Bolsonaro next president of Brazil.

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

I think it's all part of the backlash against political left wing ideologies and political correctness forced on the majorities by pampered 'elites' who don't have to live with the consequences of their moral rightousness.

In the words of the brilliant Liam Hogan, "political correctness" is a politically correct term for anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-fascism and anti-bigotry.

The so called "elites" being targetted by the backlash are always the marginalised and/or minorities. The poor, the unemployed, the sick. Women, ethnic minorities, gay and trans people.

To be fair, you have to hand it to the right for their deeply Orwellian framing of such and how they've managed to invert reality and trigger an authoritarian, atavistic streak in people all over the globe.

But it's very scary, and Bolsonaro is perhaps the most scary result of all this nonsense.

The first time I heard about the rise of the evangelical movement in Brazil was around 2002. You'd see Brazilian footballers revealing t-shirts under their jersies with stuff written on them like "100% Jesus" - ie. Cafu as he lifted the World Cup in 2002. I read that evangelicism has moved from 6.6% in 1980 to 22% in 2010. So following that trend, you could probably say 25% of Brazilians are now evangelicals.

Evangelical christianity is a harsh, authoritarian, almost 19th century view of the world. We've seen what it's done to the US in terms of enouraging far right politics, and none of it is good. It seems to me that a variation on such a theme is happening in Brazil.

However the interactions between race and politics in Brazil seem far more complex than the US. My understanding is that a majority of black and mixed race people supported Haddad over Bolsonaro, but not by much. However, a clear majority of whites supported Bolsonaro.

By far Haddad's strongest region was the north east, the area which historically had the most slaves, and was also historically neglected compared to the south-east.

Bolsonaro is the candidate of the white, south-eastern middle class and business class. Far from being "anti-establishment" (a term that in my view has become meaningless and vacuous), he is the establishment candidate, ie. your classic insider playing the outsider like Trump, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage etc. There is definitely a significant racial element behind all this.

Brazil is overall a socially conservative country. Bolsonaro has successfully created a narrative where social conservatives are "under attack". That's your standard far right victimhood playbook.

It seems to me that he has used the evangelical movement as a vehicle to cloak the racist elements of his ideology, given that high numbers of blacks and mixed race people are evangelicals. The vilification has been transferred onto even easier targets such as gay and trans people, and particularly the poor.

Brazil has 15 of the world's 30 most dangerous cities. Bolsonaro's "answers" are Duterte-esque.

Then there's the lies and propaganda element and again this is your standard far right information war playbook. Say the most horrible things, portray yourself as an alpha male "strongman", constantly troll people, and it seems there's a market for you wherever you are.

The PT party of Haddad, for which Lula and Dilma Rousseff also stood, has been painted as irredeemably corrupt, and it seems there was definitely a large element of corruption going on in within it. However corruption extended across the political spectrum and the government of Michel Temer which took over when Dilma was impeached was even more corrupt.

So Bolsonaro has painted himself as explicitly anti-corruption. I generally find that candidates who pain themselves as anti-corruption are far worse than those they claim to rail against. They are generally demagogues who have all sorts of abhorrent views. We had one in Ireland ourselves just a short time ago in Gemma O'Doherty. Trump obviously is one too. I've no doubt that Bolsonaro will prove every bit as corrupt and more as anybody who went before him.

The really puzzling thing about all this is that polls consistently showed Lula would have won the election comfortably had he been allowed stand. I guess that's the charisma/name recognition which Haddad did not have.

What has definitely been proved once and for all with this election is that capitalists and business interests prefer authoritarianism and dictatorship to even mild social democracy. That seems to the be the case in Brazil's media. See also the Wall Street Journal editorial supporting Bolsonaro and the gleeful reaction of the US right to the result.

I fear things are going to get a lot worse for Brazil and the world before they get better.

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

You can see the problem right there. Hill16Bhoy is throwing the old buzz words of the Americanised left (racism, evangelicalism etc etc) at a fairly complex society rather than ask why B got so many votes to begin with from all stratum of society.

From a poster whose entire worldview appears to consist of deliberately simplistic Orwellian buzzwords and buzzphrases used by the US right, which are used exclusively to troll and shut down debate, the irony is very strong with this one.

There really does seem to be no end to the right-wing blizzard of bull**** either online or in the traditional media. I mean on this very thread there's a poster whose user name, from looking at their posting history, appears be a very un-ironic reference to the Nazis.

Bolsonaro's propaganda wars and large scale use of fake "stories" being perhaps the worst offender yet.

At the risk of link dumping, this is the sort of thing Bolsonaro has unleashed on Brazil. But I suppose, on the plus side, at least he's "upsetting the cosy PC liberal do gooder consensus" or whatever vacuous troll soundbyte you're having yourself.

It's really amazing how the anti-immigrant "white genocide" theorists seem to fall totally silent when indigenous communities in the Americas, Australia or wherever are the ones being persecuted and/or discriminated against.

https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1056902877413806080

It seems the BBC is willing to take the concept of false balance to extraordinary levels.

A couple of weeks of ago it was climate change denial on Newsnight, now this.

Fascism, "refreshing" the parts others can't reach. FFS.

Still "marketplace of ideas", or something something.

Disgraceful.