Guerrilla History - The Rise of Fascism, Bolsonaro, & the Brazilian Elections w/ Michael Fox - Dispatch

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

In this outstanding conversation, we talk with journalist Michael Fox about the rise of Fascism in Brazil, Bolsonaro, the impending runoff elections, the rise of Evangelicalism, the role of the US in these processes, and much more!  We make sure to give plenty of historical background on these current events, so whether you're listening for the history or for analysis of the present, we know you'll enjoy this conversation.  We are also lucky to be joined by our friend and comrade Professor Stuart Davis, a researcher of and specialist in comparative media systems in Brazil, as a guest host.  You can hear more from Stuart on our Sanctions As War introduction episode, where he was our guest alongside Immanuel Ness. Michael Fox is a Brazil-based journalist, contributor to The World, former Editor of NACLA, and the host of the podcast series Brazil on Fire, a collaboration between NACLA and The Real News Network. Michael can be followed on Twitter @mfox_us Stuart Davis is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Baruch College, the City University of New York he focuses on digital media advocacy, protest politics, and digital media and public health, particularly in the Latin American context Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory  We also have a new (free!) newsletter you can sign up for!

You don't remember Den Van Booh? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons

of history to analyze the present. I'm your host, Henry Hukamaki, joined by three co-hosts today, very interestingly, as most listeners would know that we usually just have the three of us. I'm joined by my regular co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? Hi, Henry. I'm well. Great to be with you. Always nice seeing you. And also, joined by my other normal co-host, Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Happy to be here. Absolutely. Always great seeing you as well. Now, we do have another co-host today, although this is going to be a

special guest co-host, which for listeners you may be interested, we are looking at trialing some guest-hosted episodes relatively soon where we have one of our returning guests with an expertise in a specific field, sit in with us on the hosting panel to ask our guests, perhaps more informed questions than we otherwise might do ourselves. Our special guest today is Professor Stuart Davis, who was one of our guests on our introductory episode to Sanctions as War alongside Emmanuel Ness. So hello, Stuart. It's nice to have you back on the show. Hi, Henry and others. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. And Stuart, would you mind just briefly introducing yourself to the listeners is if they haven't already listened to that sanctions as war introduction, which they should.

They should go back and listen to that episode. Yes. So I'm Stuart. First, yeah, listen to all the episodes of the show and the other shows that the hosts participate in. That's a good thing to do. So I'm Stuart Davis. I edited a book that came out earlier this year on sanctions and sanctions role in U.S. imperial policy.

And my other research interest is in Brazil, particularly Brazil. Brazilian media and Brazilian activism kind of started out looking at protest movements, then moved into right-wing media. So I work at CUNY as well and teach media. So thank you again, Pratt. Absolutely. And as the listeners will see, that expertise will fit in perfectly with the conversation because our topic of the day, it's going to be a guerrilla history dispatch on the rise

of fascism in Brazil, Bolsonaro, and the role of the United States in these processes occurring within Brazil. And we're fortunate enough to be joined by Michael Fox, who is a journalist, multimedia figure, and the host of a mini podcast series that came out through NACLA and The Real News titled Brazil on Fire. Hello, Michael. It's nice to have you on the show. Hello, such a pleasure to be here. Thanks.

Absolutely. So I guess let's just get this conversation underway by, you know, why don't you introduce yourself briefly to the listeners? And why don't you tell them about Brazil on fire? because I'm sure at least some of our listeners have already heard Brazil on fire, but the majority probably don't know about it. And I would encourage them to go and listen to it. Either, you know, pause this episode, go back and listen to it first to see where we're coming from in our questioning or, you know, listen to it after you do this episode. I think either way, it'll be quite interesting.

But Michael, why don't you tell them what Brazil on fire is, who you are, and why you decided to go about making that media project? Excellent. So Michael Fox, freelance multimedia journalist and former editor of NACLA. I've had my foot in Latin America and Brazil for a long time, kind of one foot here and one foot in the U.S. And I was in Brazil. We had just moved back. My wife is Brazilian. We lived in Brazil in the mid-2000s, largely in the South Port Allegre. And we had moved back in 2017, which was kind of the lead up to the 2018. elections. And we had just seen the coup that it just happened against President Dilma Rousseff in 2016. It was a parliamentary coup where basically the parliament, a largely corrupt parliament essentially pushed her out of office for what they said was, you know, budgetary maneuvers, which then the Senate legalized the day after she was actually removed. And so it was very clearly a coup. And we had just moved back. And I was excited to be reporting on Brazil about kind of how popular movements, grassroots movements were going to find a way to

organize from below and try and bring democracy back to the country. And what we saw instead was a push even further toward fascism where the former president Lula was imprisoned. He was the frontrunner for the elections in 2018. And I just happened to be in the very moment where everything was happening in largely in the 2018 elections. So I was, you know, I was outside of, I was with Lula supporters when they told him he had to be sent to jail. I was outside the jail when he was sent there. I was out in front of then candidate Bolsonaro's house the night he won. And so there was all these different layers. And it was at that point that I saw several things happening. A, this kind of dissent toward fascism, people across the country were talking about fascism a way that they had never spoken about before. Universities, federal police were actually blocking university students from being able to protest there against Bolsonaro's candidacy and to protest against what they were calling anti-fascism.

Like they were hanging up anti-fascist banners and signs and they were literally getting shut down by federal police. And so the question of what is fascism was front and center in a way that it hadn't been for me. And so I started to dig a lot deeper. And basically right, as soon as Bolsonaro was inaugurated, those first couple of months is when I decided I really needed to do something because the parallels between what's happened in the United States with Donald Trump. What was happening in Brazil under Bolsonaro were just so stark. And so it was originally going to be a book.

And then I realized, you know, I just have too much audio sound to be a podcast. And it took me, you know, three years to make it. But it's finally out there. And it basically charts Bolsonaro's rise to power. It charts the imprisonment of Lula and then looks at some of the key sectors of support for Bolsonaro, which are the same sectors of support in large part for Trump. So we're talking about a conservative Christian evangelical right. In Brazil, kind of this growing white supremacy, fascist movements from below. And then in Brazil, of course, the military is extremely important.

And that's what Bolsonaro comes out of the dictatorship. And so each of these were different episodes that I charted and that I ended the six-part series on the Amazon as a look at kind of what is, because it is the most important metaphor for what Bolsonaro's destruction has wrought on the country. And that's where I wanted to end in the Amazon. It's just so important for so many reasons and extremely important for everybody else kind of abroad and stuff. So it looks at all this in kind of this six-part series and tries to. to shed light on not just the reality in Brazil, but so that people abroad begin to see their own reality within, for instance, particularly in the United States,

through the prism of Brazil, through the mirror of what is Brazil, because sometimes it's hard to see our own belly buttons, right? And so I wanted to be able to do that and then dive into just these key themes, which are so important for understanding what the reality is in Brazil right now, but everything runs so deep and the role of the United States in Brazil right now. I mean, historically, yes, but also in the last few years,

particularly for inspiring Bolsonaro and so many on the right, has just been so key. And there's just so many different layers, which we'll get into a second. But that was kind of a large part for wanting to do this, the podcast series. And I hope I've been able to put something to the world, really kind of gives people a deeper understanding

about what the reality is right now. Yeah, I mean, I think a good place to start, this broader conversation is to just kind of catch listeners up. on where things are right now. So we know there was an election. We know nobody got the majority. If you could kind of just like set up the stage and then we can dive deeper once we get that settled. Fantastic. So Brazil has mandatory voting. There is still a certain percentage of the population that abstains. And you also have two different rounds. So you have a first round election. If no one gets more than 50% plus one vote, then it goes into a second round. So exactly. We saw the first round vote. It happened. Lula was expected to win may or may not be outright, and he ended up getting more than 48% of the vote. Now, Bolsonaro, in the early polls, it looked like he was going to be down, you know,

down around 31, 32, 33%, maybe even as high as 37%. But he actually came in around 42, 43%, which was a big surprise for a lot of people, I mean, the entire country. And so he kind of made it a race. And it looks like part of the reason why he got that 42, 43%, is because those people, who were going to vote for the third party candidates, they really kind of decided to switch their vote in the last minute and support Bolsonaro. And there was also higher abstention rates than we had seen in the past. And part of this, some people were concerned about trying to do some kind of, the voting lines were much slower than they had ever been in the past. Like, things took a long time at the voting tables and people were concerned about

kind of the same blockages to voting that you see in the United States. And is this what we were seeing in Brazil this last election. Long story short, we are now two weeks out from the second round vote. It is between former President Luisin Nasu Lula to Silva, the gentleman who I was speaking about before, who was jailed back in 2018 and who ran the country from 2003 through 2010 and lifted millions out of poverty with his poverty alleviation programs, etc., etc. And the other person's obviously current president Jaya Bolsonaro, who is basically a, you know, he sees Trump as as his idol. They call him the Trump of the tropics. But many people would say that he is more concerning in a lot of ways than Trump because of his ties to the dictatorship. He's a former

captain under the dictator under the dictatorship. This is a, that was a moment that he's very nostalgic for. He's very clear that this is a time he would love to go back to. So as Federico Finkelstein, who is a professor of fascism history that I speak with a lot in the podcast, he calls him a wannabe fascist. And that's kind of where we stand right now. We're two weeks out. Lula is currently about six to seven points up in the polls. He's around 53, 54%. It seems like, because the third party candidates in the first round backed Lula, it seems like he's going to have enough votes to take it in the second round. But of course, you just never know.

This is Brazil and Brazilian politics. Those people who are on the panel, no, it's always upside down. You just never know what's happening. There's a debate last night. There'll be more debates and the candidates are campaigning up and down the country. And I'll just say before I stop talking, the big thing that the Bolsonaro's, and I mentioned Bolsonaro, because there's Jaya Bolsonaro and also his wife, Micheli, who's devout evangelical, and she has been campaigning.

In fact, I was just in the state of Pernambuco, which is northeastern Brazil. This is like, you know, this is where Louis was born. This is his bread and bother. And she's been traveling up and down, northeastern Brazil, trying to win votes from evangelicals. And that is really kind of the key focus for Bolsonaro and his people is trying to win over using this, this holy war terminology of good versus evil, us versus them. They're the bad ones. We are the ones who are with God. and really pressuring hard on the pastors to really pressure their people.

This has been a major tactic. And it's been fairly successful, not just in the 2018 election, but in this one, to, you know, to ensure that he had more than 40% votes in the first round. So we're going to see where it all lies. But that's where things stand right now. Hi. Can I follow up maybe on Brett's question and try to kind of tie this election to all the kind of various elements of rising fascism you cover in your podcast?

