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[–]EthnocratArcheofuturist 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I really hate conservatives.

[–]LGBTQIAIDSAnally Injected Death Sentence 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

It's almost like they're deliberately sabotaging themselves just so that the masses can be easier convinced that Brexit was a 'mistake' and thus that rejoining the EU again out of nostalgia for the marginally less dysfunctional times of Blair and Cameron is desirable.

Of course, this would be an unsound argument even if it were to suffice for the masses: there is no reason whatsoever to believe that Truss, Kwarteng, &c. would not be high up in the British government if Remain won. George Osborne, who seemed to be Cameron's personal preferred choice for a successor when he resigned in 2016, is right up there with the worst of them.

Almost all heads of state and government seem to be worse than their immediate predecessors these days. Perhaps nowhere is that more clear than if we abstract away all male British heads of government and consider the three remaining.

That is to say that Truss is clearly shaping out to be worse than May, and that May was clearly worse than Thatcher.

Now, a question about Brazil. Over the past few years it seems Brazil has seen the rise of what I can only really describe as a Brazilian analogue to South Africa's EFF. That is Leo Pericles' 'Popular Unity' party.

Do they seem like they could become a big problem in future, given that they are rather like America's RCP or PSL writ large? Even a cursory look at their website brings up a slew of Leftist buzzwords, such as 'fascista' (predictably used to denote Bolsonaro and his government), 'lgbtfobicas', 'racismo' and 'racistas'. They seem like the PT, but even worse.

Hard to believe that contemporary Brazil is the same country as what's in this video: https://files.catbox.moe/37of2g.mp4 How did things regress so far in less than four decades?

[–]VacaLeitera767[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

》 That is Leo Pericles' 'Popular Unity' party.

There are tons of small far-left parties in BR. They are all controlled auxiliary lines of PT and Foro de SP and do the "dirty work" of radicalizing specific sectors such as college students while being kept at a healthy distance to avoid contaminating Lula and the party's image among the conservative working-class population. They're breeding grounds for future militants and also help put college students (the children of the elite) "into line" by creating a far-left totalitarian atmosphere inside educational institutions.

UP is just one more of these auxiliary lines, but Woke and middle-class oriented instead of marxist-lenninist/stalinist like PSTU, PCB and PCO. I'd say their emergence was ineviatable as the organized LATAM left needs to cultivate this new US-centric woke element which has grown exponentially in the past few years. It's a sign of the direction in which the left is moving but not a threat in itself, as they will never be electorally relevant outside of public universities. Their base and down-ballot candidates are mostly middle-class white women screaming about abortion and fascism and so they're not really a racial nationalist movement like the the EFF. Despite the rise of US-style identity politics I don't think actual black nationalism will ever fly in Brazil. The left will incorporate some aesthetic elements and pay lip service to them but they'll always be kept at bay because it's simply not viable and are ultimately seen as a threat. As destructive as PT and PSOL are, they're still predominantly White (ironically, southerners have historically played an outsized role in the brazilian left, a legacy of the more egalitarian/european culture which contrasts to the colonial structure of the rest of Brazil).

》 How did things regress so far in less than four decades?

The far-left has had a totalitarian grip on Brazilian public universities since the 1970s (the worst sin of the military government was not purging them). As a result the cultural and media environment is PC and leftist. This is why change must happen above and not below. Long-term the masses are irrelevant. At most they can serve as a base for improvised "reactionary" governments like Bolsonaro's, but without robust elite and institutional support that simply cannot last. Globo (previosly conservative but now libshit media empire) is watched daily by most brazilians and has had an enormous role at mainstreaming Gays and Trannies through their telenovelas. Right now they're about to (again) take down a president and elect Lula. I'm convinced that without Globo campaigning relentlessly for him Lula wouldn't stand a chance against Bolsonaro.

(Edit) to get an Idea of what I mean by "totalitarian atmosphere", mostly white students at Brazil's biggest university are greeted on their first day of classes by a deluge of leftwing militants, flyers and posters saying things like "bolsonaro out", "negrx and pardx resistence", Sao Paulo black soil, feminists against bolsonaro, LGBTQIA against bolsonaro, transvestites against Bolsonaro, "blacken the university", "union of communist youth", "insurgent favela", "trotskyist collective", "vulvular revolution", plus a brazilian flag with the writting of "blacks, indios and pardos". It is simply impossible for normies to resist the pressure. I've been elsewhere in Latin America and it's even worse. This continent is a rotting mess and is done long term unless by some miracle there's a total fascist takeover.

https://www.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/tim2wn/como_q_tanka_a_usp/

[–]LGBTQIAIDSAnally Injected Death Sentence 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Very informative and useful reply. I always learn something from you about contemporary Brazil, which in turn helps me to communicate to others about the situation in the country.

