The Brazilian Politics Thread

I'm not exactly fond of Lula fraternizing with Chavez and Maduro and I can understand why people would find that troubling. Diplomatic relations are one thing, Lula making a video supporting Maduro's candidacy is another. However, you also have to look at both the sociopolitical and historical context of the country and what the Worker's Party actually did when you consider the validity of the "THEY'RE GOING TO TURN US INTO VENEZUELA!!!" scaremongering.

There was no actual authoritarianism when the Worker's Party was in charge, which was a period that lasted over a decade. Many of their members were indicted for corruption, the press has had a field day criticizing them for years, Lula was sent to jail and Dilma was impeached. Not exactly the signs of absolute power there.

I don't mind people criticizing them for corruption or poorly implemented policies, but many people seem to forget that corruption is not unique to PT either, it's part of a larger problem and voting them out was never going to make it go away. If I'm being perfectly honest, many of the criticisms I heard growing upfrom people about PT and Lula (including from my parents) are mostly just trite platitudes about "giving people fish instead of teaching them how to fish" and so on, and people hating Lula for his gruffness and coming from a working class background. Even just a few months ago my mother was prattling on about how little bolsa familia was, which is just ignorant as to how helpful even that small amount of money can be for families that have nothing. How exactly are people supposed to work hard and move up if they're starving? That's not how it works. Are the european countries with robust social welfare programs communist now too? Give me a break.

But at any rate, if Lula or anyone else in his party wanted to turn the country into Venezuela, they did a real shitty job of it. In fact, why wouldn't they have done so earlier back when our democracy was even younger and Lula was far more popular? How would Haddad have become a communist dictator (assuming he even wanted to, which he didn't) when he wouldn't have had the support of the army, the press, or the financial elites?

That's what people don't understand. There are larger sociopolitical and economic structures in this country far more powerful than any one person, and they favor oligarchy and conservatism. They favor people like Bolsonaro, and not people like Haddad. People seem to have ignored the fact that we've already had two distinct authoritarian right-wing governments under the pretense of "stopping the communist threat", one of them based on a completely manufactured "communist plan".

Edited by Draghinazzo on Nov 2nd 2018 at 9:19:21 AM

I imagined things like the Worker's Party strengthening of ties with Argentina, Germany and Italy would speak for themselves. I don't disagree there was some actual mismanagement (and like Drag, I'm not too fond of the token gestures towards dictatorships), but the implication that the Worker's Party wanted to be buddies with all the Communist dictatorships forever would require some sort of actual, legitimate step towards that goal like a straining of ties with democratic countries (which never happened) or any internal policies that would indicate affinity towards that kind of government.

Steps like, say, Bolsonaro deciding to change the Brazilian embassy to Jerusalém almost solely to follow in the footsteps of his sugar daddy Donald Trump, for example. That's a much more bold diplomatic concession to a foreign country of problematic political wavelength of the President than anything Lula really ever did.

Hear, hear.

Edited by Gaon on Nov 2nd 2018 at 6:14:41 AM

I'm also 100% expecting a strengthening of ties with Russia and Bolsonaro gassing up Putin, just like Donald. In fact I'm surprised old Vlad himself hasn't said anything yet.

EDIT: Oh wait, it turns out he did but it was a pretty generic statement.

Also, I have to say I feel really bad for Haddad. I really feel like he would have had a much better shot if only his name wasn't associated with PT.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Nov 2nd 2018 at 9:24:03 AM

Again, I wasn't referring to capitalism vs. socialism.

Oh, I didn't mean that the PT was going to turn Brazil into a dictatorship if Haddad had won (given the last two years that'd be, at the very least, very difficult), but it's been implied throughout these threads that the PT has been a neutral party when it comes to authoritarianism in South America and especially Venezuela and, as you may imagine, I don't like that.

It might also be worth pointing out that Haddad made the point to break from that stance; he said that he didn't consider Venezuela a democracy.

