Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "Brazil's MAGA Inspired Pro-Bolsonaro Riots" video.

  1. This was absolutely and undoubtedly orchestrated. It's also an useful case for analysis and comparison so that people realize there is a structured, well organized, extremely detailed playbook and probably corporate well financed structure that politicians are following to replicate the successes of the alt-right in the US. Hi, Brazilian here. Here are some stuff that didn't appear on this video that I'll just point out. First, the attack on Jan 8th down here was just the end point of a mirroring of Trump's politics that started before Bolsonaro was even elected. Proof enough of this is that Bolsonaro was already questioning the election process without any proof or any reason to do so when he was elected. It was a play to inflame and enrage his base just in case he did not get elected back then. He has been mirroring Trump's discourses even before the election that put him in power, but he ramped up things drastically a few months after he was elected. So, here are just a few things he did as acting president that are likely connected to this general plan. Down here in Brazil we do not have mainstream TV news equivalent to Fox News that are paid for and are always attending to Republican needs in a party sponsored manner... the biggest mainstream open TV news channel we have, Globo, has a left leaning stance. Most other official and traditional channels of communications are similar, and at most maintains a neutral stance. We also don't have that many online channels with huge followings that are conservative, conspiratorial, and on the alt-right side of things. I mean, we do have some notorious figures, some big social network groups, and stuff like this - but it doesn't exactly reach the notoriety of US stuff like Breitbart, OAN, Alex Jones and whatnot. I think we didn't quite get to that stage yet not because there aren't enough people who believe in alt-right extremism and conspiracy theory radicalism, but rather because most of the Brazilian population just aren't well equipped nor have a cultural background to follow such channels in the first place. The way most people seems to consume things down here is very disconnected, not by following specific people. Radicalism has coalesced not around these big channels and big figures, but rather around chat and social media groups, smaller ones. So, what Bolsonaro did was completely cut off communications with mainstream news in TV, newspapers, magazines and whatnot, and create his own channels from scratch where he talks directly to his indoctrinated following. This has a different effect in comparison to the president talking to a Fox News sized channel, or appearing in radio shows that are listened to hundreds of millions of people all at once. The problem this created for himself is that the strategy is self evident. If there are voters and parts of the population that are undecided about who to support, there is nothing of Bolsonaro's ideology going up in mainstream news. And since he chose a channel that a whole ton of Brazilians don't have easy access to, what it looks like for lots of people is that he was a president that refused to talk to anyone but his followers. In effect, he was an absent president for the majority of the Brazilian electorate. Another significant step on proving the connection. We had, during his term, a parallel, secretive cabinet with regular meetings that eventually came to be known as "cabinet of hate", where Bolsonaro, his followers, his sons, his party members and potential new recruits constantly gathered behind closed doors to discuss... something. Probably the strategy behind the whole thing. From there, it is speculated that came things like the anti-vax strategy, playing down the pandemic, putting the electoral process in question, the dismantling of regulatory agencies, the dirty corrupt alliance with old centralist politicians giving birth to something as absurd as secret budgeting of huge portions of money from the public coffers, plus a whole host of other things. Strategies for his sons to avoid prosecution for their past corruption schemes, how to deny accusations and avoid liability, how to vilify and paint the opposition a certain way, how to run the political campaign for re-election... it was all done behind closed doors without access to press. A trigger for this was likely because when some of initial ministerial meetings happened with press access, multiple irregularities showed up and were reported promptly. A minister openly talking how they were going to use the pandemic to pass regulation-destroying changes in law, some politician using white nationalist gestures and signaling to it's followers, the president complaining and getting visibly altered in defense of his son who was being accused in a notorious corruption scheme... all that came to light when the meetings happened not exactly with open doors, but being recorded for press evaluation. So they switched to a closed off cabinet neither the press nor public had access to. It was an obvious strategy for information control. We had multiple revelations of scandalous things happening behind the scenes leaking during his term. The fact that it happened in secrecy only further alienated people who were unsure if they should support him. The other major thing that tips off to a playbook strategy is how many of the smearing campaign tactics against the opposition during the recent election mirrored things from Trump's campaign, things which don't make much sense for Brazilian politics. It convinced a lot of his radical followers, but it doesn't pass muster if you look just a bit into it. For instance, there were a lot of red scare tactics going on saying how Lula was going to transform Brazil into a communist state, I've even read absurd things on how there was a plan to make the Brazilian flag communist red, how he was gonna ally himself to criminals he met in prison, how he was gonna ally himself to other Latin American leaders to make a China or Russia kinda state in America, and other bullsh*t like that. The problem is, President Lula, no matter how badly people see him, already had two complete consecutive terms as a president in Brazil, and his party was the ruling party for almost 4 terms, which is almost 16 years. He attempted none of that while he was in power, and there is zero indication he is going to try doing this now. None of what Bolsonaro's propaganda was putting out happened in all that time. There was no reason to believe in any of the FUD that Bolsonaro's campaign was putting out, in secret and indirectly I must add, unless you were completely indoctrinated by it. Any major link that Brazil has with supposed communist states are there because of trade relationships, and those relationships cannot be put at risk by any political party because Brazil's economy is highly dependent on it. China, for instance, is one of the biggest importers of Brazil exports. So Bolsonaro cannot use some jingoist strategy down