Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s presidential candidate and leader in opinion polls, suffers a knife attack. According to close sources, his condition is grave. The aggressor is a militant of the Workers Party of Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro’s supporters resisted the temptation to lynch and directed the attacker to the police. Dilma Rousseff stated that Bolsonaro was the victim of his own hate speech. It is the left blaming the victim and justifying the aggressor. This is the “peace and love” left.
Brazilian politics
A short note on Brazil’s elections
In October Brazilians will elect the president, state governors, and senators and congressmen, both at the state and the national level. It’s a lot.
There is clearly a leaning to the right. The free market is in the public discourse. A few years ago most Brazilians felt embarrassed to be called right wing. Today especially people under 35 feel not only comfortable but even proud to be called so.
The forerunner for president is Jair Bolsonaro. The press, infected by some form of cultural Marxism, hates Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro’s interviews in Brazilian media are always dull and boring. Always the same questions. The journalists decided that Bolsonaro is misogynist, racist, fascist, guitarist, and apparently, nothing will make them change their minds. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Bolsonaro is a very simple person, with very simple language, language that can sound very crude. But I defy anyone to prove he is any of these things. Also, Bolsonaro is one of the very few candidates who admits he doesn’t know a lot about economics. That’s great news! Dilma Rousseff lied that she had a Ph.D. in economics (when she actually didn’t have even an MA), and we all know what happened. Bolsonaro is happy to delegate economics to Paulo Guedes, a Brazilian economist enthusiastic about the Chicago School of Milton Friedman. One of Bolsonaro’s sons is studying economics in Institute Von Mises Brazil.
It is very likely that Brazil will elect a record number of senators and congressmen who will also favor free market.
Even if Bolsonaro is not elected, other candidates like Marina Silva and Geraldo Alckmin favor at least an economic model similar to the one Fernando Henrique Cardoso implemented in the 1990s. Not a free market paradise, but much better than what we have today.
Unless your brain has been rotten by cultural Marxism, the moment is of optimism.
What is the proper role of government?
Former Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff publicly lied by saying that she had a M.A. and a Ph.D. in Economics. The lie was discovered in 2009, when she still wasn’t Brazil’s president. Maybe that’s the problem with Dilma: she would even lie to say she was highly competent in economics.
Nobody in the 19th century believed that the role of government was to control the economy. This notion only became strong in the 20th century and to a great degree thanks to Keynesianism. It was Keynes who popularized the notion that the free market is inherently unstable, and that government should exercise some oversight on it.
Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian presidential candidate ahead in the opinion polls, has no problem admitting he doesn’t know enough about economics. For me, this is one of his main strengths. In the past, Bolsonaro was more statist. Today he shows signs of becoming more inclined towards free markets. He is clearly willing to delegate the economic policy of his government to people who are strongly favorable to the free market. In other words, Bolsonaro doesn’t know a lot about economics and he is not ashamed of admitting it. But he knows that too much government control ruins a country’s economy.
Dilma is arrogant. Part of her arrogance is to believe that she would be able to control the economy politically. Bolsonaro seems to be humble enough to admit that’s impossible. Keynes believed that the economy is inherently unstable. Contradictorily he advised governments to try to control it. Hayek’s answer to Keynes was that economics is not a science you can master in college. There are simply way too many variables for any human to control.
Bolsonaro’s focus is on public security. Criminality is on the rise in Brazil. People are afraid of walking on the streets, especially in big cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. That should be the role of government: to guarantee we can go out for work, come back, and not get killed or robbed on the way. If the government is doing that, it is already doing a lot. People freely and willingly interacting with one another can do the rest. Guarantee that evildoers will be punished, and watch the economy fly. And before I forget: contrary to cultural Marxism (and Rousseau), criminals are not victims of the society. Society is the victim of criminals.
Brazilian senator Gleisi Hoffmann sends weird message to “Arab World”
Earlier this week, Brazilian senator Gleisi Hoffmann, president of the Worker’s Party (of the jailed former president Lula da Silva), sent a message to “the Arab World” through Al Jazeera TV to, in her words, “denounce that Lula is a political prisoner.” Hoffmann blames the Brazilian judiciary system, Globo TV (a major mass media in Brazil), American and European oil companies, and even the US Department of State for Lula’s arrest. At the end of the video, she invites everyone (I assume she means everyone in the “Arab World”) to join her in the fight to free Lula.
Hoffmann’s message is very weird, to say the least. What is she expecting? An Arab intervention in Brazil to free Lula? If that is so, she is committing high treason. To say the least, the Worker’s Party is a bad joke. If Lula needs foreign intervention, then how can Hoffmann say that he enjoys full support in his country? The truth is that Lula is history. I would very much like to stop writing about this. But it seems that, while people like Hoffmann are still in power, there is work to do.
