January 11, 2023 • 42 mins
Tragedy itself is consumed by farce as Bolsonaro supporters storm the Brazilian capital and try to get the army to install their godking, currently in a hospital in Orlando, as dictator.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hagel remarks somewhere that all great world historical facts and
personages appear so to speak. Twice he forgot to add
the first time as tragedy, the second time is farce.
Welcome to Nick. It happened here the podcast where when
we last left Jayree Bolsonaro, he had locked himself in
the presidential mansion, turned off the lights, and refused to
(00:26):
leave or talk to anyone. Now Bolsonaro has returned to
his ancestral home hospital in Orlando, where he's been admitted
for abdominal pain, jointing me to discuss maybe the first
man in history to be his own Napoleon. The third
is James Hi, man, this is I'm very much looking
forward to this. Oh God. I okay, So for for
(00:51):
those of you who I don't know somehow have missed this.
I I woke up on Sunday and ten minutes later
this was happening, and I was like, well, okay, I
guess I'm canceling my dinner plans. Uh, we're doing this instead. Yeah.
I think Marx could have added to that quote and
then as fast again, and then for a third time
(01:12):
as fast. Yeah. We really, we really, we really have
sort of left the tragedy cycle on or now just
in the forest, over and over and over again. Yeah,
we kind of need a new word for what keeps
happening because it's not it's not really a coup and
it's certainly not a revolution. It's just like an extreme
reactionary tantrum. Yeah, I mean, I kind of like storming
the capital because it is what they do. But then yeah,
(01:37):
I don't know, like I'm upset that everyone calls it
insurrectionism or insurrectionists because it's like they're not like insurrectionary.
Reactionary is like a power. Yeah, it's like like I
think like auto coup is closer. But the problem with
COO is that cool implies that the military is actually cooperating,
which it isn't. Yeah, that's why they always fail. Yeah,
(01:59):
we're working get into that more and a bit. But yeah, okay, So,
so the thing that has actually happened is on Sunday,
supporters of of UH former former Brazilian president jay Are Bilsonaro,
who I fled the country to Orlando, I sacked the
Plaza of the Three Powers in Brazil, which is the
(02:21):
home of the basically the buildings are the three branches
of governments, and unlike in the US, they sacked all
of them. They stored their presidential mansion, they stormed Congress,
they stored the Supreme Court, and then having seized control
of the buildings, as cops either sat around joking with him,
which is actively walked them into the building. Like there
is a video of a procession of Bolsonaro supporters with
(02:44):
just like they're they're all walking in a line towards
the plaza and there's just like two cop cars like
in the middle of the thing driving with them, like
it's wild. There are cops taking selfies of them taking selfies. Yeah. Yeah,
Like I that that one that was the one in
Puts particularly that was like I feel like that goes
slightly above and beyond even what was happening with with
(03:05):
the American cops. Like that was some Yeah, it's yeah,
it's okay. So they get there, they do that, they
do the thing where they grab metal stuff and they
break the windows and then they break in and you know,
they they do classic January six stuff. Um, they take
(03:25):
pictures there. There's one picture that I found that's I
think it's in the Supreme Court. That's a picture of
someone like you can't see their face. It's just them
squatting on a like facing backwards, squatting on it on
a filing cabinet like fully butt out about take a dump.
It's wild. Yeah, this is what democracy looks like. Yeah,
(03:50):
and shifting on a filing cabinet and government office. Yeah. Okay,
so like they this this. They don't have a great
plan here. Um. The thing that they do is that
so they all do this. They break in, they like
break stuff, they like take random stuff. Um. And then
they whole bunch of people sit down on the ground
and sing the national anthem, uh, waiting for the army
(04:12):
to show up, because they think that when the army
shows up, the army is going to join them. And
I said, the army shows up and arrest them all.
There's some people who try to fight the police. Uh.
They beat up a horse cop, which I think is
funny because apparently this is just every single one of these.
Now someone beats up a horse cop. Um. But you know,
by bye bye bye, by the end of Sunday, like
(04:36):
it's all over the government forces. We take the plaza.
People try to fight the police, but they lose really badly,
and you know, Okay, so obviously there's a reason why
I read that versus strategy a second time. Was first
line to start this, like, okay, the January six comparisons
start fast and get harder. Which is this happened literally
(04:57):
on January eight, like two days after the American Like,
I mean, they stowed the Capitol buildings. But this is
something I think it's kind of important to understand. This
is an even worse plan than the January six plan.
So the January six plan, if people remember this, so crucially,
(05:19):
January six happens while Trump is technically still in office.
And what's going on when when they're showing me the
capital in January six is that Congress is trying to
basically pass power to Joe Biden, right like they're they're
they're doing the vote to proof the ballot totals from
the the electoral College blah blah blah blah blah. But okay,
(05:40):
so this means that you know when when when when
when on Jay's on January six, right, Congress was actually
in session, so the people who were there actually had
a thing they were trying to do to overturn their results,
and there was like there were people they could have harmed.
There was like they had they had like a goal
kind of it was like seth Abramson. But on the
(06:02):
other side, think it was like constitutional fantasy. But yeah,
but yeah, but like I I can't believe, you know,
like this is the thing about about about what's happening
Brazil's like I genuinely cannot believe that I am being
made to defend the planning capacity of the January six crowd,
like genuinely stunning. But the plan for the plan for
January eighth in Brazil was even worse because Okay, the
(06:28):
day they do this on right, Congress is not in session,
the Supreme Court is on holiday, and Lulu, the actual
president of Brazil, has a already taken power and b
is ins apollo. No money is there. Literally they store
three abandoned buildings. There is nohing there they could they
(06:48):
could have tried it. Agration was like three days before, right, Yeah,
it's funny. Lula talked about it in this in his
speech where part of like in this speech after after
this happens, is he has this line about how like
all of these people were already in Brazilia, but they
were too cowardly to face the people who were there
for the inauguration, so instead they waited for everyone to leave,
which is true. It's really funny. And this is kind
(07:13):
of what they always do, right, They always kind of
take the easy thing and then grandstand like like it's
a big brave thing that they've done. Like we see
this constantly on the right. Yeah, and you know, I like,
I I think I think it's reasonable to ask what
were they actually trying to do? Um? And I'm I'm
gonna read from the Washington Post. The Washington Post is
(07:33):
talking about, um, some of the previous attempts to do
the same thing. Quote one radicalized Bolsonarista named George Washington
Day Olivaria. Was it what? Yeah, all of the people
involved with this are named like George Washington Olivaria. It's incredible.
Do wow did they did they change their names? Or
(07:56):
is the whole thing just being a lame partake of
American conservative Well, I mean that's that is like like
it really like there is a lot of truth to
the analysis that, like Brazilian fascist culture is just like
the fourth time of Facebook meme isn't passed around, but
(08:16):
this time on what'sapp Like it's it's some it's it's
somehow more cringe than than the American stuff, like it's
wort have incredible. But here he was okay, yeah he was. Yeah.
