Grubstakers - Episode 124: Edir Macedo ft. Michael Brooks

Episode Date: December 17, 2019

This week we go to Brazil with special guest Michael Brooks. We cover Edir Macedo, an evangelical pastor who teaches that the true path to salvation is giving him lots of money and possibly your newborn. We also talk about his associations with Jair Bolsonaro and the smash blockbuster Nothing to Lose based on his life. This one was recorded right after the election in the UK so we're a tad shell shocked but we kept calm and carried on for you fine people. Follow Michael Brooks on twitter @_michaelbrooks, check out his YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh2UY1hxlMr4_7Az_iQ82HQ, and support him at https://patreon.com/TMBS

I want to be held accountable for what I'm doing. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it was like the 9-11 of my career and certainly of making kombucha. Jesus is smart. This idea of income inequality, that always strikes me as a very, it's a deceptive term, income inequality. Well, let's flip it around. It comes from outcome inequality. In five, four, three, two. Hello, welcome back to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. My name is Sean P. McCarthy, and I'm joined here by... Andy Palmer.

Yogi Poliwal. And so today we're going to be talking a bit about a billionaire Brazilian evangelical named Adir Macedo. But before we get to that, we are joined by a very special guest today. We are thrilled to have with us the host of The Michael Brooks Show on YouTube and Patreon. The one and only Michael Brooks is here. Hey, guys. Big fan of the show.

Super happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you for doing it. And I think you're here today with us on what is, I guess, a solemn day for what considers itself the left around the world. We're recording this December 12, 2019. We've seen exit polls in the United Kingdom that, if they hold up, indicate that Jeremy Corbyn is looking like he's going to get routed, which is a very tragic event because, apart from everything else, I think

he's a fundamentally decent person in politics, which you don't always see, and just to see a decent person get destroyed by people as odious as the modern UK Conservative Party. And now, you know, I do want to congratulate whichever of Boris Johnson's mistresses end up negotiating the US free trade deal. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of job opportunities for them. It's also just a horrible loss for those of us who are wildly anti-Semitic. We're really rooting for Jeremy here. Yes.

Well, Jeremy Corbyn did give it his best effort. He really did find the crisis actor child to lie on the floor of the hospital and pretend like there are any problems with the NHS. Now let's do the intro if the results are different. We want to make sure we do a plan b yeah no i always thought corgan would pull it out i know this is a rough one socket to me all right well um i guess we should move on to the subject of the episode today uh michael you mentioned uh your illicit history series and i do recommend people watch you did one an illicit history of modern brazil brazil and lula um and i

very much enjoyed it i recommend people watch it about 14 minutes it tells you a lot of very relevant information in a condensed and informative manner and um and i wanted you here today so we can kind of talk a bit about lula whereas you we just did an episode on the coup in Bolivia. And something that was interesting that we talked about there that is very similar with the situation with Lula in Brazil is that both Evo Morales in Bolivia and Lula in Brazil, they massively reduced poverty. 30 to 40 million people in Brazil lifted out of poverty. They massively increased GDP, you know, like they made the country vastly more richer. So, you know, in both of those countries, the rich got richer under their governorship. And yet it was this same reactionary rich that ultimately threw them out.

And we were just talking about how it's not even about for these people getting richer. It's about their own power. It's that when you empower, you know, the marginalized or you create a middle class as Evo did, you actually do reduce the power of the rich, even if in nominal terms, they are getting more money in yeah no i mean i don't know i don't remember i think we probably used it in the history but there's this clip uh in one of the first interviews that lula did when he was in prison he's actually been released from prison and is uh you know hitting the streets hard in brazil and that's sort of changing the dynamics there he said i'm gonna make these people's lives a living hell which is pretty funny which but um among many other uh things but he said um in this interview with glenn greenwald i mean i think it definitely really impressed people i mean this guy was a political prisoner and and he had been silenced i mean nobody had heard from him and the fact that he came out

and started giving these interviews and not only like It was just like oh, that's Lula like not the press not going crazy like just fucking Totally masterful and we made this point. He said he said that people said during my mandate my presidency that like They'd go to the airport and they would start saying like, this place looks like a bus station because new people are using the airport. Right. Like, and,

and he said, and he said, Oh, you should have seen what they said. And like, I think that's, that's correct. And then the other problem that actually starts to get created in Brazil and

across the pink tide is first you have, yeah, the wealthy that are like, even if we're winning, uh, we're still losing some kind of relative status, which we don't like. And then you actually do start to put a bunch of people in the middle class. And if you don't, and I don't know what the answer to that is, but if you don't politicize that, then people can also start to identify in a different way politically.

Like, well, wait a second. I'm not poor anymore. Right. I'm not poor anymore and right i'm not going on the neighborhood you know maybe i ought to look at a different political option i think that's actually another thing that's happened um although the tide is is kind of i mean bolivia is a huge setback but there has been some tide turning in latin america yeah the theme of today's episodes is the failures of electoral politics and why we must all use our patreons to fund violent revolution um but so the subject today is a brazilian um billionaire uh pastor

if you can call him that named adir bishop yes bishop adir masito he only moves diagonally yeah and so uh masito is fascinating to me uh forbes puts his net worth at about 1.1 billion U.S. dollars as of 2015. That was the last time they tried to estimate it. And he entirely got rich off taking donations from poor, mostly poor people in Brazil and eventually using it to buy a television station, which is now the second largest television station in Brazil. And he has been a major supporter of Jair Bolsonaro, the current extremely right-wing president of Brazil. He apparently gave him some sort of blessing back in September at his main church in Sao Paulo. He's used his massive TV station to promote Bolsonaro, of course, pt the workers party um glenn greenwald has an article in the intercept about how uh his uh tv station one of its news outlets started an investigation you know like aggressively investigating um the um intercept journalist who um i believe was the one who leaked the um what is it the prosecutors uh oh oh that was the whole intercept team yeah yeah that was but yes this reporter was involved in the yeah it, the prosecutors? Oh, that was the whole Intercept team.

Yeah, yeah. One of them. But yes, this reporter was involved in the, yeah, it was basically the, they got, a whistleblower went to them with all these telegram messages that showed the corruption in the case against Lula, and much more broadly, too. Yes. Yeah, the so-called Operation Car Wash. Yeah, Operation Car Wash. Operation Car Wash. Which, you know, investigated Lula as well as Dilma Rousseff and other members of the PT in particular.

And across Latin America. I mean, it was used against the left wing leaders across the region. Right. And so, you know, they found the communications that show they were clearly focusing on the PT and using this corruption as a political weapon, you know? But so, you know, and so of course he knew their own cases were like, like the, what they put Lula in jail and was complete,

like they knew it was weak themselves. Really? Right. And so that's why Lula is now, you know, out, out on bail, as they say.

