It Could Happen Here - The Brazilian Election Part 3: The Sowers Reap, The World Burns

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

In our final episode on the Brazilian elections we look at the US backed crusade against the PT and talk about the nature of corruption.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It's me, Chris. I'm here with james stout hello hi chris so we have we have an update on on this situation which is that jr bosonaro okay he's still he's still i don't think has publicly announced defeats but he apparently told the supreme court quote it's over so he seems to have committed defeat, which has not stopped a bunch of his followers from calling for a military coup. Yeah, and from these people that still seem to be blocking roads, right? Yeah, it's happening. I don't know.

I. Yeah, it's sort of unclear to me to what extent his followers are going to back down i don't think there's really much chance of a military coup at this point like they seem to have just lost i read something earlier about bolsonaro making plans to like so there's like there's like a like a sash thing you're supposed to hand over to the next president and he was making plans to not be in the country when lula took office he was gonna have his vice president hand it over instead which is like this is like the most whiny baby shit i've ever seen which is like oh god what a what a loser holy fuck like first as tragedy and then as farce and then as farce yeah and continually as farce like that

it's how the right operates right yeah i actually almost had that like i i actually almost started the lula episode with that quote and then i was like well his return i was like that that's that's too mean to say about lula like his return hasn't been farce yet like yeah but bolsonaro is oh boy yeah he's he's gonna go and spend more time with a novel coronavirus that's why he's withdrawing from politics you know i i heard there's a great line in one of the things i was talking about that uh militants in the fog piece from illwell yesterday where they talked about like uh i forget their exact quote it was something like but also it wasn't it's not just that bolsonaro failed the uh like failed to respond to coronavirus it's that he was

a vector for the for coronavirus and i was like yeah this is this is both literally and metaphorically true like several of the outbreaks are just from bolsonaro oh yeah absolutely amazing yeah real real piece of shit um yeah yeah so today we're gonna be talking about the very specific so we spent last episode talking about sort of like the the the enormous army of grave diggers that the pte had sort of built around them and this episode is going to be about like how their grave was actually sort of built around them and this episode is going to be about like how their grave was actually sort of built and then filled in um so i talked about in episode one um there was in 2005 i think i might have actually accidentally said 2006 in the original episode but it's 2005 there's just a giant corruption scandal involving the workers party that like

shakes all of brazil basically the the the short version of it is that a bunch of senior members of the pt were accused of bribing members of the central centro who's like brazil sort of like perennial elite corruption faction to like buy their votes to get bills passed which honestly like i'm okay with this like we're gonna talk about some corruption later that like does suck uh this i think is fine like i'm i am i am okay like i i'm gonna put this on the record uh me christopher wong i am okay with literally just buying the votes of like weird corrupt right-wingers to get them to vote for legislation that's actually good like whatever i don't care about this like this is bullshit like i who cares um but that that said i i okay so this entire episode

like well okay the first like three quarters episode this is this is this episode's like a lot about corruption and before we need to go any further like we need to talk about like what corruption actually is and about the politics of it so okay i want to say this as someone who lives in okay so i i think most of our listeners understand that chicago is notoriously corrupt i didn't grow up in chicago i grew up in chicago's even more corrupt suburbs like i i literally watched a mayor sell physically sell city hall to the highest bidder like he actually literally physically sold city hall like this this is the kind of shit you get out in the suburbs like it is fucking mind-boggling right like that that that that wasn't my town but like I have seen some shit. Right.

And OK, the thing I can say about government corruption is that there are two kinds of people in the world. There are people like Chicagoans who understand that every single politician, no matter every single politician whatsoever, is going to rob you blind because they're all corrupt. And, you know, there's a sort of like a more analytical color area to this, which is that like corruption. Corruption is just a structural tendency of the state, right? It's, it's a product of, of state officials,

like having access to the state's enormous supply of resources. It's a product of the kind of structural incentives that like being in a state produces. And it's a, it's a product of the fact that the state, you know, acquires resources, do violence and,

you know, okay. So there's people who understand this on various levels, right? Like, I mean, there's, and this is genuinely the nice thing about Chicago is like everyone gets it. Like, you don't have to convince people. And then there's a bunch of people like the other category of people, people who genuinely think that like politics is about people debating political principles. And that like if we just make slightly better arguments and like have slightly better land use policies, the politicians who literally spend all day taking bribes from developers or like somehow end homelessness

or something or that like somehow like like like ah corruption is a matter of political principles like no no they're all they're all doing this to you like you guys you gotta understand this yeah it's it's very funny and it's uh, we don't get enough credit for our corruption in San Diego, I feel like, right? Oh, yeah. Enron by the sea, as San Diego is known. But it's very funny to see people being like,

oh, there can't be corruption because identity politics this or because not Donald Trump, rather than like, this is the nature of the state, especially the state under capitalism, especially the state under capitalism especially under capitalism in the united states is that like you don't get fuck all unless you pay for it yeah although okay

i will say this corruption as a policy of the state is essentially trans ideological like the red is communist the brown is fascist and the most bleeding hard red white and blue capitalists all take bribes they all give contracts to their family and they all steal money from the government like you you can tell this by the fact that the u.S. is literal like the U.S. just made it legal to give like they made it legal for a corporation to give money to a candidate in order to have the vote a certain way. This is legal. Nazi Germany corrupt as shit. The U.S. is are famously insanely corrupt. Like this.

