Jair Bolsonaro

Ol Bol, bringin' back the good old military dictatorship.

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Jair Messias Bolsonaro (1955–) is a morally bankrupt Brazilian nutjob politician worshipped by the Brazilian right. A former congressman and president of Brazil,^[3][4] Bolsonaro is considered one of the most evil right-wing politicians on the planet in the 21st century so far. He longs for the good old days of military dictatorship^[5] and espouses his belief in "Christian values" and “family values”. A former^[6] member of the so-called "Social Liberal Party", a far-right party that is part of the informally known "Bullets, Beef and Bible Caucus" within the Brazilian Congress,^[7] he has been labeled the "tropical Trump".^[3] He has been compared to other authoritarian statesmen, such as the Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte and Egypt's Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Still, he leans even further right than Trump in certain aspects.^[8] His son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, is also a congress member with similarly cuddly politics and was touted to become Brazil's ambassador to the USA,^[9] but that failed. In other words, he's the perfect kakistocrat. Of all the politicians accused of being "Trump clones", he is one of the more successful/dangerous. Thankfully, he was defeated by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022, becoming the first incumbent president since Brazil's 1985 return to democracy to have lost reelection.^[10]

Jair Bolsonaro is well known for his bigoted stances on several topics, such as minorities, the LGBT population, and crime. Besides being an admirer of the Brazilian military regime, in 1993, he openly supported Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori,^[5] who has been charged with crimes ranging from corruption to supporting forced sterilization programs and even genocide.^[11] Later, in 1999, he openly supported the assassination of several people, including the then-Brazilian president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso.^[12] This is ironic given that decades later, he would also be targeted by an assassin, unsuccessfully.^[13] He also has an extensive history of making homophobic, misogynistic, and racist remarks.^[14]

Bolsonaro is one of the main opponents of socialism, communism, liberalism, leftism, marxism, the indigenous people of Brazil, Bolivarianism, the gay agenda, common sense, common decency, and the lungs sink^[15][16] of the planet. And at one point, THE archenemy of Brazil, the country, and its people until they said "no" and elected him out of office.

(In)Famous quotes and context[edit]

"What is golden shower?"^[17]

Bolsonaro became known in Brazil and internationally chiefly because of his controversial statements on many subjects. However, if everything he has declared since the 1980s is considered, several contradictions can be observed. Although he is typically viewed as conservative or far-right, he has also expressed admiration for the communist Hugo Chavez, pro-choice views, and support for topless rights, among other things.

Criminality[edit]

Heated argument between Rosário and Bolsonaro in the Chamber of Deputies.

In 2003, Brazilian teenagers Liana Friedenbach and Felipe Caffé were brutally murdered by five assaulters, one of which was 16 years old. This sparked a debate over a possible reduction of the age of criminal responsibility, as in Brazil, nobody under 18 is considered fully responsible for even the most severe crimes. While Bolsonaro supported such a reduction to 16 years old, fellow congress member and human rights advocate Maria do Rosário was against it. In an incendiary argument over the case, Rosário called Bolsonaro a rapist, and he replied: "I will not rape you because you do not deserve it."^[7]

Eleven years later, in 2014, Bolsonaro and Rosário had another argument (this time about the military dictatorship in Brazil) in which he repeated his words.^[19] This brought wide media attention and, in one of his interviews about the case, Bolsonaro explained: "It was a reflexive response. A word said to her by me over the rape accusation".^[20] In another, he clarified what he originally meant: "She doesn't deserve it because she is too bad, too ugly. She is not my type. I would never rape her."^[21]

In May 2021, the Brazilian police conducted a raid in a poor neighborhood in the city of Rio de Janeiro.^[22] With a death toll of 28, it's the most lethal police operation in the city's history.^[23] Bolsonaro congratulated the raid: "By treating as victims the drug dealers that steal, kill and destroy families, the media and the Left equate them with the common, honest citizen, who respects the laws and his neighbor."^[24] A few days earlier, his vice-president Hamilton Mourão had already congratulated the police for the deaths.^[25]

Women[edit]

Despite his past and present sexist comments, Bolsonaro voted in 2006 for the Maria da Penha Law (a law targeting domestic violence against women) and in 2015 for including femicide in the Penal Code of Brazil.^[29] As president in 2019, he sanctioned measures that made Maria da Penha Law even more strict.^[30]

Dictatorship and communism[edit]

Bolsonaro with his wife Michelle and his predecessor Michel Temer during his inauguration.

As a former army captain, Bolsonaro openly admires the anti-communist military regime that ruled the country between 1964 and 1985, which practiced censorship and torture.

