Chapo Trap House - Bonus: Brazil feat. Ben Fogel (10/26/18)

Episode Date: October 27, 2018

Amber talks to author and editor Ben Fogel about Brazil's current political crisis, its contemporary political history, and how the left should approach "anti-corruption". Against Anti-Corruption: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/10/corruption-bolsonaro-pt-populism-democracy-development Brazil's Never-Ending Crisis: https://catalyst-journal.com/vol2/no2/brazils-never-ending-crisis Aufhebunga Bunga Podcast: https://aufhebungabunga.podbean.com/e/49-kids-confessions-ft-amber-alee-frost/

All right. Hi guys. This is Amber. I am joined with special guest Ben Fogle. He is a contributing editor to Jacobin. Africa is a country. He has a new article out in Catalyst, and he is on a wonderful podcast called Alf Bunga Bunga. Please do not judge it for its stupid German portmanteau name. I made an appearance and will link to that along with all of his articles as well. Yes. I'm normally based in Brazil, but I'm back in New York for a few weeks. Yeah. I'm sorry about that. However, it's probably not good to be there right now. Yeah. I mean, it might just be the most depressing place in the world, but at least it isn't cold. Yeah. Well, there's that. So I guess to start, I think people who listen to us are aware that something bad

is happening in Brazil. So could you catch us up on, let's say, recent, maybe not so recent Brazilian politics? Okay. Well, I'll try to be as brief and precise as possible. Yes. If you could consolidate your Catalyst article, Brazil's never-ending crisis in three minutes. Well, I mean, the first rule I think about Brazil is that things can always get worse. And right now, this Sunday, Sunday the 28th, there is the second round of Brazil's presidential election, which has been the most traumatic and messed up election since the country returned to democracy in 1985. And this Sunday, as you may or may not know, there is a man called Jair Bolsonaro, who will be elected almost certainly short of some sort of unforeseen miracle

or comet settling down from space as Brazil's next president. And Bolsonaro, I think, can fairly be described as a fascist or neo-fascist. Unfortunately, as I think many American listeners and listeners from Europe may know, the word fascism has been degraded by overuse. It's like the boy who cried wolf. People have said the fascists are coming so many times that people kind of get weary and cynical when the wolf actually pops his head up. And the case of Bolsonaro, I think it's an accurate description. Among other things, he's a former army captain who has ridden a tidal wave of anti-systemic anger,

anger at the left, raging about violence and corruption and economic crisis to basically say that the problem with Brazil is that there's all these internal enemies. It's the left, it's the working class, it's the gays, it's the woman, it's the black people, it's all of these things and what we really need is a return to authoritarian values and to shoot our way out through this crisis. And he's basically saying that I love the military dictatorship. I love torture. Torture was great during the military dictatorship.

Oh, my sons go around wearing his t-shirt. I go around waving in the book of Austro, who's one of the most infamous torturers of Brazil's military dictatorship, who among other things used to put rats in women's vaginas. This is Bolsonaro's hero. Jesus. His main criticism of the dictatorship was they didn't kill enough people. And he's also beloved by the business community because he's outsourced his entire economic program to a Chicago school-trained economist who got his start working for Pinochet back in the day.

Kind of nostalgia vibe, right? Back to the 70s. Anyway, he basically, his economic program is privatize everything, cut all social spending, his way to deal with Brazil's extremely deep security problems. 64,000 people were killed last year in Brazil. At least 5,000 of those were by the police is to say, let's get rid of all human rights and all these fucking human rights NGOs and let the police do what they want. So he's literally advocating social cleansing of poor communities as a way to deal with violence.

And more than that, he's also saying that I don't accept democracy. I've never been a fan of it. That he said, and this is obviously in English, but it's kind of verbatim. I'm going to unleash a historic cleansing in Brazil and those red bandits. They're referring to suppose the workers party in the left will either have to be banished or put in prison. And he said other times, I will end all activism. And basically he's writing a wave of support, which also includes elements in the military. The military has a faction behind him, which includes several top generals and ex-commanders

of say the Brazilian armed forces in Haiti. And they all they're behind him. He has the support of the business community. And what's basically Brazil is like this sort of surreal place right now, because it feels like almost like Weimar Republic Germany in that basically there's all this like rage against the left. And they had a center left party, which was in power. Yeah, can you talk a little bit about Lula and the stuff that led up to this? So Lula is from the workers party. The workers party is kind of like a unique thing in Latin America.

