Who the feck thought it was a smart idea to stab this prick.
Brazilian Elections
- Thread starter Arruda
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My God, just read up on Bolsonaro, he's like Trump's evil brother. He wants to open up preserved parts of the rain forest for mining, pave the amazon and ban Greenpeace.
He's like some sort of Disney villain. What the feck is wrong with the world.
He's like some sort of Disney villain. What the feck is wrong with the world.
What's the deal with Haddad, what's his background? It's an Arabic name, my wife has a cousin in Brazil with the same surname.
According to wiki, son of Lebanese christian migrants.
Thanks. Just checked my cousin-in-law's Facebook and saw he's a massive Bolsonaro fan. Likewise my wife's Iraqi relatives in the US are all massive Trump fans.
Many lebanese migrated to brazil during the late 19th and early 20th century. There have to be many brazilians with lebanese and syrian decent. Same is true to some extend for countries like Argentina or Colombia. For reasons I don't know Latin America was the #1 destination for many during this time. e.g. Carlos Menem, the former argentinian president, is of syrian decent. Michel Temer (the guy that replaced Dilma) would be another. One or two ecuadorian presidents, whose name I forgot. Carlos Slim, the richest man of mexico. Its quite common.
I know nothing about him but I've just seen that his Chief of staff is called Onyx which is pretty awesome
https://www.americasquarterly.org/content/what-expect-jair-bolsonaro
Brian Winter is an excellent english speaking journalist for Latin America.
Brian Winter is an excellent english speaking journalist for Latin America.
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I'd guess they were catholics fleeing the middle east, so Latin America feels an obvious place.
The left and right have been guilty of extraordinary corruption in Brazil. This is the result. The person that stabbed him should have made sure they did the job well or not bothered at all.
The corruption and inefficiency of 'normal' politicians paves the way for nutcases.
Very interesting, if worrying, read. Thanks for posting that.
Worth reading
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To sum it up:
I think it's a bit of both though. Rich protect their interests by manipulating uneducated masses.
Worth noting that Brazil is one of the most unequal economies in the world. Even compared to somewhere like USA, Gini Index is about 10 points higher in Brazil, I think only a few African autocracies beat Brazil on that.
So, in Brazil, I'd suggest higher education correlates a lot more with elites than, say Europe, where there's a large buffer educated middle-class between elites and the poor.
These people not only tend to be favoured by the sort of economic policies Bolsonaro will pursue, but, perhaps, more importantly to them, Bolsonaro wants to tackle one of the few (but big) nuissances of concern for a wealthy elite in Brazil: The extremely high crime rate. Lethal carjacks, kidnappings, etc, are a threat to them. My mother visited Brazil recently and stayed with some distant friends of friends who were wealthy. They offered her an armored car and a driver who was a trained and armed bodyguard.
I mean what good is a Ferrari if you can't go show it off in cities where 80 % of the population barely scrapes by? These Ferrari owners will vote Bolsonaro for the crime stance alone, even if they share none of his bigotry or views in other issues.
Exactly this. My girlfriend is Brazilian. It'll be devastating when he inevitably comes to power.
48% of Brazilians aren't Ferrari drivers.
I worked in Brazil (Rio) 2000-03 when Lula came to power and they've won every election since.
They've ransacked the country. Every time I go I see it further and further in decadence. Cities like Curitiba, which used to be like being anywhere in Europe, you bump into beggars and lowlives every few yards.
Most honest, hard-working people don't live in crystal palaces. They live in the same ever-expanding favelas which are under the rule/law&order of criminals.
15 years ago I had to help an employee with $ advances and logistic support to move house 2-3 times a year. They would come knock on their door and tell them their house would be used for X purpose so they had to move. No payment/compensation, just evicted from your own home by truants. Today I wouldn't be surprised if that's a monthly occurrence.
If I were them I would also vote Bolsonaro. You don't need to agree with his values, people just want basic guarantees that all of you give for granted and Brazilian politicians haven't delivered, too busy lining their pockets organising World Cups, Olympics and Panamerican Games.
Bolsonaro is a fascist ex army captain with a neoliberal economic program, more like Duterte President of the Philippines than Trump but he's going to win because the PT(Works Party) is now hated in Brazil.
Trains? On time? You think Brazilians care about either?
Say what you want about the man he makes the trains run on time.
They want personal security for them and their families. They don't want to spend their lives at the mercy of druglords. They don't want crime going unpunished.
It's an overreaction? Absolutely, but nobody else is offering that. Not with any degree of credibility.
do you believe, that Bolsonaro's strategy has any promise at all to reduce crime? Is there any example where this approach actually worked?
Bolsonaro is a fascist and has to be completely rejected there is no excuse(Hence the Mussolini example I used)what so ever to vote for him.
