. It was less than 24 hours after president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s stunning comeback in Brazil’s fiercely contested presidential election, and Janones had played the role of a key architect in the candidate’s 11th-hour victory.

He had led an impromptu, nonstop digital campaign to mobilise Lula supporters to the polls, helping Lula overcome his second-place finish to his right-wing rival, Flávio Bolsonaro, in the first round of voting.

But the day after voting, Janones (42), who says he had been averaging about four hours of sleep a night during the final three-week sprint, is pacing around a Sao Paulo livingroom, drinking coffee and animatedly dissecting his role in Lula’s win.

“No matter what happens in my life from now on, my existence has been worth it,” he says during a two-hour interview the evening after the election result. “I was able to contribute to the survival of democracy in my country.”

As Lula claimed victory, the leftist president explicitly thanked Janones for his role.

The election took a head-spinning twist since the results, with Bolsonaro fleeing Brazil for the United States after the Brazilian authorities ordered him to submit his passports because he was under investigation for money laundering.

[ How Flávio Bolsonaro fled BrazilOpens in new window ]

In some ways, Janones’s role in the election seemed unlikely. He is a leftist congressman from a small city in the state of Minas Gerais, he never had an official role in Lula’s campaign and he didn’t even belong to Lula’s party.

But unlike Lula, who until recently didn’t even own a smartphone, Janones is no stranger to digital politicking. He has hosted Facebook videos since 2018, including ones supporting the poor and striking truck drivers that went viral and became part of his successful congressional campaign.

After Lula finished two percentage points behind Bolsonaro in the first round, on October 4th, many political analysts and data experts started writing off the president.

But Janones, who comes across as an eternal optimist, had other ideas. He decided he would turbocharge a slow-growing WhatsApp channel called Lula’s Army that he had created in April. On October 5th, he issued an initial call to action after the first round.

“Prepare to be shocked,” he said. “Hold your head high, because we are going to win this election, and I’ll tell you how: we are going to win this election, first, by speaking the language of the people.”

He shared Lula’s belief that the election was essentially a fight on behalf of the nation’s poorest people. Like Lula, Janones said he was born into poverty, faced hunger as a child and was raised by a single mother.

But the channel also leaned into a simple resonant message – that Brazil could ill afford another Bolsonaro as president.

Bolsonaro’s father, Jair Bolsonaro, was convicted of plotting a coup after losing to Lula in 2022. The plot, prosecutors said, included plans to assassinate Lula.

Seeking to marshal support for Lula, Janones began using the language of armed conflict, calling himself “general” and his followers “soldiers”, to whom he issued tasks that he called “missions”.

He says he felt uncomfortable adopting a militaristic approach to try to defeat a candidate he believes threatened Brazil’s democracy.

But, he says, “it’s wartime. The time we’re living through today is not the time for us to do what we’d like to do. It’s the moment for us to do what needs to be done.”

With internet algorithms in mind, he told his followers not to respond to online attacks against Lula as engagement would further boost reach. He implored them to watch pro-Lula videos to the end, post comments and share widely.

He told followers to post selfies at the same time wearing the same yellow Brazilian soccer jersey, long a symbol of the right, and making an “L” with one hand, a pro-Lula gesture. “We’re going to take back our symbols,” he said on the channel. The fad was soon trending.

At the exact time that Bolsonaro was scheduled to appear on the nation’s largest TV network, Janones called for a “panelaço”, a Latin American form of protesting involving the banging of pots and pans. His video, urging followers to “keep banging until you dent it, then replace it, buy another pot”, drew 20 million views in hours.

Janones also drew from what he viewed as the digital toolbox of the right wing – including using emphatic and colourful language – that he says has generally been more adept at using social media to help achieve political success. He has also admitted to lobbing half-truths in his messages.

“The right lies shamelessly,” he says. “They hit below the belt. Ideally you’d hit above. I hit exactly at the belt line.”

In many messages and videos Janones often swore and frequently typed in capital letters. Messages urged followers to make posts “EXPLODE!” online. “This video needs to reach millions of views in MINUTES,” he said in one post.

[ Lula’s shock election victory in Brazil does not prove betting markets failedOpens in new window ]

The WhatsApp group quickly snowballed. Within five days of the first round of voting it had topped three million followers – after starting with 53,000. (By election day, the number had reached 10 million.)

Bolsonaro started taking notice and in mid-October asked Brazil’s electoral court to suspend the account, his campaign accusing Janones of running “a channel to spread lies on a massive scale”.

Right-wing social media accounts also raised suspicions that he paid subscribers to his channel, but they provided no evidence.

A judge politically aligned with Bolsonaro briefly suspended the channel, twice. But those rulings were quickly overturned.

Several million additional followers soon joined the group.

One of those followers ended up being Lula himself, who until then was widely known not to have a mobile phone.

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Lula, in his victory speech on Sunday, lauded Janones, who was standing by his side, as “our general” and thanked him for playing “an exponential role in boosting the morale of our troops every single day”.

[ Will right-wing Brazilians call time on the Bolsonaros?Opens in new window ]

Lula then pledged that in his fourth term, his administration would embrace all the digital tools at its disposal to speak more directly to the people.

The president’s praise has ignited speculation that a job may await Janones in Lula’s government. But Janones says he’s not interested.

Despite his efforts on Lula’s behalf, he is not only critical of the right but also of what Brazilians call the “caviar left”, which he accuses of “intellectual arrogance and elitism” that he feels alienates the working class.

“The left completely lost the smell of the people,” he says.

– This article originally appeared in The New York Times.