This guy named George Washington Dlafaria was arrested and accused
of planting a bomb beneath a bus at the Brazilia airport.
In a statement to police, he said he wanted to
(08:38):
quote begin chaos that would lead to military intervention. So
she's trying to do the strategy of tension, right, which
is which is this thing from Italy where Okay, so
you you have the government running a bunch of sort
of like no, I mean, I don't know, calling them
fake fascist groups is technically correct, but you haven't. You
have them running a bunch of terrorist groups. And you know,
(09:00):
so they they this is this happening in like the
sixty seventies, and yeah, it gets a little bit into
the eighties. Is that they're they're doing all these bombings
and stuff, and they're doing all these terrorist attacks and
the goal is to get people to like sort of
trust the government and like allow like short of further
state of military intervention. But the thing about that was
that crucially the strategy of tension was a strategy that
was done by the government. Doesn't really work if you're
(09:22):
not the government and you are, in fact that people
causing the chaos, And where did you get to military
to sort of join you. So this is a crucial
problem for Brazilian fascism because as much as the sort
of the modern fascist movement is a cultiple scenario, it's
really a cult of the military. Bulsonaro was sort of
just the person who embodies the sort of desire the
fascist masses from military rule. But this means that if
(09:45):
the military just refused to do a coup, they have
no idea what to do. Yeah, but they could deploy
Baltonara himself. Have you seen that video of him trying
to do press ups to prove that he's kind of
super solidatew you know, But this is this is sort
of this is a real issue for them. And Okay,
(10:06):
so if I am pretty confident that if the military
had actually decided to do a coup this would have worked,
like and I think they would have pretty trivially just
like smashed the rest of the forces of the state.
Lulu would be in prison. But and this is the
thing that's been the key to everything that's been going
on in Brazil from the beginning. The army does not
have the green light from Washington to do a coup
(10:28):
because once again Biden just absolutely hates Bilsonaro, which is like, yeah,
you know this this this is this is a coup
that was planned from Orlando and not Langley. Now we're
on like number four in the last few years that
was planned from Florida and notably three of the four
of them have failed, and this is that Yeah, well,
(10:54):
I mean, I like, to be fair, this is a
better planned coup attempt than the Venezuela one that's not
hard that did exist bar. Yeah, the kind of bar
that you can get over by tripping. But you know,
we're sold the very early process of figuring out how
exactly who was involved in this and that like to
what extent everyone was coordinating with each other and like
(11:14):
you know, I might you want extent like literally governors
were involved seen to have been involved in this, but
we don't. We don't exactly know yet. Um. What we
do know in terms of it's being planned from Orlando
is that Bolsonaro for literally years has been saying ship
like quote, the patience of the people has run out.
I want to tell those who will make me unelectable
in Brazil, only God removes me from power. There are
(11:36):
three options for me, jail, death or victory. And I'm
telling the scandal rules. I will never be imprisoned. Even
thing is literally years and years and years just saying
said like that, like just over and over and over again.
And you know, Okay, So the other thing that we
know right now and this this this is being recorded
on what day? Is it is the ninth Yeah, it's
(12:00):
been a court on Monday to night, so this is
this is the next day. Uh. If by the time
this goes out there's more information, there will be more
information was going on what we have right now. One
of the things that we know is that the guy
who was in charge of security for the Federal District,
which is like the Federal District is basically like what
if washing d C. Was a state, but like a
tiny one. So the guy who was in charge of
(12:21):
security for that, uh, was a Bulsonaro supporter who just
so happened to be on vacation in Orlando, where Bulsonaro
was staying with an mm A fighter whose mansion has
a Minion Stein room. Uh. He's just coincidentally onification in
Orlando with Polsonara. Well, this is happening, so you know, Okay,
(12:43):
the Brazilian state seems to be being a lot faster
to sort of crack down on everything that's happening than
the American state was. Um that the guy who was
in charge of security, I who was in who's in Orlando.
That the Brazilian federal defender has already asked the Supreme
Court to arrest him. A Supreme Court justice like deposed
the governor of the federal district for allowing this to happen.
(13:06):
So yeah, it's wild. The Brazilian Minister of Justice as
they've already entified people in ten states who helped plan
or fund the operation. They've arrested like well the Totalsome
yesterday said that they arrested four hundred people. I saw
somewhere that arrested twelve. I don't know about that. I
could be wrong, but yeah, there was at least four
hundred people. Um, there's a huge like there's a huge
(13:27):
track down on people involved in this LULA. It's much
better than the January six response. And yeah, well like
like part part of what's happening, right, is like like
Lula literally like basically declared a state of emergency in
the federal zone and like got basically like I guess
you call it, like he basically sent in the FEDS
(13:49):
and like has like his people now have direct control
over security in the capital because because because the police
there are so unreliable, and you know, and like he's
been yeah, it's moving very very fast, just sort of
better than the US charge and probably yeah, and and
also like Lula Lula, unlike Biden, Lula, Lula has like
(14:11):
like literally like three hours as this was happening, he's
making a speech about like that him vowing to go
after everyone who's involved in this, including Bullsonaro and Um.
A Brazilian member of Congress is formally asked to Foreign
Ministry to extradite Bulsonaro to the US. Who knows what's
going to happen there? Uh, there have been there has
(14:33):
actually there's been like a surprising amount of sort of
support for that in the US. And you know, I
mean that's everything that's been kind of interesting for this,
like before we take the ad break, is that like
he's gotten Lula is getting support from like everyone, like
this is this is one of the rare we we
(14:54):
we we have the great capitalist triumvirate of Vladimir Putin.
Joe Biden and and Macron have all said that they're
backing him, which is wild real international Lincoln Project vibes. Yeah,
it's I mean that that that that that that is.
I guess like Hulula is abroad extent, right, Like you know,
(15:16):
if you go back to Lula episodes, like he was
close with the Bush administration, but also like close with
the World Social Forum people. So he's he's always kind
of like been the guy who straddles the divide between
like yeah, he's not and he's the guy he straddles
a divide between the sort of like international imperialists and
what was the left. Yeah yeah, So all right, we're
(15:43):
we're gonna we're we're gonna go to ads and then
when we come back, we're gonna talk more about how
everything is actually sort of gone. All right, we're back.
So one of the things I think is very interesting
(16:03):
about for all of the sort of planning and organizational
capacity that's gone into building the sort of like transnational
fascist movement the American right, like that that the American
rid has been setting up Uh, the American right has
just actively been making their allies worse here, like the ideas.
It's it's sort of incredible. I mean, this is something
(16:24):
I think that that's genuinely very scary about the Brazilian
right is that their regular combination of tactics are really effective.
Um that you know, that they've been able to successfully
will this combination of sort of electoralism, of lawfare or
sort of like using the legal system against their political
enemies off road blockades, mass marches, and you know, just
straight up paramilitary death squads of various kinds. You know,
(16:45):
you have your sort of urban death squads, you have
these like genocidal logger death squads, and that's been very effective.
