INTRODUCTION
This mini-manual grows out of the Brazilian experience of Exército do Lula, a movement organized around the ideas and mobilizing efforts of congressman and strategist André Janones, and its independent subdivision, Comunicação Combate, created to extend the reach of its missions during Brazil’s 2026 elections.
Our aim is to bring together, directly and pragmatically, the tactics of communication and political mobilization suited to this terrain.
The tactics presented here emerge from practical experience and experimentation on the digital battlefield itself, having been put to the test in concrete political struggle.
Maximum concision is our principle: every piece of content is reduced to its essentials, prioritizing quick reference and direct application.
BASIC FACTS
Politics is a permanent interplay of forces operating at different levels, converging and/or colliding in the struggle for hegemony over how the realities we inhabit are shaped.
Social media are fundamental components in shaping the realities people inhabit today, constantly connected through their devices. Networks are therefore a fundamental terrain in the struggle over reality .
The networks we inhabit are dominated by digital platforms owned by a small group of large North American corporations with their own interests and supranational prerogatives. Our ways of constructing realities are subject to these platforms. While we cannot escape their capture, we can use their own operating logic to advance other interests . This is the path we will set out.
Each platform has its own logic, which is algorithmic, commercial, and relational at the same time. Platforms are machines in which algorithms capture people in a particular kind of trance from which value is extracted.
Understanding a platform’s logic means understanding how it produces and modulates realities. On the one hand, this means understanding the kinds of behavior it spontaneously favors; on the other, understanding how to intervene and change the course of this process.
Over the past decade, certain political forces acquired this understanding and used it to storm liberal democracies around the planet, in collusion with international financial power. What is now called the far right feeds on the spontaneous workings of platforms, on a permanent trance that excites the basest impulses of moral horror, tribalism, the desire to destroy differences, and so on. The result is the accelerated entropization of institutions and the most basic conventions of coexistence. The spontaneity of networks favors the decline of whatever little civilizational order remains.
The old republican institutions lack the resources to contain this wave. They become hostages and accomplices of the new regime of power while being progressively undermined in favor of regimes with fascist characteristics.
Janonism proposes that other forces appropriate these same platform mechanisms. Instead of what networks spontaneously favor, train a mass of users to intervene in a coordinated way and hijack the algorithmic dynamic.
Space and time on social media are limited. Not everything posted circulates, and the algorithm selects content according to its capacity to generate spontaneous engagement: how much people will react to it, positively or negatively. A mass offensive by committed users can hijack the algorithm on its own terms.
With the right content and, above all, an enormous amount of directed informational power, it is possible to overflow and blow apart the dynamic of bubbles and occupy ever larger portions of the infosphere. The activity spontaneously favored by networks is replaced by the coordinated avalanche.
The dream of a digital public sphere for deliberation through rational arguments is over. Only a force sufficient to produce hegemony in the infosphere can confront the political processes preying on what little civilization we have.
We must mobilize INFORMATIONAL BRUTE FORCE.
CHARACTERISTICS OF “JANONISM”
Janonism relies on a centralized communications structure with far-reaching branches. A channel on a popular messaging app, WhatsApp in Brazil, though Telegram is also an option, issues commands, the “missions,” that must reverberate among all participants, the “soldiers.” From these participants, they must spread to every possible social network within a short interval, preferably within one hour, to produce a wave of algorithmic relevance. Participants also relay commands to secondary channels or groups on the messaging apps themselves, as well as sending them to their contacts. We must occupy every space, force open and rupture the membranes of bubbles.
The idea is to get as many people as possible into this central group so as to win the informational battle through sheer force of numbers, following a logic similar to a DDoS attack. Alternative channels are necessary in case of a judicial attack intended to favor opponents or a direct attack by the platform itself. Centralization matters.
The objective is to expand the infosphere favorable to the cause being defended and draw ever more people into that cause. The most distant and hardened opponents will not be converted. Give up on that. The aim is to sway the undecided, pull people out of a stance of neutrality, and produce contagion through enthusiasm, euphoria, and the informational avalanche.
Commands specify topics to publicize, hashtags to push, images to share, blitzkriegs of likes / shares / saves / forwards on publications of interest, Google search terms to promote, and so on. Any way of artificially dominating a platform’s parameters and metrics is fair game.