I know about the late Olavo de Carvalho, but are there are any other intellectual figures (philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, &c.) generally considered 'Right-wing' or 'Far-Right' who were/are popular on the Brazilian Right?

The overtly Far-Left parties being satellite parties of the PT that serve for PT a function is a take that I haven't heard before. Of course, parties being slightly Leftward or Rightward of the mainstream often do end up as—provided that they weren't from the very start—satellite parties deeply intertwined with the mainstream, and so it is not wholly unbelievable. For instance, America's CPUSA is often viewed in the circles of those extreme Leftists who run with Antifa, PSL, RCP, &c. as a satellite party and front of the Left-wing of the US Democrats.

If PSTU, PCB and PCO better resemble the older Marxist Left, where does PCdoB fit in relation to them? I read once that the (by Western standards) 'Far-Right' PSC had an electoral alliance with the PCdoB and that this was the exact reason for Bolsonaro leaving their party, out of disapproval. The average PCdoB voter seems to be super-woke, however. 89% approval for same-sex marriage according to: https://brasil.isidewith.com/en/poll/965633/1550182717. But even the PSL voters seem woke, with 81% approval according to: https://brasil.isidewith.com/en/poll/965633/3347843671. It seems more like, in switching from PSC to PSL (which merged with the more conservative DEM to form UNIAO) Bolsonaro went from allying with conservatives to allying with liberals. DEM had a much less extreme 32% approval, going up by 1% over the past four years: https://brasil.isidewith.com/en/poll/965633/1550182707. Now he's gone back to conservatives by allying with PL.

breeding grounds for future militants

You ruled out the probability of South Africa's EFF's (and BLF's) strange blend of social radical+ethnonationalist (EFF is explicitly pro-feminist, LGBT, &., see, for example, this image from their website: https://effonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/WhatsApp-Image-2020-08-09-at-13.09.24.jpeg) politics taking off in Brazil, because the wider Left is uncomfortable with actual black racialism.

But is ideological Far-Left violence resembling that of the military rule years probable in future even if black racialist violence is unlikely? After all, there is the 'conspiracy theory' that Dilma herself was supposed to have participated in bank robberies, assassinations and other acts of Left-wing extremism during those years, charges albeit which she has always denied.

I've also noticed that the Left's hierarchy is dominated by White and White-passing Brazilians, despite the fact the more non-white parts of Brazil are (predictably) where they are electorally strongest. Like all multiracial democracies, race seems to be a significant marker of political allegiance. In 2018, the most pro-PT areas, where Haddad got 70% of the vote in the run-off, were also those that are the worst off demographically.

That Globo—which Brazilians should probably take to calling 'Globohomo' at this point—has influence comparable to that of CNN and similar mass media outlets is certainly no surprise. I certainly believe that mass media has had and still has a massive impact on the impressionable masses' conception of what is normal and what is 'extreme', although it certainly also takes time to socially engineer people, and thus it may take decades of bombarding viewers with queers and trannies to make them flip sides on that question. The same method was used where I am as well, viz. initially portraying them as 'normal' and 'like us' and slowly shifting towards portraying them as having desirous and enviable lifestyles. Now they are effectively protected classes who can do almost no wrong. And if that is one of the chief causes of their normalization, it is clearly succeeding there too, because it is very easy to find overt Brazilian queers and trannies wherever Brazilians can be found online.

As for the linked Reddit video... Bolsonaro really is the 'Brazilian Trump'. The way that his support plummeted around the time of Covid despite it turning out in hindsight to be much ado about nothing. The way that his opponents label him with the exact same terms. The way they're accusing him of aspiring to launch a Peruvian-style auto-coup. The way they'll go after him after he leaves office.

Sao Paulo University looks every bit as bad as you say it is. Left-wing buzzwords everywhere (socialism, imperialism, LGBT, feminists, anti-racists). That's yet another analogue with Trump: just as Trump either couldn't or didn't even try to change American universities, Bolsonaro likewise has not changed Brazil's universities, and so they remained bastions of their enemies all through their time in office.