A Fascist Won Brazil’s Presidential Election, And The Media’s Tweets Were Very Bad

By Travis Waldron

The élite media still can’t fig­ure out how to call right-wing author­i­tar­i­ans what they are. 

These are con­fus­ing times for the estab­lish­ment media. Fascism is on the hoof, and the lib­er­al order and its var­i­ous shib­bo­leths are under threat, among them the very notion of a free press. But how to get a han­dle on such a phe­nom­e­non? How does one report objec­tive­ly on the can­non being point­ed at one’s head?

One way would be to pre­tend that the can­non isn’t a can­non. That’s what we saw on Twitter Sunday night after Brazil, the world’s fourth-largest democ­ra­cy, elect­ed a neo-fas­cist as its new pres­i­dent.

Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right con­gress­man, is by any rea­son­able def­i­n­i­tion an author­i­tar­i­an, a fas­cist and a poten­tial dic­ta­tor. He prais­es dic­ta­tor­ships and says the only prob­lem with pre­vi­ous dic­ta­tors is that they didn’t kill enough. He has called for killing his polit­i­cal oppo­nents and said last week that he would “cleanse” Brazil of left­ists, who would have no choice but to “leave or go to jail.” He calls immi­grants “scum” and said mem­bers of Afro-Brazilian com­mu­ni­ties aren’t suit­able for pro-cre­ation, wants police to kill alleged crim­i­nals on sight and chose a run­ning mate who refus­es to rule out a return of mil­i­tary rule. His entire polit­i­cal career is built on vio­lent rhetoric aimed at Brazil’s most mar­gin­al­ized peo­ples.

These are all objec­tive­ly fas­cist, author­i­tar­i­an, auto­crat­ic things to say, and Bolsonaro’s long his­to­ry of espous­ing such sen­ti­ment sug­gests they are a good bet to become the fas­cist, author­i­tar­i­an, auto­crat­ic things he will do. 

And yet after the returns were in, the élite press, which we’re told is very com­mit­ted to objec­tiv­i­ty, start­ed hem­ming and haw­ing its way around the elec­tion of a pres­i­dent who would glad­ly shut­ter their oper­a­tions and throw them all in prison if he could. 

Bolsonaro is a “divi­sive pop­ulist,” The New York Times said, jam­ming a euphemism and a cat­e­go­ry error togeth­er, the lat­ter premised on the idea that pop­ulism is noth­ing more than a mat­ter of coarse rhetoric. (As with Donald Trump, Bolsonaro’s “pop­ulist” ges­tures served main­ly to dis­tract from the sup­port he was con­sol­i­dat­ing among the reac­tionary fan­cy class­es.) Read more here: https://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​j​a​i​r​-​b​o​l​s​o​n​a​r​o​-​b​r​a​z​i​l​-​e​l​e​c​t​i​o​n​-​m​e​d​i​a​_​u​s​_​5​b​d​7​6​9​f​4​e​4​b​0​7​4​2​7​6​1​0​a​3​6de