By Eric Vandenbroeck and
co-workers
The Bolsonaro Story Amazon's New
Gold Rush
Several thousand
Indigenous people marched
in the Brazilian capital of Brasilia on Wednesday ahead of a major land
rights ruling. Titled
Amazon's new gold rush.
The landowning class
in able to exercise violence with impunity. They control entire regions in
rural areas and are almost
never held accountable for the murder of indigenous and environmental activists
or intentionally starting forest fires. Authorities do not pursue
landowners as vigorously as grassroots popular leaders. Right-wing journalists
and politicians have accused the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) of terrorism,
stealing, and violence far more frequently than they were actually accused of
doing so by the police and the courts.
The Bolsonaro Story
The Supreme Court is
hearing a case that activists fear could lead to the removal of protections for
native lands. Some 170 different ethnic groups united in protest of the hearing
and against allegations of systematic
persecution under President Jair Bolsonaro's administration.
Organizers said it
was the biggest Indigenous protest in the country's history, as about 6,000
attendees carried bows and arrows and wore traditional headdresses.
The case centers on
the constitutional protection of
Indigenous lands.
The agribusiness
lobby has argued that protection should only apply to native populations who
can prove they have lived in an area since at least 1988 when the constitution
was adopted. This is a legal argument known as Marco Temporal.
Indigenous groups
have argued that there is no cutoff date in the constitution and that native
inhabitants have often been forced to move from their ancestral lands.
The Supreme Court
case specifically looks only at a reservation in the southern state of Santa
Catarina, but it will set a legal precedent for dozens of similar cases.
The government of
Santa Catarina has filed an eviction notice for the Indigenous territory of Ibirama-La Klano, where
the Guarani and Kaingang peoples live in addition to
the Xokleng.
But that is more to
the Brazil and Bolsonaro Story. On 3 June 2020, the Brazilian far-right
activist Sara Winter arrived outside the country’s Supreme Court with fifty
armed followers. Proclaiming their support for Brazil’s right-wing president,
Jair Bolsonaro, and calling themselves the ‘300 Brazilians’, a reference to the
small force of Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae, they pitched tents,
attacked journalists, launched fireworks at the building, and then stormed it,
getting as far as the roof while the police stood helpless.1
In a YouTube video,
Winter, a 27-year-old former sex worker turned anti-abortion activist, promised
potential recruits they would become part of a far-right guerrilla movement and
receive training in ‘subversion’. The stunt was part of a wave of protests
against the Supreme Court, over its attempts to investigate President Bolsonaro
for interference in a police investigation concerning his business dealings.
Winter’s avowed aim
was to ‘Ukrain-ize’ Brazil, that is, to overthrow its
Congress and Supreme Court in a revolution modeled on the Euromaidan protest of
2013.2 She threatened one judge via Twitter:
We are going to make
your life hell. We will find the places you go to. We will find the cleaners
who work for you. We will discover everything about your life. 3
Winter herself does
not conform to the typical image of a fascist. Nonetheless, her group fits the
typology of the fascist militia perfectly. They were armed, in face masks, with
burning torches; even Winter’s name, a pseudonym, is borrowed from that of a
wartime British Nazi. But Sara Winter was not the main problem for Brazil’s
beleaguered judiciary. For among the wider mass of demonstrators who assembled
outside the Supreme Court to demand its dissolution early that June was
President Bolsonaro himself.
Bolsonaro rose to
power because of a double collapse: the collapse in commodity prices and wages
after 2008, which ended a decade of growth and improvements for the poor; and
the collapse in support for the ruling left-wing Workers’ Party (PT) as its leading
members were engulfed in a corruption scandal in the mid-2010s. This scandal
culminated in 2016, with the impeachment and removal from office of Brazil’s
then-president, Dilma Rousseff, as millions of right-wing demonstrators took to
the streets, while prosecutors also jailed the PT’s iconic leader, Luis Inácio
Lula da Silva (known as Lula).
