Rev Left Radio - Guerrilla History: Brazil on Fire - Lula, Bolsonaro, and the Future of Brazil

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Listen to the FULL CONVERSATION over at Guerrilla History, which you can find and subscribe to on your favorite podcast app, OR here: https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/the-rise-of-fascism-bolsonaro-the-brazilian-elections-w-michael-fox-dispatch 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 

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, you know, 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 drug? 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 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 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 Catholic. 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. We're talking back, say, in like the 1970s and 1980s, in large part due to the backlash from the church in Rome to live. 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 those, in the favelas that were left behind when the Catholic Church moved out. And those, they filled a 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, this conflict of interest between evangelicals, many evangelicals and some of these poor communities saying, are we going to vote for our, 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 Bolshado 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 onto the side of voting for kind of the evangelical faith and

religion, the pastor 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-Brizzlyan churches by evangelicals in connection with narco-traffickers. 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've and I and I and I met with folks in fact at the church and again I bring this into the into the podcast but silas Malafaya who's kind of one of this most staunch allies evangelical allies pentacal 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 within the country of Brazil and if you look at the figures I mean it's it 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 the same time as a country that is, you know, Cardival. 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 the 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 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, I think it was, I can't remember which episode, but one of the episodes, Bolsonaro's relationship with both kind of right-wing media in Brazil. So I was thinking about particular like TV would 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 getting to be the first, in Brazil, that's owned by the Igresia Universal or 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'd didn't mention this last time, but 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 clear about, you know, the challenges that lie ahead.

In terms of Bolsonaro and media, yeah, so 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 he and, and yet for the far right, they've been against global for a long time as well, going back to before Bolsonaro's presidency. And 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, he's definitely been, you know, been putting the country's money in, 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 messes that were being pushed and then bought armies of, you know, Bolsonaro paid messages that were being sent out and all of this 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 my, 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 get 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 crack 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 build to do that over WhatsApp. So in a lot of the ways, his people have migrated onto telegram because what's up create 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 Adagi, who is who was like, you know, he was, he was the presidential candidate for the workers party at the time once Lulu was taken out and sent to jail. And now there it's a lot of ways that's going both ways. And there's been all these attacks, you know, videos leak showing Bolsonaro saying things that that seemed like they were, like he was a pedophile, that there was that he was tied to a Masonic lodge. Like there's all these things that that 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 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.

It shouldn't all come down to like the social media war. But so much, that's what so much is playing out right now.