And he does have, you know, charges against him that he still has to face and deal with hopefully. And this is another way of keeping him from running because as we say, and he does have charges against him that he still has to face and deal with, hopefully. And this is another way of keeping him from running, because as we discussed, he would have very easily beat Bolsonaro one-on-one, but he has to beat these charges before he can run against Bolsonaro. But I guess just for what's fascinating about Adir Macedo, and we'll just kind of go through

his biography, and then we'll talk more generally about um uh brazil uh though i did just want to mention michael because i i watched your show and i saw this you said that lula uh installed linux on government computers in brazil and then as soon as dilma was removed from power uh microsoft windows was reinstalled there was a lot of my all the yeah there was a lot of that i mean that that happened across the board for every initiative like that and i i just want to say too about the charges i mean to be really really clear because these big terms get thrown around like money laundering and slush funds and all this stuff what lula went to jail for and there are other charges that are literally i mean there's one charge where

they they talk just to really summarize it they talk about a yacht and literally it's like a tin fishing boat right so like but what they stuck him in jail for and what they themselves in this telegram message one of them was kind of like are we going to be able to this kind of week was they said he took a seaside condo which first of all sounds super upscale and actually you look at it basically looks like something you get like jacksonville florida it's like it's i mean it's beautiful i'd happily take it but it is not what comes to mind there's no paperwork connecting him to it. And they literally couldn't prove that he went there more than once or twice to basically, which is what he said,

which is like, yeah, I thought about buying this place and decided not to. And so like he went to jail for that. That is what literally put like, even people who say like, there are other questions and blah, blah,

blah, blah. No one did not like, that's what he went to jail for. That's what he was silenced for. That's what he was taken out of the election for. And, you know, the bigger point beyond that, which I just think is worth saying, is like corruption is a super slippery term, which people throw around way too much. Because what are we actually talking about here? Like, the truth is, is that the guy decided to become president of a structurally corrupt country.

Like, if Bernie, say in an amazing scenario, you know, cut some deal with some scumbag senators, like in exchange for your vote for Medicare for all, we'll do some like type of like special kickback for your state's hospitals or some bullshit like that like is that corruption like sure i guess or it's so a lot of the stuff with lula is just sort of like yeah you want to pass an agenda you're going to find like there's tons of like the four of us would create a little party and sit in Congress and be like, yeah, pay us bribes to pass your agenda. And that agenda happened to be like building colleges, increasing wages, eliminating hunger. So,

you know, some of this was like, yeah, they chose to work. And maybe there is a broader critique of like a left-wing project that exists inside a capitalist client list context but then you got to get into a conversation about like capitalism is corrupt and that's the only credible way you can have that conversation but corruption has been used every single neo-fascist move

drain the swamp modi used corruption they used uh bolsonaro so i think we got to be super wary about that rhetoric and then of course you have a billionaire uh bishop who owns a media empire but apparently that's that's on the up and up well yeah the um the papists are trying to take him down we'll get into that but yeah i mean it it's to that point you know michael bloomberg uh we mentioned in one of our first episodes he quintupled his net worth from 5 billion to 25 billion while on paper he was the mayor of new york getting paid uh one dollar annual salary and by the way that's just money working like that isn't even i guarantee you that michael bloomberg never had a meeting no in a back room.

No, no, no. Never. Yeah, it was just his money is Bloomberg terminal. So he used government policies to promote Wall Street, which makes him rich. And that isn't even like just the blurring of like, it's just, yeah. It's like we can call it corruption, but the reality is, is how money moves and how power moves is through these veins, through these passages. And to clarify that as corruption is not incorrect, but it just is fundamentally fucked up. And then imagine it.

Like, imagine what if de Blasio, like, if de Blasio did the equivalent of what Lula did for New York City like he would have saved NYSHA there would be like massive public housing investment right and sit in poverty in the city was cut he's universally below like right and then you find out that like oh like he he was involved in some like you know I don't know like not illegal but you know like machine politics fundraising scheme at least i would be like thank god finally a fucking like center-left politician being a little bit serious about power right and so you know like uh it is important to emphasize like you said like yeah there are uh there is there is and was systemic corruption in the brazilian state but they were never able to tie lula to anything it was a completely ridiculous case that they

entirely brought to keep him from winning an election he would have won by any polling metric it's used to criminalize the left right that's what lava jato is and that's also why it's backed by the doj here as well my wife uh my wife's brazilian she told me one time um uh i think it was in congress somebody shouted at bolsonaro it called him a fascist and he said yes you can call me a fascist but you can't say i'm corrupt and so that is like something you know i mean it is but bolsonaro goes wild i mean this is a man that's like if i had a son that's gay i'd you know he wouldn't be gay because i'd beat the shit out of him he's also connected to the militias in reo de janeiro who literally assassinate like what the fuck does that even mean there's all sorts of bank account questions around this family it's i mean it's also it's

just like trump it's also bullshit you know like i remember people like actually taking that serious oh it's like oh i mean he's already rich so he doesn't need to be fucking crazy he's gonna run like a business he's gonna run like you know i mean that's a good thing i remember years like back in the day when like literally probably the 90s there was like some onion headline and it was all like it was like chicken conglomerate ceo promises to make government work like his factory and it it just went into gruesome detail. Basically, it was like, yeah, it tells you everything you need to know.

But so an interesting thing with Adir Macedo is, so I read the chapter on him in the book Brazilian Heirs by Alex Quadros as a Bloomberg writer. So I read the chapter that has his actual what we know of his biography. That's the basis for my biography. But Andy watched the movie that he made. Yes, and the movie is called Nothing to Lose.

IMDB says that it stars Martin Lawrence and Tim Robbins. And it's about how Nick's wife in bed with his boss uh he later gets a gun to his head by a carjacker but steps on the gas pedal they end up friends after adventures together hold ups burglary reckless driving revenge etc twists follow that's not the movie i watched uh so i don't know what's going on with imdb but yeah it was this uh it was a film that uh had uh incredible uh directing i thought incredible cinematography incredible acting and it uh was based on his autobiography and so it was clearly very talented people who clearly owed the guy a favor trying to make a Dobbik ship script filmable. And they kind of almost succeeded.

Also, the with the great acting aside, it has been dubbed to English by what I would charitably call first year Bob Jones University acting students. I have like some Baptist cousins and sometimes we would go on these car trips and they would play these tapes about all these lessons these kids would learn about Jesus. And I think the people who dubbed this might have been the same production company as that. So I've actually,

I've got, I've got an example here where first it's the original Portuguese. And then I play the same clip dubbed over. This is from early in the movie where his, his mother is telling him after he fails to climb a tree that it was not his job to climb a tree. It was his job to climb mountains. Oh,

the word. My mom told me the same thing. That actually sounds pretty good. You're going to climb mountains. I didn't know he made neon Genesis Evangelion. Oh, oh yeah. There,

there, there are definitely, um, scenes where the papists are deliberate. We'll get to them. Yes. Papists are deliberating. And do you assume that they're also deliberating off screen about the human instrumentality

project? Well, I did, I did just think it might be amusing cause I can kind of go through the chronological i'll be a little brief about it but the chronological mostly biography of him that we know to mostly be true and andy can maybe interrupt with uh how they chose the real truth how they chose to portray that in his uh marvel big budget movie uh which apparently played to a bunch of empty theaters. But another interesting thing about Adir Macedo is all of his different empires link back together.

So, like, he'll write books and then his churches will buy the books, which they will sell back to congregants at the church. And, of course, his television station promote his church. And so, yeah, he has a movie. Smart guy. I mean, like, that's how the music and movie industry works. Like, you know, as much as we can say that that's a tactic by Macedo here, the record industry has done a great job of buying their own content

to resell to themselves, basically. Yeah, that's exactly how Top 40 works. Yeah, precisely. He has been linked to child trafficking out of Portugal, but his worst crime was payola. Andy, you got that drop? His worst, we'll get to it later address his child trafficking and his autobiographical movie his worst crime was uh providing the salvation of god to the people yeah

yeah so by his own admission he's been investigated more than uh two dozen times by brazilian and other authorities uh the longest he did an 11-day stint in jail, and then he spent half a million U.S. dollars hiring the best lawyer to get him out of it. Dershowitz helped him. The ghost of Johnny Cochran. Dershowitz flew to Brazil. It's like, oh, okay.

That's what I like about Dershowitz, is there is a part where he's just so fucking disgusting. There's some line like I think it's I cannot believe I'm making this reference but I always I don't remember any other part of this book but it uh Madame Bovary I think Flaubert but it's like the mayor sold

himself for the pleasure of it like about some like local corrupt politician you just look like I'm not even gonna get to like all of the reasons that like Dershowitz should be shot into space. But just like sticking to like just the, like just the, oh, like a murderer. Yes. Like, oh, like I just like, of course he's defending Trump. He's disgust.

Like, oh yeah. Like Dershowitz is like in his own filth. Like basically he's incredibly bad for the Jewish brand. And I say this like every time I see Dershowitz, I'm just like, that is so bad for us, man. Jesus Christ. This man has just undone all of the progress you just made with the defeat of Jeremy Corbyn.

I was actually thinking Dershowitz would help Jeremy Corbyn. It's like Jeremy Corbyn should have put up a giant picture of Dershowitz would help Jeremy Corbyn. It's like Jeremy Corbyn should have put up a giant picture of Dershowitz. He would want you to vote. People are like, this is an anti-Semitic caricature. It's like, I've always never shied from telling the truth. It just actually went like he became an actual anti-Semite last week. It's like, I don't want him controlling British banks. Look, is that the face that you want

controlling your credit rating? Well, I don't. I'm just imagining Dershowitz like, thank you, Mr. Bolsonaro, for visiting me on little St. James Island so we can discuss criminalizing BDS. Exactly. Would you like a massage?

Anything you would like. Because we need to protect Israel. It's very important. His self-defense right now is like, I am getting railroaded in the press, just like President Trump is for doing the exact same thing with the exact same guy. That is awesome. I like this new gen it used to be that people like that would make disgusting comparisons like the dershowitz of 10 years ago would be like what happens is when you lie then then a great man like nelson mandela's in prison and now they all are just recycling like this is just like what's

happening in that yahoo it's like what do you mean the sense that you're all fucking degenerate criminals like you're like this is just like donald trump's like right yeah exactly you fucking crazy um so to start from the beginning of the story of how adir masito became you know the billionaire evangelical pastor who promoted uh bol, still promotes him today. He's born 1945 in a small town in the state of Rio de Janeiro, outside the city, but his parents move him to the city early on. Oh, and we should just mention, he's the founder of what's called the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. They claim over 8 million followers in Brazil, 12 million worldwide. They actually have

a church in Brooklyn. Oh, really? They might even have one in Queens as well, but I know they have one in Brooklyn. So we're all going here after for the midnight mass. Where's it at? I don't know exactly. It's not mass, Sean. That's some faithist bullshit. Dude, we didn't tithe

enough to them to wish a jeremy corbin of victory into existence well they got a candlelight vigil there tonight so i think we show up by the way this uh movie starts uh kind of like uh city of god yeah it really does with way more god and then it ends up if the rest of city of god were written by the drug dealers and they were much more successful. Well, and so Adir, he preaches prosperity gospel, which a lot of Americans will be familiar with, you know, Joel Osteen or whoever else you want to pick, whatever. Kanye West. Yeah, 80s thief you want to pick.

But the basic idea of prosperity gospel is you say, I'm a church man. If you give me money, if anything good happens to you after you give me money it's because you gave me money right and if nothing good happens to you because you didn't give me enough money so that's like prosperity gospel in a nutshell like he talks about a deer does you know tithing as giving him 10 of your income absolute minimum that's like just to square the books with god and every percent you give above that that puts even more karma in your god book you know exactly right yeah it's like my it's like the patreon for the team jeremy corbin lost because not enough of you guys subscribe to the grub stakers and michael barks patreons it's like oh you're so sad about the labor results. Well, our next goal, I told you the reach goal is 4,000 patrons.

Look, 3,000 was the bare minimum to destroy the Lib Dems. You want labor to win, 4,000 patrons. If you want a Bernie Sanders presidency, we need 10,000 patrons by 2021. It's just what we have to do. Yogi staging a shirtless protest on Billionaire's Row, our 500 patron level, is necessary for Iowa. Yes.

We didn't set up that $5,000 a month tier for no reason. We did it because we were trying to support Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom. I mean, we're joking about it, but the episodes will get better the moment we get more $5,000 tier people. Okay, so I just wanted to start with from the book Brazilian Heirs.

Adir gives a quote on prosperity gospel. He asks his followers rhetorically, what's the richest country in the world? And, you know, they shout out some stuff. And then, of course, he says, it's America, the United States of America. Do you know why? Silence. Because way back during the colonization of the United States, this is history. You can look it up on the internet.

The colonization was done by men who believed in the word of God, and they were tithers. That's what you see on the dollar bill. In God we trust. So he essentially believes and argues to his followers that the reason the U.S. is the richest country in the world is because its founders were the most pious Christians in this prosperity gospel tradition. We had George Michael's faith. Yes.

But anyway, before we even get to all that, so he's born a small town outside Rio. He's one of 17 kids. Ten of them die. It is true. We talk about there are very few actual rags to riches billionaire story. He is one, but the actual way he got there was stealing from his fellow uh poor uh to delivering the message of god yes uh so he's born uh one of 17 kids 10 of them die he's uh has deformed fingers uh his dad apparently beats him for this and um uh right because he

feels ashamed like trump logic that like Trump logic? He's looking at his like... Because you see the figures and it's bad luck. It's like having braille in the building. It's like the... It's bad luck. I think that's true, right? Yeah.

Yeah, Trump didn't want braille in a building. It's just bad luck. So yeah, his pointer finger and his thumb listen if if if the walls look like dice the dice isn't gonna know what to do so adir's pointer finger and his thumb they're slightly smaller so you know it's even worse the pointer figure a lot of people use that a lot that's a very useful part of communication you can't give people a thumbs up or a thumbs down that short thumb how can you hitchhike without such a such a prominent thumb a deer staring at his small thumb going saying to his dad you motherfucker you had to only tithe five percent you thought you could get away with

it but so according to this again biography from the book brazilian heirs at 11 years old he quits school to work at his father's bar at 16 years old he gets a job at the rio state lottery apparently pushes caught the coffee cart you know like they sell coffee and lottery tickets i guess this is you know in the early 60s um oh no it was just for the people who were working in the office oh i see at least in the movie that's how it's portrayed so he works at the yeah it's like the male goddard guy yeah i see oh wow uh but so yeah so he's uh working for the state lottery he apparently according to his own autobiography he doubts his family's Catholicism,

their reliance on spiritual healers. How can you believe in a God who's dead? You pray to God, but you see a dead Jesus everywhere. Anyway, continue. He attends a Pentecostal church of a Canadian evangelical preacher named Roberto McAllister at the age of 18. And he describes this as a conversion experience. True. And he gets into, you know, the kind of born-again Christian fundamentalist movement throughout his 20s. Because he cures his sister's asthma. Yes. She starts going to this church, and then she throws away all her asthma medication, and she doesn't have an asthma problem anymore.

It's better than kombucha. Yeah. But it has a negative effect on his relationships really adir i liked you before that church we can't even have sex anymore wait i like i like that i like how he's like putting the bio like you know i was still getting it in yeah yeah you're not supposed to right right i did does he ever talk in the bio like, you know, I was still getting it. Yeah, yeah. You're not supposed to. I did. Does he ever talk in the movie or are people always just talking at him?

Oh no, he does a lot of talking, yeah. So far, oh yeah, I guess, yeah, so far it's just people talking at him. Sean, you were saying though that he lost his virginity somewhere else? He claims he lost his virginity at a brothel. That's not covered in Nothing to Lose. That didn't happen.

I didn't see anything like that. It was edited out of the final cut. Yeah. They had to delete the scene where the... Mom's like, you're not meant to pay for it. You're not meant to get herpes. You're meant to give it. But so, yeah.

So he... Throughout his 20s, he's working various government jobs, like we said, for the state lottery. He also works for the national census. But he says throughout this time, you know, so he goes to this Pentecostal preacher. He gets converted and he starts preaching the gospel in his spare time to particularly people in the favelas. Oh, yeah. Okay. So we got a few clips. So in this time time he meets his

wife he also goes from a teenage actor to a 50 year old actor playing a 20 year old actor so what you get is uh a very joe you get an old guy trying to be a young guy and it just looks like joe biden um he he picks up his wife from the pentecostal church she's uh going to college but she wakes up late. And so they have a tiff. Dear? Why are you still in bed, Estelle? I only wake up early when I have morning classes.

This is laziness, Estelle. If you're going to be my wife, you have to wake up early. Got it? Fellas, we all been there uh that he but he he also has some personal ruminations what good is a house a car more money more comfort if that's not what god asks and and so then he finally he finally preaches at his brother-in-law's church but his his friends have have their doubts about him. I don't think he can handle this.

He can barely hold the microphone. He doesn't know how to handle the microphone, but he does the thing that desperate open mic hosts do, which is when people are scattered all around a venue that has way more seats than people, they say, come to the front, you'll laugh harder. And finally, he has his real breakthrough when he starts preaching uh in a gazebo or a bandstand and uh then one of the guys is like hey something's going on with my wife and he goes over to his house and this is an hour in they bury the lead on this and then we have this scene

his wife is on the floor contorting what oh yes the exorcism yeah put her hands behind her he's like listen bitch get up in the morning leave this life and never come back again

in the name of the lord jesus get out and then she's all confused she's like what happened and um oh she thinks yeah yeah so

yeah wait what happened and I hope she thinks. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Wait. The evil has gone. So just a couple of things on those clips. First of all, they're like, what good is a car or a house if you don't have, you know, what is it, a touch with God or if you're not connected to God?

So he will literally use this exact argument in his preaching where in December they have an event called the Holy Bonfires where he will encourage people to give him their car or their house and people will sign over titles to their house or their car. So it's a very cynical anti-materialist argument where you get people to give you their material things by saying you know materials there's so much more than just material wealth yes the the pigs and animal farm yeah and uh and then on just the fucking demonic the fucking demonic thing like so a similar thing to what's going on in Bolivia, where his evangelical church preaches that the alternative religious traditions in Brazil are demonic. They are Satanism.

And this is what's called candomblé. Great job. Yeah, I know. Send your letters. Earlier you said brazu when you're trying to say Brazil. Yeah. It's worth noting that Sean has a Brazilian wife where he can't say, hey, how do I say this word? Yes.

That would be all the more reason to not want to say it. I got your back, Sean. Look, I was going to ask her, but she wasn't awake yet. The exorcism hadn't happened yet. Yeah. But so anyways, there are various so-called voodoo traditions. I am a podcaster. You need to be awake.

You need to be awake. Trying to figure out a way of making a new Jeffrey Ebsen joke. But so, you know, Brazil,, of course, had had a large slave population and a lot of people were descendants of, you know, African slaves, just like the United States. And they brought their own religious traditions. And so these traditions are called, you know, going into these churches or not these religious institutions of people who practice alternate faiths and telling them, like, we will kill you if you don't shut this down. And, you know, there has been a massive increase since Bolsonaro took over in violence against, you know, non-Christian denominations within Brazil. Bolsonaro Christian? Yeah, he's an evangelical Christian.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, according to the Washington Post, in Rio State, reports of religious-based violence against followers of Afro-Brazilian religions have arisen from 14 in 2016 to 123 in the first 10 months of 2019. Why has it got to be black? But, you know, if we have time, we'll get back to that. But it is just something where there is a very dark part to, you know, describing it to a lesser extent Catholicism, but in particular, these Afro-Brazilian religious traditions as demonic, satanic. Oh, yeah. I mean, look, the whole thing there is really synchronized, and it does parallel here. But the evangelical push, I mean, they did an exorcism.

There was supposedly some type of exorcism in the presidential suites because that's where Lula and Dilma had been. It's totally and and i mean there is like i mean you know the policy in the amazon with indigenous people both ecologically i mean it's literally genocidal you could use that i think it's fair to say that yeah definitely and then you think about i mean basically the security policy is just like the police should just be able to murder anybody that makes you feel uncomfortable as well as you yourself. I mean, essentially their version of like stand your ground laws. And so it's all part and parcel of like the power military presence and the evangelical business for sure. And then you look at this guy having a media empire and helping

propagandize for Bolsonaro. So it's all in the nexus. Spread the word of God. But yeah, so he, at age 32, he quits his jobs for the government to found the ministry. As Andy was saying from the movie,

he would bring, you know, sound equipment to public parks. He was originally called the boss, a Nova preacher sound equipment to public parks. He was originally called the bossa nova preacher because he had slicked back hair and stuff. Sure. You have to look cool to stay cool. By the way, this guy

was like 50. You could tell that he went through a bottle of Just for Men before every scene. The actor? Yeah. He wouldn't try to play himself. Huh? No, no. I'm not sure if they could convincingly get a wig to work on him sean you mentioned earlier that his main group originally was the favelas right yes and uh you know one thing i want to point out about these televangelists is

they often prey on the poorest part of a community i've seen this time and time again with the indian spiritual healers and leaders and how they've uh preyed on the poorest part of a community. I've seen this time and time again with the Indian spiritual healers and leaders and how they've preyed on the poorest population to get their massive wealth. And Sean's getting into it now. But when you own your own television company and you can put hours upon hours of yourself broadcasting your own televangelism,

eventually, especially if there's not commercials, people at the end of their rope, in the bottom of the barrel of life, will go, fuck it fuck it i'm gonna go with this guy because he seems to have everything figured out and that's what's happening all around the world right and um yeah i mean to pick up on that point so he gets uh he's doing these kind of crazy things where he's performing exorcisms miracle cures he apparently buys a plastic kiddie pool to baptize people in. They left that out. It wasn't cinematic.

That was something to lose. Right. But so he's getting these donations. Eventually he gets enough donations to open his first physical church. 1977 is when the Universal Church is founded. This is right before his first sermon there. Is your wife really pregnant? She is.

If he's a boy, name him Moses. Moses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have to pilot the Ava, dear. Your wife is still asleep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The dub person does not seem like a deer seems to be like,

what have I done? That one, the actor is actually, it kind of looks like that. He's like, okay. Yeah. Um,

but so, uh, he gets, he opens his first church. He eventually is able to buy airtime on local radio stations. And, you know, like the more he spreads his message, the more he's able to get donations, which pays for XYZ. You know, donations allow him to buy more churches, to open more churches. He buys his first radio station in Rio, a local radio station. He rents time slots on local TV.

It's all a feedback loop. But what I wanted to do to follow up on Yogi's point that he just made is just quoting from the book. He, quote, built churches on the poor outskirts, distant from the Catholic cathedrals downtown. Sensing unmet demand, he kept them open from dawn till after midnight. Most of them were open seven days a week. They would have four to six services a day. And again, if they're open till after midnight, well, you have the poor working class come home and they're not gonna be back by 5 p.m. They can go to a midnight service. And so it is something where

when the state or the society as a whole completely marginalizes and rejects a community, there are these kind of people who will step in where yes, he is stealing from them, but he is also providing them with a community. True. that that mark you're you're just thousand percent right and you know that mark's quote where people always got the you know opium of the masses part i'm gonna i don't know the whole graph by heart obviously but it's actually like it's like warmth in a cold world it's comfort like the point is is that the that one line that people take, it's very like 15-year-old atheist.

It's a gay man, like pacifies the masses or whatever. But the actual point he's making there is in a world of exploitation and alienation, this is like the one area that we have given people for community, for purpose, for a sense of basically values that exist outside the market. And we can stipulate all of the cynicism about, you know, the spike of these types of like new religious movements in the 70s 80s through now and and i mean they've always existed but i'm sure you could study waves of their popularity and correlate it with different economic phases and on one hand like a certain track really appealing to people like in true profound desperation and then actually also another part of people who

were actually relatively speaking pretty materially satisfied and well off and then actually also running up against the limits of that too and you know getting programmed like another thing too basically deal with alienation loss of purpose and market atomization on the privilege side of things yeah so this stuff always shows up and the the outcasts of the world seem to be the largest market for most thing and most things and when it comes to uh most people yeah eden erid erid what the fuck's this guy's name a deer a deer that's a weird name but uh when it comes to a deer okay yogi yeah that's fair point um when it comes to him like you know it's not just the fact that he's providing this this is this warmth to people but then i i bet that if we really looked into it a little further that he's also cutting out the other people that are doing the same thing

to bolster his own net worth eventually because that's the only way you profit from this in the long run you can't be non-monopolistic the only way you profit from this in the long run. You can't be non-monopolistic to get a billion dollars in this type of way. Yeah, one irony from the book is that eventually he would use record TV investigations to accuse other evangelicals who were taking his followers of stealing money from their followers. You see, here's the thing Is that in creating an alternative To the main Catholic institutions And providing this wonderful service for people

He started making some enemies Some very powerful enemies Good morning gentlemen Good morning We need to have a conversation The leader of that new cult Bought a radio station Has a TV show now

And fills stadiums I know An aunt of mine fell for that con man She gave him money even though she has none herself He tricks people with his lies and fake healings It's all an act Senator Can't you do anything to protect the people of Brazil?

Can't he be put in jail For being a faith healer? Senator, can't you do anything to protect the people of Brazil? Can't he be put in jail for being a faith healer? Your Honor, you need to do something. What I like about that is that the first, like, two-thirds of that is just sort of like, yeah. Yeah. Sounds about right. That's what this guy's doing that's the thing is they'll take like the things he actually does and then they'll just spin it into well and in the background of all these scenes obviously no you can't see it but there is uh whenever the

powers that be come down on him uh there's a very visible uh bishop with the cross very prominent on his chest, just like glaring in the background. I was thinking it'd be nice if like the end shot of that was a tracking scene to like an image of the Virgin Mary and then the music gets really ominous. But yeah, like actually what he was saying there is what they were saying about him filling stadiums is not inaccurate. By the 80s, he's opening two churches per month. Actually, what he was saying there is, what they were saying about him filling stadiums is not inaccurate. By the 80s, he's opening two churches per month. He was apparently filling up this stadium in Rio de Janeiro with 200,000 people to hear him give mass. So, you know, and another thing. He does have a lot of charisma. Well, the thing is, he did it the same day the Pope visited and he outsold the Pope.

You can't do that. Is that what he says? Yeah, well, there's a it's a real it's not what he says there's just uh a scene of him watching the the tv where they're reporting on it and my goal is to get more uh youtube view than the pope papal youtube channel yes god it's like we're wondering why the evangelicals like Trump. It's like, clearly they like people who talk about how good their ratings are. Did you ever see the, I'm sorry, I know I'm an idiot. There's that clip with Trump where he's like, he's like talking. He's like, yeah, the art of the deal.

He's like, second best book ever written. And he's like, you know what the first one is? First one. And he's like, you know what the first one is? First one? And he's like, yep, the Bible. Minister, do you see how dangerous he is? These healings and exorcisms, aren't they illegal? Legality is relative when it comes to religion. But if we could fabricate a witness willing

to accuse him, we can't keep allowing him to act with impunity. Minister, let's use the media to get rid of him. This is why he had to build out his media empire is to counteract the establishment and the

papists building up their onslaught against him they're just haters man right and so we should we mentioned earlier about the community we should also mention that he what he does is he gets his most fervent followers to become assistants and later priests and later bishops and actually like is uh he does have some of his own bishops in brazilian congress in elected positions right now but it is is something where, you know, his most, not only does he create this sense of community, but his most devoted followers get to be a part of the scam as well. You know, they get to be brought into it.

They get to wet their beaks and promote it more heavily. But what he really does, you know, we mentioned by the 80s, he's opening two churches a month. He's taking in, you taking in all these donations. In 1989, he buys Record TV, which is now the second largest TV channel in Brazil. He buys it for $45 million US approximately. And he does this by going on a big donation drive and then using his church to give himself a tax, a interest free loan, which he says is his money. And he uses it to buy this TV station. Sure, why not?

Yeah. But when he was making the purchase, he didn't want them to know that it was him purchasing it. So he sent one of his top aides to go in. Well, he was dressed as a driver and just as the negotiations were going south, he threw off his driver cap and his glasses

and decided to lay the law down on how they were gonna negotiate the deal yeah that's great that's cool so he buys this tv station uh in 1989 um and basically the way it went was at first it was just like a straight up evangelical network but they're losing a ton of money on it so what he does in 1992 he brings in one of his followers to be the new ceo and they just turn it into a profit-making enterprise in 1992. They start taking ads for quote-unquote sinful products. At first, they wouldn't take cigarette ads, alcohol ads, and then they start taking these ads. And then they also just start giving evangelical preaching

primetime slots. They put on all these telenovelas, these soap operas it's like one of the more raunchy channels in brazil where it'll have like tons of like almost nudity oh really and you know it's this evangelical channel where they'll just have the evangelical stuff on it like two or three a.m hilarious none of the prime time slots that is awesome yeah but like i fell asleep watching this like soap opera porn at 8 p.m and when when I woke up at 3, I learned about God. Yeah, it sucks if you like watch them long enough. You'll see somebody on the TV lecturing you for watching their channel. I mean, that's a tried and true formula.

I remember I used to do a bit about how late night TV just says like you're fat and single and your dick doesn't work because that's what all the commercials were like in the late 90s, early 2000s where it's like extends Taco Bell and like Girls Gone Wild. So the masses that need guidance certainly are awake at 2 a.m. watching TV. Right. And so just from the book, Brazilian Heirs, the former CEO actually admits to Alex Quadros, he says, to paraphrase, like, we didn't get the TV station to push issues like gay marriage, but to exert power when our interests are under threat. And that's exactly how they use it. You know, if somebody's investigating them, they counterpunch. If other evangelicals are accusing them of things, they counterpunch or other religious leaders or any other power base. They use the media empire any other power base they use the media empire as a power base um but you know so record tv is another source of profit but according to

the book um they took in in 2006 750 million u.s dollars in donations wow and this was i guess the last year that they actually revealed that um but so you know of course they're making money off the tv and the media empire but also just people tithing a huge chunk of their income and um and i guess you know we should say in 1992 partly in relation to kind of the shady circumstances under which he buys this tv station he's indicted in 1992 he spends 11 days in jail the only time he spent in jail we mentioned he spends half a million on a lawyer to get out of it. But by his own account,

he has beaten more than two dozen investigations. He just beat one this year on the Statue of Limitations running out. Well, I think I actually have some audio from his hearing from that 1992 arrest. And you claim that you're not getting rich off the money of your followers. Haven't you seen the documents, Your Honor?

You found nothing wrong because we have nothing to hide. I respect the justice system, but I won't accept what's being done to me and to the church. You will not address me in that manner. There are still many questions about the rapid expansion of your church doing all that you have done requires massive amounts of funding people only give their offerings your honor because they are always blessed by god in return so uh he beats it and then um uh at the at the very end of the movie, kicked out of their homes. We don't know where this is headed.

Bishop, it could mean the end of our church. And it's continued on Nothing to Lose 2. They're both on Netflix. Go watch it now. I like how he says, sort of like, stop being such a cuck, down i do love that he had an actual marvel movie ending to his autobiography about his church where he's like you know iron man comes out at the end and says but we don't even know the power that lies in the next movie i I'm not mad at her.

I mean, the man knows how to sell. Yeah. Well, undoubtedly. I mean, honestly, this is like the type of thing, it's like every DSA chapter in this country should be reading this guy's biography in order to figure out strategy. And I'm only like a third joking.

I mean, like, you know, charm is a learnable skill. And this guy wields it like a fucking sword between his fable like upbringing to just the amount of power he wields in Brazil. And you're also listening to people. I mean, look, you're you're feeding them, you know, poison in return. And there's actually probably few things, frankly, more evil than actually, like, seriously understanding, you know, human needs and then using that to exploit people. But, again, that's an important skill set. Yeah. I mean, but like, you know, like Sean's saying, at one point he's building two churches a month. He's going around the country.

He's got a bigger appeal than the Pope in Brazil. He knows how to lead a crowd into following him wherever he wants to go. And he understands people's needs. So just quoting from the Brazilianaire's book, just to contrast the way he describes his givings, I just thought it would be interesting to read the paragraph describing what exactly he does with all this money, how he offshores it. According to the 2009 case filed against him, which would eventually be dismissed, his pastors would deliver undeclared cash donations in garbage sacks to black market money changers who spirited the funds to bank accounts in New York

and then to shell companies in offshore tax havens. To bring the now anonymous money back into Brazil, these shell companies made loans to pastors to invest in a slew of private businesses, security firms, accounting firms, travel agencies, an air taxi business, even a health insurance provider. To expand records, you know, the media empire's national network, they also used the money to acquire regional TV stations. They bought radio stations, you know, to form the Hallelujah Network. And they continue to fund it all by selling airtime and services to the Universal Church. Papist lies. But it is, I mean, just kind of a fascinating description of our horrific offshore financial system. But, you know, and how all these different

media properties tie together where he's literally able to use them for money laundering by just having, you know, these fucking cash donations come back in from offshore and then be used, get funneled back into the businesses. And I guess, you know, with the time we have left, I just wanted to mention a couple other things. Bolsa Familia is a Lula program. It was direct cash transfers to mostly the poor. It lifted helpless tens of millions out of poverty. It was unabashedly a good thing.

But in the book, Brazilian Heirs, he actually gets a quote from a pastor who talks about how Bolsa Familia was great for a dear Macedo. We talk about Lula being great for the rich. And he talks about, you know, now the poor have money they can get on the subway. They can come to our churches. They can give us more money, you know. So it is just something where Adir Macedo, like very few people in recent memory have made him more rich than Lula did. And yet he's, you know an adamant uh lula opponent

well i mean yeah and but again also like there's like a broader you know the economy boomed for everybody and then the relative rate of growth was actually best for like the most poor but you know there's all these other kind of factors, obviously, that go in from like the AIDS policies, the gay rights policies. And, you know, there's this really intense scene in this documentary at the edge of democracy, which is about the coup that removed Dilma. It really accelerated this process. And, you know, Lula is in the car with his wife and the woman who made the film and he's kind of like basically he's like saying like yes like the next step would have had to have been we needed to take on these media monopolies that was something we really needed to do strategically and he's also just basically

saying like i don't remember the time frame is but when you really think about it like slavery ended in this country like a shockingly short time ago and we're still dealing with this like it's just you know and i don't know man there's there's always going to be room for guys like this in the midway point of like people's religious needs and fucking unregulated capital. Yeah. I mean, that's just, you know, you definitely, you see people like this exist in every corner of the planet.