However, despite his opposition to socialism in Brazil, Bolsonaro has also expressed support for Hugo Chavez's socialistic dictatorship in Venezuela:

Homosexuality[edit]

Gay protesters kiss in front of an amused Bolsonaro.

He said that he would "be incapable of loving a homosexual son"^[3] and would "rather let his child die in an accident than be gay", according to a 2011 Playboy interview.^[7] He also claimed that "We Brazilians don't like homosexuals."^[3]

He accused the openly gay, left-wing politician Jean Wyllys of "heterophobia" when Wyllys refused to sit next to him on a plane.^{[34][better source needed]}

Race[edit]

In 2006, Bolsonaro proposed a law that would require 50% of seats in congress to be occupied "by the black and brown population."^[35] This, however, was an attempt to ironize racial quotas.

Bolsonaro has also had some unsavory views on his country's indigenous people, somehow even finding a way to be xenophobic toward them in their own country.

2021 WhatsApp leaked messages[edit]

In September 2021, messages of Bolsonaro's leaked to the Brazilian press. Here is some of the content shared by him:^[42]

“”I had it in the ass three times, but I'm heterosexual. If it's only up to three times it's ok.

—About the Brazilian singer Rogério Skylab, who claims to be heterosexual despite having gay sex three times.

Presidential proposals[edit]

Among his presidential proposals were closing unnecessary ministries (such as the Ministry of Finance, which keeps the government in control of the economy, the Ministry of Defense, which keep the military subordinate to politics, and folding the Ministry of the Environment into the Ministry of Agriculture, to put an end to its "fines industry"), supporting free markets and entrepreneurship, opposing an alleged "biased political education in public schools" (where teachers, supposedly, indoctrinate children into socialism, as he and many of his supporters on the right claim), and relaxing Brazil's strict gun laws.^[44] He is firmly in favor of law-and-order policies and supported lowering the age of criminal responsibility and further increasing the prison population of Brazil while in office, already the 4th-largest in the world.^[7]

Anti-environmentalism[edit]

Smoke from the record-breaking wildfires in central-west Brazil. Satellite image taken by NASA in 2019.

Bolsonaro does not hide his contempt for the notion of ecological reserves. He was fined for illegally fishing in 2012, but it expired in December 2018. After he took over the presidency, the auditor responsible for fining him was fired.^[46] He also claimed that once president, the indigenous populations wouldn't get "one more centimeter of land" from him;^[47] The fact that these lands are rich with valuable minerals like gold and copper might have something to do with him despising the indigenous population of Brazil, calling them "slaves kept in pre-historical conditions by NGOs".^[48]

The risk of his election sparked worry around the world because he was promising to open the lands within the Amazon Rainforest for exploration.^[49][50] The man he named for the Environment Ministry, Ricardo Salles, is a climate change denier who was condemned for illegally editing ecological reserve maps to the benefit of mining companies as a state Environment Secretary in São Paulo,^[51] to the point of slashing the funding for fighting climate change by 96%^[52] and also stated that the Brumadinho tragedy, where a dam containing mining scum broke, could've been avoided if there were less "auditing bureaucracy" in place.^[53] The duo is doing its best to make the risk of turning half the rainforest into a naked wasteland of abandoned mines a reality. And, because he's such a patriot, he wants other countries' mining companies to extract all the goods. On ecological reserves where no minerals are extracted, like the bay of Angra, he wants to turn them into Cancúns.^[54]

When Angela Merkel told the German parliament that she would do everything in her power to stop Brazil's deforestation efforts, Bolsonaro replied, during the G20 summit in Japan, that "[Germany] uses a lot of fossil fuels. We don't. They have a lot to learn from us".^[55] That was reassuring.

Perhaps the most alarming thing Bolsonaro managed to do thus far (besides starving funding for fighting climate change) was fire the director of the INPE (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espacias, or National Institute of Space Research), Ricardo Galvão. The reason? The institute published the deforestation numbers for the first six months of 2019, showing an increase of 88% compared to June 2018 to June 2019, plus 278% for July 2018-19.^[56] Once Bolsonaro ordered the institute to retract (after accusing them of data tampering, working for NGOs, and claiming the instruments were unreliable), the director stood his ground and openly complained about how his boss behaved like a "14 year old, not a president".^[57] Although Bolsonaro complained that publishing those numbers was "bad for the country", he's either too stupid, ignorant, or arrogant (possibly all three and more) to realize how much his own actions are bad for the country's image.^[58]

Doubling down on denialism[edit]

Carbon monoxide released by the wildfires in August 2019.