It's probably the last Social Democratic Party of the classical model, like the German Social Democratic Party or the Labour Party. They came out of Brazil's trade union movement, but it was created in the 1980s. It was sort of buck the trend. It was sort of out of place. And it enjoyed a when it was Latin America's strongest working class movement, perhaps the strongest in the Western Hemisphere at the time. And it was also aligned to these huge powerful social movements, particularly of people fighting for land in the rural areas, the sort of feminist movement, the gay movement, the urban movement. And it was really strong, but it was very radical and it played a role in the end of the dictatorship. But it had one great leader who led a series of huge wildcat strikes in the ABC region, which is kind of like the most industrialized region in Sao Paulo.

It's kind of like being in, I guess, Detroit, where the car industry was. And he, in the United States, he came to the fore and is kind of a unique political figure in his complete political genius. And he came to the fore of the Workers' Party and he ran for president three times in 1990, where he narrowly lost in 1994 and 1998, where he lost again. And before finally winning the 2002 elections, and it's a big thing in Brazil, which is a very racially stratified and sort of class divided society, to have Lula, who got his start as a metal worker and is from the northeast of the country, which is the most impoverished and historically backwards region, or the narrative likes to go, came to Sao Paulo as a boy, got to start in the factories and now as a president of the country, doesn't have much formal education, doesn't speak like proper formal Portuguese. But at the same time, it's really like the elite hate him for this reason and still do. And at the same time, he was a remarkably successful president.

His party, by the time it came into power, wasn't the radical left force it was, but it was sort of like a moderate social democratic party that pursued macroeconomic orthodoxy, along with social policies aimed at helping the poor. They lifted 30 million people out of poverty, the economy boomed, they opened up huge consumer markets everywhere, increased infrastructure spending, and really sort of expanded social citizenship, if you would like, in Brazil. First time you would see black people on airports and the universities, and this generated a backlash. And there were a number of corruption scandals that hit the workers party. And particularly what you have to understand about Brazilian politics is that the political system is designed and was deliberately designed by the people who drafted the Constitution under the influence of the military, who didn't lose, like they didn't say Argentina, they just kind of negotiate the transition and sort of were the puppet masters behind it,

which basically made sure that when the president elected, the Congress will be divided between a numberable amount of small parties which mostly exist for rent seeking purposes. They're basically like clientelistic parties that have some strongman out in the middle of nowhere who represents them. And if you want to do policy, you have to negotiate with all these like big machine politicians from the cities, which is Atomafiosos, all these guys from the country who get their kicks from cutting off peasants' arms, you know, that sort of thing. And so what Péter did is, when the workers party, when they came to power, and which had been pioneered by their predecessors in the previous governor, Fernando Enrique Cardoso, who's still lauded as this like, you know, mythical, anti-corruption, clean, technocratic, neoliberal president, like kind of the Bill Clinton of Brazil, even though he was kind of discredited by the time he left office, which is... Well, Bill Clinton wasn't considered that clean, but I get what you're saying. Yeah, well, he basically said, yeah, that's true, he was, yeah, that's very true, but basically he thought he was like, Cardoso was like, Bill Clinton is my best buddy, you know?

Right, right, right. You know, I'm hanging out with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. So like a modern kind of neoliberal... Yeah, he's also kind of interesting because he was a former professor of sociology, a very famous Marxist professor. And he still doesn't actually denounce any of his former beliefs, he just says he's being somewhat consistent. But anyway, his party had basically said the way to do politics in Brazil is, and they didn't do this openly, of course, is basically set up institutionalized kickback schemes to ensure that people vote along with you in Congress. And the workers party did much the same thing because that's basically what you...

That's how you do politics. And unfortunately, if you want to get anything passed, you have to make... And in this case, the thing with corruption is like, I'm not saying this is the only way to do it, it's like, is a trade-off when you come to power in a political system, which is not by your own design, is that do you want to make certain sort of choices to make it be effective, or do you want to sort of be impotent? And the workers party made their choices or did business as usual, and this continued. And everybody was involved in Brazil. And there was a big scandal in 2005 that nearly threatened...

And then he sunk the party called the men's alarm, which is the monthly kickback scheme, but they survived that, and Lula left office in 2010 with a 84% approval rating, which is kind of unheard of. Yeah, it's almost like people don't really care about corruption. Well, I mean, the economy was booming, things were good. Yeah, of course. And then his successor, who he personally nominated, was kind of like a political unknown, but had been a former guerrilla who had been tortured by the dictatorship. Her name is Dilma Housseff, and she was elected, and she proceeded to do nothing too radical,

but go a little bit more to the left with economic policies, counter-cyclical spending to thwart the recession, pretty soon big infrastructure projects, but at the same time, the Brazil's economy, the international effects of the global recession, a Chinese slowdown, a number of factors meant the economy was just about to not do so well. So in 2013, when we started by actual, like, autonomous, like, leftist activists, there were protests against an increase in bus fares in Sao Paulo. And, like, wildfire, these protests suddenly just took off, and suddenly there were huge protests, millions on the street all over the country,

in dozens of cities, and initially, like, the first month or so, and people still on the left kind of have this very rosy image of this first month of, like, all of these left, and they grew up basically after the governor of Sao Paulo, who was from the Pesta de Berre, the Social Democratic Party, which is not social democratic. It's kind of like the most neoliberal Democrats, but more gangster. Okay. But anyway, so they sent the police to beat the shit out protesters, and people just took to the streets in bigger numbers afterwards.