This is not this is not actually a product of ideology. It's just it's just a sort of structural like tendency of the state and it doesn't mean like the military dictatorships are corrupt like the fuck like the like the parliamentary democracies are corrupted like this is this is just this is just like how the state works right um and and the like so political corruption genuinely isn't that interesting right like the actual politics of it like it's not that interesting like it's just people just corrupt right what is interesting is anti-corruption politics and we need to get this out of the way immediately it is simultaneously true that like almost no one openly supports corruption like it's it's it's like almost impossible to find anyone who will come out

on the record and say they're pro-corruption like you like you can't do it right and it's also true that like every single one of these people on the across the entire political spectrum is corrupt and you know and the the the you know and no no politician is actually anti-corruption this is this is something that's very very important to understand none of these people are fucking anti-corruption this this is sort of this is one of the lessons of chicago which is that all of the sort of anti-corruption crusaders are like just as corrupt as people they're replacing yeah um this is part of the way like uh i don't want to go like extreme marcusa but like uh the like this idea this false choice right the corruption in and itself creates a means

for another person who is equally corrupt to enter simply by claiming to be anti-corrupt right like and then this we can just kind of continually one up each other and claiming to be different and doing the same shit and and people will embrace this fucking false choice yeah and you know we're going to see this in this story later on i will give you a preview of where this is going so sergio moro who is this judge who's like like brazil's like great anti-corruption crusader uh turns out to have been funding his quote-unquote anti-corruption investigations by sell illegally selling information to the fbi and then getting paid and fine and uh fine money collected by the u.s from successful corruption prosecutions uh he also is uh going to like very blatantly and pretty openly take a job

as the uh as brazil's uh justice minister uh in in exchange for putting bol Bolsonaro's political opponents in prison. Magnificent, okay. Yeah, and, you know, so, okay, the thing that's important about this, right, is that anti-corruption is not a real politics, right? Like, it's not an actual real set of political positions, right? What it is, is a set of politics you con Rubes with. But it turns out it's really, really good at conning rubes because people really fucking hate corruption and and the thing the thing the thing that being like an anti-corruption quote-unquote candidate does is it lets anyone like appear to be this sort of like

populist champion of the people against the corrupt elite and this is really useful to the right and to sort of i mean not just to the right it's really useful to sort of like bourgeois like capitalist politicians in general because there are a lot of times where in order to sort of protect their interests, you know, or protect the interest of like their specific faction of the ruling class, they need to win an election and they need to win the sort of hearts of minds of the people who see that up the politics of anti-corruption it's it's it's it's it's like the the absolute picture perfect neoliberal politics right like rudy giuliani for example um got his start going after the mob in new york and you know and what he did right really so he goes after the mob he's anti-corruption guy and then he replaces them with like even more efficient and extractive neoliberal bureaucratic parasites yeah and it's perfect like yeah in terms of neoliberalism right in terms of completely avoiding a class analysis because you can you can appeal to people who are genuinely

oppressed and marginalized by the system right by saying i'll go against this corrupt system which is oppressing and marginalizing you but also to the bourgeoisie because you can say oh the reason your fucking business is not as successful as it does when it's corruption, so just vote for me and we'll sort that out and you can continue exploiting the workers who I'm also appealing to. Yeah, and you know, like Giuliani

specifically, like, his name is just literally a punchline now, right? It's not even worth talking about him fucking, like, chomping on a cigar doing an ad for a cigar company in the middle of the video. His face melting. Right? Like, but, you know.

He's selling flip-flops now, isn't that his latest thing? Yeah, something like that. But that's the thing. Like, the anti-corruption stuff was really, really good for his career. And, you know, this is the politics. Anti-corruption is the politics that the Brazilian right finally figures out as, the only thing that can stop the workers party juggernaut. Now, like in 2005, the corruption case brings down a whole bunch of sort of like high profile PT party members, but it doesn't touch Lula himself, who is like, he gets his rep, like basically similar to Reagan is just like the

Teflon president where everything just bounces off of him. But you know, the right in 2005 really thinks that they've got him and they're like okay we're going to crush him this next election everything's gonna go back to normal and then you know and it is true that from 2000 compared to 2002 lula does have less support in 2006 he goes from 61 percent of the vote to a whopping 60 percent of the vote so okay so this didn't work right but the right still sees that like this is the only thing they've been able to come up with that like actually damages the pt at all and in 2014 a judge named sergio moro who we've are moro who again we have given you the spoiler this is like this is one of the most corrupt dudes in like the history of brazilian politics but he he goes

after he finds like a different corruption ring to go after that he's not a part of and i think it's important to understand sort of from the outside of this right that like this anti-corruption stuff is essentially like a newer faction or like a slightly different faction of the brazilian ruling class going after another faction of the Brazilian ruling class. So he finds, he starts to think that that becomes known as Lava Jato, or Operation Car Wash. And what Morel's going after is this legitimately, genuinely

enormous corruption ring surrounding PetroBoss, which is Brazil's state-owned oil company. And the investigation leads to the arrests of an enormous number of government officials like there's a but like some of the like richest people in brazil go to jail like and it is true that like like there is an enormous amount of corruption like there are billions and billions of dollars that are being sort of stolen from this oil company right through sort of like

