FFS!
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A few months later, in 1956, Major Haroldo Veloso and Captain José Chaves Lameirão, both from the air force, attempted to overthrow Jucelino's government. They failed. But Juscelino, fearing that he would increase tension in the country by punishing the conspirators, granted amnesty to them. However, years later, in 1959, Major Veloso tried to stage another coup along with Lieutenant Colonel João Paulo Moreira Burnier. For fucks sake! The government didn't grant them amnesty this time, and they fled the country. The historical lesson that should have been learned is that a democratic nation governed by the rule of law should never grant amnesty to those who attack it. But the lesson, of course, was not learned. In 1964, influenced by the same anti-communist hysteria of guys like Penna Botto, the Brazilian army staged a coup, overthrowing then-President João Goulart, and began twenty years of dictatorship in Brazil, which only ended in 1985, two years after I was born. At the end of the dictatorship, the military, in agreement with the controlled opposition, approved the amnesty law, which allowed the return of left-wing political exiles and prevented torturers and murderers of the regime from being punished when Brazil became democratic again.
The new federal constitution only came in effect in 1988, and it wasn't until 1990 that we had our first president elected by popular vote; a right-wing president who confiscated people's savings and screwed up the lives of millions. For fucks sake!
Fast forward to 2018. In the wake of Brexit in 2014 and Trump's election in 2016, two major victories for the new, crazy global far-right, Brazil elected an unremarkable, thieving, and caricatured congressman from Rio de Janeiro to the presidency. He fooled many people outside Rio, especially in São Paulo and the south, people who believed his São Paulo countryside accent. He fooled them because, in reality, Jair had made his entire life in Rio de Janeiro, a place that a good portion of the people from São Paulo and the south hate. In other words, they were suckers. As president in 2019, Jair Bolsonaro placed one imbecile after another in various ministries. They were idiots who constantly made blunders and were replaced by other idiots. Right off the bat, Jair appointed a literal Nazi as Minister of Culture, a guy who made a video imitating Josef Goebbels, which led to his removal after allies pressured the president, who tried to defend the guy. Jair mismanaged the Covid-19 pandemic, embracing anti-science and anti-vaccine rhetoric. He delayed the arrival of the first vaccines in Brazil, which resulted in us having the second highest number of Covid-19 deaths at that time, after the United States, which had Trump as president.
Meanwhile, Lula, who had been president twice between 2003 and 2009, was imprisoned. He was arrested as part of Operation Lava Jato (Carwash in English), in which an unremarkable judge acted in collusion with the prosecution, orchestrating the investigation. It took a long time for people to understand that a judge cannot be in bed with either the defense or, much less, the prosecution. Many people still don't understand this today, which is why this former judge was just elected governor of the state of Paraná. But before that, this judge was the Minister of Justice in the government of Jair Bolsonaro, the candidate who benefited the most with Lula's imprisonment. Finally, after some years, Lula, who did not flee and faced justice, was released and acquitted by the Supreme Court after Lava Jato was shown to be a fraud and several judges and prosecutors who were part of it were exposed as grifters with a political agenda.
Released from prison, Lula ran for president against Jair in 2022. Jair lost, but only narrowly, showing that a large part of the country is dumbed down by a ridiculous nostalgia for the times of slavery. Furthermore, more than 70% of evangelicals vote as a block for the most subservient far-right possible. The so-called "evangelical religion" is now the second largest religion in the country, after fifty years of constant American influence. When I was born in the early 1980s, Protestants in general were about 5% of the population. So far, so good. But Jair didn't accept losing to Lula, nor did his followers. They tried to stage a coup in Brasília, our capital, before Lula's inauguration. Lula, incidentally, had Geraldo Alckmin as his vice-president this time. Alckmin is part of the traditional Brazilian right, which governed Brazil from the 1990s until the early 2000s, during Fernando Henrique Cardoso's presidency. He even ran against Lula for president in 2006. Today, the far right considers that government of the 1990s and early 2000s to be "communist." Alckmin is also seen as "communist" by voters of the Bolsonaro family. Instead of stopping to think that perhaps they have been radicalized, they prefer to actually believe that Alckmin is a communist. Stupidity truly knows no bounds.