As more data came in pointing that^[59] the fires raging around the rainforest have increased almost 300% compared to the previous year, Bolsonaro kept denying and blaming everyone but the actual culprits, big farmers, who organized a "fire day" via a WhatsApp group,^[60] for it:

Emmanuel Macron, France's president, was humiliated time and time again by Bolsonaro and even his Education Minister, Abraham Weintraub.^[63] The donkey kicked again when Macron accepted, with the rest of the G7, to negotiate and send some funds to help fight the fires (despite his absolute indignation with the Brazilian treatment). First, accusing the group of seeing the Amazon as a no-man's land^[64] and accusing Macron specifically of "throwing gratuitous attacks at the Amazon". The next day, Bolsonaro went back and considered getting help, but he insisted that Macron was wrong: "[...]Firstly, mister Macron must retract the insults he directed at me. He called me a liar. Then, the information I received, is that our sovereignty is open in the Amazon."^[65]

In case of oil spill[edit]

Brazilian beach fouled by oil in 2019

Starting on August 30, 2019, spilled oil started to show up on beaches of the northeastern coast. After the whole month of September doing nothing and pretending nothing was happening, despite more oil showing up on even more beaches, the very first action that came from the government was to claim it was Venezuelan oil.^[66] Really.^[67] When that claim caused facepalms worldwide and was quickly proven false, Bolsonaro doubled down on stupidity: "Coincidence or not, we have an auction. I ask myself, we have to be very responsible in what we say. Could it be, you don't need to answer, a criminal action to jeopardize the auction? The question is in the air."^[68]

Unlike the government, the people living near the affected areas decided to do something that wasn't pointing fingers at those obviously not involved.^[69] This is important: it is within the president's powers to order the navy to take immediate action in case of such a disaster. Without his express order, they don't do anything. Also, the Environment Ministry has a contingency plan to minimize damages, but it took 41 days since the first spill to put it into action.

Fun fact: The Bolsonaro government dismantled several federal-civil councils and committees back in April, including two responsible for taking quick action in the face of oil spills.^[70] At the time, Bolsonaro was happy that he was getting rid of "entities filled with ideology [...] that were purposefully hindering development and not worrying about the real necessities of the people".^[71] However, because reality, common sense, and good behavior are the polar opposite of Bolsonaro, the man continues to blame (without an atom of evidence) his own enemies as responsible for the oil: Greenpeace, Foro de Sao Paulo, Dilma Rousseff, PT (Worker's Party), Nicolas Maduro, NGOs, other left parties. Given his track record, when the actual reason for the spill becomes clear, it's very probable he'll bark "VENEZUELAN COMMUNIST CONSPIRACY".

In November 2019, he and his government had once again become the subject of ridicule, as the Federal Secretary of Fisheries stated in a Facebook livestream that "fish are smart, when they see an oil spot, they flee"^[72] and that, therefore, it was safe to eat fish from contaminated areas, despite multiple samples of seafood being found with dangerous levels of chemical contamination.^[73] This is the same Secretary of Fisheries whose family was fined a dozen times for illegal fishing practices, and the officers responsible for the fines were fired after Bolsonaro's election.^[74] Is anyone else seeing a pattern here?

Record fires and deforestation in 2020 and 2021[edit]

Smoke from the 2020 wildfires in central-west Brazil

As if 2020 wasn't a bad enough year on its own due to COVID-19, the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul registered record fires and deforestation,^[75][76] partly due to the prolonged drought, partly due to human greed and stupidity, partly due to the government's purposeful inaction. To make matters worse, the Amazon also registered another increase in deforestation, compared to 2019,^[77] which was already record-breaking. Bolsonaro, being Bolsonaro, claimed that the media was overblowing the whole thing, both in regards to the Amazon fires^[78] and the Pantanal fires^[79] and that the indigenous populations were responsible for the fires to make him look bad. As if he needed any help with that.

The Agriculture Minister, Teresa Cristina, claimed during an interview that if there were more cattle in the area, there would be fewer fires, "cattle are firemen of the wetlands [...] they trim the pasture and don't leave as much dry foliage or organic mass to burn."^[80] Considering that cattle ranchers are the main source of illegal fires and several other illegal activities, including but not limited to assassination and arson, that is some stellar level of ironic bullshit. To the surprise of no one, Bolsonaro approved of that message.

Meanwhile, the man put in charge of the ministry that was supposed to fight those things, Ricardo Salles, pretends there's nothing out of the ordinary going on, that it's being overblown and, because he can't resist even a figurative smoke screen, points that Africa and California are burning even more,^[81] which, as usual from anyone from the Bolsonaro government, is diversionist bullshit. Bolsonaro and his ministers have yet to complain that NASA is being taken over by communists or that their instruments are unreliable, things they always do when it's INPE and other Brazilian institutes, despite both showing the same thing: that the fires are without precedent.