contracts and like payoffs and stuff um but we also get to some real like lepers eating people's faces party shit here as well where okay so 2013 dilla rusev signs a law that massively expands police powers that includes in particular allowing them with no strings attached to offer plea bargains people to get them to confess to stuff amazing and like give the cops information they want to hear which is like genuinely really unethical because i mean for a lot of reasons right like the whole plea bargaining system is like the reason like one of the reasons the whole us justice system is completely fucked up because everyone just fucking pleas out instead of going to trial because they know they know they're like everyone is pretty sure they're going to lose and so people

you know people will just plead the shit they didn't do because they have no chance of winning the case it's completely fucked up and dillman rousseff's like nah yeah fuck it like we're gonna sign this like you know and i like i get that like she was responding to like the protests and i get that she thought it would mostly be used against like fucking protesters or some shit but like who did you think this was gonna be used against yeah yeah yeah wait why like come on like seriously it's like it is simultaneously true that there was like an incredibly coordinated sophisticated like like a joint american brazilian like intelligence and like justice state operation to bring down the pt it's also true that the pt like like the reason they state operation to bring down the PT it's also true

that the PT like like the reason they were able to be kneecapped so like so easily is that like they'd spent the last like six years like firing rounds over and over again into their own knees so like okay these things are both here at the same time but okay and so

Lava Jato like eviscerates an enormous part of sort of the, a section of the Brazilian ruling class, but it very quickly becomes clear that it's being used as a political weapon against Dilma Rousseff and the PT, despite the fact that like literally every Brazilian like party is involved with this. Like I think the PSOL might be like the only major Brazilian political

party who wasn't involved in this. And like, that's because I don't think they had anyone who was senior enough to do it. So like, you know, I, but, but,

but, you know, everyone instead like just is using us to go is like very clearly using us to go after the PG. The problem is that like, and this is, this is going to be a perennial problem with these investigations,

is that they can't actually directly nail Dilma Rousseff or Lula with doing anything. They have real problems with this. You know, Dilma wins re-election in 2014, but in 2015, there are these, as Lava Giotto is, like, going, and there's this enormous fucking press fury around it um there are these massive sort of anti-corruption protests demanding

that like she resigned that's ripped up by like again like the right-wing media goes just completely batshit in this period um and you know okay so again morals running into this problem that he can't find anything that Dylan Rousseff did that was illegal. So he starts relying on political theater instead. He stages this enormous series of raids on Lula's house, his nonprofit, his brother's business. And with the entire press corps there, right like with all the like stage for all these raids they drag him off to like jail for questioning but again like they don't really have

anything they kind of like invent this case about Lula based on some convoluted shit about a property that he didn't own it's like I know the thing here basically is that like as with all corruption scandals right this is a fight between parts of the ruling class, right?

Like the actual details of who's taking money from who are essentially irrelevant, because that's not what actually matters, right? What matters here is that like these sort of right wing prosecutors have decided they're going to destroy the PT. And, you know, the PT has helped them do it at every step. It's not just the prosecutors, right? There's like the there's this like press plus prosecutors it creates plus a bunch of political parties too yeah it's so not to like draw a comparison where it's not necessarily entirely valid but like look at the united kingdom right we have boris johnson like monumentally fucking up the covid response

tons of people die and it's not that that brings him down it's that he had a suitcase of wine in a karaoke party like because at some point but it's the appearance right it's this political theater of accountability like but you're not actually accountable to the people who you let down or the people who you lied to you're accountable to like 17 media editors yeah to rupert murdoch right and brazil has its own versions of Murdoch who are like... Yeah, I can only imagine. People to who, if I said my actual opinions on them, like the FCC would specifically start regulating podcasts

because like, oh boy, all of these people should, I'd redacted parody, et cetera, et cetera. We'll just have like a five minute bleep here while Chris goes off. So, okay. But, but again, so, okay. They have this problem again, which is they can't really get Dilma Rousseff on anything. And so what happens instead is that the Brazilian Senate is sort of like scrambling for something they can use. And what they eventually impeach DeMarissa for is this like accounting procedure thing,

basically, that like everyone does. And when I say everyone does, like almost every previous president, like every single, like, what's it called? Like every single, like, why am I blanking on it? Governor, is that the right word? Yeah, the the people who are like the heads of states yeah i think like all the governors do this like fucking literally everyone in brazilian politics does this including some of the people who are signing like the fucking uh uh uh impeachment thing but they they remove her from this and okay so like a part of the like the the the sort of sort

of like like decrepit and despised neoliberal right takes power and but the normal part thing here is that she is dilma rusev is impeached by her own allies right she is impeached like michael temer the guy who replaces rusev like winds up as president because Dilma Rousseff made him her VP. It's just like this. This is this is dating back to like this. This is like really old sort of PT political maneuvering stuff dating dating back to like Lula finally winning out over the sort of PT base in 2002. Right. Where he's able to convince them to, like, have a sort of, like, conservative guy, like, be his running mate. And here, this is where this finally goes to shit.

The PT is making alliances with sort of, like, center-right parties and all these corruption parties, and it's like, okay, you allied yourself, like, I understand the reason they were doing this was that the sort of central, which is this was that the sort of central which is like the the sort of corruption parties have enough votes that you kind of have to work

with them but also like what did you expect was gonna happen like did you did you really not expect that the leopards were gonna eat your face like i okay it's you know like it's really like okay like you let a mosquito into your house and you are now, like, fucking Pikachu facing because the mosquito bit you. It's like, really? Like, ugh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and this all comes back to sort of, like, the things I've been talking about in the last two episodes about, like, the inherent contradiction of being a leftist and having to run a state where you have to keep the economy going, right? Which, again, it means that you have to make sure that capitalists get money.