So for listeners, and I think you mentioned this specifically, or at least invoked it, you have this, what is it, the BBB bench in Brazil, right? The Baba Boye Bibliah, right? You have the agriculture lobby, the religious lobby, and the arms rights activists. So as that made up a major part of Bolsonaro's constituency in the 2018 election, do you see that still kind of. kind of continuities between his base of support now has that kind of intensified or continued. So maybe if you could speak to that and also just kind of open up the conversation, maybe who are the players in terms of the support for each of the candidates, right? Because Bolsonaro has, you know, these different kind of, I guess, conservative elements with

transnational ties and then maybe speak to like who's on Lula's side and kind of where the cards or kind of falling, and maybe if that's different than 2018, to kind of link to Brett's question. Oh, I love this. This is so good. Okay. So, yes, the BBB is, and it continues to be extremely important. Now, there was this really strange twists that a lot of people didn't really expect in the first round. I mean, A, it's important to understand that in the first round vote, you had, it was for congressional seats, it was for senators, it was for governors. So it was a very large vote outside of just the presidency. And what you saw in that vote is Bolsonaro picked up a lot. His party, the PL party, is now the largest voting bloc in Congress.

I think he has 99 members, so it's pretty large. Now, the PT is the second largest voting block. And it's not too far behind, but it is important. The thing that Bolsonaro was doing, and you can see the strategy now looking back, is that he basically was taking all these ex, this former ministers, people that were very important in his government. And he was fielding them for Senate. So he was putting him to Senate office.

And most of those people won. So I believe now Bolshana has 12 staunch allies in the Senate. And that includes, you know, his former minister of family, human rights, and women, Demades Alva, is evangelical pastor. It includes Sergio Morrow, who was the former judge that jailed Lula back in 2018, turned justice minister. It includes just, in fact, it even includes his former vice president. So in the Senate, he's, he, now.

the Senate, there's like 90 or is it 81 different senators. So, you know, of course, 12 people, that's not that big of a deal. But the fact that these are staunch allies of President Bolsonaro, so this is key. The one thing we did see in this last election is that evangelical candidates actually lost. Their full numbers dropped by about 30%, which was substantial because we hadn't seen this. In fact, it's now the lowest numbers of the evangelical caucus in the last 20 years. So that was surprising. But a lot of people are pointing to the fact that those votes may have transferred straight to Bolsonaro's PL Liberal Party supporters. So although evangelicals themselves may have lost within the evangelical caucus, the BBB caucus is just as strong as it ever has been.

The agribusiness caucus is huge. This is where Bolsonaro comes from. It's kind of this idea of gutting industry, privatizing the state, and then throwing all his money on the destruction of the Amazon and banking for the agribusiness because that's, you know, the sale of commodities abroad and whatnot. So, I mean, that's how it lays out in terms of like international finance capital. And these people are solely on board with Bolsonaro. And this is, you've even seen this. If you look at the map, there was someone that laid the map of deforestation of what it's looked like in the last, say, 20 years on top of the map of the election results in the first round. And Bolsonaro won something like, you know, 90% of those areas that were deforested

within the last 20 years and something like that. And in fact, I was just in Hondonio a week and a half ago. And Londonia is one of those states that has been ravaged by deforestation. It is an Amazonian state. But it was where the dictatorship really pushed their, like their, you know, development push building roads and whatever else. And we're talking about back in the 1960s and the 70s where the whole idea was to make the Amazon the great pasture land.

That was, that was, there was actually an ad, the great pasture land of Brazil. And in Hondonio, Bolsonaro won, like, you know, by 65 or 70%. I mean, it's extensive. And so that's the reality in many portions of Brazil. So where the agribusiness is huge, where the agribus is important, Bolsonaro has made big gains, and that's just the way it works. And of course, those places like in the state of Amazonas, where you have indigenous populations that are still holding onto their land,

where you have where the force is still intact. Of course, those are places where Lula did much better. So it's fascinating that you can actually map it one thing next to another. So the coalition of forces, in large part for Bolsonaro's people, still remains very much the same. On the flip side, Lula, you've got the Workers Party, which is what he founded back in the 1980s, extremely important. You have social movements. What's been fascinating for Lula, however, is that you've got several things that are going on. First off, you have this unity, and we saw this even after the 2016 coup.

You had the left that became more united that had been in the longest time. And they've continued to unite and they've continued to organize. In fact, what we saw this last year was kind of workers party together with different social movements, including the landless people, the landless workers movement, which is the largest social movement in the hemisphere. And they've all been organizing to build these popular committees in kind of poor communities and grassroots communities up and down Brazil. They've now built 5,000 to 7,000 of these popular committees

with the idea of using this moment, not just as an electoral moment, but also organized to build these kind of long-lasting committees. So this is on kind of a grassroots level where you've got more unity and solidarity amongst the different left parties, whether that's the Pesol, which is obviously a party that broke off of the Workers' Party back in 2005.

They're back in the coalition. And you see this, a lot of these left parties that are on board. other thing that you have is much more of unity amongst the traditional center, even center right and center left parties. And this is why it's really important that you brought this up. Lula's, his running mate is Alkman. Those people that don't know Alkman, he was like Lula's arch nemesis back in the 2006 elections. He's from the PSDB party, which are like, which are like the arch rivals like the evil, you know, right. But what we've seen is this re-coolition of forces whereby the PMDB, the PSDV forces, if they haven't jumped ship and join Bolsonaro in the

far right, then they've come more on Tallulis side. So this has been a fascinating turn of immense because the whole idea is to try and bring everybody on board. And this becomes this dichotomy that we're seeing. And this is why I talk about in the podcast. I talk about these two different visions for the future Brazil, one being dictatorship and one being democracy. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that Bolsonaro is going to be able to push through a dictatorship. That's what he's wanted to. And if the military was completely on board, he probably would still. And that doesn't mean he's not going to try if he loses this election. But these are the two visions for what the country means. And so that's part of the reason why you've seen this kind of

center, right, center, like all these other more traditional parties that used to be completely against the workers party are now on board Lula's coalition. Because if they want some sort of a liberal democracy, then they're joining Lula because they think that they can win it. And remember that the Centrone, which is like those traditional PMDB parties, they've always joined whoever they think is going to win. And they've always been part of that ruling coalition. And we talk about like the Centrone, it's center, but it really is more center right. So of course, there's concerns for, you know, will Lula be able to govern understanding like the far right members in. Congress and stuff. And just remember that Lula's always governed with an opposition

in Congress. And the center has always, and even the center right, has always had to kind of form, you know, coalition with Lula and with the Workers Party. And the other thing is that, look, the workers party, even in power, it was there with coalitions. And it could never be, it was never able to do everything that it wanted to. It couldn't stop GMOs from being used in Brazil. It couldn't stop. But it was able to pass many other things that it couldn't. So that's the reality right now. Is Lula can be able to do everything? No, but if he comes into power, will he be able to bring back Brazil to some sort of semblance of democracy? Yes. And that's really why people have come back to this question

of democracy. That's been democracy and unity have been the two key themes with throughout this whole kind of campaign season. And that's kind of where we stand right now. I know, Adnan, you have a question coming up about religion. And I'm just going to preface this question with another short question for Michael to address on his way to your question. So Michael, just so that we don't, so that we don't forget to, you know, clarify this point as we get a little bit deeper into the conversation. A term that the listeners will have heard you use a few times already is evangelical. And it's going to be very important that we clarify what exactly evangelical means within this context because it is very different than how, you know, most of our listeners are going to be based in the United States. Maybe not most at this point. We have a lot of international listeners as well. But many of our listeners are based in the United States. where evangelical has a certain connotation. In Brazil, it has a very different connotation. And I think that it will be very important for us to explain, at least briefly, what that

means in order for people to understand why we are discussing them in the way that we are discussing them. So Adnan, I'll turn it over to you now to ask your question, just with that brief note, that we should clarify that point. Well, absolutely. And that's sort of one of the things I'm interested in is how you compare and show connections in your podcast between evangelicals in the U.S. and the evangelicals of Brazil. But I guess one thing that I'm interested in is why are they so open to Bolsonaro's particular brand of politics and his candidacy?

And maybe even underlying that because many people may have this view of Brazil as a carnival and this traditional Catholic, historically Catholic. country that the religious complexion of Brazil has changed a lot in the last few decades. And there's been so much missionizing outreach, but conversion to these other forms of Christianity. And I think it does beg the question of what are the primary drivers of that? Why is evangelical Christianity of various kinds, you know, filling a gap that it seems a traditional church or Catholic traditions are incapable of doing so, I tend to think of some of these forms of evangelical religion as very compatible with the, you know, destructive forces of neoliberal capitalism. And so I'm wondering, you know, if some of the attraction for these evangelicals goes to, you know, some of the same underlying conditions

that are fueling this populist, neo-fascistic, far-right sort of brand of politics. So I'm wondering if you could kind of tell us a little bit more about how you see Brazil's religious and cultural situation changing and the impact that that's having on this constituency in Bolsonaro's kind of alliance. Oh, my God, this is great. I love this discussion, by the way, y'all. Thank you so much. But I wish we had like 10 hours.

This is so much to cover. Yes. First off, let me just say the question. of evangelicals in Brazil, this is a really important thing to define this. So in Brazil, evangelicals is any non-Catholic Christian. So it's very different. When we talk about evangelicals in the United States, we're talking about largely Pentecostals. Now, that said, roughly two-thirds of evangelicals in Brazil are Pentecostals. So that is an important context. We're also talking about Baptists and Methodists and whatever else. The fact that Pentecostals make

up the lion's share in Brazil of kind of evangelicals means that they lead the way. And that's been what we've seen, say, in Congress in large part. That's what we've seen in the evangelical caucus and whatever else. And that goes back and we're talking back, you know, 100 years, 150 years to the arrival of missionaries, evangelical missionaries and whatnot. So that's important context, but it's also important to understand kind of Bolsonaro's base when we talk about it, the evangelicals is kind of the the Pentecostals and the prosperity gospel, which is in so many of like the poorest communities. Now, let's just real quick, guerrilla history, let's say a quick history lesson to understand why this is important now and how this, the kind of the makeup of forces has got to this point

vis-a-vis the Catholics, because like you said, this is, I mean, Brazil is considered the largest Catholic country in the world. And it still is. I mean, it's huge. And it's Catholics still make up a majority, even though many of those Catholics are not actually practicing Catholics. You know, they might go to church on, you know, Christmas or something whatever else. But evangelicals really started to grow, and we're talking back, say, in like the 1970s and 1980s, in large part due to the backlash from the church in Rome to liberation theology. It was at that moment when in the poorest communities, the Catholic Church pulled out of the pedifidi, pulled out of the urban centers, those poorest communities,

and left this void that the evangelicals found a way to fill. Now, it's fascinating because there's a lot of kind of back and forth, obviously going back a long way, with evangelicals in Brazil looking north to the United States and saying, well, what are they doing while that's working? And so as they saw kind of the rise of the evangelical movement, the far right, Christian right movement in the United States back in the 1980s, growing into the 1990s, you know, Of course, Brazilians in a lot of ways were looking, how can we do kind of the same thing? Rural, the growth of evangelicals was still pretty slow until they realized we have to move into the urban centers, which is different from the United States.

You know, it's not like, you know, the growth of evangelicals happens more in rural, lower class communities, say in the South, whatever else. In Brazil, it's been in the poorest communities, in the favelas that were left behind when the Catholic Church moved out. And they fill the really important niche and the very important role. Now, there's an interesting dichotomy here, whereas in the United States, say a majority of evangelicals might be lower class, working class whites. In Brazil, we're talking about black Brazilian by large part. And this is extremely important because that's also Lula's base in a lot of ways, right? The poorest communities, that's what these are the people that are voting for, you know, Lula, who, I mean, just because we didn't really give a good introduction of who he was for those people that don't know. but this is like the working class hero of Brazil, right?

He led the largest marches against the end of dictatorship. And he comes. He was born in a poor family up in Pernamuco in the poor Northeastern and a house with no floors in the house. And then he became a union organizer in Sao Paulo, right? So this is what he comes from. And this is why for him fighting hunger and fighting poverty was so important. So you have at this moment with this present election,

kind of this conflict of interest between evangelicals, many evangelicals and some of these poor communities saying, are we going to vote for our interests, our class interests, or what we think that Lula might be able to bring us back in a lot of ways, or are we going to vote for faith? And this is why Bolsonaro has been so pushing so hard on this question of faith and trying to win people over with the gospel, trying to win people over with this holy war, because if you can win them away from voting for kind of their class consciousness, and bring them on to the side of voting for kind of their, the evangelical faith and religion, the pastor's saying that they have to do that. Then that's where that kind of comes from.

And absolutely, there's this connection between kind of the prosperity gospel in many of these poor communities and neoliberal capitalism that we've seen. In fact, in Rio de Janeiro in particular, and this is one of the things I get into my podcast, one of the most concerning situations is the attack on Afro-Brizzan churches by evangelicals in connection with narco-traffickers. So they've actually moved on and attacked the leaders of different spiritual centers. And part of it is a very clear move by evangelical pastors, powerful evangelical pastors, to push people away from the Afro-Brazilian church and move them in order to gain followers, right? And so there is this idea of not just kind of gaining more followers for the faith,

But evangelicals, and I met with folks, in fact, at the church. And again, I bring this into the podcast, but Silas Malafaya, who's kind of one of this most staunch allies, evangelical allies, Pentecostal allies of Bolsonaro. And at his church, they're very clear that they have a goal that goes out five, 10 years, 15 years. They want to be in every spear of power and influence within the country, Brazil. And if you look at the figures, I mean, it is absolutely possible that evangelicals are going to be a majority within the country.

And when I say evangelicals, again, this is non-Catholic Christians will be a majority in the country within a generation. And so what does that mean for politics and policies and kind of the makeup of how all this works? And it is a fascinating that this is happening at the same time as a country that is, you know, Carnival. And so you, I mean, this is Brazil and this is Brazil with all of its complicated complexities, right? So, but that's kind of where we stand at this moment. Michael, can I if I jump in here? I kind of wanted to make a comment and then maybe shift a tiny bit. One thing that I really appreciated about, I don't know if it was in the podcast series or one of the updates, but the way that you, like you've done here, really kind of conceptualize the evangelical community as a kind of terrain of struggle, right?

Like the sort of battle between fate, fighting against the PT, you know, because they're whatever represent the devil, etc., etc., versus on the other hand, and we can see this a little bit with Willa support with an evangelical community, they maybe start. to think about actually, you know, my economic well-being is also an important thing, right? And my faith isn't necessarily contradicting or making it so my enemy is the person who actually cares about poor people, right? So I thought that really came up very well in your, in your series. And it's what I saw as well when I was living in Rio in particular. The evangelical church is just sort of like the institution over which a lot of things kind of, or through which a lot of things kind of play out. So I wanted to shift a tiny bit, if that's okay, and kind of think about media and the way that, because this came

up in your, one of the, the, the, I think it was, I can't remember which episode, but one of the episodes, um, Bolsonaro's relationship with both, uh, kind of right wing media in Brazil. So I was thinking about particular like TV, you have quality or like we're actually has a link, which I guess for listeners, this is one of the, I think the second now, largest TV station, maybe they need to be the first in Brazil that's owned by the Igresia Universal or the universal, well, the biggest Pentecostal church. So how does Bolsonaro kind of fit in both with the kind of legacy media landscape and with this sort of new media activism around WhatsApp and these other sort of networks that were really important in the 2018 election? So if you

would indulge me, that would be great. Fantastic. Well, let me just first say, because I didn't mention this last time I should have, that there is a group of progressive evangelicals in Brazil. They are important. They have been growing. And I was in touch. I just story on them for the world late last year about how they were actually, you know, organizing and meeting to organizing, to try and organize evangelicals kind of against voting for Bolsonaro. But it's still minor compared with, you know, the power and the breadth of the more conservative far right at Pentecostal evangelicals. But just to say that that does exist. And they are very, very. clear about, you know, the challenges that lie ahead. In terms of Bolsonaro and media, yeah,

so this is, this is fascinating. I mean, I'll just say quickly that, yes, his relationship with Teva Heikort has been much more important because he saw them as very important allies because of their kind of evangelical base, obviously. And in fact, he took, there was a period where he took a bunch of funding away from Global, when Global was like, you know, it's always been the largest channel TV media conglomerate in Brazil. And yet for the far right, they've been against global for a long time as well, going back to before Bolsonaro's presidency. So in a lot of ways, he was like, all right, you guys are out and I'm throwing my money behind TV hit court. So that's kind of one area where he's definitely been putting the country's money

in that direction. But his focus has totally been on kind of new media, what's up and social media. I mean, that's how he won the 2018 election without a doubt. And I did several pieces on that kind of in the lead up to the elections where, I mean, he and the whole what's up campaign of fake news and the lead up to the 18 elections was innovative and it was terrifying. And there was just thousands and thousands of messages that were being pushed and then bought armies of, you know, Bolsonaro paid message that were being sent out. And all of this things being financed by Bolsonaro-backed businessmen who were paying millions of dollars to kind of hit people with telegram and WhatsApp messages and whatnot. And so this, not to get too in-depth here,

but this then built into what's called the cabinet of hate. And I dive into a little bit this within the podcast. Cabinet of hate comes out of that. It's this idea of this kind of loosely aligned network of people. Some of them are just social media influencers. Other people are within the Bolsonaro government. And they've continuously been organizing in support of Bolsonaro and against anybody else. And even some Bolsonaro supporters who would then go rogue and would denounce Bolsonaro, who then were just immediately attacked by this cabinet of hate. The Supreme Court has pushed back extensively against them.

And this was, you know, came to this kind of head. And we got into kind of more in depth in, I think it's my fourth episode when I really dive into what fascism looks like and the fascist supporters and white supremacists and stuff. But the Supreme Court really pushed back hard because they were threatening members of the Supreme Court. And so the Supreme Court used this as a tool to say, all right, well, if you're threatening us, then we have the ability to defend against that. And they started this investigation into fake news, investigation into the cabinet of hate,

into the financiers of the cabinet of hate. And they cracked down pretty hard. They sent some people to jail. And that was extremely important as a way to kind of stop or put at least a hold on the amount of fake news that was being pushed out from the Bolsonaro government. Right now, what's been fascinating is, I mean, that's still continued. Obviously, the fake news still plays a role. Obviously, the social media landscape still plays a role.

And obviously, that's been important for Bolsonaro's bots and his supporters and whatever else. But he hasn't had the same means to do that over WhatsApp. So in a lot of the ways, his people have migrated onto Telegram because WhatsApp created or WhatsApp created different layers to try and stop the amount of fake news that was being pushed. And it's fascinating now what we're seeing is it's a much more actually equal playing field that we're seeing over social media, whereas in the past four years ago, all of the attacks

were against Bolsonaro's leading candidate Fernando Adaji, who is, who was like, you know, he was the presidential candidate for the Workers Party at the time once Lulu was taken out and sent to jail. And now it's in a lot of ways that's going both ways. And there's been all these attacks, you know, videos leaked showing Bolsonaro saying things that that that seemed like he was a pedophile, that there was, that he was tied to a Masonic Lodge, like there's all these things that they're actually looking at culture, because so much of what's at stake here that I get into is we're talking about culture war, right? We're talking about culture war in the United States, much of it imported from the U.S.

into Brazil. And so talking about these questions of culture and trying to make many of Bolsonaro's supporters question what culture means and who Bolsonaro is. And so it's been this really fascinating moment in Brazil where those same kind of media attacks in the campaign that Bolsonaro used to get lifted to the presidency back in 2018. At now, he's not having the same kind of outright ability to be able to do what he was able to back at that point. And, you know, and kind of everything is up in the, you know, it's up for grabs now,

which is really, I mean, for better or for worse, right? Because that's not necessarily the way that you want to run your campaign or for your country. shouldn't all come down to like the social media war. But so much, that's what so much is playing out right now. Unfortunately, I know Stuart is going to have to leave now. You know, he's an academic and he's got students and all of that. So, Stuart, you know, you are an expert in Brazilian media and the Brazilian media landscape and you've been studying Brazil for, you know, more years than some of our listeners

have probably even been alive, you know, not to, not to date you, Stuart, but anyway. Anyway, I do want to give you the opportunity to give any of your analysis on the Brazilian media landscape, how that's playing into the current political climate, as well as any other parting thoughts as you leave us. Thank you. And I apologize to the listeners and I have to go teach in four minutes. But I guess I would really just building on what Michael was just saying really emphasize the stakes of the shift towards. kind of what we saw in the United States from the 2016 election, right, where the right were, you know, the quote unquote Russian meddlers, you know, I'm using that extreme square quotes or scare quotes, were really aiming low and promoting disinformation, where, you know,

the Democratic Party, they have the New York Times, right? But what we see in Brazil in this election, something that just keeps coming out, it seems, is the sort of changing terrain of struggle between the two sides and the idea that if we're going to get Bolsonaro out, like the gloves are off. We're going to send memes about him being a cannibal. We're going to do whatever we can, right? So I do think that is interesting and worth noting in this election. And we kind of linked to that, and I'll leave on this. I would like to have maybe a conversation and maybe this will happen after I go about this shift from the PT as a working class party to this big tent attempt to save democracy from Bolsonaro.

And I know maybe Brett will ask a question about this or another of the hosts. But what happens to class struggle? What happens to the PT's commitment to the poor, you know, since the 1980s, right? In Sao Paulo, when it becomes this big tent and we're all trying to just, you know, fight Bolsonaro and keep Bolsonaro from winning and preserving democracy in a country that's, you know, no matter of the wins or loses, we'll still have extreme egalitarianism and extremely kind of subsidiary relationship to the United States and American capital. So yeah, maybe going forward thinking about like, what do we lose or what what does Brazil lose and what where can we as guerrilla historians

and activists kind of push in terms of the left, right? When we're when it seems like Some things are getting lost along the way. This is not to criticize Lula one bit. You know, I don't know what I would be doing if I was facing, you know, kind of an existential fascist threat that you do a really good job of documenting in your series. But what does the left lose in Brazil as Lula and the PT creates this big tent with, you know, like, Akmi or the vice president who's, I think in the PDSB, I can't remember, very right-wing. I would consider a right-wing vice president, for example.

So, yeah, maybe just more about democracy and how democracy and class struggle, maybe work together, maybe don't. And thank you so much, Michael and all. Thank you, Stuart. Should I respond to that? Yeah, sure. I think that's a good one. Yeah. Okay.

I would just say that, you know, I mean, in a way, today is a new moment, obviously, because the country is fighting someone like Bolsonaro. But at the same time, the PT also had to form its coalition back in the 2000s with parties in the center and the center right. And it also had to make just tons of compromises in order to actually win. I mean, we're not talking about Alula back in like the 1980s, 1990s when he was first running for presidential office. And when he was really pushing more revolutionary socialists, reforms and proposals, you know, already he had to move toward the center back in the early 2000s in order to gain power. So this is not, and of course, he's the great negotiator, right? So that's who that's who Lula is.

I mean, this is what I think I talked about a bunch because I wrote a book about a decade ago called Latin America's turbulent transitions, the future of 21st century socialism in which we looked at, you know, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Cuba, and of course also Brazil, simply because of Brazil's importance for the region of kind of supporting those left movements, but without with the understanding that Brazil under Lulu was never going to be a revolutionary moment in a revolutionary state, but it was really important to kind of support like the multinational regional integration and whatnot. But it is a really important question. I think that people are going to be grappling with if Lula wins in the coming months about, you know, how does the coalition of forces pan out?

And, you know, I'd just say, I think it's fascinating with the left, you know, all these different, like the pace is probably the most interesting because this was a splinter group that kind of broke off from the PT and was kind of like, you know, backed, voted with the PT in a lot of ways. but we're also kind of critical of the PT and now it's like no you know because of this moment and because of the threat of what Bolsonaro represents they're completely on board and so what does that mean in you know in the coming months as things pan out differently in Congress and stuff like that so I mean this is something that and the other thing that I think is really important is just to remember that Brazil and I'd love to hear from you adan about what you think about all this how this all kind of plays out in in the next little bit but I think Also, it's important to remember that Brazil is not like in the United States where you have the Republicans and the Democrats and then everybody else is kind of marginalized. You have many, many different parties and they're more than ever, they're in flux. You know, in fact, Bolsonaro's own PL party was previously in coalition with Lula back in the 2000s. And in fact, his own party was one of the most corrupt parties. His party now was one of the most corrupt parties in the in the Lavajato scandal.

But then it left and then formed with Bolsonaro and become something different. And so you see a lot of that happening. So this this transforming of what something is happens very, very quickly amidst all these different parties. And I think it's definitely going to, you know, the political map has already shifted under Bolsonaro. It's going to shift even more in the coming years, particularly if Lula's able to come to power. I heard somebody talk about Lula's coalition building with more centrist and liberal parties as back in the day a little bit as like a trying to do. deliver for the poor without overly antagonizing the rich. And one of the things he did was, you know, empower women, poor working class women by allowing them to get what we basically

call something like a stimulus or a UBI or something like that, which really allowed women in general, especially poor and working class women to rise up. So this is question of do you want to deliver gains at all or do you want to not coalition bill and just lose and go into the dustbin of history? I mean, it's a difficult situation. Here in the U.S., we have a lot of because of the Democratic and Republican hegemony, the left just gets pulled around by the nose, you know, by the Democrats. Whereas in this situation, even with compromises, even if it's less than ideal for our revolutionary politics, it's still the Workers Party that is having a position of power by which they can operate and reach out and form coalition. We don't even

have that. So just stuff to keep in mind. But I kind of want to shift the conversation towards the threat of political violence in this. I mean, we saw here in the U.S. Trump's election denying, culminated ultimately in January 6th. It seems in Brazil the threat of political violence is even greater. Now, we've saw Bolsonaro a few years ago get stabbed. I don't think that was necessarily politically motivated, if I remember correctly, it seemed to be a mentally ill person. But we also saw in 2018 Mariela Franco get assassinated by what we assume is right-wing forces. And on this campaign trail, I think both Bolsonaro and Lula have been seen wearing bulletproof vests when they go out in public.

And on top of all of this is now Bolsonaro at least flirting, full on embracing, really, this Trump playbook of setting up the table such that if he does lose, huge chunks of his constituency will are primed to believe that it was stolen. And we'll see how robustly Bolsonaro, you know, takes that narrative if he does lose, which I think polling shows there's a good chance he will. But polling, of course, in Brazil and in the U.S. have been skewed towards the Democrats or the, you know, the center left and away from the right and the right in both situations have outperformed the polls, another interesting

parallel. So all of this really creates an intense political moment that very well could result in violence, even more violence than we saw on January 6th here in the United States. So what is your gauge on all of this? How real is this threat of political violence? And what could happen if Lula does win, but Bolsonaro fully embraces the Trump playbook of denouncing it as a rigged election. Great question. I mean, first off, political violence, this has been one of the most, if not the most violent electoral campaign season in memory. And in fact, according to a recent poll, you saw two-thirds of Brazilians say that they're afraid of being attacked for their political views. We've seen murders largely by Bolsonaro supporters against the

supporters. We've seen threats and attacks and it's just been constant throughout. But they have been isolated. Like it's not like one group of people that is out, but it's like you're seeing these kind of attacks on a political level largely by Bolsonaro supporters, but they're kind of strewn around the country. You never know where they're going to happen. So that is real. The coup threat. So here's the thing. A lot of people talked about, well, is Bolsonaro going to try and get the military involved? Is he's going to try and, you know, the military are going to back him, from from everything that I've been understanding and looking at that seems not like a likely scenario if according to a document that was released and and made by the ministry of defense

there are I think it's the Navy in the Air Force that are more aligned with Bolsonaro who might be more than willing to kind of support him on some you know fraud back escapade or something like that but it looks like the military is going to remain neutral in part because look they've gained so much clout in in recent years. And they've gained so much power within the Bolsonaro government right now that even transforming and transitioning into Lulas, they would probably find a way of retaining much of that power or some of that power. So that's probably what's in the back scenes. Now, the threat of possible fraud is absolutely, or fraud claims, not a threat of fraud, but fraud claims like Bolsonaro is real. I mean, that's what he's been talking about for a year

and a half the Trump Bannon playbook. In fact, Bannon was talking that there was fraud, even the first round election, the day after the election, even though Bolsonaro wasn't saying anything. So, and it is obviously very likely that he's going to try and play something if he loses this round. And I will tell you this. I have been in the streets in Brazil in, I don't know how many different states and different cities over the last couple weeks. I think six different states and talking with a lot of people, every single Bolsonaro supporter that I have spoken with has said that they believe they're in the majority and that if Bolsonaro loses,

they believe something was wrong with the elections. So this is not a minority. This is every person I've spoken with. And that's concerning because it is a substantial portion of the country. And they absolutely believe because they saw people out in the streets on Independence Day when Bolsonaro will call those people come out. And so they believe that that's just the way it is. And if you look back to what I talk about in the podcast,

kind of this loss of the debate, the loss of the ability to understand common knowledge, and information to be able to look at polls and look at this and say, oh, I guess we're a certain percentage and simply to say, well, I know I'm right because I saw a lot of people. So then that means that I have the truth and that means I'm going to win. It falls within the same mindset and kind of goes back to your question, Adnan, about the kind of the holy war terminology and the relationship between the ties between this holy war terminology and kind of I have the truth because it's given to me by God. And what we saw under the

dictatorship where it was a very top-down structure of we have the information everybody else has to just follow on board. And so that kind of mindset is really, really, it is really concerning right now because regardless is if there's not a January 6th moment, we don't know if there will be. There's no doubt that Bolsonaro is going to want to try something. The other thing is that if people are going to be going to back him and be willing to support him and when that might actually happen, these are all things that are up in the air and I have no idea how that might play it out. And if it does play out, we probably won't know until kind of last minute or something. But I think just as concerning as that is what is this going to look like?

What is this country going to look like in the coming months and years if Lula is able to take power? And Bolsonaro supporters are completely on board, just like the United States believe that Bolsonaro is still their president and believe that, you know, Lula is not their president. The only difference is that in Brazil, it's a country with a history of violence, a country of the history of dictators. a country of the history where the military is really strong with like, you know, and so what, how does, how does that play out? How do you put the genie back in the bottle with these forces have been released by Bolsonaro over these last four years? Those are, those are kind of my biggest concern. So definitely there's a possibility of some sort of January the 6th kind of coup style scenario. But, you know, again, we don't know what things are going to look like. It's really

hard to say. I think that it's important to talk a little bit about the history here. I mean, all we are a history podcast. So surprise, surprise. I want to bring up the history. But we were talking about political violence. And you mentioned that there was a military dictatorship. I think that many of our listeners are probably aware that there was a military dictatorship in Brazil, although probably not as many as that know about the military dictatorships that were in Argentina and Chile, which, you know, of course, are right there as well. And in many cases, in most cases, probably were far more brutal than the Brazilian military dictatorship. But that is not to say that the Brazilian military dictatorship was not brutal. It most

certainly was. But one thing that I think that it's really interesting that you did in your series and that is also worth throwing into the fray here is that when we think of military dictatorship, those of us on the far, the fringes of the far left, when we think of military dictatorship, we often tend to conflate that with fascism. And as you point out, there is a definite distinction between the military dictatorship that was present within Brazil and what we would typically conceive of is fascism. And you mentioned earlier in this conversation, Federico Finkelstein and his definition of fascism, which is the one that you use throughout the series. Of course, there are multiple competing, you know, conceptions of what is fascism. But within his conception

of fascism, the military dictatorship just didn't fit the bill in Brazil. It was not a fascist military dictatorship. So, I'm just wondering if I know I'm kind of rambling and throwing a bunch of things out there, Michael, but perhaps you can tie these threads together so that the listeners have a little bit more of a deeper understanding of, you know, what was the military dictatorship, when did it take place? What were the conditions that took place under the military dictatorship? What differentiates the conditions and the setup of the military dictatorship within Brazil from the dictatorships in Chile, Argentina, why is it not fascism, like all of these things

that are kind of floating out there together. I think it's important to try to tie these together so that people have an idea of the history of political violence that took place within Brazil and also where Bolsonaro comes out of because, of course, he was a captain in the military during the military dictatorship and is somebody who speaks quite glowingly of the military dictatorship. So, you know, this is not just like ancient history.

It's something that, one, didn't take place that long ago and two is still referenced today by the current president of the country. So a little bit of that historical grounding, Michael, please. Awesome. I guess to go back, you know, A, the history of Brazil is one of going back between like monarchy, republic, dictatorship, democracy, dictatorship, democracy. So like, A, like this is not a country that like, you know, 200 years ago set in stone democracy and it's carried forth ever since. That this is part of the reason why, you know, when we talk about concerns of coups or dictatorship and things like that, they're really, really present, you know, just a year and a half ago, and I'll do the history

in just a second, but just a year and a half ago, I, it was at this really key moment where Bolsonaro was trying to push against the Supreme Court and push against Congress. There were fears he might even try and close them down. In fact, there were some leaked reports that he even attempt to do that, although people stopped him. And my father-in-law even contacted us to say, listen, stop posting so much on Facebook because you don't know what's going to happen. And I was alive during the dictatorship. And I knew people. I told them the same thing. And I never saw them again. So like this is things that people, it's real. You know, it's real for people in their lives. And, you know, people have been impacted. You know, my wife, she grew up under, you know, her first years,

were under the dictatorship. The Brazilian military dictatorship lasted from 1964 to 1985. It was put in place in the early 1960s because you had a left president who was in power named Joal Gulart, who was passing

a series of progressive reforms, agrarian reform, all these other measures, and elites in Brazil were concerned that he was pushing towards socialism. Remember, this was just after the Cuban Revolution.

And so the U.S. with the support of the United States that got on board and said, we, you know, we are more than willing to back some sort of a coup scenario. And then the military rolled the tanks out into the streets in April, April 1st, 1964. And so they rolled out this military dictatorship that kind of had this. It was a pseudo-democratic, right? They still had Congress who was still in power for about five years when they passed a law called Institutional Act 5 in which they banned, you know, they cut habeas corpus,

they closed Congress, the Supreme Court. And that's when they really launched the most dangerous moment of the dictatorship, the most violent and bloody. Roughly 20,000 people were tortured. Hundreds were killed and disappeared. Obviously, thousands were detained. And, you know, it's your vision of a usual military dictatorship. But of course, very different, like you mentioned, from say the Argentine dictatorship or Uruguay or Chile where you had, you know, tens of thousands of people that were killed, you know, people being, you know, left activists being picked up thrown into the Rio Plata. That was not necessarily happening at that level, but Brazil's was, Brazil's dictatorship was first.

And remember, this was in the context of the U.S. fight against so-called communism, right? And so they formed all these different countries across Latin America. these dictatorships formed Planned Condor, where they would fight and attack activists from one country to the next. You couldn't flee in any which way. But it was brutal. It was not fascism or not fascist because, you know, as we talk about in the podcast, fascism, the idea is building this popular mass movement,

organizing people, kind of what we've seen from Bolsonaro right now, using fake news and a hate discourse in order to attack your political. Of course, they had that from kind of the internal left activists that were organizing. But kind of this whole use of fake news and whatnot in order to gender kind of popular mass mass movement for nation and for God and for family, which has been, which was the Integralista slogan, which is the, which is the fascist movement here in Brazil in the 1930s. And of course, it's another slogan that's Bolsonaro lifted up now. during the dictatorship, it was much more about, let's lock things down, order and progress, which are the things on the Brazilian flag, let's keep things in order, let's do civic moral education, let's try and get people in line, and of course, completely crack down on everything,

you know, on any type of dissent and left movements and organized and whatnot. But that sense, it didn't fit into what our understanding of kind of a, of a, of a, of a fascist popular movement would be with a charismatic leader as what we've seen from Bolsonaro. So this is important to understand kind of the history, although the dictatorship is something that many members of even the armed forces would love to come back to. Bolsonaro was part of kind of a smaller group within the armed forces that never wanted to leave the dictatorship that wished it had been able to continue and they had not gone into democracy. And he's tried to hearken back until now.

When Bolsonaro, who's a congressman, he was a longtime congressman before he became present, When he was a congressman, and he voted for the impeachment of Dilmaroussef back in 2016, he did it in the name of one of the known tortures of the dictatorship. And of course, Dilmaru Suf was a leftist guerrilla fighter who was detained for several years and tortured in jail during the dictatorship. So it shows the dichotomy of the two forces that are playing out. And I think one of the things that's really important to note that is important that I mentioned, in the podcast as well is the fact that in Bolton, the Brazil never had a reckoning with its past,

with its kind of brutal past. There was never trials and human rights trials and people were held like we saw in Uruguay and Argentina, well, less than Uruguay, but in Chile and Argentina, in particular and many other countries of these dictatorships around South America, where people were taken to jail,

they were convicted and are now serving time. In Brazil, we didn't have that in part because of this amnesty, law that that supported the left organizers and the kind of the guerrilla fighters and the military groups and so they were able to come back into the country, but also gave amnesty to any military officer that was committing crime on the part of the dictatorship itself. And so that remains in today, people have never been able, had never had to go on through that process of really extracting what that meant.

And you have a very substantial portion of the society that believes the dictatorship was, they harken back to those days, they see it as nostalgic, and they see those days as order and progress, or they talk about how their parents used to talk about it. Those were the good old days. And so that's part of the reason why Bolsonaro and his kind of dictatorship support or is nostalgia for the dictatorship has so much, well, for the far right and for members of military and members, conservative members of society. So that's just kind of like, you know, that sets us up to where we are now. And so Bolsonaro, of course, he ties his connections and his legacy to the dictatorship. And many people really, they appreciate that. That's just fascinating. And I think that

history is so important and also the use of history in the present, which is why it's so important. There's so many, it seems, levels of contestation going on if we frame this as a culture war. and some of it is about how we, you know, remember the past and what are the implications. So some of the appeal clearly seems to be because there wasn't really a reckoning, a kind of truth and reconciliation. Amnesty was given without truth. Like, so that's the kind of problem here, it seems, is that, you know, you got amnesty, but you didn't have to admit what really were the crimes that were done. Maybe we're not going to be prosecuted in some kind of negotiated piece. And we know Lula is a is a negotiator, but it seems like one thing you would want out of all of

this is some acknowledgement of the crimes of the past so that you can set, you know, set to, you know, a right, at least this romantic affiliation with, you know, how things were better. That's clearly seems to be a big danger. So that leads me in some ways to think a little bit about how the politics of the moment are being waged in this kind of a culture war and harkening back to Stewart's kind of points and that issue of, you know, can you. win a culture war with the right that's prepared to talk about, you know, kind of holy war and demonization and a very dichotomous view of good versus evil, matter of faith versus infidelity?

And do you want to win it if you do? Because if you have to contest it on those grounds, rather than say, class or other analysis, how much politically do you gain other than the short-term benefit that maybe you defeat your opponent? But you've, you know, undermined the possibility. for genuine political reform class-based politics. This is real concern. And so I'm wondering in this contemporary moment, how is it, you know, why is the sort of corruption scandal still operating so effectively to undermine Lula? I mean, you know, after he was cleared, he was like the most popular figure. Bolsonaro was weak and unpopular, you know, polls were against him. But somehow, Despite the fact that everybody knew he had been in jail for various, you know, on corruption charges that, you know, now have been overturned, it seems like that is still operating somehow politically.

This call and this appeal for democracy and saving the democracy, it seems perhaps that it is being undermined in some ways by this, you know, reviving these charges of the scandal that it's not. really convincing for some of these people who seem to be falling into Bolsonaro's camp. So I guess I'm wondering, you know, are these appeals to democracy, why are they, just like in the U.S., it seems to me that there's a certain class of people who are very compelled by this idea that we have to save democracy. But yet, on the other hand, that democracy seems to have failed so many people already, or it already has been undermined and violated, that sometimes that seems not to be so convincing to the wider electorate as a strategy. There's a lot of different components of this, but I'm wondering how you see this approach

in the campaign. Like, you know, it's not about policies so much. It's not about, you know, class analysis. It's about saving democracy from fascism. It's about fighting some kind of culture war. I guess the other component is that there's a lot of charges of COVID. But COVID, again, you know, being mishandled in the pandemic. But again, as a culture war approach rather than as policies for how you can improve health and so on.

So I'm just wondering about your reflections on why this approach is. being taken and whether it really promises much, I think, politically. Great question. Yeah, great question. I mean, first, the reason why the corruption scandal is being dug out of the grave again and keeps being hammered home. Of course, this is ground where Bolsonaro thinks he could win. In fact, we saw that in debate last night. It was the very first debate between Lula and Bolsonaro and who walks up on stage right after the debate is over and stands beside Bolsonaro. doesn't say anything, but just stands beside him is former Judge Serjean Morda,

the guy who jailed Lula and then went on to be Bolsonaro's justice minister, literally took the job because he was able to take out his leading opponent and he's allowed to walk up on stage and stand beside Bolsonaro. So just his image, what it's supposed to show is this idea,

this appeal of Lavajato, of the car wash scandal, of corruption. Even if Bolsonaro himself has actually had more corruption with his government than, you know, it's just, It's been terrifying because he has this whole secret, this whole secret budget where he's put, they've put in billions of dollars in there and nobody knows where it's supposed to go.

He continually is hiding things and putting on a hundred year, what's it called, Seiglio secrecy clauses that you can, no one's going to know for a long time. But the more he hammers at home, because in the lead up of the last seven, eight years, what we saw was the mainstream press and the press just damning the workers party. constantly hammering Lula as the biggest thief in the history of the nation. And so him doing this, it connects to the same thing that people heard about for so long in their heads. And so it's an easy connection to make. And particularly amongst far right supporters that they never really bought the idea that Lula was actually innocent.

And they actually thought all this corruption happened. And so it's just easy for them to make that jump and say, no, Lula is the one who's corrupt. Bolsonaro is the good one. And so that's why this has become, you know, that Bolsonaro's dug it and just hammering at home we saw in the debate last night and we continue to see it. It is one of the most complicated things for the Workers Party and for the left right now because there was corruption within the Workers Party. There was corruption within the Workers Party coalition, as I mentioned, which Bolsonado's

own party current Bolsonaro Party was actually tied into all that corruption, even more so than others. In fact, the Workers Party was one of the parties that was least corrupt amongst all of them. But that's obviously the reason why they're harming at home because it's a place that Boston other things he can win on. Now, in terms of the appeal to democracy, the idea is like, let's get, let's just bring everybody on board at this point because they're like, you know, our backs are against the wall. But I will say this. Lula is very clear about who his base is and about the workers and the working class. And this is something that at every

single rally, at every single speech, you know, that that is who he's focused. on. And that is who he is speaking to. In fact, in the last words, the debate last night, weren't some sort of intellectual barrage because that's not who Lula is, but it was like, listen, I'm going to win and we're going to celebrate and we're going to bring back the good day so we can all meet our meat and eat, you know, good food. Because this is, this is, this is like a symbol of what Lula represented for the country, is bringing good times to those who had nothing and who were hungry before and couldn't afford to have meat on the table, couldn't afford to have a have a barbecue with meat. And so this is something he always

talks about because he's trying to tie to the, to the country's poor. And this is also why the poor Northeast, which is where, like I said, I was just a few days ago, this is why you have overwhelming support for Lula there. As of right now, I mean, everything is almost tied across the rest of the country, but it was the Northeast that pushed Lula over the top. I think he won by something like 12 million votes there. And if he wins in the second round, it's going to be because of the northeast. And you walk through the streets in downtown of the Sifah, and you talk to anybody. And everybody says, you know, even the guys that look like their Bolsonaro supporters are all in for Lula, because he, what he's represented.

And of course, Bolsonaro also shot himself in the foot a couple of days ago. I don't know if you saw this, but he actually blamed his loss in northeastern Brazil by saying, oh, that's just because people in northeastern Brazil are illiterate. And so they just completely responded, everybody up there, just forget you, man. So, you know, so obviously the focus on the working class, the focus on the workers, the focus on bringing back jobs, alleviating poverty, which is what Lula did. That's the thing. He doesn't, not coming out of like, you know, left field here with some really crazy ideas. He's just talking about re-implementing what, you know, what he had during the good days,

eliminating Hungary. You know, right now in Brazil, hunger in Brazil had been eliminated. And now, according to a report from a couple months ago, roughly 33 million Brazilians don't have enough food to eat each day. And so this is why this has been really key for Lula to focus on while Bolsnaut has been, you know, kind of hammering home on the Holy War. And I will say this also, that Lula, we have seen this, and this kind of talks to this interesting question of the culture war question, right? we've seen Lula embracing using some more religious language than he had never used before. Of course, he's always embraced evangelicals. Evangelicals, you know, or some members of the agelical community, you know, supported him in other elections.

And we're actually seeing Bolsonaro's numbers of evangelical support have decreased compared to 2018 because we've seen this shift of supporting of support for Lula. But he's also been having this kind of religious terminology talking about Bolsonaro calling him the devil and things like that. So it's been an interesting shift. Now, your question of how do you win with a culture war with the far evangelical right? God, that's like the $200 million question, right? Like, what is this? What do politics look like going forward in the coming years, not just in Brazil, but for the United States? When that is how the game is played, that's when the political game is being played on that type.

of a letter instead of having a democratic debate about policies and you know like this is where this is extremely concerning not just for what it means at this election but what does it mean for the elections to come and for the future of like of democracy right in the in the western hemisphere but but that's like that's a whole other podcast right just i want to i want to just clarify one thing quick breath and then i'll turn it over to you so um you mentioned that lula is not proposing any like radical wild policies that people haven't seen before. And this makes a lot of sense if you understand the context by which he left office. So when Lula left office after he termed out after his second term, he had an approval rating of over 90%, which is like really

unprecedented for somebody to serve for two terms and then leave and have this this massive support. This is fundamentally different than what you would see in a country like the United States where when somebody is calling an appeal to the past, if you call an appeal to a recent past and a definite recent past, people are not very excited about that. Think about like, for example, Hillary Clinton saying like, oh, yeah, Bill Clinton was my husband and we're going to turn back to things before we had, you know, George W. Bush and we'll get to, you know, those good times or, you know, that message was not very exciting to people. like, okay, we're going to turn times back to the mid-90s.

Yeah, maybe the mid-90s were okay compared to the financial crisis of 2008, but it's not like some sexy vision of the future, whereas, you know, Trump, on the other hand, was using a vision of an imagined past, this past that really, it did not exist other than for a very, very small sliver of society, white land-owning men, basically, you know, in the past had this, what Trump was pitching, but it wasn't like a definite period of time where people could look to and think about, you know, okay, this is the period of time that he's talking about. These are the specific policy proposals that were in place. So this is something that's worth exciting us about. Lula, on the other hand, does have a period of time that is in recent

memory. And people were like genuinely excited and pleased with the results of. Not only do you have metrics in terms of improvements in people's lives. But I mean, people were generally happy with and genuinely happy with the government at that time. So when you are appealing to a definite past, you're appealing to something that people actually did like and that they do remember. So this is fundamentally different than what we would have seen in the United States. It's just worth keeping that in mind that when you hear, yeah, he's proposing the same thing that, you know, was recently there. Like, why would people be excited? Because people really loved it. And it's worth keeping that in mind if people weren't aware that, you know, he had an approval rating of

over 90%. So Michael and then that's, that's so important. And also, I mean, just to put this in context, this is not just kind of the working classes and the millions of people that were lifted out of poverty, but also the business community. You know, capital classes made more money under Lula than they had before, the financial capital, the Brazilian businesses, in part because he opened up, you know, huge numbers of embassies abroad. And so he, he, he's, you know, he's He helped Brazilian businesses in order to be able to trade and to move their companies abroad in different ways. But it's also because he didn't mess with financial capital, right, which is a critique that many people had with him. But he wanted to play the game safe.

He wanted to lift people out of poverty and help float all boats. That was kind of his thing. And that's how come even now what you see is a substantial portion of Brazilian businessmen and kind of corporate elites who are also willing to go on board. with Lula because they see Bolsonaro as the more concerning bet because he's kind of like a Trump-like figure. He sat down, Lula sat down with like 100 businessmen in Sao Paulo about a week and a half ago and talked about, you know, the potential for the future. In fact, what we saw a few months ago was also there were two different letters, letters for democracy that were signed by more than a million Brazilians calling for democracy in the country, you know, pushing back.

on any potential for any sort of coup scenario. And one of them was actually signed by the South Paulo Chamber of Commerce, one of the most important kind of financial groups in the country. And they were saying, we want democracy. And so that's the interesting thing here is that back in 2003, Lula actually, he wrote this letter right before he was elected. And he wrote it to the, it was a letter to the Brazilian people, but it was really to Brazilian corporations and to the financial class, saying, I'm not going to mess with your businesses.

You don't have to worry about me. This time, he doesn't have to do that because they already know that that's not going to happen for better or for worse. But that's what the reality is here. And so when we talk about, you know, absolutely 90% approval, that includes all these other areas that you wouldn't necessarily all kind of on board. And that's also because they were economic good times. Of course, there's several reasons for that. But that's what he's trying to harken back to those more. yeah i find all of that incredibly interesting and the and the where do the big business corporation

vote go because here in the u.s we don't have anything like a workers party or a lula but certainly they've cited largely with like the Biden democratic you know agenda against the trump agenda now you know the republicans here talking about woke capitalism and woke corporations it makes for a funny dynamic when they have to put down corporations without putting down capitalism so they got to call them woke i just thought that's funny but um i also want to remind listeners that this is happening in a context in which there's been a real resurgence of the broadly conceived left throughout Latin America. You have, of course, Amlo up in Mexico and Cuba holding it down all the way down to Chile's recently defeated, but still, you know, really

interesting. The world's most progressive constitution was advanced and unfortunately defeated, but still there's lots going on. Bolivia, for example, pushed back in one against a coup that was successful and then got pushed back upon and the people came out victorious there. So where the biggest country in Latin America goes right or left is really going to say a lot about Latin America more broadly. So I just want to toss it out there. But I have two quick questions for you without much preamble on my part. They're not really connected, but perhaps maybe they are, which is what are the connections to the U.S.? You mentioned Bannon earlier. I know John Jr., I think, has had some relationship with Bolsonaro people, if not outright, Bolsonaro himself.

So there, and I think Trump during his presidency went down there even and met with Bolsonaro. So I'm just interested about all the connections to the right wing in the United States right now. And then the second question is the implications of this election for the Amazon, which is a huge issue with climate change and the ecological crisis more broadly. So U.S. connections and the implications for Amazon. Awesome. All right. I'm going to try and again, oh my God, I could talk for hours about this. And I do have just so, you know, I have an update.

that's going to be coming on the podcast in which it's going to be an interview with a foreign relations professor here in Flodinopolis in English. And we're going to get really, really deep of the Trump banning connections and all of that. So I kind of talk about that throughout my entire podcast, but I wanted to have one episode that was like, you know, a half hour long and we can just really dig into it. But I'll just say that the connections between Trump and Bolsonaro are huge. Obviously, Bolsonaro, since for years has seen himself as the Trump of the Tropics, His son, Eduardo Bolsonaro has three politician sons, and his son Eduardo is the one who made the connection with Steve Bannon and then connected with him in the U.S. And then Bannon actually made him the head of his movement, you know, his movement organization in Latin America.

So Eduardo Bolsonaro is that. Bannon allegedly or supposedly said he would help them on their campaign back in 2018. and there's no doubt that he's done that and kind of threw out. Now, Trump and Bolsonaro, I think Bolsonaro, I can't remember if Trump came to Brazil, but I know Bolsonaro went to the States four times during the

two years that Trump was in power and they kind of overlapped. One of those times Bolsonaro actually visited the CIA and it was, it was he was the first Brazilian president ever to visit the CIA in

Langley, Virginia. and he did it before he had ever visited the Secret Service in Brazil, just to show you where his allegiances lie. And, of course, they run very, very deep. They sign accords and agreements. One of the things that we haven't talked at all about yet that I think is really important just to tie in Oliva de Carvalu because he is kind of this, or he was,

he passed away earlier this year from complications due to COVID, something that he had previously denied, but he was this far-right philosopher, people called him kind of the guru of the far-right or Bolsonaro's guru, who had lived outside of Richmond, Virginia for roughly 15 years. And he is credited with essentially giving the philosophical backing for growing the far-right in Brazil like it had never seen before.

So he trained far-right Brazilians in his kind of far-right ideology from his home in Richmond, Virginia, online courses from, say, 2005, up until just last year. And it really transformed what the country meant and how people saw the country. And in a lot of ways, we were talking about culture before. He helped to import in a lot of ways

a U.S-style culture into Brazil and using his conspiracy theory, ideology, but also teaching people in Brazil how to not have a debate and a discussion, but how to simply have them, shut down their political opponents and ignore their political opponents because that's what he represented. He taught kind of Bolsonaro supporters and even if not directly, but it's all been spread and he taught them how to say, no, we just don't believe you. And so I'm right,

you're wrong. It doesn't matter. And in fact, I'm going to think that you think that I'm crazy, but you're the one that's crazy. I'm the one that wins. So he was an extremely important person and continues to be, he was a traditionalist, which is also Bannon's kind of philosophical underpinnings, and they met once at the Brazilian embassy or consulate in Washington. So anyway, but this is just all to say that the connections run deep. That's like on the very top layers, and it goes so much deeper than that. And we can hopefully get into this with this other update to the podcast. In terms of the Amazon, the Amazon is, so I was in, that's where I've been in the last two weeks. I've been traveling in. I was in Manas. I was in Fondonio. I was in visiting indigenous community in the outskirts of Porto Velio that's just been ravaged by land invaders deforestation. I was literally there when land invaders were on their territory, past their motorcycles and past areas of their land that was smoldering from the fires that had been set, areas that had just been cut down. Under Bolsonaro,

he has, with his discourse, has empowered land invaders to push onto territories like never before. He has opened up and empowered them to deforest and cause fires like never before. What we've saw in this last year, deforestation fires are their highest in over a decade. And if you remember what the fires looked like back in 2019, when everybody was kind of having this uproar in the streets and they're saying, no, no fires. I mean, they've got consecutively worse since then. So this year was way worse than back then, but nobody's talking about it because it's just one other thing to think about. And it keeps getting worse. He also gutted the indigenous and the environment agencies, Bolsonaro did. And so it's basically just let it be a free-for-all for loggers and miners and land grabbers to just move on to territory and do what they want. And the thing is that under his government, 50% of that deforestation has been on indigenous lands and conservation zones. So this is new. That in particular is really. important to understand because it's not respecting what the land demarcations used to be, but this is saying, no, we just don't care. And we're going to move on, you know, using this

kind of Wild West terminology. So I was speaking with this professor interviewing her earlier this week and earlier, just late last week. And she said that she thinks that the way things stand right now, if Bolsonaro is not out of office, if it's not elected, pushed out of office, that basically the Amazon is going to be, it's going to be done within 10 years. Like the first layers of its demise will be over because of mining, because of deforestation, all the rest of this. So it is, it is an area that is extremely important in this election. Now, the really positive thing on the flip side is that Lula, if you remember,

deforestation was actually even higher than it is now during the first two Lula years in power. And that's because he came in when deforestation. was just through the roof. But what he did, using with the support of his then environment minister, Marina Silva, is they created a whole new set of policies and legislation to push back on that deforestation, including tracking systems for meat and logging to ensure that those types of things weren't being sold, and starting new legislation that would try and stop people from starting the fires and fines, and then actually giving the Funai, which is the indigenous agency, but also the

environment agency, the Obama, like the tools and the means to crack down and those people that were actually causing deforestation fires. And it actually, they were able to stop, cut Amazon deforestation in half within two years. Brazil was able to meet its UN 2020 development goals because of, you know, deforestation carbon dioxide from deforestation by ahead of schedule. And so it's important that this is the guy who was able to do it the first time around, and he's already said he wants to do it again. And Marina Silva, now she had broken, if you remember, a little bit of a history lesson here,

Marina Silva then shifted more to the right. She, who herself, is evangelical, and she actually ran against the Workers' Party back in 2010, back in 2014. Well, she's back in Lula's coalition. In fact, I met her at a rally just before the, the first round vote. And she's already said she's handed over to Lula what she believes is necessary, like the plans that's necessary in order to get Brazil to zero deforestation or as close as possible. And she's more than, she's like she's on board.

