QAA Podcast - Premium Episode 197: Bolsonarismo, Conspiracy Theories & the Jan 8th Riots feat Ben Fogel (Sample)

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

On January 8th, in the city of Brazilia, supporters of Brazil’s ex-President Jair Bolsonaro stormed multiple government buildings. The Bolsonarista movement, as it’s known, had grown convinced that their idol’s 2022 presidential election loss was fraudulent. We explore what happened that day, the movement that spawned it, and the Brazilian new right — ascendant, extremely online, and with their own reactionary conspiracy theories. We also have a segment on how the American right is reacting to the events. Our guest is Ben Fogel, a contributing editor for Jacobin who is currently working on a phd in Brazilian anti corruption politics at NYU. Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like 'Manclan' and 'Trickle Down': http://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous Ben Fogel: https://twitter.com/BenjaminFogel Music by Pontus Berghe, Christiane Needs FX, CE. Editing by Corey Klotz. New Merch / Join the Discord Community / Find the Lost Episodes / Etc: http://qanonanonymous.com

What's up QAA listeners? The fun games have begun. I found a way to connect to the internet. I'm sorry, boy. Welcome listener to Premium Chapter 197 of the Q&ONANANANANANANAS podcast, the Bolsonorista Insurrection episode. As always, we are your host, Jake Rogatansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View. On January 8th, in the city of Brasilia, supporters of Brazil's ex-president Jair Bolsonaroo stormed multiple government buildings and basically trash the places.

The Bolsonaroista movement, as it's known, had grown convinced that Bolsonaro's 22 presidential election loss was fraudulent. Luisina Sjulaula da Silva, the winner of the election, had long been the ire of a growing coalition of far-right interests. Now, obviously, the history of the biggest country in South America is a complex one that includes far-right coups in military, So the context is a little bit different than we might use to examine something like January 6th in the United States. But Brazil also has an ascendant and extremely online new right festering in its vast ecosystem of social media influencers who have a history of leveraging their platforms to become politicians. To dig into all of this, we'll be speaking to Ben Fogel, a contributing editor for Jacobin, who is currently working on a PhD in Brazilian anti-corruption politics at NYU. He's going to fill us in on Bolsonaroismo as a movement, provide historical context for the election, and help us explore what happened on January 8th in the Capitol.

We'll also be touching on conspiracy theories spawned by the Bolson-Arista movement, much like the MAGA movement spawns stuff like Pizagate and QAnon. But before we dive into that interview, Travis has prepared a short segment about how the American Right is reacting to January 8th. So let's jump right in. The American Far Rights reaction to January 8th. So as the attacks unfolded on January 8th, American far right figures, they went right to work, jumping in to defend, justify, downplaying the violence. And these sorts of reactions were documented by media matters and others. You know, there have long been close ties between the Brazilian right and the American far right, with some of the latter even echoing false claims about Brazil's 2022 election.

For example, Steve Bannon claimed in post that people storming the buildings were freedom fighters and that Lula stole the election. Joe Hofft of the Gateway Pundit wrote, quote, the people in Brazil know that their recent election was stolen just like the two recent elections in the U.S. In a series of posts, Ali Alexander, who was partially responsible for the Stop the Steel movement, expressed his support for the Bolsonaro supporters,

writing that, quote, the National Supreme Court in Brazil is illegitimate and the most corrupt part of the country, do whatever is necessary. And over on Gab, the founder of that website, Andrew Torba, called those who stormed the building's great patriots of Brazil. QAnon influencers, who have previously expressed support for military coups and Russia's invasion of Ukraine,

praised the storming as, quote, a proper civilian coup against tyranny by those not standing for the rigged election and as proof that, quote, people around the world now know for a fact that elections are rigged and our politicians are selected. On Info Wars, Alex Jones accused the State Department and Brazil's new government of staging the attack to, quote, demonize the opposition as lawless. Jones claimed that the same thing happened with the January 6 attacks in the United States. They could have seized the media.