And Lula could just pay these people off, like literally or figuratively, because he was benefiting from the commodity boom, right? But then when the Chinese economy goes under, and suddenly the money dries up because the commodity boom's over and the Brazilian economy starts to collapse, like, you know, there's nothing to pay off the bourgeoisie with. And, you know,

Dilma Rousseff's like, she's trying to pay them off, but, you know, inma rousseff's like she's trying to pay them off but you know in order to fund it now now she's doing austerity okay and that's sapping her and that's sapping her base because you know okay you have to choose one or the other but she's not but again but she's also not able to pay off enough of the boys you just stopped some coming and so they off her and you know okay so the the the the pt pt supporters will describe what happens like that this impeachment is a coup which is like true like as far as it goes like it is true that like a bunch of absolute like psychopaths like just like overthrew the democratically

elected president on for bullshit um i actually think it's less of a coup than the next the next thing we're gonna get to um but yeah so okay so the product of this is that michael temer who is it like just a unfathomable neoliberal ghoul like i really like oh god like really one of the worst people ever um who again rusev picked as her vp uh becomes president in 2016 spends the next two years like oh wow so if draco malfoy grew up this is what he would look like yeah no it's it's it's really incredible yeah you you you you do owe it to yourself to go look up this man is yeah very streamlined but otherwise yeah it's remarkable i mean he just like he just looks like like he's one of those people who just looks like exactly who he is

yeah i cannot believe this guy succeeded in politics when he uh looks like an yeah an evil snake yeah i think he also got arrested for being even more like, OK, so like, like there is corruption going on in the PT. Temur is the corruption party, right? Like he actually goes down eventually in level. He is like unfathomably corrupt. Like he goes down for like. He took like. It's a bribe from a meat packer right

yeah that was one of them he funneled like a hundred and eighty million dollars into like his political like into like his friends and his like like unfathomable and this stuff genuinely sucks right like it actually does suck that literally

hundreds of millions of dollars are being just like fucking stolen by these ghouls, right? Yeah, especially in a country where, like, people genuinely struggle to get by every single day. Yeah, and I think it's worth mentioning, like, the level

of poverty that we're talking about here is, like, again, like, people who don't have running water, people who live in deserts and like don't have water at all like it is really really bad and you and then you know you're you're you are watching just this bullshit happening right like this fucking, like, guy who... God. This is like absolute fucking demon

just stealing $150 million, right? Yeah, it's just rich people playing Monopoly with your fucking future and your children's future. Yeah, but again, like, nobody fucking voted for this guy, right? Right. And he just immediately starts implementing unfathomable, just atrocious austerity.

And he has a 7% approval rating. Everyone who's calling for him to resign. Jesus Christ! Yeah, 7%. This is the second lowest approval rating I've ever seen for a ruling politician after Kim Jong-pil, who I think got down to 3%.

One day I'm going to do an a Kim Jong-Pil, who I think got down to 3%. One day I'm going to do an actual Kim Jong-Pil episode. I feel like you're within the error margin of any polling once you get into the single digits. No one likes you. Like literally, like people from his own party

want him to resign, right? And he just doesn't. He just stays in power because no one can do anything about it. Well, you always get that, right? he just doesn't he just stays in power because there's no and no one could do anything about it because well you always get that right when you when you engage in this politics of corruption the the like sort of palace coups and international backstabbing will necessarily happen because like that is how you further your own career and therefore benefit more from the corruption right like yeah again see the clusterfuck that is the

united kingdom yep now do you know who else doesn't benefit from corruption like the rest of us? I don't think we can say that with any degree of certainty, Chris. It's Shell. It's Shell. It's the products and services that support this podcast.

Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. podcast or wherever you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

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wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.. His father in Cuba. Mr. González wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Piece,

the Elian González story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, and we're back. Okay, this I think is as good a time as any to mention that, like, okay, so Lava Jato is going on this entire time, right? This thing is going on for years and years and years and years. is being illegally backed by the american justice department justice department the sec the fbi probably all i think also the cia although weirdly this is okay and this is where things get very strange because this like from the documents that we've seen there is some evidence the cia handed them shit the thing we have the most evidence for is actually the fbi running this coup weird yeah it's very weird what's happening basically is that okay so the way american corruption laws work is that like if any money passes through like

an american bank account the fbi has the authority to go after them and the fbi and the justice department fucking hate the pt and they're they're looking at petro boss and they're going like this is so much fucking money we can get if we go after these people and also we hate them and it's also worth noting okay so uh sergio moro is like he's a harvard guy right he he's a harvard guy he was trained by like a bunch of american police people like he he is like he's like one of these sort of like he's he's a nazi ghoul basically right but like he's like the the law version of a nazi ghoul and so the the entire like and again it's funny like the fbi in theory is not supposed to be like the fbi is supposed to be a domestic agency which does not make them any better by the way but like

they're not supposed to be going after like they're not supposed to be trying to overthrow the president of brazil but you know they are and again like they are they are taking down the black panthers increasing anti-semitism yeah just your normal standard domestic yeah this yeah shooting anarchists shooting like possibly assassinating mlk um yeah yeah that's your normal that's what we expect from them yeah not they're not supposed to be doing the foreign crews that's the cia's job but they're muscling into the CIA's territory here. It's worth mentioning as well that the Obama

administration is heavily involved in this. Right? Shocking. And it turns out that by the time you get to 2016, the Trump administration, 2017, the Trump administration is in power. They love this shit because it's Trump. It's like, wow, damn, who could have guessed? Yeah, that is, wow.

Yeah. It's going gonna come out later um by okay this is the second time that glenn greenwald is just handed like one of the biggest news stories of the decade like literally dropped on his lap and he gets to like write about it is that yeah it comes out that like this stuff is being politically like very obviously politically motivated like sir sir he morrow's like he's openly cutting cutting deals with Bolsonaro to do political persecutions. There's, again, the stuff about how he's being paid by, he's literally getting, like, the task force is being funded by the FBI through these slush funds of fine money collected from Petrobras. Like, it's unbelievably shady shit.

money collected from petro boss like it's unbelievably shady shit um now the entire time this is going on uh Sergio Moro has been like illegally wiretapping Lula's conversations and leaking them to the press to like destroy Lula and De La Rosa politically it's and you know and like like Operation Car Wash like prosecutors are like, going on TV and telling the entire Brazilian public, like, no, Lula's guilty, there's no doubt about it. And then, in 2017, Moro has Lula convicted. Now, Lula appeals this on the grounds that, like, this is incredibly obviously a show trial. Like, but by the, because there's a lot of, you will read a lot of, like, the sort of liberal press in the U.S. like fucking loves this shit. And, like, she doesn't 14, doesn't 15, doesn't 16, doesn't, someone says she doesn't 17. will read a lot of like the sort of liberal press in the u.s like fucking loves this shit and like 2014 2015 2016 2017 but like by 2017 even the sort of american liberal press are is like hey you're running these trials too fast like these don't look like real trials anymore like he's just like

there's there's like it really is like they stop having even the pretense that there's not being show trials they're just like convicting people convicting people convicting people convicting people and like you know in the lula case there's some interesting stuff which is that like okay morrow doesn't have the legal jurisdiction to prosecute lula here like the crimes that were supposedly committed aren't committed in a place where lula where morrow has any jurisdiction at all like it's another state and he just does it anyways because he's just like fuck it like yeah whatever and so it's more of a vibe when

you're also the government yeah and again like this is the thing like people people get really really really hung up about legal technicalities and that as we're about to see in that in in this case right like that shit does not matter right this this is entirely about sort of power

brokering and sort of where the Brazilian elite is in a particular time, who's backing what. Lula puts in a petition, he puts in a writ of habeas corpus that's like, hey, there's stuff in the Constitution that's like, I shouldn't be put in prison until my appeals are done.

And this goes to the Supreme Court. At which point, a fucking brazilian general who apparently be this this apparently was planned by 15 other generals uh who i i i got a guy named uh edward eduardo villas bolas like literally starts threatening the supreme court on twitter and like he like, he starts employing and this tweet is read on Globo, which is like the fucking like, like, like, like biggest news network

in Brazil. They like read out this tweet, like the subtext of which is if you don't put Lula in jail, we are going to do a coup. So they drag Lula off to prison and they put him in solitary for 580 days.

Which is like, yeah. Yeah, they, they, they are And they put him in solitary for 580 days. Holy fuck. Which is like, yeah. Yeah, they are torturing the shit out of him. Jesus, yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, they're just living out their, like, fucking, like, you know,

like, previous generation of coups against Latin America, like, chopping Victor Jara's hands off fantasies. Yeah, and like I said, Lula was arrested by the military dictatorship in the 80s, right? But even the military dictatorship only held him for 30 days and then let him go. Yeah, they got nothing on the neoliberals.

Yeah, and they're trying to put him in prison for, I think, it's originally seven years and then it's extended to 12 years. And there's this whole thing, but he's also not allowed to speak to the press during this time, and the reason this is happening is that if you're in prison, you can't run for president, and in 2018, if Lula is allowed to run

for president, even with all the press shit, he is going to fucking stomp literally anyone in the field. Yeah. And, yeah, so this is going on, but before we talk about the election a little bit and then sort of wind down there's one more thing i want to talk about which is that four days before lula is arrested mariela franco who is a incredibly radical city city councilor in rio de janeiro is assassinated by a death squad um there there's a lot of coverage of like who she was sort of like there's a lot of coverage

of her story about how she's a black lesbian woman who came who like was from an incredibly poor family in the favelas and how she sort of like worked her way out to the politician but like they don't talk about you know people will sort of obliquely mention her human rights work or they'll talk a bit about how she's part of the psol which is leftist party that like okay so i'm still i i spent a lot of looking i'm still kind of hazy about their exact story i think what happened was there was a group of pt of pt like uh politicians who refused to vote for an austerity package the pt was trying to push through and they got kicked out of the party for it and they founded the psol um and you know they'll talk about sort of this stuff what what they won't cover really is what she

was actually doing and and i think this is like this is incredibly important because the thing she was actually doing was a bunch of very radical and unbelievably dangerous anti-police activism um so in 2008 this is again under lula's pt government there was a reorientation of police strategy in the favelas towards this new program called pacifying police units or upps and the idea was that instead of doing constant raids into the favelas and then leaving them they were just going to put them under like constant police occupation yeah and you know like something like 400 000 people at a time are just living under these occupations and in the beginning it's supposed to be tied to like so like there's supposed to

be like an expansion of like social services into the favelas and it's supposed to be like community policing and that just doesn't happen and by 2013 they just like give up the pretense of doing any social work and they they they found this thing called tactical groups of proximity police which very quickly turned into just like fucking death squads but but they're they're both death squads and they're also doing like stop and frisk shit and just like harassing random black people there's just murdering people on the streets um on a scale that is like it's worse than it's been before. Like there were individual police unit. There's an individual police unit that kills 117 people in a year. Like it is, it is fucking horrible.