And yet, since 2000 the number of people living in poverty in Brazil has declined from ~25% to ~10%. That's millions and millions of people who no longer live in poverty. They've also gone from around 60 in Gini inequality coefficient to closer to 50. That's still pretty damn bad, but again, it means genuine improvement in the lives of many.
Admittedly in the last couple of years there's been a negative trend again, which no doubt helps explain the rise of Bolsonaro. But your theory of the decay of the fabric of Brazilian society is a fairytale.
What are you talking about specifically? As an outsider I've focused on the economic and free trade beyond Mercosur proposals given their impact on the region.
As far as internal security is concerned I have mostly seen the more extremene stuff like policemen killing criminals being a good thing, bringing back the death penalty, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like the guy one bit, but I can empathise with the fed up Brazilians.
You realise that quote originates from tourists? Italians didn't support Mussolini for that reason, it was the detached foreign tourist (which, back in the 20s/30s was the Ferrari driv8ng sort described earlier) that made such statements.
One of the reason Italians literally did support Mussolini was for infrastructure reason but anyway the point still stands that no one for any reason should be voting for Bolsonaro.
Also Bolosonaro force isn't being driven by the Brazilian poor but the mostly white middle to upper well educated classes.
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You're using stats, I'm going on first hand experience. The decay of the fabric of society and poverty stats aren't the same thing.
For starters a lot of the stats are purely reflecting recording/methodology differences, not real ones. E.g. not poverty but crime, if it's a lot harder, more time consuming and frustrating to try report a mugging and the outcome is nothing happens, people stop doing it and the stats improve. I've seen that in several South American countries.
One major change has been before social programmes used to give assistance in kind. Huge large trucks would enter poor areas and distribute food. That didn't get recorded as income. Today they largely distribute through electronic payments to top-up cards. That does get recorded as income and in itself must have significantly shifted the stats without people's lives changing much at all. In fact, you could argue before they got food and now they get money they may be spending on the wrong things.
15 years ago I used to see and occasionally chatted with guys from the favelas close to Copacabana who spent all day at the beach playing footvolley and enjoying the sun. They couldn't understand the rat race. For them life was going to the beach, hanging around "looking after" a few cars for a couple of hours to get some tips and buy their rice and beans. Back in the favela they hooked up to cable/electricity illegally and paid nothing.
They led a simple life and loved it. They often made me wonder about my own choices in life.
These days I see a lot less of those and a lot more with their brains fried by drugs trying to push them.
You obviously can't just put all that down to politicians. It's a much more complex issue and no, I don't think fascism fixes it at all. But again, I can empathise with the frustration and people first and foremost looking for someone hellbent on at least trying to tackle it.
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Yes, he massively improved the infrastructure and I'm sure they appreciated it, but it wasn't what got him in power or kept him there like the quote suggests.
That disparaging remark originates as an outsider's oblivious summary. It's detached from reality by design.
Bolsonaro is very vocal about fighting crime by unleashing the security forces. The police&co are going to ramp up violence. There is this meme that criminals are better protected than honest people but that's just bullshit. The Brasilian police is already militarised and fairly brutal. I just can't think of any example in Latin America where escalating violence against crime worked.
We'll see about the rest. Brazil adopted fiscal orthodoxy in the 90s, but they never really abandoned the protections for their domestic industries. This sleaze is a massive drag on their economy and a hotbed for corruption. I don't think that he is going to change any of that.
I understand why Brazilians are angry. They have every right to be. The PT was in charge for about 14 years and fecked up. They wasted the gigantic opportunity of the commodity boom. They didn't initiate many important reforms (e.g. pensions was already an issue back in 2002). They are responsible for the monstrosity that Petrobras has become and everything connected to that. They didn't invest properly in country and people.
Yet bolsonaro is not going to solve their problems. That's about as likely as trump "draining the swamp". I am also not sure how credible his commitment to free trade is considering that he is embracing trump, one of the biggest protectionists since ww2.
This was certainly a factor. Arabs will also have moved to South America roughly for the same reason so many Italians, Spaniards, Germans etc moved to South America. The promise of opportunity.
There were of course other factors such as poorly functioning local economies at home and wars at home.
I've also read a few times that some were initially told they were going to America (which they assumed meant the USA) and were instead dumped in South America. Whether this is true or not I'm not sure, it seems unsubstantiated but funny nonetheless.
Funnily enough, to integrate and protect themselves from discrimination, many of them changed their religions, hence they'll be mostly catholic now and completely indistinguishable from others in their country, as opposed to Eastern orthodox or muslim.
It has worked at times but the collateral damage isn't worth it, maybe not in the short run but certainly in the long run.
The problem has always been the same, you fix one problem only to create a different one.