My point operates the same if you stick to just broad Authoritarianism, but I see what you're saying and as I said, I don't wholly disagree that the Worker's Party fucked up in some aspects when it comes to foreign relations. As I said, I'm not a huge fan either of those token gestures towards dictatorships. You just have to understand that 98% of the time people bring up The Worker's Party relationship with foreign authoritarian communist countries it tends to be a code for "but what about that worker's party plan to do the RED COUP of our glorious country?", so I naturally assumed you were addressing the situation from that angle. One of the few people in this forum I've consistently seen not doing that is fellow thread regular Angelus Nox.

It's like when people bring up the Bombing of Dresden in discussions about war crimes. It's possible that person is just talking about the loss of life in Dresden (a reasonable point to argue), but it's more often than not a smokescreen to whitewash Nazis so the confusion happens often.

Uh, PT was not neutral on that, they were supporting of that. The party's website up until the the nearing of the second round of the elections had a letter dedicated to show full support to Maduro's regime. They then tried to hide that letter, but if I'm not mistaken, they still didn't delete it.

As an extra note, as the second round neared, they also made a move to visually disassociate themselves from Lula, but at that point Haddad's reputation was already stained, with him being considered Lula's puppet by oppositors (It doesn't help that they chose Haddad solely because they couldn't put Lula to run, as he's a sentenced criminal now). The party took a big hit as well, as Lula is viewed by many as the party's de facto leader.

Edited by ZeroDozer on Nov 2nd 2018 at 11:59:08 AM

Haddad's campaign was terrible, of that there was no doubt. I'm not sure that he could have pulled off the balancing act of distancing himself from Lula and the party's reputation while also not alienating PT's base, but tying himself to Lula means he got stuck with Lula's baggage and that was a huge problem.

It was a kind of Catch-22 scenario where Haddad both needed Lula's base and also needed to distance himself from Lula but couldn't succeed without somehow doing both simultaneously. It was a hard to win scenario from the get-go, considering Bolsonaro's weapons-grade use of Fake News, the general weariness of PT, sheer burning hatred in the country's hearts, eternal bothsideism and apathy everwhere and stuff like Ciro (the most popular non-PT left candidate) bailing on everyone and deciding to sit atop his high horse proudly watching the country ruin itself so he can maintain his foolish pride.

Actually, no politician wanted to take a side on the second turn, a first since the country got a Constitution. Alckmin, Ciro, Amoedo, none of them wanted anything with Bolsonaro or Haddad. This alone says an enormous lot.

Also, it's a bit naïve to say that Bolsonaro rode his campaign on Fake News. You also forget to take into account that supporters from both sides were very willing to throw misinformation of their own free will.

While there may have been a lot of scaremongering on Haddad, the opposite was true as well. The whole elections this year were a war between Scare Campaigns, with the very Brazilians helping fuel the fire.

Edited by ZeroDozer on Nov 2nd 2018 at 12:34:21 PM

I don't know if it says more how spineless or how stupid all those men are, but I agree it definitely says a lot of something.

Whatever you say.

For that matter, it wasn't even a matter of his campaign itself. The man itself ran on false information, like his recurring claims about the gay kit or the very concept of the communist coup the PT was seemingly about to deliver to a extent the PT campaign never even vaguely attempted to reach.

Edited by Gaon on Nov 2nd 2018 at 7:39:09 AM

Neither for Amoedo, spineless for Alckmin, stupid for Ciro. My chips on this.

Which is funny. Ciro is said to love acting like a colonel, yet he didn't support Bolsonaro.

I heard stories that he actually believed the gay kit stuff. And then he puts on a law project that intends to raise punishment for hate crimes... I wonder how the bigots who voted him to validate their own hate are feeling now.

Edited by ZeroDozer on Nov 2nd 2018 at 12:41:25 PM

Spineless for everyone (particularly Amôedo) except for Ciro, who was just stupid and proudful in the worst possible moment, would be my take on it.