Right. And this is what I was talking about, about the Brazilian police killing, killing at a rate that's 11 times higher than the American police. Like it is, it is fucking atrocious. Oh yeah. And there are some incredible videos of.

Yeah. Like it's fucked. Yeah. And they're at war with parts of their own population yeah i mean i'd say this like this is this is one of those things about fascism right where like fascism like always kind of has works in this system of alliances between sort of like the police paramilitaries who are sort of tied to the police and organized crime yeah and you know like there is an extent to which there are a bunch of gangs and the police paramilitaries who are tied to the police and organize crime.

There is an extent to which there are a bunch of gangs and the police are fighting them. There's also an extent to which everyone involved is just shaking down all of these fucking unbelievably poor largely black working class people who are just getting fucking robbed every day. It's

horrible. Is that where it might be a bit of a sidebar that we we don't like need to fit in here but um in which case we can just delete it but there's a i know that one of the big brazilian prison gangs is like ostensibly leftist they're like they're called red command right yeah i think. I think, is it? Commandante Vermel? Vermelo? Yeah, yeah. So they used to be, yeah.

So, okay. Red Command used to be like an ML group that was like a sort of like alliance between like regular people in prison and like leftist people who've been put in prison. Commander Vermel. Yeah, and it does a similar thing to like, like regular people in prison and like leftist people who've been put in prison. Command of Mellon. Yeah. And it,

it, it, it does a similar thing to like, like there are parts of the FARC that go like this. There's a lot of, there's a thing that happens when you're dealing with sort of armed groups like this, which is that,

okay. So like a lot of the things that you do to get money as an armed group are things that are also just a good way to get money. So things like kidnapping, things like entering the drug trade. And there's a lot of groups that start out ideological that just cease to be ideological. And the people are just like, well,

we're just in the drug trade now. And this is kind of what happens here with these people, but okay. There's actually, this actually does tie into this because so Mariella Franco like spends her entire life, like fighting these people. She, she,

she gets, she gets a sociology degree and like what she's doing in like while she's doing sociology stuff is she's like making reports and like like telling everyone like what these people are doing like what what the fucking police are doing and when she dies like there's a fucking judge who's like uh actually uh i what what happened was that uh uh she was uh she was she was working with red command and uh she got behind her debt payments and they killed her and it's like this is some fucking bullshit like right it like she so we think is we actually still don't really know much about like who killed her right we know

that uh one of the one of the people who's being tried for it the getaway driver was like pictured with bolsonaro he's there's a bunch of weird ties to Bolsonaro's brother because Bolsonaro is very very heavily tied into a bunch of armed paramilitary groups it works well for everyone to have these groups that they can paint as the great Satan right? the police can be like we're combating the gangs the gangs can be like well you all hate the fucking police right?

and then yeah they can just blame anyone else whenever there is and it's like this self-supporting structure but every once in a while you get someone and like maria lafranca like she's a very very rare kind of person she's like she winds up as a city councilor right she's a she's a very very rare kind of politician who like everyone likes like an internet like everyone on the left likes like you're even you're sort of like like most hardcore, like, fucking guy in, like, your most, like, hardcore guy in, like, a tiny ML sect and, like, your most hardline anarchist.

Like, everyone likes her because she's doing, like, she's every day putting her life in danger trying to stop the police. Yeah. And, you know, and when you get someone like that who is not part of the sort of, like, is not part of either of these factions, right? And who was a genuine threat to both of them because she is unbelievably popular. She gets the fifth most votes of anyone like who's running for city councilor. And she's doing it again, running for the PSOL, who's like, they have like five seats, I think,

in the Senate or something like that. Like they're not like, they're not, like they are a kind of large party, but they're not like one of the parties that's ever going to like win a national election right like and but you know but she she is an incredible threat to them and so they have her killed uh we know that the bullets that were that that i uh she was killed by were part of a batch that was sold by the police we know that from from another one of the batches that was in that sequence uh there's a bunch of other people

who were killed by the police. And this is also like. Wait, sold to the police or sold by the police? Sold by the police. Magnificent. Oh, good. Yeah. Yeah.

There's a lot of stuff going on here too, which is like, there are a lot of activists in Brazil who get killed. Like this happens all the time. There are a lot of indigenous activists who get killed. There are a lot of black activists who get killed. There are just like, if you piss off the wrong person, like you can just just get executed and this assassination is one of the symbols of it because like she was a city council woman right

like she was part of a major political party and they just fucking shot her yeah and no one's been held accountable yeah i it's it's fucking horrible um i i yeah i don't really have i don't have any sort of, like, clever thing to say here. It's just fucking awful. Welcome. I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

