Jair Bolsonaro

Parliamentary Investigation Of MST Ends With The Movement Strengthened

October 4, 2023 Brasil de Fato, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Brazil, Far Right, Jair Bolsonaro, Landless Workers, MST

On Wednesday September 27, the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (also known as CPI) that investigated the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) came to a close and confirmed the total flop of the pro-Bolsonaro far-right in the Chamber of Deputies, particularly the participation of the federal deputy Ricardo Salles (Liberal Party), the commission’s rapporteur. Salles was the minister of the environment in the Bolsonaro government. For many analysts, Salles seems to have used the CPI as an extension of his work in the ministry. Throughout the 130 days of the CPI, the commission presented data from when Salles was a minister and insisted on criminalizing the MST.

The Not-So-Discreet US Campaign To Pressure Brazil’s Foreign Policy

July 6, 2023 Pedro Marin, People's Dispatch. Educate! Brazil, Coups, Democracy, Jair Bolsonaro, Lula da Silva, US Foreign Policy

The London newspaper Financial Times ran with the following headline last week: “The discreet U.S. campaign to defend Brazil’s election.” The report, written by Michael Stott, Michael Pooler and Bryan Harris, deals with a “pressure campaign” carried out by US officials throughout 2022, in order to prevent the thesis of fraud in the 2022 Brazilian elections from unfolding into a coup d’état. Translated and published in Brazil by the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper under the title “U.S. campaigned to defend Brazil from a possible coup by Bolsonaro,” the article in the Financial Times quotes a series of sources in the US government that agreed to talk about the movements carried out.

Maduro Makes Historic Trip To Brazil For South American Presidents’ Summit

May 31, 2023 People's Dispatch. Educate! Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, Juan Guaido, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Nicolas Maduro, Sanctions, US Imperialism, Venezuela

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro participated in a joint press conference on Monday May 29 from the Planalto Palace in Brasília and highlighted the importance of the neighboring countries resuming ties. The press conference was held following a bilateral meeting between the heads of state ahead of the South American Presidents’ Summit. Lula told national and international media that, “This is a historic moment. After eight years, President Nicolás Maduro is back to visiting Brazil and we have recovered our right to have a foreign policy with the seriousness we have always had, especially with the countries that border Brazil.”

Bolsonaro Supporters Attack The Brazilian Government

January 11, 2023 Brian Mier and Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Brazil, coup, Fascists, Jair Bolsonaro

On January 8, 2023 thousands of supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro attacked and vandalized that nation's Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace in the capital of Brasilia. Bolsonaro claims that election fraud was responsible for his defeat by Lula da Silva in the 2022 election. His supporters had demonstrated previously after the election and used social media to publicize their gathering in the preceding days and weeks. Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Margaret Kimberley spoke with Brazilian based journalist Brian Mier of Telesur English who provided analysis of these events.

Coup Attempt In Brazil Condemned By Leaders From Across The Globe

January 10, 2023 People's Dispatch. Resist! Brazil, Coups, Fascism, Jair Bolsonaro, Lula da Silva

On Sunday January 8, supporters of former far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro invaded the Supreme Federal Court, the National Congress, and the Planalto Palace, the office of the president, breaking through the blockade of the Military Police and the National Security Force at the Esplanade of Ministers in the capital Brasília. After invading the headquarters of the three branches of government, the violent groups vandalized the buildings, looted the armory at the Planalto Palace, and caused tremendous damage to public institutions. Following the acts of violence, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva condemned the situation, criticized the complicity of Brasília’s public security forces in the attacks, and decreed federal intervention in public security of Brasília until January 31.

