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 Mr. Janones had played a key role in the candidate's 11th-hour victory. He led an impromptu, nonstop digital campaign to mobilize Lula supporters to the polls on Sunday, helping Mr. Lula overcome his second-place finish to right-wing rival Flávio Bolsonaro in the first round of voting.
On Monday night, Mr. Janones, 42, who said he had been averaging about four hours of sleep a night during the final three-week sprint, was pacing around a São Paulo living room, drinking coffee and dissecting his role. "No matter what happens in my life from now on, my existence has been worth it," he said. "I was able to contribute to the survival of democracy in my country."
In some ways, his role seemed unlikely. He is a leftist congressman from a small city in the state of Minas Gerais, he never had an official role in Mr. Lula's campaign, and he didn't even belong to Mr. Lula's party. But he is no stranger to digital politicking, having hosted Facebook videos since 2018. After Mr. Lula finished 2 percentage points behind Mr. Bolsonaro in the first round, many analysts and data experts started writing off the president. Mr. Janones, however, decided to turbocharge a slow-growing WhatsApp channel called Lula's Army that he had created in April.
He shared Mr. Lula's belief that the election was essentially a fight on behalf of the nation's poorest people, and the channel leaned into a simple message: Brazil could ill afford another Bolsonaro as president. Seeking to marshal support, Mr. Janones adopted the language of armed conflict, calling himself "general" and his followers "soldiers," issuing tasks he called "missions." He told followers not to respond to online attacks, since engagement would further boost their reach, and to watch pro-Lula videos to the end, comment and share widely.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing