Reuters reported late October 28 that “far-right” lawmker Jair Bolsonaro won the Presidential elections in Brazil. What is more interesting about this election victory is why he won.
Reuters reports:
Far-right lawmaker Jair Bolsonaro won Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, riding a wave of frustration over corruption and crime that brought a dramatic swing to the right in the world’s fourth-largest democracy.
With 94 percent of ballots counted, Bolsonaro had 56 percent of the votes in the run-off election against left-wing hopeful Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party (PT), who had 44 percent, according to the electoral authority TSE.
“We cannot continue flirting with communism … We are going to change the destiny of Brazil,” Bolsonaro said in an acceptance address in which he vowed to carry out his campaign promises to stamp out corruption after years of leftist rule.
The former army captain’s rise has been propelled by rejection of the leftist PT that ran Brazil for 13 of the last 15 years and was ousted two years ago in the midst of a deep recession and political graft scandal.
The issues in Brazil were an apparent connection with leftism and political corruption, and also, economic recession.
It is amazing what the mainstream media refuses to support. This was also the situation in the United States that propelled Donald Trump into the presidency, with tangible results in less than two years following his election.
It is also surfacing in Europe, where “far right” leadership is gradually replacing the globalist leftist governing style of the European Union member states. Britain wants out of the EU, and for much the same reasons.
Russia, whose leader President Vladimir Putin, considers to be a quite liberal government, has nonetheless survived years of withering sanctions imposed by the US and Europe, precisely through a strong commitment to sovereignty and gradually improving economic policy.
Vladimir Putin is widely considered a “dictator” and a “thug” by mainstream media, but he is actually an effective president, which is why even his detractors in Russia often voted for him in March 2018 – no one else in the election campaigns showed the capability to continue to lead Russia through and out of its crisis.
The victory of Mr. Bolsanaro is interesting because public sentiment defied globalist narrative.
Since many news sources are worldwide in scope, such as Reuters, it is possible for the editorial slants of these organizations to try to impose a point of view that people will believe. The following section gives the editorial slant’s “push” for “caution.”
The vote had been calm and orderly across the country, said Laura Chinchilla, the former president of Costa Rica who is head of the Organization of American States’ Electoral Observation Mission. Brazil has suffered a spate of partisan violence during the polarized campaign.
Many Brazilians are concerned that Bolsonaro, an admirer of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship and a defender of its use of torture on leftist opponents, will trample on human rights, curtail civil liberties and muzzle freedom of speech.
The 63-year-old seven-term congressman has vowed to crack down on crime in Brazil’s cities and farm belt by granting police more autonomy to shoot at criminals. He also wants to let more Brazilians buy weapons to fight crime.
Despite the brown-shirt style allegation in the second paragraph above, the basic idea of getting tough on crime has been a great protection of liberty. When criminals are not stopped, what would possibly inspire them to not do crimes?
Reuters featured something called the Trust Principles at the end of its Bolsanaro piece and in this, it tries to use its widely known reputation and some very good statements about reporting without bias to justify its, well… bias.
That bias was reflected in the dubbing of Bolsonaro as a “far right” candidate, which evokes images of Naziism, much as far left evokes Leninism or Sorosian values. But “far left” is a term rarely seen in globally available media outlets.
The trick is to confuse leftism with normalcy and reasonableness. The far right label is a way to criticize anything that expresses national sovereignty and liberty, as well as responsible governing.
Bolsonaro’s victory is a sign that people in more and more places appear to be seeing through the media narrative, and hopefully, it is also a sign that people are thinking for themselves and not letting the media outlets do their thinking for them. Fox News gave some acknowledgement of this in its own coverage of the election victory:
“We have everything we need to become a great nation,” Bolsonaro said Sunday night in a video broadcast on his Facebook account shortly after he won, as The New York Times noted. “Together we will change the destiny of Brazil.”
Voters in Sunday’s runoff election apparently looked past warnings that the brash former army captain could erode democracy, and embraced a chance for radical change after years of turmoil.
“I feel in my heart that things will change,” said Sandra Coccato, a 68-year-old small business owner, after she voted for Bolsonaro in Sao Paulo. “Lots of bad people are leaving, and lots of new, good people are entering. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Bolsonaro’s campaign first gained traction with his promises to go after violent crime in a country that leads the world in homicides and where many Brazilians live in daily fear of muggings or burglaries. However, his vows to loosen gun laws and give police a freer hand to use force against suspects also have raised concerns that a Bolsonaro presidency could lead to a bloody crackdown and an erosion of civil rights.
The campaign gained momentum by winning over much of the business community with promises of enacting market-friendly reforms that would reduce the size of the Brazilian state, including cutting ministries and privatizing state companies.
Sound familiar?
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