But what had initially been, like, you know, youth, people from the periphery, like, students, like, kind of lefty, you know, are we on the streets? Because it was led by autonomous, it didn't really have a clear direction. There weren't, like, a clear set of leadership. It was, like, everyone's on the street. Bus fares, they kind of, yeah. We don't have, like, we're against all parties. We just, everyone can be there.

A number of more shady, right-wing actors start to join the fray, and backed by Brazil's very right-wing media, like, the middle class, the anti-Peteir, the anti-worker party, middle class, and a number of shady organizations came to the fore, and kind of took this narrative and twisted it against the workers' party to the point that Jilma went from having, like, you know, 55, 56 normal pro-polar ratings that can't remember exactly to kind of her approval ratings start plummeting.

And then the recession starts happening. So by 2014, the economy's not doing so well, and Jilma's approval ratings are, like, going down a hill. The credibility of the party has been deeply threatened by both the economic and sort of these interests into this protest movement. Yeah, so there's, like, a big thing, and things will come into the fore. And then in 2014, two things happened. One is the second, the elections, the last elections,

and then the beginning of something called Lava Jato, which is this anti-corruption investigation, which we'll get into later. But in the 2014 elections, the Tucanos, or the Socialism Crack Party, they called the Tucans in Brazil because of the colors of their flag, very tropical, had this candidate who they said was young, fresh, not reactionary. He's a great modernizer. His good looking in his name was Aécio Neves. But Aécio Neves might be the most degenerate politician in Brazil.

Like, he's kind of notorious for his love of a certain white powder and being, among other things, caught on tape talking about a helicopter that suddenly appeared on his cousin's ranch with 450 odd kilos of cocaine paste, which is a precursor ingredient to cocaine, and talking about killing his cousin, among other things. Cool. Yeah, and there's also, like, some great videos of, like, him, like, being almost, like, blackout drunk, like, stumbling to buy drunk food

in the middle of Rio de Janeiro. Well, whom among us? Yeah, but I mean, it's the most relatable thing about him, but he's like, he's, but yeah, anyway. He's a really crooked guy, and, yeah. He's like, basically, he's single-handedly, basically, destroyed his own party. But anyway, basically, in 2014, people didn't know this yet, or were ignoring it about Aécio.

Aécio also got his sister sent to prison. That's kind of sick. Damn. Even his family hates him now. Damn. So, basically, the right, the center right, thought they were going to win these elections, because, like, everything was moving against,

the workers' party, people were, and what happens with any party, is that people get sick of incumbents, right? Yeah, yeah. So, in 2014, they thought they were going to win, but Jilma moved to the left and ran a pretty strong, like, anti-austerity, these guys are going to take away your, sort of, social welfare, and, sort of, narrowly won. And the right didn't, the center right didn't like this,

so they threw their toys out the pram and refused to accept these election results, which started this chain of events, really, that brought us Bolsonaro. So, at the same... But they just demanded a... Your recount, but nothing really happened. But they basically said, we're not going to accept this. Right. So, at the same time, this anti-corruption investigation,

which starts into, it's called Car Wash, Lavajato, which starts into investigation, money laundering in a car wash in the southern state of Paraná, and then uncovers through this, and it's, like, a whole messed up story by itself, which is going to be too complicated to explain, basically, a chain of corruption, which includes the state-owned oil company, which is Petro Brice,

and a bunch of huge construction firms, in which politicians, basically, they would ensure that the deals that... the state, the contracts from the state-owned oil company that went to these huge construction companies would ensure that everyone got kickbacks. So, it was a systematized system of kickbacks, and a lot of it was used for, like, campaign financing,

but it was a huge amount of corruption, but the thing is, it involved everyone. Like, the most indicted parties for Lavajato, in terms of, like, being involved in it, are not pete, pete is actually quite much low on the list, but at the same time, it was very clear, and it became increasingly clear as this investigation went on, this investigation was only targeting, was primarily targeting,

because it wasn't only the workers' party and their allies, in business and in politics. It took out a whole bunch of their leadership. It's ended up with Lula, who's in prison. I personally think the charges are quite weak against him. It's like, he's supposed to go to bribe in an apartment in a second-rate city and in informal groups. The sort of thing that would have never, like, been, you know,

brought up if there weren't this, like, anti-corruption forever. Yeah, and he didn't even live in the apartment. Meanwhile, ASCO has, like, God knows how many apartments the current president, Michel Temer, has, like, 20. In the names of all his mistresses. Wow. Including his English teacher. Damn.