And you know, Okay, so like they lost this one election,
but you know, their their position inside Resilian politics is
still really strong. They control all a bunch of like governorships,
they like Bolsonoo's party and his coalition like control control
(17:06):
the Brazilian parliament. Okay, so you know, like they're in
a very strong position. But then they talked to the
Americans and they imported January six and the storm the capitol,
and at least right now it looks like it's going
really badly for them. Like even even the sort of
like right wing all the great process turned on them, Globo,
(17:26):
which is like it's Brazil's biggest newspaper, wells biggest newspaper,
It could be second biggest. I'm prett sure it's the biggest.
It's funded by like right wing ship at billionaires um.
But you know, their entire fret page right now is
just them yelling about the coup and like gleefully reporting
them like like that they had a frit page thing
for an individual sociology professor who stepped off a bus
(17:49):
coming back from Brazilian immediately got arrested. Like this is
this is the kind of sort of jubilation that it's
really it's kind of it's kind of amazing too, because
like kind of cut sociologies is also a boson Arst
insurrection rate. Yeah well okay, I feel like that if
you're a sociologist, there were exactly two you have, ok
you have three paths. One has you become a cop.
(18:10):
Two is you is you do the Italian thing and
you become the Red Brigades. Yeah. That was that. That
was That was Italy's first sociology department. By the way,
I turned out the Red Brigades, or three you become
a Nazi. Those are your three options. Yeah, there are. Yeah.
I've never been unfortunate enough to run into any of
the chid sociologies to be a very right, they are there. Yeah,
(18:32):
we we we stayed away from them in the anthrow department.
We're like nope, Yeah, I've taught in sociology before, and
you definitely do get a lot of students who are
there to be a cop I've forgotten about that. Yeah,
it sucks. So I will say Brazil has had at
least one. I feel like they've had at least like
a couple of sociologist presidents. For Fernando Henrique Cardoso was
(18:56):
what yeah, what was the sociologist who was president for
a while and then he got replaced by Lula Um.
This is this has been this has been a tangent
about what happens when you put sociology professor's lefted out
of their cages. Uh so okay, And you know, I
would say this is going back to global for a second,
like some of the stuff that they're saying is not
(19:16):
exactly true, Like they're they're they're trying to sort of
make a separation between the like extremist Wilsonario eastas and
then like the people in Parliament and it's like okay,
so like, yeah, they have this whole thing about these
are streamists with no support in Parliament, and it's like okay, buddy,
Like there are literally people like in Congress who are
in Congress because they were elected because they filmed themselves
(19:39):
doing right wing trucker borodblocks like you know, okay, like
well if one of these other things, one of the
other stories was them talking was them talking about I
Brazilian politicians frantically deleting the social media post in in
support of the protests. So okay, you know, like I
mean it is it is actually true that like a
(20:01):
lot of like even both people in both to know
his own party like denounced it. But you know, yeah,
I mean we saw the same ship, right, and then
they'll gradually reimagine it over the next two or three
years to where like that they're they're not denounced again. Well,
well we'll see what happens, because there is also a
chance here that like everyone who was even intgentially like
(20:25):
everyone's like we'll back out of this. I'm not a
big pro prison guy. But the video of them arriving
in a coach at the jail was pretty immediate. That
was pretty funny. Yeah, So okay, so right now it
looks like this has gone pretty badly for them. Again,
(20:45):
this is this is This is being recorded one day
after it happened. So I don't know if if the
army has actually done the coup tomorrow. It's not my fault.
It wasn't out yet. But you know, I think we
should we should ask, we should take a step back
and ask why is this happening? And I think we
should we should ask why did this happen in the
same way in both the US and Brazil and why
(21:10):
did it not work? And the answer to this is
that the capital is a trap. What what what the
American and Brazilian right has ran into, sort of ironically,
is the crisis of the century revolutionary movement. So to
explain what I mean here, I'm gonna I'm gonna read
a bit of to our Friends, which is a work
produced in late by the Invisible Committee, which is the
(21:31):
pen name of some French anarchists who are most famous
of writing The Coming Insurrection. Um. I'm not normally a
huge fan of their work. But they got they got
one thing very very right, and that's this occupation of
the Kasba and Tunis, and of the Stagma Square and Athens,
siege of Westminster and London during the student movement of
two thousand and eleven, encirclement of the Parliament in Madrid
(21:54):
and September twelve, or in Barcelona on June five, thousand eleven,
riots all around the Chamber of Deputies in Rome, December four,
attempt on October fifteenth, thousand eleven in Lisbon to invade
the Assembly at the republica birding of the Bosnian presidential
residents in February. The places of institutional power exert in
(22:16):
magnetic attraction on revolutionaries. But when the insurgents managed to
penetrate parliaments, presidential palaces, and other headquarters of institutions, as
in Ukraine, in Libya or in Wisconsin, it's only to
discover empty places that is empty of power and furnished
without any taste. It's not to prevent the people from
(22:37):
taking power that they are so fiercely kept from invading
such places, but to prevent them from realizing that power
no longer resides in the institutions. There are only deserted temples, there,
decommissioned fortresses, nothing but stage sets, real traps, revolutionaries. The
popular impulse to rush onto the stage to find out
what is happening in the wings is bound to be disappointed.
(23:00):
If they got inside, even the most ferbrate conspiracy freaks
would find nothing ur cane there. The truth is that
power is simply no longer that theatrical reality to which
maternity accustomed us. Yeah, he gets very prescient and like
and it's we're raised on these myths, right, based on
left and right, like on the on the right, like
(23:20):
there are these myths of these American institutions which took
great and unique and shining cities on the hill and
on the left, like we're raised with the storming of
the Bastille and stuff like that. As he's the Winter Palace, right,
these moments have kind of revolutionary change. But yeah, and
I want to I want to specifically, I want to
take a second talk about the Winter Palace because this
is actually something that I think sort of worryingly this
(23:42):
is uh Nick what is actually talking about this in
one of his podcasts, Which is that like and he's
right about this, which is that like the like there
there there are like you can't actually just store with
Winter Palace and take power right doesn't work anymore. And
but but but I think it's actually worth like taking
like two minutes to lay out why that's true. And
because the Winter Palace was like a once in like
(24:03):
a like like a once in a century historical moment,
and it only worked because and this is something that
I think people forget. The storming of the Winter Palace
was not the thing that overthrew the czar. That was
later That was that was the Febrary Revolution, that is
a completely given revolution, the stormy of the Winter Palace.