The entire "myth" of Bolsonaro was built entirely on a house of lies that were pretty transparent if you had any good sense. He capitalized on our increasingly banal concept of politics and the infantilization of the electorate.

By the way, Bolsonaro hosted an event earlier today where he basically refused anyone who didn't already agree with him. Right out of Donald's playbook.

It's funny too because Donald has gone on record saying he thinks Brazil is unfair and taxes US products way too highly. Can't say that bodes well for our national industries.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Nov 2nd 2018 at 11:01:57 AM

Regarding deprogramming Bolsonaro supporters, one thing that's been noticed with other fascists making serious inroads in democracies is that they often don't have particularly large bases, but those bases have unusually high turnout and are often disproportionately favoured by a flawed electoral system (with examples ranging from straight-up gerrymandering and voter suppression to stuff like urban flight causing depopulated rural constituencies to punch way above their weight). Might be worth checking whether some of that is true of this election, because boosting turnout is often an easier and less risky strategy than reaching out to people who've made it clear that they do not like you, respect you, or share your values.

There's another issue related to that that needs to be addressed first in Brazil: blank voters. For some time now, people in Brazil have gotten into their heads that voting blank exempts you from the responsibility if you don't want to vote for any of the candidates, and that has resultedin a serious percentage of people basically voting for "whoever" out of apathy. A large enough group this time around, if I'm not mistaken, that the election could have had a different outcome if not for that.

As for Bolsonaro's voter base, I said it before the election and I maintain it: the numbers were changing, and they were changing very quickly. It might be that Bolsonaro's true loyal voters are only a small part of his voter base, and others just didn't turn coat quick enough.

I have some musings on how he got this far, but it's too early in the morning for me to write that long of a post.

Lastly, about our election system, I've never really heard of problems like those, but I might just not have paid enough attention. I do remember some bits from other elections, like one guy who tricked native indians into coming to vote for him then screwed them over as well as the "plane accident" back in the 2014 presidential elections, but outside of those, I don't think that kind of manipulation has been too prevalent in our elections as far as my memory goes. I could be very wrong there, mind.

"I'm not going to ask a member of a minority to be nice to a bigot.

" Problem is, not all bigots are uber jerkass who want to stamp you in your face, and hell even minorities can be bigots even against your best interest(the ever presence case of the latin nazis....damn), eventually you have to play nice to one extent of the other.

"- The police aren't your friends, they're not going to automatically agree with your opinion that you're a "good citizen"; problem is that when you are protected enough to the police to be polite to you then YOU ARE a "good citizen" is just that, people belive they are doing good when the system dosent try to screw that openly.

" A big part of the reason why I immediately recognized Bolsonaro's threat was because I saw him as our unique version of a far-right wave terrorizing the world right now"

Hell im from venezuela, a clear example of everything wrong with the left(I mean the only good thing is we havent turn genocidal)and damn I feel a deja vu when I saw guys like trump and bolsonero.

"the entire theory on the horseshoe effect is flawed to begin with when used on real-world politics."

No really, I mean for all the fear they have to turn into a socialist cesspole like my country, you probably going to end the same way to a right authoritarian.

Hang in there Brazil

If we do not hang in there, we might as well end up being hanged there under Bolsonaro's orders.

Importing some discussion from the US Pol thread, based off Draghinazzo's post there:

I think I've got a good feeling of how fucked up/dangerously analogous to the US Right Wing the Brazilian right are becoming but what about the status of the Brazilian left?

I think our main problem right now is that a lot of the population has lost faith in the left's ability to have an efficient, cleanly-ran government, both because of right-wing propaganda and the legitimate corruption and poor decisions of the Worker's Party. The Worker's Party did a lot for public funding and fighting economic inequality in the country, but the high-profile corruption scandals in Lula's government and the poor economy under Dilma made it very easy for the media and the right to paint them as the ultimate evil holding back the country from growing, and that's exactly what Bolsonaro capitalized on to win.