Brazilian Senator Aécio Neves close to jail
Brazilian Senator Aécio Neves is close to the jail. He is charged with corruption and obstruction of justice.
Aécio Neves is one of the main leaders of PSDB, the party that, especially since 1994, has been the main electoral opposition to the Worker’s Party (PT) of Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, president from 1995 to 2002, is also in the PSDB. Neves was presidential candidate in the last elections, in 2014, and was really close to defeating Dilma Rousseff, the candidate of PT that was later impeached.
The Aécio Neves trial is extremely symptomatic in Brazilian politics. There are no popular manifestations in his favor. No political analyst is claiming that he is innocent and being unjustly accused. In other words, the contrast between Aécio Neves and Lula, recently sent to jail under a lot of noise, couldn’t be greater.
A popular phrase in Brazil is very telling. The translation to English loses the rhyme, but here it goes: when Lula was facing trial, some militants of PT carried signs saying “Lula is my friend, you mess with him, you mess with me.” Former Aécio voters later carried signs saying “Aécio is not my friend, if you mess with him I couldn’t care less.” As usual, the right is right.
Time for optimism in Brazil
If you only read left-leaning newspapers, things might appear dismal in Brazil right now. But I am very convinced that it isn’t so.
With former president Lula in jail, it becomes more and more likely that Jair Messias Bolsonaro will be Brazil’s next president.
I already wrote about Bolsonaro here. To sum things up, I don’t think that he is a libertarian champion. Far from it. There are many things about Bolsonaro that will displease those who are more market-friendly. He is still too nationalistic in his economic thinking. He fails to see how awful the military government in Brazil (1964-1985) was (even though the alternative – Brazil turning into a South-American USSR – was even worse). But Bolsonaro represents something extremely important: the left is losing the culture war in Brazil. After decades of hegemony in Brazil, Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School seem to be on the ropes. People are so sick and tired of cultural Marxism that they are willing to elect someone whose agenda is to fight against it.
Maybe a world with Bolsonaro president is not the best of worlds. Maybe he is very much a Brazilian Donald Trump. But it is certainly good to know that cultural Marxism is turning against itself and that now Brazilians might be willing to elect a president that, although only moderately market-friendly, is not ashamed to call himself a conservative.
Who is Jair Bolsonaro and why you should care
Since 1994, Brazilian presidential elections follow a pattern: PSDB and PT candidates are the main competitors, with a third candidate falling between the main leaders and countless dwarf candidates. Although this third candidate does not reach the presidency and does not even dispute the second round of the elections, its political influence tends to increase and its support happens to be disputed by the candidates of the PSDB and the PT. So it was mainly with Marina Silva in 2010 and 2014, and possibly will be so with Jair Bolsonaro in 2018.
After being defeated in 1989, 1994 and 1998, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva finally won the presidential election in 2002 and was re-elected in 2006. In 2002 Lula was benefited by the low popularity of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC), hurt by the circumstantial economic difficulties that the country was going through. FHC was practically absent from the campaign of his successor candidate, José Serra, apparently by common agreement of the incumbent and the possible successor. In addition, Lula and the PT had a radical change of stance that year, expressed mainly by the “Letter to the Brazilian People”. In this document Lula promised to abandon his historic struggle against free markets and to maintain the basic guidelines of FHC’s economic policy, which in the middle of the previous decade had taken the country from one of the worst economic crises in its history. The Brazilian economy left the circumstantial difficulty of 2002 and with this Lula secured his reelection in 2006. However, looking back, the arrival of Lula to the power was not accidental. Created in the late 1970s, the PT always faithfully (and not secretly) followed Antonio Gramsci’s guidelines of cultural Marxism: to come to power not by violence and also not by elections per se, but by cultural influence. This guideline guaranteed to Lula, even in the elections he lost, about 30% of the valid votes. The other 21% were electors dissatisfied (in the case of 2002) or excited (in the case of 2006) with the economic conditions of the moment. However, it is this same strategy of cultural Marxism that is now opening room for Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro is already an old congressman in Brazil, but has only really become famous in recent years. Elected for the first time in 1990, he fiercely criticized FHC’s free-market economic policy during the 1990s. In his view the then-president was a entreguista (something like a surrenderer) and the Brazilian economy needed to be protected against foreigners. Bolsonaro has also many times attenuated or even denied the fact that Brazil underwent a military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985. But what his followers (who call him Mito) really admire him for is the way he stands against political correctness, in a way reminiscent of Donald Trump. Bolsonaro became famous mainly for opposing the introduction of gender ideology as content in the country’s public schools. For this reason he is often accused of machismo and homophobia by his opponents. In recent statements Bolsonaro expresses greater support for the free market, but maintains his admiration for the military that governed Brazil in the past and a hard line against the politically correct.