And the reason why that worked was that the government
that that that the Polsheviks were overthrowing was Kerensky's government,
which is just like really dipshit like interim interim governments
(24:26):
that was only supposed to be their own town election
happened and had like the most fig leaf legitimacy of
any government ever. Everyone hated them, they had no supporters
with but and any of this is why it worked,
right because when they had no power at all, and
so when the bulls sh wiks rolled in on them,
everyone else just stayed home and that is not going
to work in any modern context unless like I don't know,
(24:47):
you're like you're you two were also like two years
in a revolution and there's like three years into a war. Yeah,
there's like an incredibly fig leave government. Maybe you can
pull this off. But like that that that that is
not that is a app reolutely terrible, god awful model
for attempting to seize like any kind of power or
bring down any governments. But you know, it's it's it
(25:07):
became because that because that became the sort of like
mythology of of the Soviet Union, that you know, that
was sort of burned, the sort of false image of
that was burned into the certain memory of of Scholl
collective memory of the left, to the point where like
most people don't even remember that Kerensky was also technically
a socialist and that like and that the Actopeal Revolution
(25:27):
was a socialist like a group of socialists overthrowing another
group of socialists and both of them have a very
tenuous sort of like it's tenuous and whether they either
of them are socialists at all, Yeah, and then going
on to take power and kill a bunch too out
of socialists. Yeah, yeah, Okay, so that aside, you know,
this this crisis I was talking about, like this is
the reason why we're here in the first place. Right,
(25:49):
it's in large part because of the failure to overcome
the movement of power out of the sort of palace
where people expected to be that in the two thousand
eleven revolutions failed like that that that that that's why
we're here in how world because people people were sort
of unable to figure out a way to actually bring
down a government instead of sort of being like drawn
magnetically into these traps. But those problems sort of like
(26:12):
magnetic draw of the Capitol building to will be revolutionaries.
This is just as much a problem to the right
as it is the left. And for right now this
has saved us. Uh, It's caused the Brazilian right to
abandon things they were doing that actually like are genuinely
terrifying and you know, could could have been and have
been effective. Like for example, one of one of the
(26:33):
cleanup operations that was happening today was the Brazilian army
cleared a bunch of these people who were trying to
do blockades of state oil facilities, and you know that
actually could have worked right like that. Yeah, and you know,
and and yeah, I've talked about this before and then
the other and the other sort of bols in our episodes.
But like that, those kind of like trucker blockade things,
(26:53):
blocking highways blockades like those are tactics that the Brazilian
rights sort of natively uses. And there's a world where
the Brazilian fascist sticks to their instincts and instead of
doing this doomed attempt to strom the capital, they put
these same numbers of people into trucks with roadblocks and
burning tires and they try to shut down their Brazilian economy.
You know, in essence, there's a world where instead of
(27:14):
doing it October an impossible like January sixth revolution, where
they do an invisible committee one where they realize the
powers and logistics and attempting to shut shut down its
flow is how you do a revolution. And that is
a world that is a lot scarier than the one
that we're in. But and you know, I think we'll
see how this ultimate plays out. But I actually think
(27:35):
the fact that this was planned for Orlando is like,
you know, with the help of sort of the usual
American generation seth crowd. I think this actually really really
fucked them, like it it really deeply hurt sort of
the Brazilian fascist drivement, which is good. Um you always
(27:56):
like when I see that, I was thinking about this
recently with like um me and mar and everything else,
Like I always come back like Mark Cusa where he
talks about the false choice of masters by slaves and
like how the solution is not this like one big
sort of like like big I didn't want to call
it like symbolic kind of active violence, but like the
(28:18):
great refusal to participate in these things, which is something
that lots of people have power to do, as opposed
to doing this stupid ship which centralizes them in one
place to get some all arrested. Well, I mean it's
also likes there's another sort of part of this, which
is that like both in the US and in Brazil,
the right is not very good at fighting the cops.
(28:38):
Like they got that one horse cup pretty good. There's
a couple that like they'll get a cold people, but
like they're only they only do well when they're really
like when they outnumber the cops like a hundred or one. Yeah,
that is different. In Europe. That is a thing that
like like if you look at Whereasov comes from, right
Aso comes from right wing football hooligans who like the
front line and the minda and beat the ship into
(29:00):
the cops. Yeah. But but but in in the US,
it's like, I don't know, everyone's just like do this,
like it doesn't fight the busy shooting people. Yeah, but
there isn't that history of like like that's not I'm
not don't just want to pick on like where I
come from, but like like crowd violence, like like football
hood against like that that doesn't exist in a meaningful
(29:23):
sense in the US. It's not as commonplace. And there
isn't that like institutional memory of fighting riot police that
exists all over Europe. Yeah, well, I think I think
the thing is that, like, okay, American sports fans do
fight the cops, but they only do it once a
year if that like the super Bowl. Yeah, well you
(29:43):
know they'll do with the NHL, but things like it's
only it's only like maybe like three cities a year
that do it, right, Yeah, and everyone series too. It's
harder because the World Series has this whole sort of
like like that they have the parade, then they have
this whole stage managing to get people to get people
stop from writing. So really there's only two or three
events per year where you can get riots, whereas like
(30:03):
in Europe, any time, yeah, any given Saturday, he could
be throwing down with a cop on a horse. But
like it's outside of it. It's gone long beyond that.
Like I remember in like just before this two thousand
eleven moment, like the two the earlier two thousands antig
eight movement, like the institutional knowledge on how to deal
(30:24):
with large volumes of police and still get your point across,
just as we saw in twenty did not exist here
and had to be imported from Hong Kong and other places,
badly imported in Yeah, but you know infographic from Hong Kong. Yeah,
(30:48):
So Okay. Having said all of this, this is not
to say that everything is fine. It's not. You know,
I think something that's that's very important that I have
not seen any want to talk about either in either
sort of generay sic of January eight, is that the
immediate reaction to the coup on the left, and this
(31:09):
is as true of the Brazilian left as it was
with the American left. In fact, I think the American
lifted American lefted way worse. In January six was paralysis,
right even in Brazil, which has these sort of one
body social movements kind of mobilizations, took almost a full
day and materialized by the type, you know, by which
point the threat already dissipated. So you know, for a
for a full day, the only thing standing between the
(31:29):
fascist and power was their own stupidity. And you know,
as boundless as their stupidity seems, like watching these people
like taking a dump on a cabinet, like with a
camera in front of them, like it's not actually a
shield against fascism, Like every every fascism after Boussolini and
even Napoleon the third who's like the sort of modern
prototype of fascism, has at least one and usually two
(31:50):
or three comically stupid like uprisings and coups that just
fail and they failed and everyone lasted them. And then
number four, they're suddenly in power, and it's like, wow,
you can't you can't actually write these things off because
they're funny, because again they're always funny for the first
like two, and then on number three, like all your
friends are being bars into a camp and shot and
it's like wow, yeah, and like we don't want to
(32:15):
be in a place where like one growing up in
the room is all that's between us and fascism, right
like and adult making a plan. And I think there's
there's a specific like I actually I think social media
actually plays a really big role in this because you know,
I can I remember this January six, like, there was
this kind of like the way that just turns everyone
(32:35):
into a spectator. Everyone was just like, you know, I
think it was Vicky Austen, while I think was the
first person who said this was like Twitter twit. Twitter
is a machine that turns action into discourse. Yeah, and
so you know what, while it was going on, right like,
everyone turned the action of the thing into discourse. Everyone
just sort of like sitting there paralyzed watching it. And
(32:56):
that is fatal like like that if if you look
at the actual stress test of the sort of machinery
of power, right like, it's actually I think it's actually
much less of a big deal that the cops were
on their side of the cops didn't responder because the
cops eventually did clear them out right. It took it
took a long time. The cops eventually did it but
I think I think the thing is actually more dangerous
is that like there was there, like there wasn't a
(33:18):
response to the left at all. There's nothing right like
there there were there were rallies and sell Polo, like
the next day was actually funny because both both both
the rallies both like the people sacking the capital and
the people in sal Polo were both were both seeing
the national anthem, which is some real fun politics moments.