The reincorporation of Maria, Marina Soma, into Lula's kind of coalition is, is really symbolic for Brazilians because she represents the fight to, to protect and save the Amazon, even with all of the fallout from kind of her more centrist move. And even with all the complications with like the evangelical vote and her, you know, anti-abortion stance, whatever else, the environment is something that she has always defended. And seeing her coming back together is kind of this moment of a lot of hope for a lot of people. So this is this moment where if we're looking at what like Brazil means, you know, like this idea of democracy and dictatorship for Brazil, we're also looking like this idea of like life, the Amazon and destruction of that's what Bolsonaro represents. And just to tie this back to kind of what we were talking about before, why is Bolsonaro pushing and being willing to just destroy the Amazon or trying to empower those people destroying it?

Well, because for him, what this represents is the agro business and what this represents is that support that he has in Congress. That's where, and this is, of course, where he thinks he can continue to grow the Brazilian economy because he's doing this at the same time as he's gutting the rest of the country and selling off state businesses and privatizing and everything else and industries are you know, but he's doing this because he thinks this is, this is the way for Brazil to, to grow. And that's, that's his bet. It was the bet, you know, also into some part under dictatorship.

And of course, that's not to say the agribusiness isn't important in Brazil. It is. And it was always really supported by Lula as well. And that's some of the contradictions within the Workers Party governments. This is, this is Bolsonaro's big thing. And so the more that he is able to deforest, the more he's able to empower those kind of illegal land grabers and these illegal forces and these violent forces in the Amazon region, the more he thinks he can show up more support for himself. Yeah, I just want to jump in really quick, Henry. Sorry, just to just to say,

like, there's so many reasons why non-Brazilian should care about the outcome of this election. We've covered a lot of them in here, but the Amazon in particular and the future integrity of the Amazon and its importance for the global ecological situation and for climate change is why every single human being on earth should care about this election. It really is black and white on that policy issue in particular. And I'm sorry, Henry, I just want to say something real quick. This is like last week or a week and a half ago now, and I'm standing in the middle of a grove,

a previous beautiful forest, and it's slashed. And it's been cut, I mean, just a couple months before, because they cut it first before they like the fires. It's the only way they can get the fires. And the fires are still smoldering. and if we sent up a drone and you look at it from above and it's like someone's just been cutting the grass but you think about it like

they're cutting the grass for what they're cutting the grass they're they're slicing these trees down not even for the hard wood for the large part in most places it's not even for logging anymore and this one indigenous territory went to it used to be loggers that would go in they would cut the trees down and sell off the that's not even it anymore they're just cutting the trees down cutting the forest down so they can clear that land

so that they can then clear it again set fire to it once more and then sell off that land title to cattle ranchers. Those cattle ranchers are then on the land and they put their cows on the land. That then land, once it's been deforested for a number of years, it's no longer on previously deforested land. And where does that meat go? It goes into our stores. That meat, Brazil is the largest meat exporter in the world. So that meat is then exported brought its export to the United States, it's exported to Europe. And then once, after that's done for the first five or 10 or 15 years, what happens is the new wave of soy moves in once they've cleared enough of that area because they need the cattle to step around on the ground to kind of get the ground ready for the soy. Once the cattle have been used up and they've done what they need to do, then they push in and they build these massive plantains to some soy.

And that's what we saw on the way into this indigenous territory is you're driving on this road and extends for miles and miles of miles of miles. miles of just dry dirt earth and soy. And where's the soy go? It's exported by Cargill. In fact, there's a huge terminal at the points along all these major rivers along the Amazon River and the Madera River and the Hu Negru, you have major cargo terminals where millions of tons of soy is exported each year internationally to China, to the United States, to Europe. This is where the Amazon's going. That's where our lungs of the planet are going. there to make these huge corporations a lot of money for a capitalist system that is not benefiting the majority. So just to put that in perspective, it's terrifying. Yeah, absolutely. So I know that

our co-host Adnan Hussein has to leave right now. I know I have at least I have one more big question. Brett, I don't know if you have any more, but I would like to give Adnan the opportunity to tell the listeners how they can find him on social media and his other podcast before he heads out. So Adnan, just briefly before you run to your next meeting, tell the listeners how they can find you. Well, it's just been a pleasure to have this conversation. Thanks so much, Michael. Yeah, if listeners want to follow up with me at Adnan A. Hussein is my Twitter, H-U-S-A-I-N,

and check out the M-J-L-L-I-S. We talk about the Middle East, Islamic world, Muslim diasporic history and culture. And we have an excellent episode coming up any day now with Gene Bajelon, who's a professor of Middle Eastern history. And we talked about the Kurdish component of the current protests in Iran. So listeners will find that interesting. Thanks again. Yeah. And that episode will go great with the last episode of guerrilla history that we put out before this one,

which was on the history and impact of sanctions on Iran. So thank you, Adnan. I'll see you again very soon. Michael, I, well, before I ask this question, I also just want to bring up something that Adnan mentioned earlier that I had been chewing over for the last probably 20 minutes or so. So he mentioned that there had been amnesty without truth or without a reckoning. I don't remember exactly how he worded it,

either amnesty without truth or amnesty without a reckoning in Brazil. in a way that it wasn't in other countries. And it just reminded me of the United States in many ways. Let's think back to when Obama came into office. We'd had these revelations coming out about torture that the United States was carrying out against, you know, its adversaries abroad. And one of the things that Obama said, like, very directly was we tortured some folks, but we have to move beyond that. That is in the past. we have to move forward. Nobody was ever sentenced for that. And I had been thinking about how

how that had perpetuated itself than coming out of that. You know, there was no reckoning. There was no truth. Like, yes, we tortured some folks. And yes, everyone, this is a direct quote from Obama. We tortured some folks. We tortured some folks, but nobody was ever prosecuted for that. Nobody was ever held accountable for that. And what we've seen then is that many of the same figures that were present within those torture facilities, ended up advancing their careers within the United States government or even outside of the United States government. Think of, you know, all of the former NSA, CIA folks that you see is talking heads on CNN, MSNBC. Think of Gina Haskell getting promoted despite overseeing a CIA black site.

This is this is something that perpetuated itself in part because there was no reckoning. And as a result also of that reckoning, without a reckoning, I should say, without the amnesty without a reckoning, we have liberals trumpeting and championing the same security apparatus that really we should be vilifying. And even for a brief moment, they did vilify. Like some liberals at that point did say, wow, look at the torture that was being carried out during the George W. Bush administration, as if it only took place. during the George W. Bush administration. But there was a brief moment where at least some liberals in the United States had turned their backs on the security apparatus of the United States. But now we see all of these people coming out,

oh, look how great the FBI is. They're raiding Trump's Mar-a-Lago. Look at how great our security agencies are. Like, this is the thing that's going to protect democracy. Really? The CIA and the FBI are going to protect democracy? They were set up explicitly to understand. undermine democracy at home and abroad.

Like, this is exactly what they were set up for. And it was because when they were caught red-handed, you know, subverting U.S. and international law that we didn't punish or hold accountable, any of the people responsible for that, we have this societal amnesia in these countries that do not have this reckoning. And we end up, you know, reconstituting these agencies. in ways that perpetuate the same crimes that had taken place in the past. And Brazil, I think, is another, you know, a potential hotbed for that in some ways because

there was no reckoning of the military dictatorship, which we talked about a little bit in this episode, as well as you did in multiple episodes of your series. There was no reckoning in the same way that there was in Chile, that there was in Argentina. And in that way, it almost makes it more ripe for a situation. in which we will see a resurgence of this, you know, the military apparatus being used again as an extra political arm and then just subverting, you know, being an extra political arm and being an overt political arm of the state. So, I mean, there's not really a question there and that wasn't actually the question that I planned on raising. It's just I got my, I don't know,

what's the expression, got my heckles up as a result of thinking of what Adnan had been saying. So in case you want to reflect on that before I get to my. other question. Yeah, no, that's such a great connection. Absolutely. And it's so true. I mean, what's fascinating in Brazil is that Dilmarussev, who I mentioned before, you know, she herself was tortured and detained for years. She actually tried. Well, first under Lula, and then she actually tried, and they held truth commissions. They held them for several years on a national level and then on a local level in every single state. But there was no binding contract with that. People were able to come up and they were able to say, you know, what had happened to them. And it got on

tape. The press largely ignored it because they knew no one was going to be held responsible for it. So it was this important moment that people don't even realize that something happened there. People don't even realize that there was even truth commissions in a lot of ways. So it was really, it was this sad kind of lost moment. But why wasn't it taken further? Well, because there was so much concern from, because there was pushback, right? There was pushback from the military. There was pushback kind of on internal channels saying, no, you don't want to go there. don't you're not going to mess with our freaking amnesty um and it just shows the power of like the the underlying power even today that the military and of course today it's even more so because

boulsonato and we didn't mention this at all but boulsonato came into power with him he brought in uh like roughly a third of his cabinet members have been military 6,000 um members officers in his government previous civil service positions are military as well um So now it's actually the military is in, is in power. But even before this, like they, there was this, this underlying threat, this underlying fear, this underlying power that the military just had hanging over society constantly that like, no, you don't want to push any buttons. We're not going to mess with any of that stuff. So you can do whatever you want to just as long as you're not holding any of us accountable. So it is extremely concerning because then what does it mean for the future and the threat for it coming back?

So yeah, anyway, thank you. That's such a good reflection. Well, like I said, it was just something that was gnawing away at me. It was really a great comment by Adnan. And that was what was provoking my thought and then provoking my rage. But in any case, I have one last question. And then Brett, I'll leave it to you to, you know, ask any concluding questions or commentary that you would like to as we wrap up. My last question is about political geography. And this is something that you touched on like very briefly in your series. But I think deserves a little bit more of a focused attention. Because most people, I mean, they understand intuitively that Brazil is like a huge, huge country. I don't think that most people realize how huge Brazil is. But I think most people understand that Brazil is huge. But it is diverse. By many metrics, it's the most diverse country in the world in terms of populace.