Yeah, but anyway, so basically what happened is, this anti-corruption sentiment, and people will just say, corruption's the biggest problem. These guys are trying to use corruption to turn Brazil into Venezuela or Cuba. There's a whole bunch of anger, and these big anti-corruption protests happened in 2015-2016, which, from the beginning,

very openly right-wing, they take the national flag and start celebrating things like the dictatorship, and, like, we just hate the left, and it's mostly the upper-middle class, not only, like, which are much whiter in Brazil than the majority of the population, and they're all saying the workers' party needs to go. And this creates, along with Jilma doing one more thing,

which is basically breaking with her anti-austerity promises and embracing austerity, but it still wasn't enough to save her. So with the support of elements of big business and particularly driven by Brazil's media, which is really one company, Global, which is kind of like, if the BBC was a private company in Brazil,

they had these movements which basically culminated in an impeachment process, which was basically a soft coup, but they got it for absolutely nothing. It was like moving money around to pay for social welfare, which everyone does in Brazil, and she was removed in 2016,

and then she was replaced by her vice, who's kind of like, from a different party, which is the most corrupt party in Brazil, but he's probably the most unpopular politician in the history of polling. He's got approval ratings of less than 2%, and from the beginning... Oh man, that's such an own.

Single digit approval rating. And he's kind of like embraced it. There's only one number lower than that. Yeah, it's within the margin of error of zero. And like, Michelle Tema, who people like kind of joke looks like a vampire, is basically appointed the biggest array of crooks and gangsters,

and his supposed regime, that was going to be against corruption in Brazil, and did such things as remove anti-slavery laws. Well, what were they doing with those? All cut workers' rights, cut social spending, blah, blah, blah. But people were like, these guys are just as corrupt as everyone else.

So at the end of the day, the center right, because they've moved against democracy, not only unleashed this like, really popular right-wing fervor, which gave birth to Bolsonaro through these anti-corruption protests. And I will get into that a little bit later. And discredit themselves entirely

and into the void left on the right, because the majority of Bolsonaro voters will just be voting for his center right candidate in normal elections. People are like, hey, why don't we try this guy? Yeah, something new and fresh. Something new and fresh. And just to give an array,

I think Chapo will kind of enjoy this. So his party, which is called Party of Social Liberalism, there's nothing socially liberal about them, went from being like a non-entity to the second biggest party in Brazil. And among the people who elected were three of Bolsonaro's four failed sons.

He has three. Fantastic, I love a political failed son. Eduardo, who's like the most well-known of these failed sons, is kind of in hot water for threatening to say that if the Supreme Court ever messed with him, he would send a corporal and a private

and they could close down the court. No problems. Also elected was another great failed son in Brazil, which is the most prominent descendant of Brazil's monarchy, who has reinvented himself as kind of like right-wing like, you know,

minus celebrity who writes books like, why is Brazil so backwards? Probably because of your family, dude. And then Alexandre Frater, who is an ex porn star and soap actor, who among other things also made gay porn, but has reinvented himself as a defender

of family values and moral virtue, even though he's on record boasting about raping a black woman. Right. I mean, like, even like, just give example of like the failed son dynamic here is Bolsonaro's one son, Flavio, was elected as

a city councillor in Rio at 17. And the reason this happened was because Bolsonaro was currently going through a divorce with his wife at the time and who was also a city councillor and he thought it would be cool to run her son against her and take her off the council that way. Wow.

And anyway. Brazilian politics are so cool. Oh, fucking depressing. But anyway, and then also a, and this is again something that chapel listeners will have encountered in the United States, a cop who got famous for killing someone in camera. Right. Anyway, that's the

short story. This is the short story of how we ended up here where there's going to be a literal fascist in charge of a large country. And again, a literal fascist. I know people like to pretend that, you know, the Proud Boys are brown shirts when

actually they're MS-13 for Rose Emoji Twitter. But there is such a thing as literal fascism and it is coming to Brazil. Yeah. And they even have a dance routine. Wait, what? Yeah, there's a, there's like first of all, there was a dance routine that was invented for

that's deeply Weimar. Yeah. For the like the anti-corruption protests. And then they sort of made it more part of the Bolsonaro campaign. And the other thing is people like to do a protest is like do push-ups. So there's all these videos, because Bolsonaro before he got stabbed

because I don't think he's a little bit, he got stabbed by some crazy and then they blamed the left for it at a rally and he's been kind of like recovering ever since. But anyway, like before that, he used to like do push-ups at these rallies, but the thing is when you watch these videos, he can't do a real push-up.