It's another thing to talk about. Yeah, but yeah, you
(33:40):
compare that to Spain, which is obviously where I'm most
familiar with. Well, like people immediately got guns scott in
the street and started killing soldiers when they had much
more effective and organized coup, right, and that coup would
have failed were it not for fascist intervention from abroad.
But yeah, Brazil has powerful unions who did shit. Yeah, well,
and partially I think that's that's like that has to
do with hallowing out of the unions and there's a
(34:02):
there's sort of long story here, but like you know,
and even if you look at like I think this
is this is a sign really of sort of how
actually dynamic the left is, because you know, if if
if you want to look at like like a dynamic
Latin American left, like they you know, there there was,
there was, there was a very very well organized US
backed coup against Hugo Chavez. He doesn't want I was
(34:25):
just one. It was. It was just before I moved there,
so I think it would. Ah, there were other coup
attempts in Venezuela, two that were less well organized. Yeah
she doesn't too. Yeah, he doesn't too. And that one't
got far enough that like the New York Times was
like had an article out about how democracy had been
(34:46):
restored to the Cuba to Venezuela. And then you know
the thing, the thing that happened after that, and there's
there's a very famous movie of this from from a
filmmaker who was just there. Is that over over the
next forty seven hours, like the left mobilized and they
put so many people in the street that like the
(35:07):
coup plotters had to back down and Hugo travil has
got to be president. And you know that that's the
thing that that's the thing that a strong left can do, right,
they can actually defeat the military. And yeah, but you know,
but this didn't the US just we fell down on
the job, like there wasn't much of that in Brazil.
Like I like like it, like it is true, as
(35:28):
Lulu was saying, that they picked a day when everyone
was gone. But it's still, I think really alarming that
just by just by sort of acting first, they have
so much of a sort of time advantage, sort of
an advantage of reaction over us. Yeah. That film, by
the way, people want to watch is called The Revolution
(35:49):
Will Not Be Televised, which is kind of a great title.
Spectative things that you were talking about. And yeah, I
watched that bat Boy and VHS back in the day
in Caracas. Wow, yeh, big kids. So Okay, Finally, in
a broad sense, I wanted to ask, like, what are
(36:09):
we doing here right? Um, the sort of dominant mode
of quote unquote anti fascism, and this is the model
that's being adopted by Lula and the rest of the
sort of liberal and even sort of moderate conservative ruling
class in Brazil. It's what's been adopted by the Democrats
is their anti fascism is posing their opposition to fascism
as a defensive democracy and the rule of law. Mhm.
(36:34):
But yeah, okay, let's look at what's actually happening these
coups aren't working. That's the sort of actual power. Military
attempts to take power, they're losing every time. But do
you know how the fascists are taking power by democracy?
Their greatest success has been in taking power but just
winning elections. Like look look at what happened in India, right,
that is a country that has been like very nearly
(36:55):
totally consumed by fascism, and it was done by just
elections over and over and over again. Hungry. Yeah, even
here on a fundamental level, like what we're seeing right
now out of the sort of broad swath of social
sort of liberalism, conservatism and social democracy is an unsustainable strategy,
anti fashion, anti fascism as a pure defensive democracy is
(37:18):
just preserving the machine that will hand the power of
the state over to the fascist of a silver platter.
And you know that like this, this defensive democracy in
the abstract is a death march. Right, you know, if
you can, you can you can look at the sort
of course of of the late nineties, the late century, Right,
why did the bobs fall over Backdad? Well, protect democracy
when when the Mexican government was shooting the zapatisas they're
(37:39):
protecting democracy when the cops rated the when the cops
rated the Forest Defenders in Atlanta, Oh, it's because they
were domestic terrorists who are threatening democracy. But what's happened
here is that the threat of fascism has sort of
press ganged armies of people who otherwise would be enemies
of sort of capitalist quote unquote democracy into protecting the
very institutions that alrea inevitably going to bring these people
(38:00):
back into power. And that's really grim because it means
that something has to change or we're just going to
come back here again and again and again until eventually
enough of the ruling class flips to back into fascist
that they seiz power once and for all. So, you know, something,
we have to do something else that's not just this
that sort of desperate treading water. Yeah, like like fighting
(38:23):
to stand still in this terrible place where people can't
pay their heating bills and feed their families. Yeah, it's
it's pretty dire sucking outlook for us, isn't it. Yeah?
But I mean, you know I would say this like
that there was a vision in of what that something
else could be, right, Like it's it's it's not it's
it's it's not like we're in the depths of like
(38:43):
the two thousands where no one has ever seen like
anything that's taking possible, right, Yeah, Like there are a
lot of people probably listening because they saw that vision
and it changed who they want to be and how
they want the world to be. And I think that's
really good and uh for me at least, I think
once people around in the streets, which people weren't able
to do in time in Brazil, that they will tend
(39:06):
to find that solution outside of institutions. That the response
has been almost entirely institutional, at least in here in
this country to a fascist coup because people didn't and
people were tired from your industry and they've all been
fucking arrested and half of them have been shot. And
but part of the problem also is just like there's
there's like the US just has a sort of geographical
(39:27):
problem and Brazil has this to to sub extent, which
is that like, yeah, this is not like Belgium you
can very quickly get people to the capital, Like you can't.
You can't actually like it is actually genuinely very hard
to get a bunch of people to a place quickly here, right,
which you know, is a thing where we're lucky that Yeah,
like that the capital kind of like holding the capital,
(39:48):
doesn't you know. It's it's it's not a thing that
actually allows you to sort of take power. But it's
also a real sort of concerned about politics in the
US because it can't work the same way it works
in a lot of places that are smaller. Yeah. Yeah,
like Bolivia for example. Yeah, yeah, even Venezuela. Right, like
so much of the institution, almost everything is in Caracas,
(40:10):
even it's a big country. Yeah, that's that's That's pretty
much all I got. Um, Well, we'll see, we'll see
if Bolstaro when when he gets out of the hospital,
if he gets out of the hospital, he's returned to
his social home. Yeah, yeah, it's it's always good to
see people with with takes on situation in Brazil who
(40:32):
also think the capital is Rio. That's always a fun
thing that I can see on Twitter talk on it's
okay not to post you know, this is my okay,
I have what what are my rules of thumb about
talking about a place is if if you can't name
five cities in a country, don't talk about it. Yeah,
(40:53):
this is the thing that like so many like people
people people who get paid to write articles about places
like just fail all that. People who get this is like, frankly,
you should be able to like like, if if I
was doing due diligence, I would I would be learning.