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Check out betteroffline.com. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is

still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. right and the thing she was doing like literally in the days leading up it like leading up to her assassination was um so michael temer has this thing called the quote the quote-unquote federal intervention which was apparently like extremely popular in brazil which is like a sign of how fucked up everything is which is that he just like was like fuck it we're gonna hand control of quote-unquote security in rio de janeiro to the army and let them like go to war with the gangs yeah fucked unbelievably fucked and she she is takes an incredibly bold stance against this and is trying is trying to

fight it and then she is mysteriously assassinated yeah it's a bit like uh you know how like you obviously people will say that fascism is like the return of colonialism to domestic policy right colonial colonial methods in in the metro instead instead of in the colonies and like it this is similar here right like what you're seeing is just they're doing a colonialism but just to poor people yeah although i i should mention it a lot of us and that analysis is developed in like like is developed for europe and the brazilian context is not the same thing as that because like brazil was also doing all of this stuff to its own population because again brazil has a mass like like like

brazil's a settler colony that was also a slave state right so all of this violence is just it's the same thing that they've been doing since they got there like yeah i mean and this is something actually lula talks about a lot which is like the people who've been in power for 500 years are still in power but i think it's important to understand like part of how bolsonaro is able to do what he does is that everyone is already like everyone is already so primed to just like back the fucking army coming in and like right like there's so much racism there's so much just like like there there's this whole sort of law and order shit thing that's going on and the sort of product of all of this is in the 2018 election the pt put in basically some i mean he's not some random guy like he he was like like he was like a kind of prominent politician but they basically run like some guy

and he gets clobbered with bolsonaro and part of this is there's a lot of stuff that happens here that's like very similar to sort of u.s disinformation campaigns like there's all these like telegram groups going around we're like yeah his name is fernando haddad there's this whole thing about how he's gonna like turn your kids gay and like he's a satanist um yeah so and then yeah the thing is interesting right because i think people um there's this analysis like we have to see everything through the lens of american politics like the bolsonaro is the uh america the brazilian trump but like it's and my knowledge of this is not deep but like it strikes me that he embraces catholicism to a degree

that is like much greater than uh like trump did religion i mean it's interesting so like the latin american context has you know it has this like thing i think you i think you know about which is like it's there there's this sort of right-wing catholic evangelical alliance yeah that is happening here and you know because like a whole bunch of of of bolsonaro's base is a shit ton of evangelicals but he he's like there's this sort of shared language around specifically like around anti-abortion stuff around opposing gender ideology and like feminism and stuff like that where it's like yeah you can you can do this sort of dog like not even dog wasn't you can just sort of like whistle at them and you know and like it works and this is sort of like you

know i and like okay like i if if i had any energy left in me i would probably do another episode that was like like two three i could do like a fucking year of episodes about everything that happened to their bolsonaro um yeah i'm just gonna sort of hit some of the like low lights i don't know what you call it like bolsonaro okay but bolsonaro managed to kill less people than trump did but and also than biden did but comma he also killed a fucking unfathomable number of people with covid like he refused to buy vaccines he like was like really into the uh classic coraclean stuff like contractual stuff like he he like personally spread covid to a bunch of people like there's uh like one of i

think one of the most famous things that people know about the sort of Bolsonaro regime is that the Amazon was fucking burnt because a huge part of his base are these basically illegal loggers and Bolsonaro was just like yeah fuck it go destroy all

this indigenous land fucking kill the people on it and they have been just like annihilating the Amazon didn't he also and i may again be completely off base on this didn't he break down a lot of the like from funai is the brazilian national organization that among other things does some sometimes problematic but protection of indigenous peoples didn't he like a dismantle all of the structure of that and try and defund it yeah and it's like trump right like it'll take years to undo this bullshit wait it might never be i'm

not looking at that we're running out of fucking time right like we don't have yeah well and this is one of the things we're like we have to hope lula actually fucking holds up to his word here because like okay so the pt the pt's record on deforestation is way, way enormously better than Bolsonaro. But it's also true that a lot of the sort of legal framework that Bolsonaro's been using to push this stuff, like, is stuff from the PT. And, you know, Lula has pledged to stop deforestation. Like, I hope he does or fucking everyone is going to die. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's, you know, that was like that i've talked about that was bad

before got enormously worse under bolton or the police violence got worse the military violence got worse um there's just like he's able to sort of like do this like enormous anti-communist fervor um but the problem is that he kills like he kills too many people it's not so much that he's killing his own voter base, I mean he is but like, the thing is like he really just destroys the entire Brazilian economy like he just nukes it and

this costs him the support of a bunch of the ruling class and this is actually the thing that this is like ultimately what defeated Bolsonaro-m like in so far as we could even talk about a big defeat what defeated bolsonaro personally is the fact that like he like he loses it all for the ruling class that when lula appeals like when lula's actual case appeal goes to the supreme court they throw it out and sergey moro like turns on him for

a bit although moro comes back and endorses bolsonaro in the election because he's a piece of shit but like yeah there's he loses a bunch of sort of the support of the ruling class and there's this kind of this is the thing i think is kind of disturbing about this election even the lula one is that lula did this like giant united french strategy right like he pulled together like he was recognized by sort of even to Lula one is that Lula did this like giant United French strategy, right? Like he pulled together, like he was recognized by sort of everyone who opposed Bolsonaro.