I had employees in different favelas. Their "Carioca Dream", their aspirational goal was getting a house in La Rocinha. While other favelas were run by druglords, La Rocinha was run by a guy who was clever enough not to engage in that at all. Instead he charged for public services. You want the mail to arrive? Pay up. You want electricity? He hooked you up. Like a parallel state, but it was a safe haven security-wise (I say was because I hear it has changed since). Even Romario, with all his money, liked his favela roots so built his mansion in there.
Point being, you CAN escape a bad area. With difficulty, you need to afford it, but you can. Even in a dodgy area there are certain codes as druglords run a tight ship and know things getting out of hand can cause them problems.
The state is everywhere though and beyond the reach of any one guy. Once it loses its grip, you are at the mercy of whatever fecked up psychos are part of law enforcement. These tend to multiply like rabbits in such contexts. And there's nobody to go to.
Well, not precisely free trade but reviewing relationships like Trump indeed has done.
PT have played a leading role in South American politics, but always with their best interest at heart. It's a drag. It's cozy, but not beneficial.
Bolsonaro won't give two shits about that. He wants to review Mercosur to remove barriers to making individual deals outside the block. Frankly, I think that may actually help us by making us more autonomous and giving us more room (and urgency) to set our sights beyond the region.
he did, I'm stating a fact, not making propaganda.I find it interesting how polarised South American politics often is. I was in Brazil just a couple of months ago and the opinions on Lula were polar opposites. Either he was Brazil's saviour, who worked to get so many people out of poverty or he was a communist scourge who wanted to bring about a Venezuela like collapse in Brazil. There was no real middle ground at all.
I do get what you're saying. Bolsonaro is a massive douche and I would never vote for him, regardless of circumstance. That does not mean that I can't understand why some may see him as the only solution. The crime in Brazil is ridiculous, the inequality is ridiculous, the poverty is ridiculous.
I don't think he will solve these issues but I can see why people would go to extremes in these circumstances.
I do have issues with what you're saying about the guys at the favelas though. I wonder how much of those guys' lifestyles is based on choice and how much is based on necessity. It is easy enough to say you're happy with that lifestyle if you know that you will likely never get out of that life. If you don't have the educational opportunities, the opportunity for social mobility etc to change your life, you may as well make the most of what you do have and enjoy it. I'd wager most people would not choose that lifestyle if they had the choice.
This isn't to say that the rat race that most of us live in is a particularly great life either.
I don't care about the quote. The eye roll was for 1)You saying you would for Bolsonaro and that stupid ''I don't think fascism fixes it at all.'' fascism doesn't fix anything, it's literally a death cult. 2)Your dismissal of anyone else views as a view of a tourist.
As the data(Yes data is a really thing)points the force be hide Bolosonaro isn't by the Brazilian poor lashing out, it is big business and a mostly white middle to upper well educated classes baying for blood and nostalgia for dictatorship.
Agree they don't have the education or opportunities. If you gave them a choice to be wealthier, live in nicer houses, etc they would sure be up for that.
I'm not saying they thought their lives were fantastic, but they were happy people, if you know what I mean. They found people living in a rush and stressed out about work and stuff completely baffling. They certainly weren't up for trading lifestyles if that was the price. Nothing to do with being lazy or anything, they just found the notion of living like that mindboggling.
I didn't dismiss anyone's views as those of a tourist. I haven't lived in Brazil for 15 years so that would also apply to me.
The thing on tourists specifically relates to the quote, those are its origins. Italians didn't say that, foreign tourists said that about their experience of fascist Italy.
It is often used as a disparaging remark for people not digging deeper and into the more significant/fundamental issues. It would be like someone saying "Say what you want about Hitler but the Germans are making great cars".
I didn't say anything of the sort that warranted such a quote, was my point.
You keep going back to elitism. 48% of Brazilian voters isn't an elite, it's half the bloody country.
I'm not saying that makes him any better, I just think the construct that this is about class, or a zero sum game between the interests of big business vs workers and poor people, is exactly what gets you here.
All nice and lovely sounding but big business got be hide Bolosonaro, Brazilian stocks soared and the voting data shows higher the income and education the more support for Bolosonaro.
No one can get elected with just support of the elites. Its why a lot of these reactionary right wing movements appeal to some form of populism.
I think what Anto is pointing out is why Bolsonaro appeals to those that aren't rich which outsiders especially from Western Europe don't quite understand in the same way. When there is such blatant corruption and people feel promises went unfilled over decades they grow apathetic and distrustful of institutions. When things start getting as violent as they have, then its hard to care deeper about anything other than "hey I want my kids safe from random violence". Its hard to think about higher level concerns when you are fearing for your life.
Well of course. Bolsonaro clearly isn't just getting the millionaire vote in Brazil(Although they do want Bolsonaro in power) but at the same time this isn't the voice of the poor in Brazil having enough of the system.