I would be actually learning Portuguese right now instead of
like relying on my Spanish to sort of like power
(41:15):
me through it. But you know, like the lowest bar
is you should go the capital and you should be
able to name five cities in it. And if you
can't do that, like, maybe don't post. Yeah, it's fine
not to post. In fact, when dealing with coups, maybe
consider options that are not posting. Yeah, and and yeah,
go go out and stop them. Mhm, make friends. Yeah.
(41:38):
So this this has gonna make it happen here. You
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For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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(42:00):
Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com.
Slash sources thanks for listening,
Hagel remarks somewhere that all great world historical facts and
personages appear so to speak. Twice he forgot to add
the first time as tragedy, the second time is farce.
Welcome to Nick. It happened here the podcast where when
we last left Jayree Bolsonaro, he had locked himself in
the presidential mansion, turned off the lights, and refused to
(00:26):
leave or talk to anyone. Now Bolsonaro has returned to
his ancestral home hospital in Orlando, where he's been admitted
for abdominal pain, jointing me to discuss maybe the first
man in history to be his own Napoleon. The third
is James Hi, man, this is I'm very much looking
forward to this. Oh God. I okay, So for for
(00:51):
those of you who I don't know somehow have missed this.
I I woke up on Sunday and ten minutes later
this was happening, and I was like, well, okay, I
guess I'm canceling my dinner plans. Uh, we're doing this instead. Yeah.
I think Marx could have added to that quote and
then as fast again, and then for a third time
(01:12):
as fast. Yeah. We really, we really, we really have
sort of left the tragedy cycle on or now just
in the forest, over and over and over again. Yeah,
we kind of need a new word for what keeps
happening because it's not it's not really a coup and
it's certainly not a revolution. It's just like an extreme
reactionary tantrum. Yeah, I mean, I kind of like storming
the capital because it is what they do. But then yeah,
(01:37):
I don't know, like I'm upset that everyone calls it
insurrectionism or insurrectionists because it's like they're not like insurrectionary.
Reactionary is like a power. Yeah, it's like like I
think like auto coup is closer. But the problem with
COO is that cool implies that the military is actually cooperating,
which it isn't. Yeah, that's why they always fail. Yeah,
(01:59):
we're working get into that more and a bit. But yeah, okay, So,
so the thing that has actually happened is on Sunday,
supporters of of UH former former Brazilian president jay Are Bilsonaro,
who I fled the country to Orlando, I sacked the
Plaza of the Three Powers in Brazil, which is the
(02:21):
home of the basically the buildings are the three branches
of governments, and unlike in the US, they sacked all
of them. They stored their presidential mansion, they stormed Congress,
they stored the Supreme Court, and then having seized control
of the buildings, as cops either sat around joking with him,
which is actively walked them into the building. Like there
is a video of a procession of Bolsonaro supporters with
(02:44):
just like they're they're all walking in a line towards
the plaza and there's just like two cop cars like
in the middle of the thing driving with them, like
it's wild. There are cops taking selfies of them taking selfies. Yeah. Yeah,
Like I that that one that was the one in
Puts particularly that was like I feel like that goes
slightly above and beyond even what was happening with with
(03:05):
the American cops. Like that was some Yeah, it's yeah,
it's okay. So they get there, they do that, they
do the thing where they grab metal stuff and they
break the windows and then they break in and you know,
they they do classic January six stuff. Um, they take
(03:25):
pictures there. There's one picture that I found that's I
think it's in the Supreme Court. That's a picture of
someone like you can't see their face. It's just them
squatting on a like facing backwards, squatting on it on
a filing cabinet like fully butt out about take a dump.
It's wild. Yeah, this is what democracy looks like. Yeah,
(03:50):
and shifting on a filing cabinet and government office. Yeah. Okay,
so like they this this. They don't have a great
plan here. Um. The thing that they do is that
so they all do this. They break in, they like
break stuff, they like take random stuff. Um. And then
they whole bunch of people sit down on the ground
and sing the national anthem, uh, waiting for the army
(04:12):
to show up, because they think that when the army
shows up, the army is going to join them. And
I said, the army shows up and arrest them all.
There's some people who try to fight the police. Uh.
They beat up a horse cop, which I think is
funny because apparently this is just every single one of these.
Now someone beats up a horse cop. Um. But you know,
by bye bye bye, by the end of Sunday, like
(04:36):
it's all over the government forces. We take the plaza.
People try to fight the police, but they lose really badly,
and you know, Okay, so obviously there's a reason why
I read that versus strategy a second time. Was first
line to start this, like, okay, the January six comparisons
start fast and get harder. Which is this happened literally
(04:57):
on January eight, like two days after the American Like,
I mean, they stowed the Capitol buildings. But this is
something I think it's kind of important to understand. This
is an even worse plan than the January six plan.
So the January six plan, if people remember this, so crucially,
(05:19):
January six happens while Trump is technically still in office.
And what's going on when when they're showing me the
capital in January six is that Congress is trying to
basically pass power to Joe Biden, right like they're they're
they're doing the vote to proof the ballot totals from
the the electoral College blah blah blah blah blah. But okay,
(05:40):
so this means that you know when when when when
when on Jay's on January six, right, Congress was actually
in session, so the people who were there actually had
a thing they were trying to do to overturn their results,
and there was like there were people they could have harmed.
There was like they had they had like a goal
kind of it was like seth Abramson. But on the
(06:02):
other side, think it was like constitutional fantasy. But yeah,
but yeah, but like I I can't believe, you know,
like this is the thing about about about what's happening
Brazil's like I genuinely cannot believe that I am being
made to defend the planning capacity of the January six crowd,
like genuinely stunning. But the plan for the plan for
January eighth in Brazil was even worse because Okay, the
(06:28):
day they do this on right, Congress is not in session,
the Supreme Court is on holiday, and Lulu, the actual
president of Brazil, has a already taken power and b
is ins apollo. No money is there. Literally they store
three abandoned buildings. There is nohing there they could they
(06:48):
could have tried it. Agration was like three days before, right, Yeah,
it's funny. Lula talked about it in this in his
speech where part of like in this speech after after
this happens, is he has this line about how like
all of these people were already in Brazilia, but they
were too cowardly to face the people who were there
for the inauguration, so instead they waited for everyone to leave,
which is true. It's really funny. And this is kind
(07:13):
of what they always do, right, They always kind of
take the easy thing and then grandstand like like it's
a big brave thing that they've done. Like we see
this constantly on the right. Yeah, and you know, I like,
I I think I think it's reasonable to ask what
were they actually trying to do? Um? And I'm I'm
gonna read from the Washington Post. The Washington Post is
(07:33):
talking about, um, some of the previous attempts to do
the same thing. Quote one radicalized Bolsonarista named George Washington
Day Olivaria. Was it what? Yeah, all of the people
involved with this are named like George Washington Olivaria. It's incredible.