Oh, yeah. It's wild. I mean, and like they're snakes. Yeah, yeah. In the most classic fashion, their main goal is to, you know, convince you your money is not nearly as important to you as it is to them. And to get it out of you in any way or fashion is not important. And it's crazy how we're so ingrained in this country, at least, to identify with the fucking rebel or the criminal mastermind maverick that can outwit the system. But it's like,

that's literally what bolsters all these people's ego to be like, no, I'm fucking right in stealing money in people's fucking time to make my wealth. It's idiotic.

Yeah, and I'm gonna, I'll link it to the description to the Glenn Greenwald piece in The Intercept talking about how record TV journalists aggressively and completely uneth in The Intercept talking about how record TV journalists aggressively and completely unethically investigated Intercept journalists and aired smear documentaries about them and such

to try and discredit their allegations against Bolsonaro and other right-wing politicians, the reporting that they have done on those politicians. But I did just want to quote from it. Glenn Greenwald actually quotes from The Washington Post. They wrote about an investigation in Portugal where, quote, wealthy televangelist Macedo, head of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, is under investigation for money laundering, tax evasion, and allegations that he ran a human trafficking ring involving adopted children.

The Portugal resident added uh regard the church tonight there's a a scene where he's preaching and a poor lady walks in yes and starts talking to his wife and she's carrying a baby in a crate and she gives and he's like i'll take that yeah she's like my husband and i decided that we should give you this baby and he's like okay uh baby's named moses and you never see the kid again it's a relatively cute kid there's a market net on this jesus that's evil um but actually that's a true story is i talked about these uh bonfires in um december yeah the holy up into the baby the holy bonfire true story so you know people bonfire people will give him you know their their cars or their houses one woman came up gave him his two two week old baby and they kept it as a you know tribute to god a tithe to his church um but yes uh motherfuckers giving this dude babies i'm just

trying to find uh pepe escobar who's a really uh like a really interesting oh yeah he calls it a cocaine evangelist describe the sort of you know how fucking batshit that is mindset of bolsonaro's brazil wait is that pablo's fail son no actually pablo uh pepe escobar is actually uh a he's brazilian journalist who writes for the age of times he's wild dude actually i've interviewed him he's real super interesting um and then the end of that quote about the adoption thing and of course this hasn't been proven but it's very disturbing um uh adir macito is being accused of involvement in an alleged illegal adoption network that stole dozens of Portuguese children during the 1990s.

And this was an investigative journalist working for TVI 24 are the ones who reported on this. So, I mean, that's a horrifying thing where, you know, you have no idea what they are using stolen human traffic children for or doing with them. But, you know, maybe like cult-like religious settings, though, that's surprisingly common. Yeah, it is a cult. If you watched the late Leo Remini piece on Scientology she did, she talked about how because of the disconnection that Scientology makes you go through, and we're canceled now, by the way, the show is finished,

but they make it so that you sign a billion-year contract and your family's not your family, fuck them. But the kids in those situations end up working for the church with no rights or no laws, and they're doing fucking yard work and grueling work for the church to basically brainwash them into believing that the church is everything that they need in their life. So the reality that is- Holding signs outside the house of a documentary filmmaker saying they're a pedophile yeah yeah i mean all that type of shit um but it's about power it's no long you know at a certain point um you when you have above a certain amount of wealth let alone uh uh wield a certain amount of people's opinions it's just i can get away with all this shit so why wouldn't i do it i'm just imagining being the panamanian chill company accountant calling the main hq and going

uh so how do you want me to uh mark these uh portuguese babies on the uh company invoices should i say this is deliverables or i'm just trying to think parts alan dershowitz calling something a papal lie. Well, the Catholic Church has been very hostile from the beginning. I mean, I'm Jewish. I take my faith seriously, but he's undoubtedly healing people. And the Catholic Church does not like that. He cracks some eggs to make an omelet.

I don't see the issue here. There's really a turf war going on for child trafficking i mean that's the sad it's actually not a war it's you know how like uh there's a uh like we talked about this in a few episodes like a cable war but really it's just networks that certain land belongs to you know comcast or spectrum or whatever it's the same shit okay kids in these regions are going to be trafficked For Catholicism and in this region it's going to be For Scientology and so on And so forth

That's why the papers are trying to take out Adir Because he's taking all the good boys That's right And girls And this mostly brings you up to the present Of the Adir Macedito story where um we we should mention globo is the um largest tv network in brazil and uh they've you know jar bolsonaro has kind of declared them an enemy you know so it is something where this brings you up to the

present because you should not at all expect the brazilian state to investigate this guy in any meaningful capacity whatsoever, where he's doing these big services for Bolsonaro at his churches, his media empire is promoting Bolsonaro, and he has the main competition media empire with the media empire that Bolsonaro has declared war on. So, you know. And by the way, I mean, and all of those guys are still, like, it's similar to Trump. Like, to the extent that the, like, corporate, I mean, the media situation in Brazil is a catastrophe. So there might be some that are, like, maybe saying Bolsonaro is, like, distasteful.

But they are never, but they are still at war with Workers' Party and Lula and the social movements and you know indigenous people and the labor unions so even that like you know because americans like that's sort of a bullshit narrative like i mean like and what i found really interesting that greenwald pointed out was that this guy actually wasn't like bolsonaro had a lot of evangelical support, but this guy was initially actually backing this guy, Ackman, who's, I'm forgetting his name, but basically he was like the Greenwald Senate. He was the Jeb Bush candidate. Oh, really?

The plan initially was that you would basically have just like a conventional right-wing oligarchic type of person and bolsonaro i actually i actually think i've talked to some people who have a sense of this on the ground that like there's like a certain narrative of like whoa like bolsonaro came out of nowhere and then it's like undeniable that like everybody who wasn't on the left got behind them right right but i actually think there's probably a sense for a while among certain people that bolsonaro was like not plan a but plan b sure but that being said i mean it's fascinating i i caught that though because bolsonaro has this idea of like i mean he represents a huge part of the evangelical and

the middle class and the ranchers and so on and the finance people are happy to go along with it but you would think from at least i would think from reading this guy's bio i'm like oh yeah that's bolsonaro guy all the way the fact that he might have been initially sympathetic to the more like what used to be like mainline center-right party also tells you a lot about the scale of how this shit works in brazil because i i think a guy like this would have been able to certainly work it out with uh i mean with with one of the mainline right-wing parties for sure yeah it's just you know i mean it's the classic story of fascism is like the establishment or the billionaires or whoever they would always prefer the mainstream conservative parties.