Commands must be carried out. Janonism is a strategy for action within a political regime hijacked by platforms, not an ideal of participation. It asks participants, especially those on the left or with progressive views, to momentarily suspend their “critical consciousness” for the sake of the cause at hand. The participant in Janonist action is not the Enlightenment’s “autonomous subject,” but an amplification node in a coordinated communications network seeking hegemony on social media.
The person running the channel, in Brazil congressman André Janones himself, must pay close attention to mobilizing the soldiers, coordinating their action, and aligning their activity on social media with the directives of the action. They must cultivate intimacy and consistency, using their own voice and image to generate and mediate bonds among the soldiers. Missions must be clear, so that activism is gamified and easy to carry out. A very high level of trust and an already proven record of effective action are necessary before soldiers can be asked to find their own solutions. Needless to say, this person must understand how each platform works and be able to read the mood of social media at every moment.
The content to be circulated does not necessarily meet the aesthetic or intellectual standards of a university audience, but it must be circulated. Communists and social-democratic centrists, for example, will have to engage with one another’s content. What matters is producing an informational mass for the allied coalition. Janonism is opposed to keeping a low profile, intellectual pedantry, and sectarianism. Effectiveness means getting your hands dirty.
A general rule is never to engage with opponents’ content under any circumstances. Engagement is engagement, and it signals to the algorithm that the content should be given greater reach. “Positive” and “negative” make no sense at this level: insulting or praising, defending or attacking someone, mocking or falling for ragebait, denouncing something on moral grounds or agreeing vehemently, it makes no difference. Even watching a video already signals interest and increases its relevance and potential circulation. In the heat of battle, the recommendation is to try to bring engagement with the opponent down to zero and drain their reach.
Update from André Janones: “ ATTENTION! People are mistranslating what I said! I NEVER said people should block far-right accounts. I said they should IGNORE THEIR POSTS ! Blocking actually works against this strategy because the algorithm will understand that you didn’t see the content simply because you blocked the account. However, when a post appears in your feed and you ignore it, you don’t read it, don’t like it, don’t comment on it, or engage with it in any way, the algorithm will interpret that content as irrelevant because it was shown to you and you chose not to engage with it! THERE IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BLOCKING CONTENT AND IGNORING IT! ”
We must break the circuit through which people who see themselves as progressives, defenders of democracy and minorities, and so on, take part in empowering the far right in the infosphere. The little itch to express moral outrage or point out how ridiculous the opponent is in order to score points, likes, among peers is precisely what social media convert into nourishment for that very same opponent, through feedback. This dynamic has created a thriving market for figures specializing in ragebaiting leftists, who become far-right personalities and win elected office. It is a machine for producing bolsonaros.
Instead of negative engagement, which is simply more engagement, the Janonist tactic is based on the principle of mirroring. The organizational structure itself mirrors what far-right groups have developed over the past ten years. Mirroring means mobilizing analogous means and content, but with the sign reversed, with greater engagement, and in favor of other causes. When mirroring succeeds, the inverted image produced cancels out the force of what it opposes. This principle appears in various possible social media tactics, outlined below.
In Brazil, the cause for which Janonism arose is the defense of what remains of the New Republic, established from 1985 with the end of the military dictatorship, and the election of the popular leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the Workers’ Party, against the imminent threat of the Bolsonarist movement allied with big tech and the Donald Trump administration. Appropriating the means used to accelerate the harmful entropization of the social fabric by algorithms, an environment in which the far right profits politically and economically, but using them to advance a project aligned with Brazilians’ best interests, given the available alternatives.
At least two specific features of the Brazilian case that drive Janonism’s success should be noted. The first and most obvious is that the scale of participation in the WhatsApp channel Exército do Lula, led by congressman André Janones, as well as participation in the missions, depended enormously on Lula himself, the greatest popular leader in the country’s history and one of the greatest in the world, who had already served three presidential terms: 2003-2006, 2007-2010, and 2023-2026. Another factor is that the convergence around Janonism only took place after a catastrophic result in the first round of the presidential election, with the opponent finishing ahead. This triggered an eruption of energy that would be channeled into informational insurgency, securing Lula’s victory. It remains to be seen whether Janonism can be replicated without these two factors and what mutations will be needed in each context.
This kind of informational insurgency does not replace demonstrators occupying the streets and public spaces. The two forms of mobilization reinforce each other through positive feedback. Large demonstrations draw more people into informational activism, which spreads and amplifies the scale of the demonstrations by circulating images. We must occupy the streets and the networks.