Lula Vows To Punish Perpetrators Of Brasilia Attacks

January 9, 2023 Kawsachun News. Resist! Brazil, coup, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Jair Bolsonaro, Lula da Silva

On Sunday afternoon, government buildings in Brazil’s capital were stormed by far-right cells loyal to ex-president Jair Bolsonaro who fled to Florida days before the presidential inauguration. Just after 2pm, a large group was able to trespass the Praça dos Três Poderes and illegally enter the congress and the Supreme Federal Court (STF), with chants to overthrow the elected congress and government. Bolsonaro supporters had set out for the Esplanada dos Ministérios late morning from the Army headquarters, where a protest camp against the October 30th election result had been held in recent weeks. On social media, videos showed destruction to the interior and exterior of the STF building.

How Brazil’s Electoral Court Took Action Against Bolsonaro’s Fake News

November 17, 2022 Brian Mier, Multipolarista. Resist! Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, Legal System, Media

Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has often been described as the “Trump of the tropics,” in reference to the former leader of the United States. But this has led to superficial comparisons between the two countries. It is true that the Bolsonaro family and members of Steve Bannon’s ultra-conservative “Movement” have worked together closely, and social media disinformation tactics were imported from the US and became a key factor in Bolsonaro’s 2018 electoral victory. However, Brazil’s electoral system is completely different. Many things that are illegal in US elections – especially regarding campaign funding – are considered election fraud under Brazilian law.

Brazil At Crossroads

October 9, 2022 Elias Khalil Jabbour, Multipolarista. Educate! Brazil, Elections, Jair Bolsonaro, Lula da Silva

The first round of the general elections in Brazil was held on October 2, and the results show that the country is at a crossroads. Former President Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or PT) did not achieve victory in round one, and will face current far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in a run-off on October 30. Lula da Silva obtained 48.4% of the valid votes, while Bolsonaro reached 43.2%. The other candidates combined did not get 9% of the valid votes. The results of the elections point to a great paradox: despite being ahead of Bolsonaro, the Brazilian left did not obtain a significant vote for state governments and did not even win a third of the seats in the two chambers of the Congress, the Federal Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.

PBS and BBC Team Up to Misinform About Brazil’s Bolsonaro

September 20, 2022 Brian Mier, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. Educate! BBC, Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, Media, PBS

Both the US and British governments supported the rise of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. Future Prime Minister Liz Truss had secret meetings with the future president in 2018 to discuss “free trade, free markets and post-Brexit opportunities” (BrasilWire, 3/25/20). The US Department of Justice was a crucial partner in the Lava Jato (“Car Wash”) investigation, which resulted in the prosecution and jailing of Brazil’s left-leaning former president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. The politically motivated legal campaign against Lula served to prevent his participation in the 2018 presidential election, in what Gaspard Estrada calls “the biggest judicial scandal in Brazilian history.” Because of this history, and because Brazil is a hard country to explain concisely, I was weary to learn that the British and US state-affiliated media outlets BBC and PBS had co-released a documentary about Jair Bolsonaro only a few weeks before this year’s Brazilian presidential election (10/2–30/22). It didn’t fail to disappoint.

Fear And Misinformation Dominate Discourses Of Brazilian Right

September 14, 2022 Zoe Alexandra, People's Dispatch. Educate! Brazil, Election, Far Right Politics, Jair Bolsonaro

Brazil is less than a month away from historic elections. Over 156 million Brazilians will go to the polls on October 2 to cast their vote for the president of the republic, State governors, 27 senators, 513 federal deputies, and State and district deputies. The elections take place amid an acute political, economic, and social crisis in the country. The past several years have seen a dramatic increase in hunger, homelessness, unemployment, and the prices of basic commodities. The currency, the Real, has tumbled. Above all, the colossal number of deaths due to COVID-19 continues to cast a shadow on the lives of millions. Despite this moment of national crisis, the far-right candidate in the elections, President Jair Bolsonaro, has dedicated much of his campaign to sowing divisive, angry, and hateful rhetoric.