Wow. It's like kind of like he's self-cucking. Yeah. But like it's weird as shit. That's a really bad cell phone. People love that shit. They love it? Yeah, they love the push-ups and then they also love

and like it's also a great video and again, it's kind of, it would be funny if he wasn't about to rule a major country and kill a lot of people where he's like with his fucking frenzied supporters of who are basically like Brazilian frat bros. So it's like when fascism

has arrived in Brazil, partially through like off-duty cops in Paris who have formed like sort of like mafia like paramilitary organizations who kill people and take over like areas in Rio and partially because a bunch of like dudes who drink a lot of whey and have like big

unathletic muscles and ready into like, you know, like I'm sick of the feminists telling me what to do. Yeah, it's vanity muscle guys. Yeah. Wearing the Brazilian football shirt and their wives and also the evangelicals because those fuckers are everywhere.

Yeah. And anyway, so like he tried to stage dive once and didn't catch him. He fell. Oh, it's sad. It's going to be so bad, but also that's funny. That's a funny thing that happened. Yeah, you know, I think

the problem with this is like and again, I don't I've broken Godwin's law, but actually Godwin may even intervened in this and said, yeah, you can use Yeah. Godwin's law endorsed Fernando Hadaji who is the Pate Candidate

against Bolsonaro, which is just right. This is where we are in 2018. Look, I'm concerned. Things are not going right. But anyway, like I think, you know, there was like this sort of comedic and cartoonish aspect Germany, too. Yeah, it's probably very wacky right up until the point.

I mean, who knows? Maybe it was the violence was also incredibly wacky. Goose stepping is pretty slapstick. Yeah. And then they had like the SA was having all like the, you know, like the brown shirts had these weird orgies and shit. Yeah, yeah, they were like that was the weird thing people tend to think of authoritarianism as

like very like socially conservative in like a like a formalized way and it's like no, man, fascist party. Yeah, they're party hard, especially in Brazil. But at the same time, like the other thing behind like Bolsonaro's rise has been

these crazy, like in Brazil, your entire social life, maybe your work life, everything happens through WhatsApp, right? And the thing about WhatsApp is like everybody's on WhatsApp from your from crazy grandma to your like degenerate cousin and they're all

in the same family WhatsApp group. And like basically the fake news is like more than Facebook. It's their Facebook. It's no people on Facebook too, but WhatsApp is big because basically people don't text people use WhatsApp. People get everything through WhatsApp. If you don't call people use WhatsApp.

So like basically it turns out like a bunch of nice upstanding Brazilian businessmen have using illegal campaign financing have set up all these and we still unclear to what degree this has happened. These dodgy WhatsApp

projects where they just filled Brazil's WhatsApp space through of like the most bizarre array of fake news possible, which has had a big role in this. Basically a lot of people think that the Workers' Party is like a combination between the Sinaloa Cartel Satan and

High Star in Russia and some of the stories that are going around is like that the Workers' Party wants to give like kindergarten kids a gay kid. Turn them gay because they want to teach them gender ideology. And the best part of it is like the big thing

is they show it as evidence is like this That's very American. They're going to teach our kids gender. Bra, the cultural Marxism, the oil edition is big in Brazil. Yeah. The big evidence was like this baby bottle with like a dick shaped teeth on the top

and people like sending it around in groups. This is evidence of what the pet has up to. And some people actually believe that which is WhatsApp group is lit. And then crazy grandma is like oh you know like there's a alliance between Satan and Hadaji and he's a pedophile and then like

people like oh yeah fuck those guys and you know civil discourse as the liberals like to say disappeared. And then the other weird thing about this and we move on more to our corruption and this is really like I think the last thing to say is that basically the most educated upper middle class

professional sections of Brazil basically I think it would be fair to say a lot of the same people who in the United States would be very enthusiastic Hillary Clinton voters all voting for Bolsonaro abstaining. Because they're like

at least he's not a communist and he's not corrupt. So now we know kind of how we got here a little bit but what I really wanted to talk about was your Jack of an article against anti-corruption.