They could have seized the control of the infrastructure. They could have blocked the main roads, but they didn't. Instead, they stood down and provocateurs, once the communist government is well into power for seven days, let them completely take over, the capital and the president's facility, so they can then demonize the. the opposition as lawless. You're about to see a rerun of the whole January 6th program because the same people that ran January 6 are the ones that run the U.N. and just ran the operation we saw. You know, it was recently revealed in the text messages published by Huffington Post

that Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones are actually in close communication. Tucker Carlson, for his part, dismissed accusations that Steve Bannon or Trump had any role in the events in Brazil, but he also insinuated that it would be fine if they did have a role. You may actually have seen some of that video in the United States over the last couple of days, and you saw it because it has political uses. What's happened in Brazil is being likened to January 6th, and of course, populist leaders in this country are being blamed for it. Oh, it was Trump and Steve Bannon who did it. That's not true, but even if it were true, it would be just the tail end of the story. It would be the result of something that happened

before. So the obvious question is why are protesters in Brazil so angry? The way he structures his sentences is so fucking annoying. It's not true, but even if it were. What would that mean? As we see, time moves chronologically forward. Yesterday came before today. But the real question is, why are Brazilians so angry? Why are they doing these big steaming dumps? Why are they in the palace. Why are they gouging the eyes out of presidential portraits? Why are they beating horses to death? Why did they beat two horses to death? The real question is, the real question is, what did these two horses do to these patriots? Were they woke horses? Were they trying to change your gender? I'll be back after the break with more information. We are joined by Ben Fogel, a contributing

editor for Jacobin, who is currently working on a PhD in Brazilian anti-corruption politics at NYU. Welcome to the show, Ben. Thanks for having me. So for listeners, you know, who may not be familiar, you know, Brazil is a country that we haven't covered that much and in depth because it is just such a complex beast. But could you try to outline the nature of the Jair Bolsonaro presidency and just kind of what happened during this last election? That's a pretty crazy story that goes back, at least to 2013. In essence, through a anti-corruption investigation that was highly meditized and then later turned out to be corrupt itself in terms of fabricating evidence, complicity between

prosecutors and judges, and also a congressional coup against the Workers' Party government of Juma Husef in 2016, Brazil's political class managed to entirely discredit themselves. So what did that mean? It meant during a time of recession, a time in which every day there was a new headline about corruption and the Workers' Party, a sort of deep process of alienation and radicalization of the Brazilian moderate right-wing voters or center-right voters. In a country which has never really had a strong democratic tradition, began increasingly to reject democracy, to take on a radicalized politics, of the extreme right and looked for sort of figure outside of the mess of corruption

and a former army captain who had been kicked out of the armed forces for a failed terrorist attack called Jaya Bolsonaro, who had been a congressman, a sort of professional politician for 28 years, and mostly his base was in Rio de Janeiro, which has the largest concentration in terms of the Brazilian armed forces. So a lot of military voters are there, and there are a lot of police voters, and that's really was his base. He used to particularly look after their pension interest.

He was also noted for his consistent attacks on democracy, support for the Brazilian dictatorship, and frequent remarks about your tooth. Other lines like, you're too ugly to rape, or if only we had killed 30,000 more people during the dictatorship, everything would be okay. Anyway, so he became during these sort of anti-corruption, protests of 2016, 2015, to the 28 elections, the new leader of the Brazilian rights.

So, in other words, as the traditional party of the Brazilian sort of center-right voter was the Social Democratic Party, all Brazilian parties have misleading names. So that's another story altogether. So those voters and other voters for center-right parties radicalized and in rejection of the corrupted political class, which not only included the left, but it also included the center right opted for Bolsonaro as the guy who was outside the system, who'd come in and clean it up, who would deal with all the problems caused by the corrupt left, the gays, the people who don't know their place, restore hierarchies and order to Brazil, and that brings

to 2018. Now, 2018 was a rather crazy election, and in fact, the current president of Brazil, Lula de Silva, was leading all the polls. Now, Lula had been president twice, had left office is one of the most successful democratic leaders anywhere, with an approval rating of 84%, which is pretty much unheard of, having taken a lot of people out of poverty, introduced Brazil's sort of an international player, and generally seen as a statesman of a rising power. So he had been convicted of corruption for, I don't want to go into details, too much, but basically these charges are now thrown out. There were evidence of complicity between the prosecutor and the judge who heard

this case. The evidence was extremely weak. It was basically, you can say, a stitch up. Right. But on appeal, he was hoping to run as president. Now, what happened was leading all the polls, and then Sergio Morrow, the judge

in question, sent him to prison. And then his candidacy was disbarred. You have been listening to a sample of a premium episode of QAnon Anonymous. We don't run any advertising on the show, and we'd like to keep it that way. For five bucks a month, you'll get access to this episode, a new one each week, and our entire library of premium episodes. So head on over to patreon.com

slash QAnonanonymous and subscribe. Thank you. Thanks. I love you. Jake loves you. Thank you.