here without bankrupting the country in the process... and with this you see how even more artificial this FUD campaign against communism will sound. There is no room even for a mild trade war like the one Trump started and Biden is continuing, apparently. Bolsonaro was also unsuccessful in turning the Supreme Court in his favor, even though he did attempt to do it... his party is new and does not have as many direct political supporters in legislative and judiciary branch, his power grip is not as strong as Trump's, his strategy was clumsy and filled with holes for press and opposition to exploit. That's the difference. He didn't manage to co-opt half of the political ideology down here, because we have a system that allows for multiple parties to run, and even though it often ends up in an election that amounts to right versus left, during the election you clearly see how a huge part of voters don't want either extremes. This past election did indeed put lots of pro-Bolsonaro governors, mayors, and congressman in power, but the majority of them to not fully subscribe to his radical ideology. They got the support, they talked well about Bolsonaro's term in electoral propaganda, but several of them disagree with his ideology and politics to varying degrees. So it's a much less organized political power structure. Every current or former politic Bolsonaro supporter that is currently occupying a public position rushed out to condemn the Jan 8th attack lest they end up implicated too. There was no "these are just good people that are frustrated with the electoral process" response coming from politicians. This has also influenced how Bolsonaro positioned himself in the electoral run, at least for the mainstream media campaign strategy. It was clear he decided not to officially rely on attacks against his opponent, not to make inflammatory accusations, not to rely on a FUD campaign officially, because that would likely incriminate him. And like I already said, institutions in Brazil weren't co-opted by him or his party. So, he had to do a campaign that was focused on supposed good things he did while he was president with thinly veiled threats that all of this was going to end if he wasn't re-elected, while ramping up the hate machine under the hood via 3rd parties.
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  2. This made his entire campaign, for people who were on the left or were undecided and not following indoctrinating channels, look extremely shallow and artificial. His usual strong man personality cult rhetoric wasn't there. His political propaganda seemed no different in comparison to any other candidate. He tried to paint this utopic vision of Brazil that helped the poor, helped workers, invested on education, invested on the future of children, yadda yadda, when he just spent an entire term actively destroying social programs, being vocally against student movements, cutting funding for all sorts of programs, and funneling taxpayer money into opaque secret budget projects that were all going into corruption schemes. The whole thing was so visibly fake it was completely ridiculous. Only the indoctrinated believed in his campaign propaganda. The only reason why Bolsonaro got a tight run against Lula is because of FUD campaigns about Lula, the ones that were spreading out in social networks, chat groups, and word of mouth campaign that was done in that manner in order not to directly implicate Bolsonaro, his sons, or his political followers. It had to be word of mouth and kinda grassroots because political institutions and the justice system, plus press was already following his every move, looking for a reason to impeach him, almost from the beginning of his term. Personally and anecdotally, I never met a single person who actively supported Bolsonaro and believed in his bullshit. Particularly, no one that believed the military should take over and reinstate dictatorship. Most of the people I know that voted or supported Bolsonaro only did it because they believed Lula was going to be worse, because of FUD and conspiratorial thinking. The discourse was always "our current president is bad, but things can get worse with Lula". Of course, it's also because Brazilians have plenty of reasons to be suspicious about Lula and his party, PT. There are lots of Brazilians who don't like the fact that Lula is becoming president once again with plenty of justifications for it, so you add that with FUD and you get a ton of voters that will vote for re-election because they prefer the troubles they are already closely familiar with, rather than the return of old troubles they might not be too familiar with. President Lula is not the saint he and his followers are painting himself to be, but fundamentally, he's not running on a campaign of hatred and radicalism too. Anyways, I'm getting outside the scope of my comment... there are key fundamental aspects of Bolsonaro's strategies during his term and on the electoral campaign that connects it too well with the American alt-right, current Republican politics, and Trump's strategies for it to be pure coincidence. Mind you, I'm not blaming America or Americans for the creation of Bolsonaro or Bolsonarism... I'm not even sure where all of this is really originating from, if it's just Steve Bannon, if this really started in the US with Trump, or where this actually all comes from, but there is some obvious coordination, some detailed playbook moves, some system that is being followed behind the scenes there. And it is a threat for countries all around the world, because Brazil is not the only country where these sorts of strategies in politics are happening. People, voters, institutions, judicial systems, organizations, educators and press needs to understand that this strategy is a thing that is being employed to take over the political system of entire nations, and act fast against it. We need to punish, accelerate justice efforts, allow for a counter attack to happen, and reinforce democratic cornerstones to stop this global strategy of terror. Because the underlying objective of this nebulous playbook seems to be power and money at all and any cost. At the cost of democratic power, at the cost of the well being of minorities, at the cost of advances in equality, using hatred, faith, FUD, and conspiratorial thinking as tools for their objectives. It's a global scale grifting scheme, to put it simply. See how even Putin is using similar strategies to justify his war and actual genocide and war crimes. I don't think that's a coincidence. There are chances the playbook is being used there too, if not parts of it being co-opted and copied for similar gains in Russia. I don't think it's too far fetched to think that's another thing that is happening. There are chances that there is a status quo that is extremely rich and powerful that is moving towards a more totalitarian stance for fear they are losing room for democratic regimes. It is worth considering by anyone who values true democratic freedoms.
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