So this is a you know a sly little thing you did here. People are like what does that mean you're in favor of corruption? So let's like first start out with what a good working definition of corruption is. Well the thing is like corruption is

actually kind of hard to define and it's I mean I don't want to sound too pretentious but I am a PhD student. So you are pretentious. Yeah I can't hire too much but anyway like blah blah blah basically like corruption has been around since the last few weeks. Dudes like Aristotle were talking about that

shit. Machiavelli was talking about that shit. It's been like a constant of political theory for quite a while now. Right. But the thing is corruption's meaning has changed over time and it means different things in different contexts. So like back in the day corruption used to mean like you know like some sort of form of

social degeneration where people have a lost faith in civic virtue. The order of things is breaking down and some sort of form of moral renewal is needed and it was seen as like not just a set of specific exchanges but like a broader social process which affected the health of the Republic

and there was a sort of understanding that corruption was not just a it was a deep problem that required a big political project and to turn around and then more recently

corruption has been taken to mean let me actually just read for my piece because I think I have the World Bank definition over here. Okay the World Bank defines corruption as behavior or behaviors that break with rules governing public officials regarding the pursuit of private interests such as

wealth power or status. And I think the two crucial things to notice is this really refers to public power it doesn't refer to private actors and it also kind of has the sense that it's like specific things are definable

when what would be considered a things that are private interests when does that become like something that's illicit. Like when you know everyone has private interests when is it a bad thing so like lobbying would be like that's something that is

completely legal in American politics but in other places it's completely seen as corruption so I mean I more or less view corruption in like two real ways and again this is a working project so I think it's something that the left has to really tackle and we have

to move on it's tough but one is it's kind of like a set of illicit exchanges which has a way of bringing together certain actors in which basically instead of doing it through formal means

favors or money is exchanged for influence for operating in a certain way for redistribution and I think it's more like you have to see it as not like behaviors but a sort of almost a form of informal regulation of how

institutions function and this can include private actors as well because I think private actors have an actual interest in corrupting the state and the second way of view of corruption is it's a political strategy so basically

this is going to be seen in two ways one it's a political strategy in which basically capital private actors when they cannot influence the state or directly and through legal lobbying or people aren't doing things

they can use funds to basically buy off members of the ruling party or whoever is in power to do what they want through giving them a nice vacation to a brothel or buying them dinner or giving them

like a billion in cash money and the second thing it's also a way of institutional practices in which corruption is the way things get done because the way things get done is things that

get traded behind closed doors and this is just how institutions function and there's always a set of informal logics and I think the way my view is that often it can be a deliberate strategy to make sure that things are corrupt to prevent

certain political things from happening so if you basically for instance it's like you know that boring old saying that power corrupts right but if you get into government you have to govern certain institutions and these institutions may function on

like informal forms regulation that require a few backhanders you know some some bribes you know that sort of thing or if you need business support you might have to like give them some favors and what that does is it means that if you want to get

things done you have to adapt to the state and the institutions that comprise the state to such a way that you get your hands dirty and it prevents you from doing certain more radical things and also like kind of makes you adapt to power

and makes you less of a threat and I think there's evidence to see in certain cases that things are deliberate this way it's not just like some you know stories since some dude ate an apple and you know got all like sinful that every time I'm going to get power I'm going to get corrupt

right okay but one of the things that confused me about the way anti-corruption stuff was utilized in you know this sort of fascist campaign was

how poorly accusations of corruption tend to play generally with working class people so for example I used this example of like my friend Mike who was a garbage

man and when he would get a job to do large garbage pickup he would say I'm going to write you a dummy receipt well he wouldn't say I'm going to write you a dummy receipt he would say you get 15% off if you pay in cash and then he would write the dummy receipt and tell the boss

that they cancelled to like normal people that makes Mike a working class hero to a certain kind of person that makes him like a scurrilous son of a bitch yeah exactly exactly so I guess

my question I guess sort of answered it like who does this anti-corruption appeal to and why well I think there's different forms of anti-corruption and I think this is the crucial thing here and this is kind of why we have to be so skeptical of its use on the left

and the first thing is to say that there's very few people who actually would ever say they're for corruption you know right like I mean it's not a name of politics a corrupt politician well they are examples and I have respect for the examples well with the stuff though

like with Trump when they're like he's not doing his tax returns people are like we don't care the thing is like with the Trump and the tax returns is actually an important thing is that like because corruption is only the state when the businessman doesn't pay his taxes he's just being a small businessman because he's forced to be corrupt

by the bureaucrats in Washington the red tape they're forcing his hand because the rules are unfair yeah and that's kind of like the way that people see a lot of these things is like for instance there's like a famous is two or three but like the most famous one I think is in Brazil

called Paulo Malufi who was a infamous governor and mayor of Sao Paulo state and the city and his slogan which is Obama's fashion Portuguese which is he robs but he gets things done he's our guy he puts in houses

I want someone who's corrupt on my behalf yeah this is some logic to that like you know if you have to choose between like as a working class guy like some sort of like neoliberal who's going like I'm gonna be clean but I would take your welfare and some dude is like you know I might steal a bit I might have a good time you know