Right now, we have no real power. While the number of people who voted for Haddad is fairly significant (Bolsonaro won with only a %5 margin, which is a lot but not the landslide I was expecting) and PT is technically the largest part in Congress, Bolsonaro's party is the second-largest and the other parties will definitely prefer to side with it instead as part of their power plays.

What I would say we need is a new leftist party that people will more easily trust, but we don't have a good alternative at the moment. PDT, the centre-left party and the main one that would have a chance to grow and become that alternative, is really proving to be a disappointment. Their main man, Ciro Gomes, who was a candidate in this election, has turned out to be an asshole, downplaying the danger of Bolsonaro's government and saying that brazilians are "tolerant" of minority which is a huge crock. There were warning signs beforehand, but with all that, I really lost all respect I had for the man.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Nov 14th 2018 at 11:05:26 AM

Strictly speaking, Brazil kind of lacks a proper Left Wing. That used to be PT, and mostly everyone in the Left rallied under them at one point, but PT steadily moved itself away from that, currently being at best Center-Left. But the Left in the country is still synonimous with PT, which has severely weakened and/or split them apart.

Some groups have tried to take that role, of course, but in my opinion I don't think that's doable right now. Not just for what Draghinazzo said, but because our politics are very fossilized right now. The currently existing parties don't want to risk the possibility of sharing power, so any possible competition gets removed or made insignificant somewhat quickly, and any old parties trying to take that spot eventually either get turned into "PT-like" in people's heads or outright fail to take it. See Draghinazzo's example about Ciro up there.

Of course, the Left might get it's lucky break now and be able to gather strength again by uniting against Bolsonaro, but thus far, they've been either powerless or outright incompetent.

Funny, I think the Left is much more than the PT and Brazil has almost never had a Right-wing party after the end of the Military Regime. Since the Regime ended, one could say people has been under the command of the Left for over thirty years.

It's also easy as hell to list the most known Left-wing parties here. PSDB is considered a Left-wing party for all purposes and intents. PSTU had the slogan "Against the burgueoise, vote 16". PSOL is currently the second most known Left-wing party and they tried to get to power with Manuela D'Ávila much in the same way PMDB did with Michel Temer.

Among the Right-wing, there was the PRONA, for which Enéas Carneiro got known. It was quite the nationalist party if Enéas' own beliefs were of any sign, with their political ad always using Beethoven as background music and their candidates exposing booming voices.

It's easy to understand why other parties would flock to Bolsonaro. It's not just power play; I'd say it's not a stretch to think that they are being smart enough by wanting no association with a party whose biggest members got known for chieftaining the biggest corruption scheme in Brazilian history, among other real bad moves like Gleisi Hoffman asking for ISIS to hit Brazil on Al Jazeera (God, I saw that video, and GOD. Common sense flew out the window on that one.).

For that matter, PT ran itself into the ground, and Bolsonaro's victory means that it may be basically over for this particular party. Now, for the other Left-wing parties like PSOL? Nah. Bolsonaro winning doesn't mean an extinction of the Left in any form.

Edited by ZeroDozer on Nov 15th 2018 at 2:01:36 PM

The "Left" in Brazil is a lot of posturing, but very little actual actions of a proper Left Wing group. They're powerless to do any of the changes they claim they want and are mostly corporation-aligned. The Right, meanwhile, has been prevalent. PMDB, Bolsonaro's party, and other similar parties have been there from the start. I don't know where you haven't seen the Right in this country. Most of our currently on-office politicians are Right Wing, at least on the biggest city centers.

Also, I think you're exaggerating a bit there. PT isn't anywhere near done, nor is any party in Brazil. And most other parties aren't flocking to Bolsonaro, they're just playing the political game to avoid drawing ire from the guy.

Also, yeah, Gleisi Hoffman was a nutjob, but I'll have you remember our "Left" Wing also mocked her for it.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Nov 15th 2018 at 4:39:16 PM

Kind of hard to say that when the country had nothing but right-wing presidents (FHC, Collor, Sarney, etc) until Lula.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Nov 15th 2018 at 12:39:51 PM