Do wow did they did they change their names? Or
(07:56):
is the whole thing just being a lame partake of
American conservative Well, I mean that's that is like like
it really like there is a lot of truth to
the analysis that, like Brazilian fascist culture is just like
the fourth time of Facebook meme isn't passed around, but
(08:16):
this time on what'sapp Like it's it's some it's it's
somehow more cringe than than the American stuff, like it's
wort have incredible. But here he was okay, yeah he was. Yeah.
This guy named George Washington Dlafaria was arrested and accused
of planting a bomb beneath a bus at the Brazilia airport.
In a statement to police, he said he wanted to
(08:38):
quote begin chaos that would lead to military intervention. So
she's trying to do the strategy of tension, right, which
is which is this thing from Italy where Okay, so
you you have the government running a bunch of sort
of like no, I mean, I don't know, calling them
fake fascist groups is technically correct, but you haven't. You
have them running a bunch of terrorist groups. And you know,
(09:00):
so they they this is this happening in like the
sixty seventies, and yeah, it gets a little bit into
the eighties. Is that they're they're doing all these bombings
and stuff, and they're doing all these terrorist attacks and
the goal is to get people to like sort of
trust the government and like allow like short of further
state of military intervention. But the thing about that was
that crucially the strategy of tension was a strategy that
was done by the government. Doesn't really work if you're
(09:22):
not the government and you are, in fact that people
causing the chaos, And where did you get to military
to sort of join you. So this is a crucial
problem for Brazilian fascism because as much as the sort
of the modern fascist movement is a cultiple scenario, it's
really a cult of the military. Bulsonaro was sort of
just the person who embodies the sort of desire the
fascist masses from military rule. But this means that if
(09:45):
the military just refused to do a coup, they have
no idea what to do. Yeah, but they could deploy
Baltonara himself. Have you seen that video of him trying
to do press ups to prove that he's kind of
super solidatew you know, But this is this is sort
of this is a real issue for them. And Okay,
(10:06):
so if I am pretty confident that if the military
had actually decided to do a coup this would have worked,
like and I think they would have pretty trivially just
like smashed the rest of the forces of the state.
Lulu would be in prison. But and this is the
thing that's been the key to everything that's been going
on in Brazil from the beginning. The army does not
have the green light from Washington to do a coup
(10:28):
because once again Biden just absolutely hates Bilsonaro, which is like, yeah,
you know this this this is this is a coup
that was planned from Orlando and not Langley. Now we're
on like number four in the last few years that
was planned from Florida and notably three of the four
of them have failed, and this is that Yeah, well,
(10:54):
I mean, I like, to be fair, this is a
better planned coup attempt than the Venezuela one that's not
hard that did exist bar. Yeah, the kind of bar
that you can get over by tripping. But you know,
we're sold the very early process of figuring out how
exactly who was involved in this and that like to
what extent everyone was coordinating with each other and like
(11:14):
you know, I might you want extent like literally governors
were involved seen to have been involved in this, but
we don't. We don't exactly know yet. Um. What we
do know in terms of it's being planned from Orlando
is that Bolsonaro for literally years has been saying ship
like quote, the patience of the people has run out.
I want to tell those who will make me unelectable
in Brazil, only God removes me from power. There are
(11:36):
three options for me, jail, death or victory. And I'm
telling the scandal rules. I will never be imprisoned. Even
thing is literally years and years and years just saying
said like that, like just over and over and over again.
And you know, Okay, So the other thing that we
know right now and this this this is being recorded
on what day? Is it is the ninth Yeah, it's
(12:00):
been a court on Monday to night, so this is
this is the next day. Uh. If by the time
this goes out there's more information, there will be more
information was going on what we have right now. One
of the things that we know is that the guy
who was in charge of security for the Federal District,
which is like the Federal District is basically like what
if washing d C. Was a state, but like a
tiny one. So the guy who was in charge of
(12:21):
security for that, uh, was a Bulsonaro supporter who just
so happened to be on vacation in Orlando, where Bulsonaro
was staying with an mm A fighter whose mansion has
a Minion Stein room. Uh. He's just coincidentally onification in
Orlando with Polsonara. Well, this is happening, so you know, Okay,
(12:43):
the Brazilian state seems to be being a lot faster
to sort of crack down on everything that's happening than
the American state was. Um that the guy who was
in charge of security, I who was in who's in Orlando.
That the Brazilian federal defender has already asked the Supreme
Court to arrest him. A Supreme Court justice like deposed
the governor of the federal district for allowing this to happen.
(13:06):
So yeah, it's wild. The Brazilian Minister of Justice as
they've already entified people in ten states who helped plan
or fund the operation. They've arrested like well the Totalsome
yesterday said that they arrested four hundred people. I saw
somewhere that arrested twelve. I don't know about that. I
could be wrong, but yeah, there was at least four
hundred people. Um, there's a huge like there's a huge
(13:27):
track down on people involved in this LULA. It's much
better than the January six response. And yeah, well like
like part part of what's happening, right, is like like
Lula literally like basically declared a state of emergency in
the federal zone and like got basically like I guess
you call it, like he basically sent in the FEDS
(13:49):
and like has like his people now have direct control
over security in the capital because because because the police
there are so unreliable, and you know, and like he's
been yeah, it's moving very very fast, just sort of
better than the US charge and probably yeah, and and
also like Lula Lula, unlike Biden, Lula, Lula has like
(14:11):
like literally like three hours as this was happening, he's
making a speech about like that him vowing to go
after everyone who's involved in this, including Bullsonaro and Um.
A Brazilian member of Congress is formally asked to Foreign
Ministry to extradite Bulsonaro to the US. Who knows what's
going to happen there? Uh, there have been there has
(14:33):
actually there's been like a surprising amount of sort of
support for that in the US. And you know, I
mean that's everything that's been kind of interesting for this,
like before we take the ad break, is that like
he's gotten Lula is getting support from like everyone, like
this is this is one of the rare we we
(14:54):
we we have the great capitalist triumvirate of Vladimir Putin.
Joe Biden and and Macron have all said that they're
backing him, which is wild real international Lincoln Project vibes. Yeah,
it's I mean that that that that that that is.
I guess like Hulula is abroad extent, right, Like you know,
(15:16):
if you go back to Lula episodes, like he was
close with the Bush administration, but also like close with
the World Social Forum people. So he's he's always kind
of like been the guy who straddles the divide between
like yeah, he's not and he's the guy he straddles
a divide between the sort of like international imperialists and
what was the left. Yeah yeah, So all right, we're
(15:43):
we're gonna we're we're gonna go to ads and then
when we come back, we're gonna talk more about how
everything is actually sort of gone. All right, we're back.
So one of the things I think is very interesting
(16:03):
about for all of the sort of planning and organizational
capacity that's gone into building the sort of like transnational
fascist movement the American right, like that that the American
rid has been setting up Uh, the American right has
just actively been making their allies worse here, like the ideas.