The anti-Rousseff
movement mobilized all those who had lost out under the left’s redistribution
program: landowners, big farmers, the financial elite, and parts of the urban
middle class. But it also mobilized poor people who felt betrayed after the
global economic downturn made further social reforms impossible.4 And now,
alongside its traditional propaganda channels, the Evangelical churches,
newspapers, and clandestine publications advocating military rule, the
right-wing elite had social media, above all YouTube, which helped to create a
mass, popular, far-right ideology.
A 2019 investigation
by the New York Times found that YouTube’s algorithm, whose rules for video
recommendations have never been disclosed, systematically promoted and expanded
the far-right video universe in Brazil, facilitating its merger with a pre-existing
subculture of anti-vaccination (‘antivaxx’) conspiracy theorists. In the
process it normalized the practice of linchamento:
online lynch mobs targeting doctors, teachers, journalists and left-wing
politicians, sometimes inciting physical attacks. One of linchamento’s
main exponents was Bolsonaro himself.5
Long before Covid-19,
Brazil became a laboratory for what happens when social media algorithms
reward, amplify and bring together ideologies promoting irrationalism and hate.
Even the atmosphere in schools changed, with teachers suddenly finding basic scientific
facts challenged in the classroom by pupils who’d been exposed to far-right
propaganda on YouTube. The result was Bolsonaro’s 2018 election victory, after
which he set out to intimidate and degrade the judiciary and parliament,
repeatedly inciting violence and calling for a military coup.
Is Bolsonaro a
fascist? Not by most definitions offered in political science. But if he is a
right-wing populist, sharing the same
category as Nigel Farage or Italy’s Matteo Salvini, he is at the extreme end of
it.
The main problem,
ultimately, is neither Sara Winter nor Jair Bolsonaro, it is the process of
political disintegration and polarization they are exploiting. A quarter of Rio
de Janeiro, the country’s biggest city, is effectively controlled by ‘community
self-defence’ militias, armed and trained by the
police and prepared to kill left-wing politicians who get in their way.6
In the Amazon,
meanwhile, vigilantes protecting the interests of farmers, mining companies and
loggers killed twenty-four environmental activists in 2019 alone.7
When Covid-19 hit
Brazil in 2020, all Bolsonaro had to do was mobilize the pre-existing
machinery: the parties, the Evangelical churches, the junior officer networks,
the extreme right and the paramilitary groups. Defying science, Bolsonaro
declared the virus was ‘mild flu’ and, despite catching the disease himself,
began agitating against the public health lockdowns desperately mandated by
regional governors. Bolsonaro led his supporters to protest outside army bases,
calling for military interventions to lift the lockdowns, at one stage
appearing on horseback. At the time of writing Brazil has suffered one of the
worst death tolls from Covid-19, at 384,000 and rising.8
Sara Winter’s attack
on the Supreme Court was intended as a stunt. Police action eventually
dispersed the 300 Brazilians and broke up their camp. She was then arrested and
banned from Facebook. By October 2020 she was posting tearful videos on
Instagram, claiming that Bolsonaro had abandoned her.9 But Winter’s protest had
served its purpose: to send a message that if Lula, now released from prison,
makes any kind of serious bid to form a democratically elected left government,
all the forces of disorder are prepared to attack Brazil’s democratic
institutions for real.
Olavo de Carvallo
It is not a secret
that Olavo de Carvallo was one of Jair Bolsonaro's important mentors.
Given the label
"alt-right
guru" of Brazil he is also considered the architect of Brazilian
President Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right vision.
Not surprisingly
Bolsonaro displayed one of Carvalho’s books during his election night victory
speech. He followed his counsel when he appointed two little-known but
ultraconservative candidates recommended by Carvalho to be his ministers of
education and foreign affairs. He sat beside Carvalho at an official dinner at
the Brazilian Embassy in Washington. And in May, he awarded him with one of
Brazil’s highest distinctions, alongside the country’s vice president and
justice minister.