I like the good whiskey I don't like that well whiskey I'm gonna go build you some houses and make sure you get your families looked after and it's just a trade-off but moreover I think the thing with anti-corruption is there's two ways the first way is technocratic anti-corruption

which I think it's a relatively recent thing people don't realize that corruption wasn't like a big thing in terms of international development policy or aid discourse or any of those things until the 90s it's a real post-Cold War thing and I think part of it is because

people couldn't explain the failure of like neoliberal structural adjustment policies to develop like third world countries and like why were they also broke and why is everything not working it's because they're corrupts they're corrupt cultures they're not modern

and secondly it's like also this idea which is also kind of neoliberal that all like forms of like a bigger state means more corruption which is like definitely anti-left and there's also like something to say about like any redistributive politics will be corrupted by men

because men suck which is kind of like straight anti-leftism in these conclusions and so basically what this means is like we're gonna set up a bunch of what counts as corruption and international standards and measures which are basically to promote the interests of capital so what corruption is like often taken to be is like this form of transparency

in which you basically operate to accept the standards makes it easy for capital to come in and out and power gets taken away from like elected officials and given to sort of technocrats who are more favorable to the interests of capital which is argued to be less

of a conflict of interest somehow and also like this whole idea that corruption can be solved by technical fixes we just need people who do not pollute by ideology and power and like we've and like think of it like like the democratic the democrats here discourse about corruption they're like I hate to use words that's good

when they talk about corruption they talk about we need technical fixes to solve the stuff even though they're as embedded in these same networks of money while on the right you have something which I would call like populist anti-corruption and the thing with corruption is you can stand in for anger about a whole bunch of things like loss

of power you know like crime in your neighborhood things that feel intrinsically unfair it manifests in their head as this idea of well the problem is corruption the problem is bad people in power and if it's a system and everyone's bad right we need somebody to clean it up

right and Brazil does have a lot of problems yeah as does the United States because I think Trump actually ran on the anti-corruption platform I yeah I think that's fair remember like what about Hillary's emails he had drain the swamp yeah that kind of thing yeah and people are like oh my life is

miserable because there are people corrupt yeah and like this thing is like he's obviously like incredibly corrupt man oh yeah as well as like people think he's gonna be corrupt for them yeah and also like the Republicans are like oh like you know who's that dude that like lobbyist Jack Abramoff yeah I watched that movie yeah

he looked like he had a sick party yeah of course yeah the other thing is they look appealing and they look more fun than like nerds and also like they have like no scruples like I'm gonna work for a party in South Africa that's sick anyway but like but the point is like basically this anti like Washington discourse like Washington's

corrupt the problem is all these bureaucrats we're gonna get clean them all out but it's just like moralistic posturing it's not like a clear program yeah it's like basically but it appeals to people's kind of libido excitement yeah libido excitement and this idea that you know like

there's a Masonic cleansing but it's always like this guy who's kind of outside of politics whether it's you know the dude who put up these gaudy towers and eats well done steaks Donald Trump or like this you know fascist ex-captain who's in Brazil who's been in

like government for 27 years and really hasn't done shit and it's done all the same things other people do is always like somebody and outside it to come in and cleanse it and I think the second thing is why and these both tend to be quite right-wing and anti-democratic because it's like

we're gonna shoot our way out of problems we're gonna have like turn against institutions and accountability because that's a problem with a cleansing ring yeah or it's like you know we're gonna give power to a bunch of technocrats who are you know not exactly in favor of democracy or working class interests and then the other

effect of like all of this anti-corruption talk and this is where it really makes it hard for the left and I think it's probably the most dangerous thing about it is that it makes people cynical it removes faith in public life or the idea that politics and political activism and mobilization can

get things can change things and it suggests that the idea of the institutions themselves so stripping you know some like programs and you know making kind of like what you would consider like bare bones small little little s small government it's a good

excuse for that it's a good excuse for that and more of it's like basically like put it this way the left has the burden of like convincing people that things can change and to make things change you need to get up off your ass and get involved in something which

might require some sacrifices but when like people see like we've done all this work we've got the center left government but they also corrupt they do the same things as the other guys is like I'm just going to look after me and my own which is kind of a natural human instinct and the thing is that's all the right needs right it all needs

is like people to serve their asses and look after their own but I'm not saying it's completely normal to want that and most people are going to do that anyway but like it basically they don't need to mobilize people to win right they just need to make and this degree of like demoralization and did as facts of action like undermines the left or

people's belief in the possibilities of social change and I think that's kind of what you've seen in Brazil and I think the thing is what my argument at least in what I've been trying to say is that this is a something which is weaponized against left-wing projects and