A 2021 study concluded that at least 17 million vertebrate animals died during the Pantanal fires in 2020, although the authors believe the number can be much higher.^[82] Another study concluded that 4.65 billion animals were somehow affected by the fires.^[83] The government's annual report showed that from August 2020 through July 2021, deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest soared by 22%, the highest level since 2006.^[84]

COVID-19 response (Or: When winning a second term is more important than your people’s lives)[edit]

Cemetery for COVID victims in Manaus

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Brazil in late February 2020, most states responded with significant lockdowns and social distancing rules. However, Bolsonaro was against all that. He publicly said that it was just a little flu and wouldn't kill more than the common cold. He openly denounced governors that took preventive measures and always ignored every rule about not wearing a mask or avoiding large gatherings. His followers did the same, complaining about masks, ignoring restrictions, and dumbly believing it was a communist plot. In a book that Luiz Henrique Mandetta, the first Health Minister that was later fired, is writing, he explains that part of the problem is that Bolsonaro truly believes that the virus is a biological weapon created by the Chinese for the Latin American left parties to get to power. Let that sink in for a moment. That is the stupidity Brazilians, and to a lesser extent, the rest of the world, are dealing with. The second Health Minister, Nelson Teich, resigned after a month in office, as he quickly understood that he was there to be Bolsonaro's puppet, to approve and endorse every stupid thing the president said, not to come up with a plan to fight the pandemic.

Bolsonaro's calls for the people to act stupid and ignorant probably would have had a smaller effect if he didn't have an extensive reach in social media, mainly Twitter and WhatsApp groups. That is due to the large botnet he kept from the 2018 election, aptly named Gabinete do Ódio (Hate Cabinet), which, despite being illegal^[87] and being illegally funded during the elections, was never deactivated.^[88] During the pandemic, it ran full-throttle to spew falsehoods everywhere it could,^[89] whether it was to say chloroquine was the miracle drug with 100% efficiency, that "the cousin of a friend died, but the cause of death was registered as COVID-19", that the coffins were actually empty or, more often, to attack anyone that dares say Bolsonaro might be wrong on anything. Ex-supporters only "find out" about that once they get on the wrong end of the attack campaigns.

Bolsonaro, in many ways, emulated his "political cousin" in the United States, Donald Trump. Both resisted social distancing, lashed out against lockdowns, and compared the coronavirus to the flu. Both attacked medical experts and touted the medically unproven drug hydroxychloroquine as the cure for the infection. Both also tested positive for COVID-19 (Bolsonaro in July 2020 and Trump in October 2020).^[90][91][92]

As of October 13, 2020, Brazil has surpassed 150,000 deaths officially confirmed to have been caused by COVID-19. It's important to take that number skeptically, as the Bolsonaro government and some states actively try to make the pandemic look small. The Health Ministry, which had a page keeping track of all deaths, took it down to pamper the dear leader. The numbers come from what news outlets can gather from state and municipal Health Secretaries.

With the rush to create a vaccine having a Chinese one in the lead, CoronaVac, Bolsonaro was quick to state that the vaccination won't be mandatory and that the Chinese vaccine, specifically, won't enter the country, citing that it doesn't have approval from government agencies. Of course, that is a blatant lie, first because the vaccine would be produced in Brazil as a partnership between Sinovac, the Chinese company, and Butantan Institute, a Brazilian public institution that develops several vaccines, antidotes, and drugs. Second, Anvisa, the agency regulating drugs and vaccines, has not found any problems with Sinovac in the years that the company worked in the country. While it's easy to attribute Bolsonaro's decision to just him being a xenophobic sociopath, this was also a political maneuver, as the state governor of São Paulo, João Doria, a possible competitor for the 2022 elections, led the negotiations between Sinovac and Butantan to get the vaccine to São Paulo. Update: Sinovac's vaccine has turned out to be somewhat problematic, so this might be a stopped-clock moment for him - though, given his lack of common sense, it might just be coincidental luck.^[93] Expect something along the lines of "the Bible told me that".