In his first speech
to the nation after his election, Bolsonaro placed four books on his
desk: the Bible, Brazil’s constitution, Winston Churchill’s Memoirs of
the Second World War, and a book by Olavo, The Minimum You Need to
Know to Not Be an Idiot. “What I want most is to follow God's
teachings alongside the Brazilian constitution,” he said. “I also want to be inspired by great leaders, giving
good advice.”
Despite lacking an
academic degree that would give him the title of philosopher, he has become
recognized as such within Brazil’s far-Right intellectual circles, and is
particularly well known for teaching an online philosophy course., Through
this, he disseminates the notion that the Left’s Marxist ideas are behind the
country’s perceived degeneration. He is perhaps Brazil’s most successful
example of how a person can use social media to spread political ideas and
conspiracy theories under the guise of scientific knowledge. The ‘scientific
knowledge’ produced by Olavo de Carvalho has been reproduced by dozens of
institutions, causing a domino effect that could ultimately influence the 2022
elections.
Bolsonaro's
relationship with Olavo started almost a decade ago when Olavo's online
accounts came to the attention of Bolsonaro’s children, who are themselves,
politicians. In 2012, the Brazilian leader’s eldest son, Flavio, who was a
representative in Rio de Janeiro’s state assembly, traveled to Olavo's house in
Virginia to award him the Tiradentes medal, the
legislature’s highest distinction. Five years later, another son, Eduardo, a
national legislative representative, broadcast a video from Olavo’s house wearing a T-shirt that
read olavo tem razão (“Olavo is right”). Protesters chanted that same
slogan in street demonstrations against the federal government before
Bolsonaro’s election, decrying the corruption scandals that helped propel him
to power.
“We couldn’t have won
the election without Olavo,” Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo said in March.
“Without Olavo, there would be no President Bolsonaro.”
Enter Steve Bannon and the German AfD
Two weeks after
Bolsonaro’s inauguration in January, Steve Bannon met with Olavo at his Petersburg home, and a couple of months
later, Olavo was the guest of honor at an event hosted by Bannon at the Trump Hotel in Washington, where
the former White House chief strategist introduced him to a select group of
about 100 conservative guests. “Olavo is one of the great conservative
intellectuals in the world,” Bannon has said.
Meanwhile in
Brazil Bolsonaro met with the main representative (granddaughter
of Hitler’s finance minister) of the extreme right-wing
Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) which was placed
under surveillance by the German Government.
Pressure from the
media forced Bolsonaro’s special secretary for culture, Roberto Alvim, to
resign after giving a
speech that made
strong allusions to Joseph Goebbels’s Nazi-era screeds. In the televised
address, Alvim, echoing the words of the Nazi minister of propaganda, claimed
that Brazilians needed to create a form of art that was “heroic and national.”
Bannon stated he has
met with Carvalho frequently and wanted to install him as a lecturer at his
training camp in Europe for the next generation of
right-wing thinkers, housed in an Italian
monastery transformed into an academy for right-wing populists. U.S.
President Donald Trump backed the project. In March 2021, however,
a Council of State on Monday ruled against proceeding with the Dignitatis
Humanae Institute (DHI) right-wing
Academy plan.
As for
Bazil, given the above example of Sara Winter, Bolsonaro’s push to
the right has deep roots in Brazilian history, and it has not happened
overnight. Democracy and citizenship were achieved for the wealthy and white,
while the black and the poor have never been integrated to receive their
benefits. Brazil, like many of its South American neighbors, remains a veiled
authoritarian and racist country. Within a short time, Bolsonaro proved to be
unfit for the position he occupies. There is a feeble understanding of a
long-standing and central issue in Brazilian politics: rampant inequalities. It
will not take long until it comes back to the center of the public debate,
whether Bolsonaro likes it or not. The tight budget for social investment and
the depletion of the ‘new middle class and the upward social mobility (based on
rising income, formal jobs, more schools, better employment opportunities,
etc.) experienced during the 2000s will bring political consequences to this
right-leaning electoral realignment. He ignores the role of income, the proper
understanding of the composition of the Brazilian economic pyramid, and the
position of the poor and the middle class.