what you also have is like when you finally left-wing government does come to power you often have this thing the sort of narrative is like you know they failed for whatever reason from like the Peta in Brazil to

so wherever you want to choose and the reason they failed is because they betrayed the working class right right it's kind of like when they didn't have the right ideas the right leaders they betrayed that and it's basically the same anti-corruption discourse of the right so like basically it's moralism

it doesn't offer solutions it doesn't actually look what the problems with corruption are and it tends to empower right-wing projects it seems like a one-sided weapon honestly like when the right uses it it can very

effectively crush left-wing movement and when the left uses it or well when liberals use it it just you know it's a fart in a hurricane like no one gives a shit well I think it's like it does work but it also sets up double standards because like everyone expected

it didn't work here but like I think the reason why is like it doesn't really work in the same way and it has worked in other places because like you know attacking the corrupt elites the standard of like left-wing rhetoric but they tend to it works best when they attack them on politics

rather than whether they're sleazy or not I agree but like in this in the case I think it's fundamentally I don't think the right like right-wing politics see any problem with actual corruption because they for them it's like a zero-sum game like all all like

public life is going to be corrupt and we just have to keep the other guys out of power so whatever we do is justified in either like some sort of ideological crusade or like some sort of shared belief in that basically like all the things that we believe in like social programs

okay I'm being I'm gonna sound like very like like liberal left rather than saying like redistribution of like basically workers power over capital but basically like you know like reformer social programs I'll just corruption itself it's just ways of like buying off working class votes so

they don't have the same double standard as yeah that they are I mean like that's that is what it is like we will give you welfare so you will vote for us that is not an exchange that I consider to be a bad one I think it's like that's what's real corruption

so like there's a conflict of interest there yeah so like when the upper middle class take took to the streets in Brazil for instance they weren't necessarily just angry about the fact there was a bunch of dodgy spending going on where politicians were getting millions from the state oil company and big companies it was

like the workers party had fundamentally upset the natural order by like saying your domestic worker is going to get paid a minimum wage you know like black people should probably get some spaces at the universities or like you know

this idea that like there's an intrusion that people have got to their places not because of merit but because of unfair advantages and that for them is corruption right so you can see in this way like class hate and then racism and other things can get all entwined in this

nasty mess which is just it's against corruption so you can be a nice citizen you know protesting against corruption on Avenida Paulista but really you just want the police to go kill like thousands of black people and like your domestic worker to never be

paid again right and that's an extreme example but at the same time the challenge I think for us is that like when the left inherits this battle of corruption and corruption is like a central team of politics seemingly everywhere right now we tend to adopt the moralistic

rhetoric of like you know there's bad people in power let's get them out which is again what we're going to do when we get in power and then find out we have to adapt to the institutions that we are and I'm not saying that we shouldn't try and change the institutions or have more radical programs

that actually change the structure of the state to create more possibilities for left-wing advances but I'm just saying you set yourself the trap of like you get called out for corruption very soon so I think the challenge then is for like

socialists and those of us on the left is to imagine like what an actual anti-corruption politics would look like in the sense of like I don't necessarily think it has to be anti-corruption in like we against corruption this is an anti-corruption program it has to be that the problem with corruption

is it's another way of elites sharing that their own interests are being looked after and it's another form of exploitation within society so what we need to do is we need to break the powers of the ruling class through creating you know

movements, reforms that expand democracy through changing the you know forms of power in society so my argument finally is basically like and again this is kind of still on the developing stage and I think there's a lot of debate to it

but the challenge that we have to do a better job of dealing with this issue in terms of like saying it's about politics and we have to build a political project that goes against you know capital and the forces that protect capital rather than saying that it's a problem of bad people

in power and that at the end of the day we just need good people who have the correct line who are not going to betray us when we win power sounds pretty good so let's get on that let's just start working on that

after lunch in the meantime I feel like I'm going to just drown my sorrows for this terrible election we've been friends a while maybe considered not going back to Weimar Brazil yeah I mean

it's not looking good I'll be fine, everyone else is going to be fucked the one thing I know maybe he'll get stabbed again the one relief that I have and again it's kind of funny to be told by this on a podcast as somebody who's kind of known for being active on the left it's that like

these dudes don't read stuff and they definitely don't read stuff in English there you go, so you're safe I'm safe and I'm also white as fuck enjoy that thanks very much Ben Fogel we will link to both

that article your article in Catalyst about Brazil and my appearance on your podcast of Bungabunga a stupid German portmanteau of a name but is nonetheless

probably my favorite politics podcast for those who don't listen to us we talk a lot about global politics about ideas, theories but mostly about the crisis of the contemporary political order and the awful despair

that everyone's facing right now it's cheery, it's good and we have some really good guests you should check it out we'll see you next time music music