To put that in perspective, the other leading vaccine, the Oxford vaccine, with a partnership between AstraZeneca laboratory and Fiocruz, did not find any resistance from Bolsonaro.^[94]

In late March 2021, official COVID-19 deaths in Brazil rose above 300,000,^[95] with Brazil having the highest number of deaths from COVID-19 per day.^[96] The total death count in Brazil was only exceeded by the United States, which had just begun a mass vaccination campaign without supply constraints.^[97] The vaccination rollout in Brazil, in contrast, was proceeding very slowly.^[98] Intensive care occupancy in Brazil was at 80% or above in all but two of Brazil's 27 states.^[99]

Rather than resolving these issues, Bolsonaro preferred to spend his energy battling states that imposed lockdown measures to control the virus and arresting critics and protesters of his policy failures.^[98][100] Bolsonaro called governors who wished to impose COVID-19 lockdowns "tyrants" and, in a speech to his supporters at an impromptu birthday party on March 21, noted that they could "count on our armed forces to defend your freedom" (meaning, of course, "freedom" to not socially distance, not wear face masks, and "freedom" to not "lockdown" and continuing to mingle as if a massive pandemic wasn't happening).^[101][99] Worryingly, many Bolsonaro followers were emulating Bolsonaro and following this problematic "advice", a bad idea considering that a new, more transmissible variant called "P.1" was taking hold in Brazil. Experts also warned that the out-of-control pandemic made it possible for new, potentially more infectious or deadly variants to emerge. This made Brazil, and the failure of Bolsonaro's leadership on COVID-19, a threat to global health.^[98][96]

On March 24, 2021, Arthur Lira, an ally of the president in Congress, raised "the yellow flag" regarding Bolsonaro's poor response to COVID-19, warning Bolsonaro to ramp it up or face possible impeachment.^{[102][103][104]} This happened only two months after the election presidential election of Brazil's Chamber of Deputies, which Lira won with Bolsonaro's full throttle support.^[105] On March 29, Bolsonaro's response, intending to show that he was the one in charge, was to shuffle his cabinet around, replacing a third of the cabinet. One of those removed, however, was defense minister General Fernando Azevedo e Silva.^[106] Ironically considering his previous shout-outs to the armed forces and his emphasis on increasing military ties in the government, this triggered a mass resignation from the heads of the army, navy, and air force, which some saw as a cynical effort from the army to cut loose from a flailing government.^[107][108] Others expressed concern that the turmoil actually signified that Bolsonaro, who has openly expressed his admiration for Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship, was making maneuvers to undermine democracy.^[109][110]

In October 2021, Bolsonaro hit a new low, claiming during a live broadcast on his social media channels that "people that were vaccinated against COVID-19 were developing AIDS faster",^[111] using the British fake news outlet Before It's News as his source.^[112] Whether he meant that the vaccine was giving these people AIDS or that people with HIV were getting worse faster is unclear. The next day, the recording of his live streaming was removed from Facebook and Instagram for misinformation.^[113]

Possible genocide[edit]

His response to the crisis has been called genocidal more than once, and it's easy to understand why. The fine line between gross incompetence and actual malice is very blurry when it comes to Bolsonaro.

He never hid his contempt for certain people (natives, blacks, the poor) and clearly does not value human life. On March 4, 2021, during a speech, he angrily said, "Chega de frescura, chega de mimimi, vamos ficar chorando até quando?"^[114] which roughly translates to "Stop the fussiness, quit your whining, how long are we going to cry?",^[115] because the deaths caused by the "little flu" kept forcing state and city governments to issue lockdowns, which Bolsonaro has always been 100% against.

When Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas, suffered a healthcare collapse in January 2021, one of the main problems the hospitals faced was the lack of oxygen cylinders. Bolsonaro and his then Health Minister, Eduardo Pazuello, denied any logistics problems. Later on, it was shown that they were aware of the impending collapse but did nothing.^[116] Unlike the Brazilian government, Venezuela helped and sent extra oxygen cylinders to the city. Bolsonaro being Bolsonaro, thanked by implying Venezuelans are so hungry they've eaten all their dogs.^[117]

When India and South Africa asked for a temporary waive of patents so anyone could produce their versions of approved vaccines, Brazil, who would normally side with such an initiative, was against it.^[118]

Despite his many well-documented speeches and answers showing how anti-vaccine he is,^[119] the risk of losing the election in 2022 to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made Bolsonaro take a 180, at least on paper, in his anti-vaccine stance. Read that again. The only thing that made Bolsonaro publicly approve vaccination was the risk of losing his power.

To make matters worse for Brazilians, he was entirely in favor of a new law that allowed companies to get the vaccines straight from international suppliers.^[120] The advertised reasoning is that the bosses will buy them and vaccinate their employees since companies and corporations are more efficient than the government, which is easily true when you actively undermine the government. The real reason is that it will allow the rich to get their vaccines, possibly from black markets, they can sell any surplus, and the government can wash its hands regarding low supplies for the masses. A win-win for the wealthy.