It's also one of the most diverse countries in the world in terms of actual like physical geography. And both that, that ethnic diversity and that physical diversity, that geographic, that geographic diversity of Brazil, they play into the political landscape of Brazil in certain ways that I think are worth mentioning. So part one, can you tell us a little bit about how these different factors of the political geography and ethnic geography come together and form some of the political movements that are taking place in the country? And then also part two, if people are interested in watching the results.

of the second round of the election, which will be on the 30th, I believe. Am I right on that, Michael? Yes, on the 30th of October. So this will be released about one week before the election will take place. For folks that are watching the results come in, what are some of the regions that you think are, what regions should people be aware of? Like, what are Lula hotbeds and why? What are Bolsonaro hotbeds and why?

And what are like the really key, like, you can think of them as swing states and American political lingo? this is so great well before i i'm going to answer part two first very quickly just to say that we don't have the so brazilian elections they happen uh really fast um and it's because it's because of the electoral voting system so we don't have like the you're watching the CNN all not long until like three in the morning you're like oh my god well they've just um and so the results were released in the first round voting ended at five uh and by nine o'clock and by nine o'clock roughly, we knew. I mean, already by 7 o'clock, we were starting to get the first results in.

And it's also not very clear. They're not like, oh, we just got in ever, Maryland, Massachusetts. Because this last year, in this election was the first election, they've done this. And all of the country votes in the same time zone. So it all votes in Brasilia time zone. Now Brazil is also, and I'll mention how big is in a second, but most of it, the majority of it, is in one time zone. so it means that like the polls open at what was it like eight o'clock and they close at five now there's two the further west you get i believe so it it extends over three different time zones but there's only one state that's in the other one and then the others there's like two or three states in the amazon that are an hour earlier so largely we the whole you get most of the results in one package

they roll out slowly but we don't it doesn't work the same way of like oh we've just seen this And oh, my God, this is happening there like that. But still, that's an important context. Now, yes, Brazil is huge. I tend to say that it is roughly half the size of South America with roughly half the population of South America, with roughly half the GDP of South America. So that means all of the other Spanish-speaking plus, you know, Guiana, French Guiana and Suriname combined equals Brazil.

And that's important to understanding, like, wow, this is really huge. And, of course, it's spread away from the Amazon, which borders Venezuela and Colombia and the three Karikam nations up top, all the way down south to Uruguay and Argentina and Paraguay. And those are like temperate climates like you would find in, say, Virginia, whatever else. It snows in southern Brazil up in the mountain time. And it is very, very, very divided amongst kind of politics and demographics. just to explain also, Brazil has more than half the population is African descendant, is black. Now, that's really important to understanding the layout of politics and how it looks. But northeastern Brazil, which is the area that have been recently, that is generally seen as kind of the poorest.

It's been seen as the most kind of marginalized portion of the country, the highest black population. And they are, that's Lula's base. This is where Lula was born. And they're marginalized by the rest of, by the rest of the country as well. So when folks from northeastern Brazil go travel to South Paulo or they move to South Paulo in search of work, they're seeing as, oh, you guys from the northeastern Brazil. So that's important context to understand that they're actually like put down in terms of the region that they come from.

Now, on the flip side, you have southern Brazil, which is where a lot of the European influx came into, the German population, the first German descendants arrived in the small town of Sao Leopoldo and Hiro Giroz O'Sul in 1824 and moved into that region. So very large German, Italian population, Poland, Eastern Europe and also Japanese population in the state of Parana. And so it kind of creates this dichotomy where you have in the south, it's a much more European descendant population. It is more developed in the south.

More money has traditionally gone into that region of the country. And so it's kind of like, it's almost like if you look at it, it's almost the flip side of, say, what you'd have in, say, the United States where like the North is industrialized, right? And the South is more poorer. In Brazil, it's the South that's more industrialized and the North is more poorer. And this all plays out in politics in really important ways because, and Bolsonaro's bread and butter is the South, is this European much more conveniently interested in his white supremacist politics. That's where he's really been able to. to kind of inspire folks on his racist rhetoric and sexism and whatnot. That's also where, for instance, in the small town of Blumenauer, or just outside of the small town of Blumenauer in the state of Santa Capitina, that's where the Brazilian Nazi party was formed in 1928. And it grew to become the largest Nazi party outside of Germany. Because of the influx of a huge amount of German descendants,

it's also where the Integranistas, as the Brazilian home style fascist party was also founded there. And so in those states, that's where you see the highest number of new Nazi cells. And in fact, under Bolsonaro, you've seen this rising. I think they've grown by steeper in the first few years of Bolsonaro government. And they're largely focused. They're in the south, Santa Catarina, Sao Paulo, South.

Those are those four states that are kind of more white, right? And so that's how this is playing out. So it's almost like the country's bite him on these economic lines, but also along these race lines. And don't forget that, you know what I mentioned in the podcast as well. Brazil was the country that brought over the highest number of slaves from Africa during the transatlantic slave trade. Five million people were ripped from their homes in Africa and brought to work on the plantations here. And that's part of the reason why you have such a huge percentage of that. that is African descendant.

So all of this, of course, is playing out in this election. That's how come, you know, in northeastern Brazil, this is where Lula has just massive amount of support. 67% voted in this first round election for Lula compared with 27% to Bolsonaro. But it's also why you have more support for Bolsonaro in the south. And I think he's actually won elections. And I don't remember if he won in Heelgren-Jus-Sul, but I think in Santa Catanina and Parana, no doubt. And so this is.

is how the map kind of lays out. And in fact, if you look at, you know how you put the colors in the map. So red is the color of Lula. It's not the, it's not the Republican Party here. And it kind of covers all a much of like northern Brazil, northeastern Brazil down and then and the Bolsonaro can kind of control this south. But that's the layout largely of what this looks like. And of course, this has lasting repercussions on, you know, on not just this election, but on the country itself. Yeah. I mean, we've talked. for two hours. I know early on you joked about possibly making this a six hour episode. We could do that, but I think we'll take a break for now. I just wanted to say,

like, I think it was, I forget the exact time, but sometime in the 90s, when Lula was running for various offices and kind of, you know, taking L's, losing back to back, he made a visit to Fidel Castro and, you know, said something, I don't know if this is apocryphal or not, said something to the effect of, I'm just tired of losing, you know, what's this all about? I'm tired of losing. And Fidel Castro told Lula, you know, you have a dude. duty to the Brazilian people to keep fighting, to the Brazilian working and poor to keep fighting. And Lula went back to Brazil and did exactly that, kept fighting and eventually would win. And I think that's as true today as it's ever been, but with the specifically with the

implications for the Amazon, you know, Lula has a duty to the entire world to win this election. And I really hope everybody that's listening to this takes a real interest in this and watches it very closely. You know, I'm very deeply hoping that Lula comes. out on top. And I think it's really important to the entire world that we follow this election. And I just want to say to you, Michael, thank you so much for coming on, having this very long, very in-depth, but incredibly important and very timely conversation. I think the runoff elections at the end of this month, October 30th. So we'll know by Halloween where the cards have finally fallen. But I just really appreciate all of your insight and your knowledge and bringing it

to our audience. And yeah, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure. Seriously, this is awesome. it's been really great fantastic questions it's so nice to be able to dig into some of this stuff in a deeper way than usually be able to um and i just say yes absolutely no it's it's a it's a huge election that you know i think it was richard nixon um that actually said that uh which way brazil goes so goes the rest of latin america or something along the lines it's like paraphrasing of course so many other parts of latin america you know that that's stereotyping we've seen the rest of Latin America, so many other sections, as you mentioned before, kind of shifting more toward the left and the possibilities with a Lula presidency for kind of

return to regional integration to the pink tide that we saw back in the 2000s, which was really, really important. It opens up just a world of potential of what that could mean across South America in a very new way. And Lula has already said that he's totally on board for that. But it's particularly with the Amazon, like you said, it is, it is really concerning what we've seen till now. And, and yeah, I think people are hoping that things go, things go lose of the way. And that's what the, that's what the polls show.

But, but again, this is Brazilian politics and you just never know anything in Brazilian politics. Yeah, I want to echo Brett's appreciation to you coming on the show, Michael. Michael, can you tell the listeners how they can find you and your work on social media and how they can listen to Brazil on fire. Absolutely. So the easiest way to find me is Twitter at M-Fox M-F-O-X underscore U.S. And then Brazil on Fire, if you just search Brazil on Fire podcast, you can find it at the

Real News or NACLA. There's the two outlets that I co-produce the podcast with. So you can go to either the Real News or NACLA, or you can find out any podcasting place wherever you listen to your podcast. Just search for Brazil on fire. You can check it out there. And I'll be uploading. I probably have another three or four updates.

Definitely one after. I just put, did one update now. There'll be one after the election. And then another couple more interviews that I'm putting up there now. And I'm hoping to do a new series here at some point in the next year or two. So I'll keep you posted.

But thank you so much for having me on. It's been a pleasure. Absolutely. It was great. Brett, how can the listeners find you and your other excellent podcast that you do? You can find everything I do at Revolutionary Left Radio. dot com.

Excellent. I highly recommend the listeners to do that. Brett, what's the latest things that you've had on each podcast? Because this episode will be dropping at the end of this week. Yeah, we've had over at Red Menace, we're going to be working on actually working through an anarchist text, The Conquest of Bread, which would be interesting. And then over at Rev. Left, we're, let's see,

we just dropped an episode on Lyndon LaRouche. That was great, by the way. Yeah. And we have some other things. I'm in the mix right now. I think I just actually recorded an episode with the, with my friend Matthew Furlong on the Russian Soviet linguist Voloshinov and his Marxist philosophy of language. So for all the philosophy nerds out there and the linguistic nerds out there,

keep an eye for that episode. I also want to make sure that I thank our esteemed guest host who was able to join us today, Professor Stuart Davis. It was great to have him for the beginning of this conversation. It's a shame that he had to leave early. I know that he really would have enjoyed being here for the end of the conversation. But I know he's a listener of the show, so I will say, thank you, Stuart. It was really a pleasure to have you on. I know he doesn't use social media, but folks, if you want to hear more of Stuart, you can listen to that introductory episode that we did to Sanctions as War with him in Emmanuel Ness. You can find that on the guerrilla history feed came out a couple months ago at this point. And you should also

check out the book Sanctions as War, which he co-edited with Manning Ness. So that's my readout for Stuart. Also, listeners, this is the pitch for Patreon, so I can pull this from the very end. If you want to support us on patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history, it helps keep the show running and you get some bonus stuff. One of the bonus things is my wife and I, who at the time was just my girlfriend, she is a Russian linguist herself. And we interviewed the mother of Soviet and Russian linguistics and second language teaching about her life. It was like basically an oral autobiography with

Svetlana Gregorovna Tair Manasiva. And that episode is on our Patreon. It'll eventually be coming out as a from the archives. We just didn't want to release it on the general feed because we recorded it like two days before the special operation began. And so it would have been a very, very unfortunate time to release an episode with, you know, an elderly Russian woman who almost certainly would have gotten a lot of abuse online,

you know, oh, you were recording with Russian women. But it was a great conversation. She's a really fascinating lady. So if, you know, Russian linguists is your thing, you can help support the show and get that episode right away by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. As for me, you can follow me on Twitter at Huck, 1995, H-U-C-1-995. And you can follow Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla Underststery. pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A- underscore pod.

And until next time, listeners, solidarity. Thank you.