It was like, he's the only person who could stop him. But this means that he's drawing a bunch of support from the right. His, his running mate in this election is a guy named Peralta. I mean, yeah, this is a guy that Lula beat by 20 points

in an election or 30 points something like that like this is literally like a right wing guy who Lula fucking destroyed in an election and he had and Lula brings him on as a running mate because he's trying to sort of appeal to like disaffected

like he's running the sort of like Biden suburban strategy right like he's running the sort of like Biden suburban strategy right like he's doing the like appeal to sort of moderate voters thing yeah and like I mean like this is going on to the point where like he's telling people like not to like bring PT flags or like wear PT colors to

rallies because they're trying to downplay the sort of like communism thing and this doesn't really work because like Bolsonaro is just calling him everyone's just calling him a communist anyways yeah right and and he like squeaks by this fucking election right like i mean he probably won by he probably would have won by a couple more percent than the actual vote total show if there hadn't been voter suppression but like it was close and the other thing that's really really bad about this is that i like the right like bolsonaro's party like controls the senate right so and and this is everything right

if bolsonaro's party can cut enough deals and you know like jettison bolsonaro like bolsonaro ism as like as a force is still there right like the this this this sort of like fascist right has consolidated as its own political force and you know there's a non-zero chance that they just impeach lula right and this you we literally watch this entire fucking cycle that has happened again yeah fuck like right like this kind of shit like this could happen um yeah so things are still not great and yeah lula's actual hand to do stuff here is very good i should also mention though like i don't know like there was literally like partying in the streets in like like there were like there were parties in the streets of cities that like he didn't even win like

like this is like he i don't know like the the fact that he won is genuinely very good um i have i don't know what can be done to actually sort of defeat bolsonarism as a structural force because again like he won like 49 of the vote right like yeah that's still there killing like like a yeah tens of thousands of his population and being a general shithead yeah so yeah yeah yeah they're not yeah i don't know like the the like i don't know like the like actual structural things have to change about both the brazilian political system like the brazilian political system the police the military and the economy have to structurally change or we're like we're gonna get in gonna get another bolsonaro like this is what's happening in the u.s right like there hasn't actually been a sort of structural shift in like in the american political system so we're just gonna get another trump maybe it'll be

actual trump who knows like right but like like this is the thing like until until fascism sort of like class base and base in the state is destroyed like and it's sort of ideological base in in sort of like right wing constructions of the family it's religious base like a particular like we're just we're gonna be back here and we're gonna be sort of like continuously teetering between fascism and something that's not fascism but has no way to oppose it and yeah yeah that fucking sucks um yeah but we keep doing it like we keep trying to defeat fascism by running like closer and closer to fascism to pull away like the marginal fascist yeah okay so here's the thing i i one thing one thing i will give to lula is that like okay his way of doing this was that i a bunch

of people found pictures of i bolsadaro and illum doing this was that a bunch of people found pictures of Bolsonaro in a loom. Like with a bunch of, like in Freemason robes with a bunch of Freemasons. And this I think genuinely may have cost Bolsonaro. Like there's an argument this cost Bolsonaro like a bunch of election points with his own base. Because people found this. There was another thing like the day, like a couple days before the election like an old tv clip turned up of bolsonaro just out of nowhere saying quote i would eat an indian yes yes the cannibalism this turned into a cannibalism i mean this is like okay so like this is really about his racism right but he's turning

to a whole cannibalism thing the supreme court ruled like i think incredibly cowardly because he did say this the supreme court ruled that yeah uh he couldn't run ad that lula couldn't run ads calling him a cannibal but you know like there were stuff like this like we're like like suddenly there's like there were like i don't know like this is and i will applaud lula for this like he hasn't really like he could have run an election where he just fucking threw his entire base under the bus and was like insanely racist and was like no i hate queer people and i hate women and like he could have he could have run a camp he could have run a bolsonaro campaign he didn't right and and in insofar as he was tapping into right-wing shit he was tapping into hey this guy's a fucking this guy's in freemason robes like it was sort of

it was sort of funny shit that like it's probably not great that this is where the political sphere is yes it's not like like you know okay bolsonaro literally saying he would eat a human being is like i i would rather that be the kind of insane right-wing thing that's going around than like i don't know queer people are gonna murder your children or something which is like the normal shit that yeah you hear yeah and it's in 2016 it's not like he said it when he was 18 no like six years ago like yeah i think he said it's like a journalist as well right yeah no problem journalist no problem oh god yeah what a fucking terrible guy you can imagine donald trump saying he'd eat someone like he probably has i think i think i think donald trump you'd have to prompt

bolsonaro just unprompted yeah there's no connection here he was just like fuck it no i am so racist i'm just gonna say this oh god i don't know i i i wish i yeah i i wish i wish good luck and good fortune and yeah like victory to everyone in brazil who is fighting yeah seriously i yeah fuck bolsonaro i hope all this i hope he fucking dies of covid finally um yeah and i i hope i hope i really do hope that bolsonaro can be can be defeated um yeah i don't know like make better choices pt please god we can't do this again yeah i hope all the people in brazil who continue to be impacted by this this bullshit can yeah yeah have better meaningful improvements to their lives yeah and this election and i mean i will say like like this is proof that

like bolsonaroism isn't isn't undefeatable right like it like the the fact that he wasn't able to pull off a military coup right like it is beatable it's just it's very very hard and yeah i mean that this is true of fascism everywhere right it's hard to beat but it can be stopped and we are going to because the alternative is the fucking annihilation of the earth so yeah yeah, fuck them. We're going to win. Mm-hmm. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media,

visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources

for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez

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You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions sponsored by Gilead now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. AI to the destruction of Google search. Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida.

And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.