But, you know, eventually when the system breaks down, there's no popular movement that will support the mainstream conservative parties. And so he changes his loyalties. But I guess, you know, last thing I wanted to mention is just to follow up on that soldiers of Jesus thing I told you from the washington post it was it's this gang of extremist evangelical christians who operate in the same state as a dear masito you know kind of nearest power base and the washington post and it's a long very uh disturbing article but they talk about how this gang is a gang of evangelical narco traffickers you know so they're like an armed gang they took over the uh the washington post describes them taking over the parque polista neighborhood um they erected roadblocks to keep away the cops and create a narcotics haven They took over the, the Washington Post describes them taking over the Parque Paulista neighborhood.

They erected roadblocks to keep away the cops and created a narcotics haven about an hour's drive from Rio de Janeiro. And then, you know, so they are, you know, Christian drug dealers for Christ who, after they take over a neighborhood, they target everyone whose religion and faith doesn't align with their own. And this really i mean again rio has a huge problem with this and there is a lot of evidence connecting bolsonaro's family to the rio de janeiro i mean do you guys know marie marielle franco so marielle franco was assassinated in 2018 she's a extraordinary like she's afro-brazilian lesbian woman who grew up in a favela and actually rose as a uh essentially i would like a like a civil rights anti-police violence activist which that's always been a huge problem brazil and then she eventually

actually got elected on uh she wasn't part of Workers' Party. She was part of PSAL, which is what Glenn Greenwald's husband's party, which is the party of like, I forgot what it, but a socialistic party. So she was elected to the Rio City Council right before, like in the spring of 2018. I don't, maybe the winter. I don't remember the exact dates. Her and her driver were assassinated in a professional hit in rio and um and you know like as an example actually in the last interview

before he was sent to prison that i saw lula was on democracy now and he said like you know what everybody knew which was like clearly this is connected with uh these like cartel militias in Rio. And in the last year, there's just been like one of the gunmen was photographed with one of Bolsonaro's kids. There was visits to Bolsonaro's condo. Bolsonaro says he's out of town. That might not be true. And actually, that's one of the things that Lula has been talking about a lot. It was like you have a government of the militias in Rio de Janeiro.

So, I mean, it's a really great piece and it's really fucking disturbing. But even sometimes like a great piece of reporting like that. I mean, I don't know about that specific group. But I do know that that like whole militia, gangster, mafia state thing is very connected with bolsonaro it's not just like some like oh isn't that weird like weird social trends like it's it's part of a bigger story i would say bolsonaro's only crime here is being too good of a friend and being too honorable right he's got a lot of bros and before hoes and that's exactly what he did in the situation he is actually like the type of guy who i could see really unironically saying that yeah oh yeah he's such a fucking like like trump just put tariffs on him and it's like that is it is the

most hilarious like you watch like and i'm not making any type of moral comment here because they're fucking monsters. But, like, Erdogan does not give a fuck. He literally will sit at a press conference in the White House with Donald Trump and just lean back like, yeah, I said that. Like, he doesn't give a shit. Contradicts Trump. Like, doesn't care. Trump, like, greets him like like i think it's been very positive it will be positive bolsonaro is like i love you to donald like just and the response is like yeah he's a great guy but they're unfair

um so it's something about human behavior you gotta respect yourself to get respect it's bizarre but it really i mean especially with somebody is just fucking pure like snake brain this is what happens when bolsonaro tries to get away with tithing 10 percent that would be awesome if this guy tried to make that play out right you want trump to do favorable trade status it should be funny he's just like apologize like i'm sorry it's a force of habit i realize i should not be trying to defraud any one person who might be able to organize the state apparatus against me well snarls like wait, wait, no, come on, let's see if this works. How much did you say? But Michael, I appreciate your time.

We've gone a little long here. I just wanted to ask you, unless there's anything else, that, well, I guess your thoughts for the future. I know it seems very grim, but Lula is the most popular political figure in the country. He is now out of jail. And I think there is certainly hope there in brazil that uh could be a model that inspires the world you know in contrast to what we just saw in the united kingdom yeah i mean they have really serious social movements there uh they have um you know i mean he's landless workers movement landless uh so yeah i mean there was a good election result in Argentina.

Not to say that, you know, Fernandez and Kirchner are perfect or whatever, but just looking at it strategically, like the left winning that election is a big deal. And I think it is interesting in the last couple of months that, you know, there's still a gap in certain policy areas, like certainly with migration and also the drug war which are you know the main things but amlo's rhetoric has really changed like he's always been on the right side like he opposed the coup in venezuela but offering avo asylum and speaking as unequivocally as he has on bolivia right uh is significant i think the president of mexico yeah i'm the president of mexico so i mean yeah i think there there is hope and the right wing like push has mainly been a failure in latin america there's also obviously all the social movements across the region i love how like i will say like lula really is somebody who like actually believes in democracy and has even

said like, even though literally it's like an illegitimate election cause he didn't participate in it. It's like, we're going to respect the guy's mandate till 2022. And what's amazing is the distortions about him though. He's also said like, I wish the Brazilian people would basically like do something like you're

seeing in Chile right now. And they've actually said like that sees promoting violence. So, yeah, I mean, I think there is there's there's hope and like there has to be hope. I mean, I will just say like in 30 seconds, even in the UK, like it's a fucking disaster and it's going to be really bad. And there's a lot of battles. But like who the fuck knows where there be in five months like there's all sorts of internal contradiction like people do need to remember that sometimes too right like i think like there there are definitely major internal contradictions on the other side

now no doubt they have the capital they have the police they have the power you can't be naive but at the same time it these are not like these like effective right monoliths and they're not masterminds of design and fucking perfect precision so you know i think there's hope in brazil i think just hope everywhere but it's gonna take a lot of work yeah thank you for unblackpilling our audience um but was there anything else we didn't get to here uh no all right uh anything else michael or and uh where can people find you of course you can find me of course at patreon.com slash tmbs if you want to get the whole thing we really do do a ton of extra content like a sunday illicit

history series and we do these post games that are really fun so right after you become a grub stakers patron uh check out uh tmbs and then uh yeah i mean at this point there's a ton of content on youtube so if you really just want to like check out what we're sort of doing i would i would try to watch a whole show to be honest because uh really is sort of how the show is designed but we have a ton of clips and stuff so just michael brooks show on youtube yeah remember at least 15 of your annual income to Patrion's for leftist. That's exactly right. But again, I want to thank you so much.

This is so enlightening. And honestly, like I was very depressed going into it because of the UK election, but I think I have hope. And I think we had a great conversation here. So I want to thank you guys. I love the show. I listened to it.

So that's fun to be here. This one. Grouch takers. I'm Yogi Poliwool. Andy Palmer. I'm Sean P. McCarthy. If you're out there, try your best. Don't get blackpilled.

It's going to be okay. As long as you try, that's what matters. Can't you see that our growth bothers them because their churches are emptying out? You're messing with very powerful people, Adir. The warrant for your arrest is certainly proof of that.