Time and again, Bolsonaro has hailed the "Covid Kit" (Chloroquine, Ivermectin, Azithromycin, Clexane)^[121] as the holy grail and guaranteed cure to COVID-19, despite ample evidence from even his own health minister^[122] that it is not only useless for treating it, it increases the risk of death. Even Bolsonaro himself would later admit that they were ineffective.^[123] If he could have his way, he'd have the population reach herd immunity exactly the worst way possible: let everyone get the disease ASAP so "we can get over it". While he never put it that way, he did say that the pandemic would only be over after 70% of the population got the disease.^[124] A study by NGO Conectas Direitos Humanos and the University of São Paulo also seems to bear this out.^[125] Based on current COVID-19 death rates, this would result in a death toll of around 3 million Brazilians.

On the other hand...[edit]

Bolsonaro has yet to take the vaccine himself as of February 2023 (despite unverified claims he took it in secret),^[126] which is unusual for anyone in Brazil,^[127] let alone a high-ranking politician or someone in his cohort.^[128] It could just as well be that he handled the COVID pandemic and vaccination distribution the way he did because he's an arrogant idiot who lacks leadership skills. Regardless, Bolsonaro's Brazil is a cautionary tale of what happens when a staunch anti-vaxxer leads a country through a major disease outbreak. Fortunately, Brazil's world-renowned vaccination program prevailed and thrived over Bolsonaro's denialism.^[127]

Family and Militias[edit]

Flavio Bolsonaro, Senator from Rio de Janeiro.

At the end of 2018 came his first crisis, as accusations emerged of a close friend of his, Fabrício Queiroz, being a member of the militia that runs parallel to Rio de Janeiro's government. Said militia is composed mainly of cops (retired and active) that took over the lucrative drug trafficking business and protection racketeering after the old criminal leaders were either killed or jailed. There was also strong evidence that Flavio Bolsonaro, one of Jair's sons, had hired Queiroz to collect a percentage of his assessors' salaries.^[129] So far, Queiroz has failed to come up with a "plausible story", and there is a high probability that the case will be archived and forgotten by the justice system, as the initial investigation didn't have a court order, despite many previous cases, including Lava Jato, having their initial investigations begin without a court order, but a request from COAF, the agency that controls and audits suspicious money movement.

As if having one of his sons directly involved wasn't enough, there is also the possibility of the family being involved, even if indirectly, with the murder of Marielle Franco. Context: Marielle was a rising left-wing politician in Rio de Janeiro, being black and from a poor background (like the vast majority of the population) and also being lesbian. On March 14, 2018, she was ambushed and shot dead, along with her driver. An undeniable political crime, the investigation went everywhere but the most likely culprits, the Rio de Janeiro militias, one with the charming name of Escritório do Crime (lit. Crime Office). The reason for successive "mistakes", including loss of footage that could help reveal the perpetrators, is as stated above: the criminal group has active cops in its midst and is well connected to the higher-ups, so it's easy for them to disrupt the investigation. As of November 2019, the crime is still unsolved.

The current suspects of the shooting, Ronnie Lessa and Elcio de Queiroz (no relation to Fabricio), had their movement traced, leading the investigation to the condo where Bolsonaro has a mansion. At first, any relation to him could be discarded as mere coincidence, as the house the duo visited was of another person, who got busted for possessing a stock of 117 M-16 rifles on March 13. However, the condo's porter stated to the police that he remembered people asking to go to Bolsonaro's house on the day of the crime, which he also wrote down on the entrance papers. Once the news broke out, Bolsonaro and his family went into a frenzy, with the patriarch doing a livestream and bellowing at Globo, threatening the group to remove their TV concession and effectively shutting down the channel. Not only that, Jair immediately ordered Sergio Moro, Justice Minister, to take care of the porter. It took two hours for the prosecutor responsible for the investigation, Carmen Eliza Bastos de Carvalho, to evaluate the audio logs and make a press conference to state that the porter lied.^[130] The prosecutor was later shown to be an avid supporter of Bolsonaro and posed with Rodrigo Amorim, the deputy that broke the honor plaque that renamed a street after Marielle.^[131] At first, she denied that this would influence the investigation, but she stepped down after she realized nobody would believe that.

On another front, Carlos Bolsonaro very quickly posted on his Twitter^[132] (and later deleted) the audio logs of the porter's calls on the day of the murder. However, this raised more questions than it answered:

• How did he have access to ALL audio logs, including those for other houses?
• What proof is there that he didn't tamper with any of them?
• Why did the police evaluate a copy of the logs instead of the originals?

