Historically, in electoral campaigns, the demands of people with disabilities have been appropriated and, consequently, emptied by right-wing parties and politicians. The Bolsonaro practice refines these models by contesting the discourse and dismantling established public policies. Thus, constructions that were previously fiercely opposed, such as school segregation, or terminologies that went hand in hand with the norm-centered ideas of psychiatric institutions, return under the guise of struggle banners.
The instrumentalization becomes evident in political advertisements, as the causes of people with disabilities, particularly driven by the expansion of the autism industry, are captured as electoral showcases for the extreme right and conservatism.
This maneuver reinforces the paternalistic and philanthropic logic and positions the charitable, fundamentalist religious discourse, and segregating institutions as the only solutions to what these groups consider the "problem" of inclusion, thereby nullifying the struggles and usurping the narratives of people with disabilities.
It is crucial to recognize that this movement is not static in time and perfectly adapts to the logic of capitalist productivity and social conditioning. Once a demand is deprived of the discourse of emancipation, dignity, and human rights, it is intentionally reconfigured, converting the demand for inclusion into a pedagogical problem in the school environment, a threat in public space, and an inability in the labor market. This is therefore a deliberate strategy of social control.
In this mechanism, the hypermedicalizing clinic acts as a central and lucrative weapon. In this sense, overdiagnoses are used to justify individual limitations, without ever questioning the barriers created by power structures that generate various forms of exclusion and violence, deepening the cycles of individual blame and medicalizing life as a solution.
On the other hand, the criticism must reach the entire political spectrum. While the right appropriates the theme under the guise of charity, progressive and left-wing parties often fall into structural neglect, as they fail to guarantee basic practical commitments, such as accessibility in their own spaces, events, and policy formulations.
However, when choosing our candidates, we need clarity in the narrative contest. Voting for conservative parties and politicians deepens segregation and allegorical representation, unlike progressive and left-wing politicians, who, when held accountable and pressured in their actions, commit to a just Brazil project. The choice has its challenges, but the path must always be democratic.
The reductionist, biomedical, individualistic, and paternalistic statements made by politicians on the extreme right, who have never experienced disability, but believe they can speak for those who do, drain social criticism and invalidate the political protagonism of the person with a disability.
Stay alert: simplistic and charitable answers to structural problems drain the emancipatory, collective, and transformative potential of the anti-capacitation struggle.