Jair was arrested by the Supreme Court after the failed coup attempt in 2022, which largely failed because, in the meantime, the American president changed from Trump to Biden, and the Biden administration signaled that it would not support a coup in Brazil. Jair's allies who participated in the attempt were also arrested. They got fucked, and rightly so. Some fled Brazil for the United States, like one of his sons, Eduardo. Speaking of Jair's three eldest sons: they lived here in Tijuca, the neighborhood of Rio where I live, where I was born and raised, and so were they. Before moving to Barra da Tijuca, which is another neighborhood, they spent practically their entire childhood and adolescence here. They're swindlers. Anyway, Jair was arrested and Lula served his third term from 2022 to 2026. In all macroeconomic metrics, Brazil improved during those years. Loudmouths, like that billionaire owner of Havan, a chain of stores that sells products made in China, said that Brazil would go bankrupt under Lula. This billionaire said he would flee Brazil. Not only did he not flee, but Havan made billions in profit during that period. The farming sector, which is conservative, evangelical, coup-supporting, and subservient to foreign interests, also made loads of money.
Now, in the 2026 general elections, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, Jair's eldest son, was the right-wing candidate for president. He ran against Lula, who was seeking his fourth term. Flávio lost the election and will be without public office for the first time in almost thirty years, since his father, Jair, placed him as a fake employee in Brasília. Flávio is still a senator until January 2027, but less than two days after the election, he fled to the United States, claiming that the left persecutes the right and that we live in a left-wing dictatorship. This is completely false. If that were the case, elected and re-elected governors from the right and far-right, politicians like Tarcísio de Freitas from São Paulo, Ronaldo Caiado from Goiás, Cleitinho from Minas Gerais, and representatives and senators like Michele Bolsonaro, Jair's current wife, Carlos Bolsonaro and Renan Bolsonaro, two other sons of Jair, and so many other figures throughout Brazil, would also have fled or would be being arrested. But they haven't fled nor are they being arrested, because there is no evidence that these figures have committed any kind of crime. They may be sellouts to foreign interests, they may be stupid, and I may despise their positions on everything, but they are not criminals.
There's also the narrative that there was fraud in the elections, since Flávio was ahead in the first round. It's a lie that there was fraud. What happened was a gigantic mobilization between the first and second rounds. The first round of 2026 had the highest abstention rate in decades. Many people didn't vote. In the second round, it was the lowest abstention rate in decades. The mobilization made many people wake up and see that Flávio is neck-deep in fraud and corruption, such as in the case of Banco Master, which involves banker and evangelical preacher Daniel Vorcaro, and in the money laundering of organized crime carried out by the lawyer Willer Tomaz de Souza, who also fled to the United States claiming political persecution. Willer, incidentally, wagered more than a billion dollars on virtual bets via cell phone in a single year. Besides being a criminal who launders money from crime syndicates, he's an imbecile. But now he will have the protection of the decadent and nearly defunct second Trump administration, along with Eduardo, who was convicted for the attempted coup in 2022 and fled, and along with Flávio, who is now plotting to harm their country for the benefit of a foreign power. In the event of a military attack by that power on Brazil, all of them should face summary execution, as that is the penalty in our legislation for such cases.
And all this because of anti-communist hysteria, the same anti-communist hysteria of Admiral Penna Botto, a hysteria that considers any labor and social protection measures to be communism. All this because of a bunch of imbeciles who have never read Ludwig von Mises's Human Action, a book as mediocre as it is verbose, but believe they are talking about the greatest genius of economic sciences by throwing his name around here and there. All this because of idiots who bought into the idea that Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Geraldo Alckmin are "moderate" communists who are part of the secret conspiracy of the "scissors strategy," another pathetic anti-communist hysteria that was spread in the internet age in Brazil by none other than Olavo de Carvalho, a charlatan who was — and still is — the idea that stupid people have of a brilliant philosopher. I only hope and pray that the Trump administration, which is about to face a massive defeat in the midterm elections this November, doesn't impose sanctions or, even worse, attack Brazil to distract the American populace that loves a war. I hope this not so much for the good of Brazil, but for the good of the Bolsonaro supporters themselves, for the good of those 59 million who voted for Flávio. If that happens, they won't all be able to flee to the United States or anywhere else.
by Fernando Olszewski