Jair Bolsonaro later claimed that his son got the audios on his behalf before the logs could be tampered with.^[133] Their interference completely ruined the evidence, casting doubt over whether they didn't tamper with it.

While it is possible that they had nothing to do with the crime, the speed at which they and their lackeys responded, as well as the overall intentionally slow and faulty execution of the investigation, raises serious suspicions. Given Brazil's track record, don't expect the factual truth to come out anytime soon.

Olavo de Carvalho[edit]

Carvalho in the Brazilian Embassy in Washington DC. He's the guy in the beige jacket next to Bolsonaro.

One of Bolsonaro's chief intellectual sources was Olavo de Carvalho (1947–2022), often described as "Bolsonaro's guru" (or, by Nick Burns, described as "part Roger Scruton and part Alex Jones"). Carvalho was a batshit crazy lunatic, foul-mouthed^[134] conservative, (USA) nationalist, self-educated (or self-described) philosopher who began as a Trotskyist but switched to the right in a cloud of irrationality. He combined a deep hatred of the PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores, Workers' Party) and all things of the left and opposition to homosexuality with a mindset rooted in every conspiracy theory and a lot of deeply weird occultism and irrational ideas such as astrology.^[135] He appeared skeptical of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, heliocentrism, and other non-geocentric worldviews.^[136] Here's a small rundown of other nice characteristics of him:

• He was an Obama birther.^[137]
• Claimed that Nazism was planned by Stalin^[138][139]
• Claimed every Brazilian political party, and therefore every politician, was communist^[140]
• Also stated that Brazil was always ruled by communists
• Stated that Pepsi is sweetened with aborted fetuses^[141]
• Thought 9/11 was a leftist job^[142]
• Didn't really believe in evolutionism^[143]
• Believed in the flat earth conspiracy theory^[144][141]

Considering the low bar for most of his ministers, it's a real surprise that Bolsonaro didn't formally name Olavo for anything.

In June 2020, Olavo saw many of the names he initially endorsed being kicked out of the government. This caused him to start criticizing Jair Bolsonaro. Ironically, one day later, facing legal prosecution for not paying fines after losing a court case,^[145] Olavo asked Bolsonaro for help, which the president promptly ignored. The relationship only deteriorated from there, and Olavo was subsequently mostly absent from anything regarding the government, though most of his followers were entirely loyal to Bolsonaro, and many still held high positions in the government hierarchy.

"No reason for impeachment"[edit]

Despite a long list of reasons why Brazil as a whole could do without Bolsonaro and his family, as well as several actions that he made that, under normal circumstances, would serve as the basis for impeachment. Despite over 100 demands to start an impeachment process, Jair Bolsonaro has no such risk, thanks to a favorable congress and congress president.

Rodrigo Maia, the Chamber of Deputies president (the Brazilian lower house) during 2019-20, famously said on March 2020 that "this is no time for impeachment."^[146]

Arthur Lira, elected as Chamber of Deputies president after Maia and a steady ally of Bolsonaro, said, "there is no justification for opening impeachment proceedings at this time."^[147]

Meanwhile, throughout his tenure, Bolsonaro:

1. broke decorum every day^{[citation needed]}
2. frequently attacked and riled up his followers against the Supreme Court judges
3. spread lies and false accusations on a near-daily basis
4. has ties to the Rio de Janeiro militias, which are criminal groups^{[citation needed]}
5. used the Brazilian intelligence service, ABIN, to help with his son Flavio Bolsonaro's defense in a corruption case^[148]
6. possibly knew about a large corruption scheme going on at the Health Ministry when it tried to import the Indian Covaxin and did nothing about it^[149]
7. openly, but indirectly, threatened to launch a coup d'etat in 2022 if he lost the election. (He ultimately lost the election and walked back on this threat amid pressure from even his key allies, defying expectations.^[150])

"No reason for impeachment", indeed.

The 'Big Lie' heads to Brazil (or, casting unfounded doubts on the voting system)[edit]

2022 second round results map, shaded by vote share.

After Sergio Moro, the judge behind Lava Jato (Car Wash), was declared suspect in March 2021 by the Supreme Court and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (often known mononymously as simply "Lula") was declared innocent and had all his political rights reinstated, the ex-president began a steady climb on polling opinion for the 2022 presidential elections. Bolsonaro immediately began a furious attack on the elections,^[151] claiming several times that the electronic urns used in Brazil are "black boxes" and easily hacked. When asked if he had proof, he said, "I'll show you proof if I want to!" Jair Bolsonaro made it clear that the only result he will accept in 2022 is his victory; anything else is fraud. Sounds familiar?^{[note 1]}

Bolsonaro also tried a desperate attempt to pass a new law that would give voters a paper receipt of their vote, so it could be "properly audited", claiming the paper receipt was the only way to truly be sure your vote wasn't frauded (which is a blatant lie). On the day of voting in the Chamber of Deputies, he held a military parade^[154] to pressure the vote to go in his favor. The law did not pass by a tight margin.