YouTube Pushing Pro-Bolsonaro Content To Brazilians, Study Finds

September 14, 2022 Brasil Wire. Educate! Brazil, Election, Google, Jair Bolsonaro, Media, YouTube

Folha de São Paulo reports that the YouTube algorithm has found to be giving prominence to videos in favor of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in its recommendations. The findings were published by NetLab, a special unit at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). According to opinion polls, Bolsonaro is on course to lose the coming election, after a catastrophic first term, and the far-right president and his military dominated government has attempted to cast doubt on the electoral process itself, as a means to remain in power. The UFRG study finds he is being aided in this by YouTube, owned by US tech giant Google. It is not the first time the company has faced criticism for apparent political interference in Brazil.

Fox Seeks Allies Across The Political Spectrum To Shill For Bolsonaro

July 26, 2022 Brian Mier, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Educate! Brazil, Elections, Jair Bolsonaro, Media

It is no secret that, since the 2016 legislative coup against President Dilma Rousseff and 2018 arbitrary imprisonment of front-running presidential candidate Lula da Silva, multinational corporations have made billions of dollars from environmental deregulation, dismantlement of labor rights and privatization of Brazil’s natural resources. It’s also now known that corporate media outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post normalized the breakdown of Brazil’s rule of law and rise of fascism by ignoring crimes committed by high-profile Judge Sergio Moro that were widely publicized in Brazilian media. Some people in the US even know how Anglo media outlets like the Washington Post and Guardian misrepresented Lula’s conviction for receiving a nonexistent apartment upgrade by unethically associating it with an alleged multi-million dollar graft scheme in state oil company, Petrobras.

Brazil’s MST On The Fight Against Evictions And Bolsonaro

July 4, 2022 Kawsachun News. Resistance Report Brazil, Elections, Jair Bolsonaro, MST, Peasants, US coup

The MST is a peasant movement that organizes people to struggle for agrarian reform and for the democratization of land in Brazil. So I believe most of the people in Latin America knows, but Brazil has one of the highest land concentration in the world. It’s one of the, let’s say, the foundations of the Brazilian state is basically the large states monoculture and slavery, slave work. And those foundations are still a very strong heritage that we have in Brazil. A lot of people with no land, a very high land concentration, structural racism, all of this comes from I mean, our vocation for exporting commodities and all of this comes from this from nations of the Brazilian state.

Indigenous People Of Brazil Fight For Their Future

September 26, 2021 Nick Estes, Green Left. Resist! Brazil, Indigenous Rights, Jair Bolsonaro, Mass Action

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has given new license to the killing of Indigenous people in Brazil. Before he came to power in 2019, it wasn’t clear what he wanted to build, but he knew exactly who and what he wanted to destroy: the Indigenous people and the Amazon rainforest, respectively. “Bolsonaro attacked a woman first, the land, our mother,” the Indigenous leader Célia Xakriabá told me. “We have no choice but to fight back.” Since becoming president, the former Army captain, who served under the country’s last military dictator, has led an unprecedented war against the environment and the people protecting it. A slew of anti-Indigenous legislation, escalated violence against and assassinations of Indigenous land defenders, and the COVID-19 pandemic have threatened the existence of Brazil’s original people, the Amazon rainforest, and the future of the planet.

September 7th: The Greatest Crime

September 8, 2021 Marcelo Zero, Brasil Wire. Educate! Authoritarianism, Brazil, Fascism, Jair Bolsonaro

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro just appropriated Brazil’s September 7, Independence Day holiday for his own political purposes. If he had appropriated Rio’s Cristo Redentor statue or Petrobras state petroleum company, the crime would have been less egregious. September 7th is supposed to be a great civic festival that includes all Brazilians, regardless of party colors or ideological preferences. But this year, it will will be an exclusive manifestation of the bolsonaristas in support of their “Myth” and, even worse, in defiance of or even attacking democratic institutions. There are a lot of warnings about avoiding the riots, but the big riot has already happened without a single person taking to the streets. By appropriating Independence Day, Bolsonaro just broke the Constitution, the law, tradition and the rules of pluralist democracy.

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