THE METHOD
1. HYPE UP YOUR OWN SIDE.
During mobilization, it is mandatory to like, repost, save, and share, or use the equivalent functions on the platform in question, every post from the allied side, especially those of its central figure. As many accounts as possible on this side must follow one another, producing a mass of content that will be amplified on a huge scale. If the content is a video, watch it to the end. We must interact as much as possible, catch the algorithm’s attention, and generate the greatest possible engagement per unit of screen time. The idea is to flood the infosphere with favorable content and occupy the time and space of networks and users.
2. NEVER ENGAGE WITH THE OPPOSING SIDE.
Just as important as hyping up your own side, or even more so, is NEVER engaging with opponents’ provocations: do not reply, insult, or mock. Do not let the opponent set your agenda. Follow the opposition’s moves without turning every provocation into a public dispute. NEVER engage with ANY POST from the opponent. The algorithm counts only the AMOUNT of interaction. Your interaction will only feed the opponent. Has a post appeared in your feed? SCROLL PAST QUICKLY so the algorithm stops delivering more. Reprimand soldiers who fall into these behaviors harshly and demand that they delete their posts.
3. KEEP WATCH ON THE NETWORKS.
Track the dynamics of hashtags, circulating topics, and coverage by traditional media. Maintain a routine of patrols through digital territories, identify the fronts under threat, which platforms the opponents are gaining ground on, and continuously assess the results of actions.
4. CENTRALIZE POSTS.
Maintain consistency in the hashtags used and the images and videos posted, avoiding scattered initiatives. Track their circulation on a given day and at a given time. Everyone can converge on the same piece of content, whose dissemination takes the form of a wave . A slogan needs continuity, recognition, and a shared direction. Excessive dispersion fragments attention and weakens the identity of initiatives. In Brazil’s 2026 election, one example was Janones’s call for supporters to post photographs wearing the Brazilian national team jersey and making an L with their hands, simultaneously, at exactly the same time. This common gesture brought thousands of accounts together in a collective demonstration and became part of the struggle over national symbols. WE MUST REWORK LENIN: extract from his revolutionary experience what remains alive for our time, the articulation of propaganda, agitation, and organization. Hashtags and shared content can function as slogans and points of convergence, provided they are integrated into a recognizable political vector, whether tactical and circumstantial, ad hoc, or strategic and longterm.
5. THE INFLUENCE OF THE FACE.
The French thinkers Deleuze and Guattari already knew: the Face is a machine . In Brazil, Janonism produced the revolution of low-profile users: ordinary people began to display their political positions on their personal accounts, through political banners, photographs, and watermarks. Politics acquired familiar faces beyond public figures and activists. A familiar face turns a message into a position openly assumed, affects those around it, and politicizes everyday relationships. Do not underestimate the power of showing up.
6. BUBBLE-BREAKING CONTENT.
Learn to recognize and produce content capable of circulating outside politicized circuits: music, montages, humor, pop culture, sports, and entertainment. This operation involves both curation, identifying material with a message favorable to allies and the potential to cross bubbles, such as movie scenes, songs, or artists’ posts, and the deliberate production of content whose power to circulate precedes its political reading. Janones understood the importance of this register. Bubble-breaking content is not just content that does not look like propaganda: it can be propaganda and still break through the bubble. This depends on its points of contact and its capacity to pass through and arouse the desire to share. “Challenges” and “games,” for example, may fall into this category.
7. MASS PRODUCTION AND AI AESTHETICS.
Artificial intelligence tools are available to anyone with internet access and have made rapid image production widely accessible. We must flood the networks with political material in still images or video, in every possible aesthetic, from the popular appeal of kitsch to artistic sophistication or shitposts. Parodies of famous photographs or videos, such as movie scenes, reality shows, memes, or music videos, in which the characters are replaced by political figures to be promoted or disparaged, have strong engagement potential.