2022 elections
Bolsonaro, a COVID-19
skeptic and initially dismissed the virus as "little
flu." He also regularly contradicted health officials over the
necessity of social distancing measures and has come under fire over the country's
vaccine purchase strategy. Prosecutors launched a probe against him last week
for dereliction of duty over the acquisition of Indian-made vaccines. In fact,
just yesterday, Brazil registered 31,024
new coronavirus cases and 920 additional COVID-19 deaths.
Bolsonaro, who during
the election in 2022 is expected to face a serious challenge from left-wing
former President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, and Bolsonaro under
pressure amid corruption
allegations and
the country’s COVID-19
crisis ahead of
presidential polls scheduled for next year, wants a receipt to be printed after
each vote on the electronic ballot box to allow the votes to be recounted
physically.
The country’s
electoral tribunal has said the current voting system is completely transparent
and never showed widespread irregularities. Still, Bolsonaro has alleged
without evidence that fraud marred the 2018
presidential election that he won.
Hence experts have
accused Bolsonaro of seeking to sow doubt ahead of next year’s election, much
like former United States President Donald Trump, whom the Brazilian
leader had emulated.
Also, other questions
have surfaced about alleged irregularities in his government’s
coronavirus vaccine procurement process, alongside accusations of past corruption.
In July, the Supreme
Electoral Court issued a statement calling Bolsonaro's comments
"lamentable" and stating that any action to
prevent the election violates the constitution and is a "dereliction
of duty."
Brazilian
progressives have sometimes attempted to use these punitive politics against
the elite. For instance, the motto “prison for Bolsonaro” has come to
prominence in recent years. It is deeply worrying that grassroots movements
still hold onto the naïve belief they can abolish political oppression by
criminalizing it.
The UN Subcommittee
on Prevention of Torture called on President Bolsonaro to revoke the decree
that “severely weakened” the national anti-torture mechanism and criticized the
governor of São Paulo for vetoing the creation of a state anti-torture mechanism.
As detailed in a 2021
report, in Brazil, the police and
judges reproduce oppressive social structures. If the country’s 2022 elctions is to overcome its present malaise, it cannot hold
onto the hope that it can rely on a corrupt and elitist judicial system to
serve justice. But all of the above and its interconnections to elsewhere show
why the political climate in Brazil might indeed matter to the rest of the
world.
Conclusion
As reported by the
BBC today, Bolsonaro is currently trailing former President Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva in the polls. He said he sees only three possibilities for
his future: death,
prison, or winning the 2022 presidential elections.
But the former
military officer added there was no chance of prison because "no man on
Earth will threaten me."
Bolsonaro also
mentioned an indigenous protest taking place in the capital, claiming not to
understand the reasons for the demonstrations.
"There are now
approximately 5,000 people camped in Brasília. The vast majority, almost all,
don't know what they are doing there," Bolsonaro asserted.
"They are people
that are gathered by the MST (Rural Landless Workers Movements), people that
are gathered by Cimi (Indigenous Missionary Council,
linked to the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil), indigenous people who
are there protesting against no one knows what," Bolsonaro added.
1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGChu5vxl30
2.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/29/how-brazil-was-ukrainized/
3.
https://apublica.org/2020/05/especialistas-apontam-semelhancas-entre-os-300-de-sara-winter-e-grupos-fascistas-europeus/
4. Barbosa dos Santos,
Fabio Luis, Uma História da Onda Progressista Sul-Americana (1998–2016), São
Paulo, 2018
5. Fisher, Max and
Taub, Amanda, ‘How YouTube Radicalized Brazil’, New York Times, 11 August 2019
6.
https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/spate-murders-brazil-shines-spotlight-militia-phenomenon/
7.
https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/defending-tomorrow/
8.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/brazil/
9.
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CF9vKoKHAYZ/?utm_source=ig_embed
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