Think Brazil, think carnival. The Rio carnival is widely believed to be the biggest party on our planet. Brazilian carnivals are the most popular and secular festivity in the world. The street parades are a rich, neatly interwoven mosaic of artistic prowess and complex social relations. The carnivals of the Samba schools have become the biggest street extravaganza in the carnival’s universe. Brazil’s carnival is equivalent to America’s Super Bowl Sunday, only with significantly more “wardrobe malfunctions”.

Carnival doesn’t pretend to disguise Rio’s social problems. In fact, it provides locals with a creative outlet. Thiago Silva de Amorim Jesus of the Federal University of Spirito Santo says that through the carnival, the Brazilian people “invert, reverse and subvert the temporal and controlled daily order… reserving the right to create a new way of life in the carnival period.” Though more than 50 countries now organise carnivals, this street opera remains most vibrant in Latin America and the Caribbean.

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Carnivals are loci of resistance but also assertion of power. The festivity represents alterity, but also a celebration of the grotesque, transgression and sacrilege. Everyone in the carnival is able to behave in a way that transgresses normal social rules. But carnivals are also a site for conviviality, pleasure and social cohesion. During carnivals and street protests, the body becomes a site. You make your body speak. Bodies become walls to hold posters and slogans. The revellers use their bodies as a political and social act. At a time when governments are taking away the rights that nations gave to their citizens, the people claim streets as belonging to people, not just for cars. Carnivals are not just festive celebrations; they are also cathartic tools to heal multiple wounds of societal excesses and state depredations.

Robert Stam of New York University says that a carnival is simultaneously “ecs tatic collectively, the joyful affirmation of social change and dress rehearsal for utopia.” Over the years, carnivals have acquired a new character. They have now become “protestival”, says John Jacob, Christian evangelist. Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin says that carnivals have four traits: the familiar, the carnivalistic mésalliance, the eccentric, and profanation. The carnival allows for blasphemy, obscenity, and a celebration of the earthly and bodied, rather than celebrations of heavenly deities. Foucault calls it “vile sovereignty”. Today, politics in many parts of the world is turning carnivalesque. Populist leaders and parties have understood the nature of the post truth world in which there are only players and certain roles.

Political and electoral campaigns and mobilisations have now entered the realm of the forbidden. Derek Bower of Financial Times writes eloquently about “what Trump’s carnivalesque rallies tell us about his 2024 campaign”. Trump campaign rallies “blend the carnivalesque with the political.” While some of his supporters are draped in the flags of their countries of origin, others are busy swaying to the tune of Dirty Dancing. When Trump arri ves, the crowd roars and the loudspeakers blast out the songs of a certain kind. Across the country, Trump’s rallies are a blend of an evangelical revivalist meeting and carnival. This is what his supporters, “a basket of deplorables,” want.

Trump’s supporters believe Joe Biden stole the election four years ago. Some believe Barack Obama is still running the country. There are still others who believe that leftwing activists, not Trump supporters, had atta c ked the Capitol in January 2021. In the post-truth world where lies have become the new truth, many other leaders have taken a leaf from Trump’s book. Leaders like Putin, Erdogan, Bolsonaro and Modi follow a style of campaigns and governance that are carnivalesque. Social movements and anti-globalisation movements increasingly became “protestivals”. Populist leaders have hijacked the strategies of the protest and global justice movements. They resort to a political discourse and extravagant pronouncements that don’t conform to acceted conventions and norms.

Politics, like a carnival, is also a staged perforpost truth. Increasingly, the crowds gathered by the party or leaders use and display masks of their leaders. Here the Latin Americ an experience is quite instructive. The Zapatista leader, the bapost truth-clad, pipe-smoking Subcomandante Marcos symbolises what he calls “todos so m os Marcos (we are all Marcos).

Modi’s cosplay masks convey a similar message. A mask is a collective cry for justice. It is a tool of transformation so as to play and assume roles in a broader social and political drama. But masks are also used to engage in masquerades. Road shows have all the traits of a carnival. Even the kanwar yatra has acquired a carnivalesque character. In recent years, these have been co-opted by the ruling BJP. Those revelle rs are anything but anti-establishment. No doubt, they escape from harsh conditions of life for 10 days The religious has become political of a certain kind.

During the Stalinist era, the Russian dictator was known for mocking and ridiculing his party comrades and ideological rivals. The state used the parodies and travesties in its exercise of power. Some leaders and oppressive states celebrate the reversal of democratic order and legal norms through festive performances of their own transgression of power. Leaders like Trump have benefited from their performative political style. Foucault calls it “arbitrary sovereignty.” Such leaders castigate their rivals through lies and calumnies. Trump knows how to fact-check them as “fake news”.

Trump’s campaigns bank on insults and rants. By ridiculing his rivals, Trump frames them in a way that undermines their credibility as also perpetuate the “us-versus-them” polarisation. Others have sought to control the media and deny a level playing field to their political rivals. Sarcasm and black humour are the traits of demagoguery. As Maya Vinokour, a scholar of Stalinism says, “you laugh at something to diminish it and as preparation for casting it down or destroying it.” The comedy in the hands of ‘actor-leaders’can normalise the abnormal and lessen the monstruous and give their supporters a sinister kind of license.

Trump has mastered this art. The comic authoritarian style of the politics of Trump has allowed a threat to democracy to appear at best like a tasteless prank. Like a carnival, populist politics is fast becoming grotesque, profane and vile. Given the growing trust deficits, the practitioners of carnivalesque politics are refashioning themselves as new tribunes of the people.

(The writer is Director, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delh)