8. MIRRORING.
Mirroring can be used in different ways. Janonism’s communications structure itself mirrors the opponent’s, but in a more organized way and with trained soldiers. The far right relies heavily on favorable treatment by platforms and on buying views to boost “spontaneous engagement.” The forms and patterns of the opponent’s memes, images, and videos are appropriated, with their referents reversed. For example, mogging video edits exalting the allied side’s central figure. The meaning of a message can also be mirrored. A post saying “We’re going to retire Lula,” for example, is not answered with comments defending the president, but with another post saying “We’re going to retire the Bolsonaros.” This post will be boosted through coordinated engagement and will overwhelm the first. A fake narrative can be mirrored with a counternarrative that produces reversals in order to ridicule it. Mirroring becomes especially visible in battles between hashtags. An opposing hashtag gaining traction can be mirrored with a favorable hashtag that shares some of its terms. Once it overtakes the opposing hashtag in popularity, the favorable one suppresses it. Mirroring contests both meaning, by flooding the infosphere with a message, and attention, including that of the opposing side itself, which will generate engagement. The most important thing is to have enough power for the mirroring to prevail. It is a matter of force.
9. APPROPRIATING AND DESTABILIZING SIGNS.
The insurgency must intervene in the meanings imposed by the opposing side, which colonizes symbols, signs, and language itself. Flooding the infosphere with a sign displaced from its usual meaning is enough to exploit its ambiguity, so that the opponent can no longer count on semantic stability. This is a specific development of the previous point. In Brazil, the far right had appropriated national symbols such as the iconic Brazilian national football team jersey and the national flag. One of Janonism’s actions was to reclaim these symbols. Several aspects should be highlighted. 1. This broke a taboo in the pro-Lula camp, which had developed a tribal aversion to these symbols; 2. The action made instrumental use of the affective charge that nationalist themes can still activate among Brazilians, especially in an election clearly conducted under foreign interference and threats to national sovereignty; 3. It generated a sense of paranoia in far-right circles, accustomed to automatically identifying anyone dressed in green and yellow as an ally; 4. It has a demoralizing effect on the opposing group, which is flooded with images of the enemy displaying symbols it believed were its own. Clearly, this instrumental use of symbols and nationalism must be adapted to each country’s context.
10. MEMETIC HYPERSTITION.
Contesting the imaginary means intervening in the production of the real. Appropriating memes, producing caricatures, and reconfiguring collective symbols makes it possible to introduce narratives that open up possibilities for action as they circulate. In Brazil’s 2026 election, André Janones was anticipating Lula’s victory even before the second round began. He repeated this forecast in the so-called prophetic past tense, stating LULA’s future victory as an accomplished event. The recurrence of this discursive gesture helped consolidate his image as a “prophet” among supporters. This was not a naive use of language: the anticipation of victory revealed itself, only afterward, as producing a figure of enunciation that introduced the desired future into the perception of the present. FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT? Giving present existence to what one intends to bring about. The hyperstitional operation requires understanding this feedback between the imaginary and the real.
11. ANYTHING GOES.
Any issues and methods are fair game, provided they favor the cause being defended and have engagement potential. Brazil’s elections made use of things as varied as defending popular religious symbols under attack from the opponent, publicizing government initiatives directly favorable to the rights of workers in the formal and informal sectors, using nudes and thirst traps, shitposting, bringing in artists and influencers from different strata, releasing songs in different genres, and so on, and so on, and so on.
12. MOBILIZATION BEYOND SOCIAL MEDIA.
Digital mobilization must, whenever possible, turn into intervention in physical spaces, which in turn feeds back into digital circulation . Leafleting, distributing flyers, posters, putting up material with QR codes, marches, walks, street demonstrations, pot-banging protests, public rallies, synchronized mobilizations, work stoppages, and visual interventions make up a broad repertoire of action. Dissemination must be thought of as continuous with the other points in this manual. QR codes connect physical presence to digital circulation, leading directly to videos, montages, posts, and campaign pages. Another possibility is to arouse curiosity through short questions capable of leading people to look up a particular subject on search engines. In Brazil’s 2026 election, Janones explored this register with prompts such as “WHO IS MARIANA?” The question works as a device connecting the street, curiosity, and the search for information. What matters is that the content people find matches the interest aroused. WE MUST ERADICATE the missionary and catechetical spirit we inherited from certain Marxist traditions : the fantasy that the political task consists in “transmitting consciousness” has collapsed. The very term consciousness-raising is no longer of any use. WHAT REALLY MATTERS IS CONTAGION.
AFTERWORD
This book is a MANUAL : pragmatic and polemical.
Those interested in the conceptual elaboration underlying it will have to wait.
The raw theory will soon be disseminated under the same pseudonyms: @YACOBVS & @DENGXIAOPIX