Not only in Brazil, but in other parts of the world, the spell of cultural Marxism is turning against the sorcerer. When the facts refuted Marx’s economic theory (already brilliantly refuted by Mises) some Marxists, such as Oskar Lange, and more recently Thomas Piketty, sought a soft version of economic Marxism. Many others, however, took refuge in the cultural Marxism of Gramsci, Foucault, Herbert Marcuse, and others. The option was simple: instead of admitting that Marxism is not true, many Marxists decided that truth is relative. The main result of this is the identity politics that spread throughout the world. Everyone wants to identify themselves as members of minorities who are not represented by traditional politicians. It was only a matter of time before white middle-aged men began to complain that they were not represented. And so white middle-aged men have taken Britain out of the European Union, elected Trump US president and will shortly elect leaders in other countries or at least greatly annoy the globalist establishment.
Throughout the world there is a weakening of the semi-Marxist welfare state, and the same can be observed in Brazil. Important right-wing leaders have emerged in recent years, ranging from conservatism to libertarianism. In the case of Brazil, however, where the population is still largely socially conservative, there is a strong tendency towards a conservatism with which libertarians do not identify, and this trend is stopping the advance of communism in the country. Brazilians can accept Marxism in politics and economics, but they do not accept it in their bedrooms as easily. It is possible that Bolsonaro is accepting the basic premises of a free-market economy, but his main appeal is to be the most anti-Lula, anti-PT, anti-establishment and politically incorrect presidential candidate. Even if he is not elected president in 2018, or even reaches the second round of elections, Bolsonaro is already a political leader impossible to ignore.
Some thoughts on Rio de Janeiro elections
I’m a great fan of the Lord of the Rings, both the books and the Peter Jackson movies. Overall I believe the movies are pretty faithful to the books. There are, of course, some differences, but I generally accept the explanation that adapting a book to a movie is hard and some changes have to be made. There is, however, a whole chapter from the books absent from the movies that I believe shouldn’t be. If you haven’t seen the movies or read the books, be warned, spoiler alert. The said chapter is called “The Scouring of the Shire.” In the movies, when the hobbits return home from the War of the Ring, hardly anything has changed. It seems like the Shire has not been affected by the events in the world around it at all. In the books, however, Saruman the White, the evil wizard, escapes to the Shire after been defeated in the battle of Isengard. He ends up governing the Shire in secret under the name of Sharkey until the events of “The Scouring of the Shire,” when the hobbits return and lead a rebellion, defeating the intruders and exposing Saruman’s role. I believe this chapter is important because it shows that evil is not somewhere far from home. We may fight a war overseas, but evil may end up lurking really close to us.
This last Sunday Brazil had municipal elections. The Workers Party (PT), the political party of impeached president Dilma Rousseff and the almost convict ex-president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, was the great loser. Some cities will still have a second round of votes, but it is clear that in the process PT will lose a great number of prefectures, city halls, and with it many commissioned positions as well. In sum, the process of rejection that started with the impeachment goes on and well. Or almost. In Rio de Janeiro the elections will be decided in second round between Marcelo Crivella and Marcelo Freixo. Crivella is a licensed bishop of the controversial Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, and Freixo is a member of the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL). Crivella was Rousseff’s ally almost until the very end, when his party decided to vote for the impeachment. PSOL is a dissent from PT that left the former party in 2004, believing that Lula was too pro-market in his policies.
Saruman took refuge in the Shire and changed his name to Sharkey. The inhabitants of the Shire were too unaware of the events of the War of the Ring to understand what was going on. Saruman was the White Wizard. He was supposed to be good, but ended up being one of Sauron’s greatest allies. Freixo is Saruman: he may try to hide as much as he wants to, and even change his name, but he is an ally to the worst things in Brazilian politics. He poses as someone pure (or White), but just like Saruman he actually has a robe of many colors, depending on who he wants to impress. PT changed its name to PSOL and is now trying to hide in my Shire. I hope the cariocas will not let it happen.
PSOL is popular mostly among the young, artists, and rich people from rich neighborhoods, so I don’t actually believe Freixo will become mayor. But their plan is, following Antonio Gramsci, to create a cultural hegemony and thus to win elections on the long run. PT did exactly this, but it seems like Brazilians are beginning to understand that socialists care only for other people’s money and little else. PSOL even has liberty in its name, but of course they aren’t going to offer any liberty to the people. Slavery can be defined as forced labor to someone else’s benefit. And that is also the exact definition of socialism: you work, they take your money and they give it to someone else. As Alexis de Tocqueville said it, “socialism is a new form of slavery.” I hope people in Brazil, and especially in Rio, will realize it.
Notes On Liberty 