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Did you see this, BTW?
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Not yet. I watched the honest Ad.
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He basically argues that Bolsonaro is gonna pull a Trump if he doesn’t take the election in round one, and that he has a good deal of support from the military, so shits about to get crazy… It’s probably not anything that you don’t already know about your upcoming elections, but I think he always puts this stuff together well (and with some good gallows humor).
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TL;DL (too long didn’t listen) it was made up by Falun Gong.
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Falun Gong strikes me as evidence that the enemy of your enemy, even if they do put themselves out to be the free-thinking plucky underdog, might also be your enemy.
Sure, Falun Gong might be persecuted by the Chinese state, but that doesn’t mean I’d trust a word they say. And I suspect if they actually got what they want (which they won’t), they’d be even worse than what’s there now.
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Very much so. It doesn’t matter if it is the Communist Party of China or Falun Gong in charge, I, and every other queer person would be in serious trouble either way. The Tankies and far right like to blame each other for our existence, and both will attack us for not fitting into their worldview.
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The advice seems a bit late.
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You are right. It is strange to know that my country is attracting this kind of attention. Some people here are afraid that he can really try to stage a coup d’etat. His rhetoric against the electoral system is old. One of his kids, for example, once boasted that only a soldier and an army corporal in a jeep were all it took to close the Supreme Court.
Other people fear that Bolsonaro does not have the army on his side, but in fact, the military has a great ally in Bolsonaro…
Bolsonaro’s acolytes do not believe any of the points raised by Mr. John Oliver. For many of them, Bolsonaro, while being the best president of all time, is also a weak guy who can’t do anything. He manages to personify George Orwell’s concept of doublethink. He is a virile man, who fights against communism, raises the population’s standard of living and will end the gay mafia that wants to destroy childhood. But when they have to face reality, his supporters say that none of this is his fault. We have people starving, a high unemployenment rate, homeless families, burnings in the Amazon and thousands of deaths caused by Covid, but this was all caused by people who didn’t let him work.
Sometimes I think I am living in a bad parody of “Bananas” or “Brazil”.
Candidates like the samurai taxi driver are common. They are known as folkloric people, people who are not afraid to look ridiculous or who are known in their communities and who wear the attire of their daily activities as a way to stand out from the crowd. That’s why it’s easy to find people using funny/odd/exotic monikers such as of joe from the pharmacy or cute cleaning lady. Even porn stars are trying to get elected this year.
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One of Umberto Eco’s points regarding Ur-fascism,
The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.
I guess the flipside of this, is that the leader is both a hero and victim (or it’s elsewhere in Eco’s essay & I forgot)
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He is playing the vexed victim these days.
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Well, sounds like you guys are in for some tense times… I hope Bolsonaro gets resoundingly kicked out of office.
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The newspapers said that His party, which He once maligned as part of the corruption caucus, already have a document that “exposes” the fraud.
ETA link
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