• As a side note, a Brazilian electronic urn is a simple machine. It has a screen and a physical, numeric keyboard, without any components or ports to connect to any network, cable or wireless. Each vote is saved to an internal storage card. Once voting is over, the urn is taken to the local Electoral Tribunal to have the card read and the votes computed. The process isn't impenetrable, and anyone savvy in information security can think of ways to interfere, such as: installing malicious firmware in some urns, getting access to the storage cards before they are read, or hacking a local Electoral Tribunal's database. However, neither Bolsonaro nor any of his followers can articulate how the frauds they claim to exist happened.
  • And guess who once received fraudulent votes back when elections were fully on paper, in 1994? Ironically, he didn't even need the less than 50 fraudulent votes he got, as he was the 3rd most voted federal deputy candidate for the state, which, along with the fact that all those fake votes were isolated to a single voting zone, made the Electoral Tribunal decide that he shouldn't lose it.^[155]

Bolsonaro didn't come up with all of these ideas himself. Even though he has made groundless fraud claims since at least 2014,^[156] his movement to discredit legitimate election results has also received a lot of backing from outside groups.^[157]

October 2022 election loss and aftermath[edit]

After an intense election, Bolsonaro was finally defeated by former president Luis Inacio Lula de Silva in a reelection bid. This defeat makes Bolsonaro the first Brazilian president to lose reelection since 1985.^[159] At the very least, his closest allies have, by and large, conceded that Lula won the election (which is already a step ahead of Trump's supporters in 2020),^[160] so that's one point for Brazil. However, this hasn't stopped some of his more hard-line supporters from protesting and demanding a coup.^[161]

In the weeks following his electoral defeat by Lula in October 2022, Bolsonaro's staunch agribusiness allies reportedly sponsored the protests calling for military intervention, presumably because Lula's pledge to restore the rainforest threatened their business interests.^[162] And if that's not enough, US election denialists – not knowing how to mind their own business^[163] – concocted their own batch of blatant lies about Brazil's elections process to sow even more baseless doubts.^[164][165]

Bolsonaro, for his part, has largely remained silent since he lost reelection.^[162] To his credit, he finally admitted he lost and agreed to a peaceful transition of power (though he unsurprisingly stopped short of formally conceding and congratulating his opponent Lula). He's even admonished his protesters not to resort to violence.^[166][167] Nevertheless, protesters viewed his strange silence as his tacit approval of their activities.^[162][165] Furthermore, military leaders testified that Bolsonaro proposed a self-coup to them.^[168]

In December 2022, Bolsonaro fled Brazil for Florida, refusing to fulfill his last duty as President: handing over the office to his successor.^[169] This basically meant he did not want to take part in the peaceful transition of power.^[170] Lula was nonetheless sworn in as President, with representatives of Brazil's diversity at his side.^[171] He might still get arrested, nevertheless.^[172]

On January 8, 2023, some of Bolsonaro's die-hard supporters took a page straight out of Trump's playbook and stormed the Brazilian Congress and the Supreme Federal Court. Bolsonaro has denied any responsibility for the attacks.^[173]

On June 30, 2023, Brazil's top elections court voted 5-2 to convict Bolsonaro of abuse of power for making false claims about the integrity of the country's voting system, and barred Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years. It was the first time in the court's 90 year history that it has banned a former president.^[174]

On October 31, 2023, Bolsonaro was again convicted because he used an official Independence Day celebration for the benefit of his reelection campaign.^[175] On March 19, 2024, he was indicted for allegedly faking his COVID vaccine records.^[176]

See also[edit]

• Donald Trump - His fellow Christofascist brother, political inspiration, and staunch American ally.
• Jaime Rodríguez - Another Latin American Christofascist politician with xenophobic leanings.
• Javier Milei - Ditto in Argentina.
• Vladimir Putin - Another nationalist nutjub friend of his who doesn't care about the environment or international relations. Only this one is more powerful and more aggressive.

External links[edit]

• See the Wikipedia article on Jair Bolsonaro.
• Jair Bolsonaro Is Elected President of Brazil. Read His Extremist, Far-Right Positions in His Own Words. — Even more quotes
• What Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, has said about Brazil's Indigenous Peoples — A compilation of Bolsonaro's quotes on Brazil's indigenous people, with links

Notes[edit]

References[edit]