It's it's sort of incredible. I mean, this is something
(16:24):
I think that that's genuinely very scary about the Brazilian
right is that their regular combination of tactics are really effective.
Um that you know, that they've been able to successfully
will this combination of sort of electoralism, of lawfare or
sort of like using the legal system against their political
enemies off road blockades, mass marches, and you know, just
straight up paramilitary death squads of various kinds. You know,
(16:45):
you have your sort of urban death squads, you have
these like genocidal logger death squads, and that's been very effective.
And you know, Okay, so like they lost this one election,
but you know, their their position inside Resilian politics is
still really strong. They control all a bunch of like governorships,
they like Bolsonoo's party and his coalition like control control
(17:06):
the Brazilian parliament. Okay, so you know, like they're in
a very strong position. But then they talked to the
Americans and they imported January six and the storm the capitol,
and at least right now it looks like it's going
really badly for them. Like even even the sort of
like right wing all the great process turned on them, Globo,
(17:26):
which is like it's Brazil's biggest newspaper, wells biggest newspaper,
It could be second biggest. I'm prett sure it's the biggest.
It's funded by like right wing ship at billionaires um.
But you know, their entire fret page right now is
just them yelling about the coup and like gleefully reporting
them like like that they had a frit page thing
for an individual sociology professor who stepped off a bus
(17:49):
coming back from Brazilian immediately got arrested. Like this is
this is the kind of sort of jubilation that it's
really it's kind of it's kind of amazing too, because
like kind of cut sociologies is also a boson Arst
insurrection rate. Yeah well okay, I feel like that if
you're a sociologist, there were exactly two you have, ok
you have three paths. One has you become a cop.
(18:10):
Two is you is you do the Italian thing and
you become the Red Brigades. Yeah. That was that. That
was That was Italy's first sociology department. By the way,
I turned out the Red Brigades, or three you become
a Nazi. Those are your three options. Yeah, there are. Yeah.
I've never been unfortunate enough to run into any of
the chid sociologies to be a very right, they are there. Yeah,
(18:32):
we we we stayed away from them in the anthrow department.
We're like nope, Yeah, I've taught in sociology before, and
you definitely do get a lot of students who are
there to be a cop I've forgotten about that. Yeah,
it sucks. So I will say Brazil has had at
least one. I feel like they've had at least like
a couple of sociologist presidents. For Fernando Henrique Cardoso was
(18:56):
what yeah, what was the sociologist who was president for
a while and then he got replaced by Lula Um.
This is this has been this has been a tangent
about what happens when you put sociology professor's lefted out
of their cages. Uh so okay, And you know, I
would say this is going back to global for a second,
like some of the stuff that they're saying is not
(19:16):
exactly true, Like they're they're they're trying to sort of
make a separation between the like extremist Wilsonario eastas and
then like the people in Parliament and it's like okay,
so like, yeah, they have this whole thing about these
are streamists with no support in Parliament, and it's like okay, buddy,
Like there are literally people like in Congress who are
in Congress because they were elected because they filmed themselves
(19:39):
doing right wing trucker borodblocks like you know, okay, like
well if one of these other things, one of the
other stories was them talking was them talking about I
Brazilian politicians frantically deleting the social media post in in
support of the protests. So okay, you know, like I
mean it is it is actually true that like a
(20:01):
lot of like even both people in both to know
his own party like denounced it. But you know, yeah,
I mean we saw the same ship, right, and then
they'll gradually reimagine it over the next two or three
years to where like that they're they're not denounced again. Well,
well we'll see what happens, because there is also a
chance here that like everyone who was even intgentially like
(20:25):
everyone's like we'll back out of this. I'm not a
big pro prison guy. But the video of them arriving
in a coach at the jail was pretty immediate. That
was pretty funny. Yeah, So okay, so right now it
looks like this has gone pretty badly for them. Again,
(20:45):
this is this is This is being recorded one day
after it happened. So I don't know if if the
army has actually done the coup tomorrow. It's not my fault.
It wasn't out yet. But you know, I think we
should we should ask, we should take a step back
and ask why is this happening? And I think we
should we should ask why did this happen in the
same way in both the US and Brazil and why
(21:10):
did it not work? And the answer to this is
that the capital is a trap. What what what the
American and Brazilian right has ran into, sort of ironically,
is the crisis of the century revolutionary movement. So to
explain what I mean here, I'm gonna I'm gonna read
a bit of to our Friends, which is a work
produced in late by the Invisible Committee, which is the
(21:31):
pen name of some French anarchists who are most famous
of writing The Coming Insurrection. Um. I'm not normally a
huge fan of their work. But they got they got
one thing very very right, and that's this occupation of
the Kasba and Tunis, and of the Stagma Square and Athens,
siege of Westminster and London during the student movement of
two thousand and eleven, encirclement of the Parliament in Madrid
(21:54):
and September twelve, or in Barcelona on June five, thousand eleven,
riots all around the Chamber of Deputies in Rome, December four,
attempt on October fifteenth, thousand eleven in Lisbon to invade
the Assembly at the republica birding of the Bosnian presidential
residents in February. The places of institutional power exert in
(22:16):
magnetic attraction on revolutionaries. But when the insurgents managed to
penetrate parliaments, presidential palaces, and other headquarters of institutions, as
in Ukraine, in Libya or in Wisconsin, it's only to
discover empty places that is empty of power and furnished
without any taste. It's not to prevent the people from
(22:37):
taking power that they are so fiercely kept from invading
such places, but to prevent them from realizing that power
no longer resides in the institutions. There are only deserted temples, there,
decommissioned fortresses, nothing but stage sets, real traps, revolutionaries. The
popular impulse to rush onto the stage to find out
what is happening in the wings is bound to be disappointed.
(23:00):
If they got inside, even the most ferbrate conspiracy freaks
would find nothing ur cane there. The truth is that
power is simply no longer that theatrical reality to which
maternity accustomed us. Yeah, he gets very prescient and like
and it's we're raised on these myths, right, based on
left and right, like on the on the right, like
(23:20):
there are these myths of these American institutions which took
great and unique and shining cities on the hill and
on the left, like we're raised with the storming of
the Bastille and stuff like that. As he's the Winter Palace, right,
these moments have kind of revolutionary change. But yeah, and
I want to I want to specifically, I want to
take a second talk about the Winter Palace because this
is actually something that I think sort of worryingly this
(23:42):
is uh Nick what is actually talking about this in
one of his podcasts, Which is that like and he's
right about this, which is that like the like there
there there are like you can't actually just store with
Winter Palace and take power right doesn't work anymore. And
but but but I think it's actually worth like taking
like two minutes to lay out why that's true. And
because the Winter Palace was like a once in like
(24:03):
a like like a once in a century historical moment,
and it only worked because and this is something that
I think people forget. The storming of the Winter Palace
was not the thing that overthrew the czar. That was
later That was that was the Febrary Revolution, that is
a completely given revolution, the stormy of the Winter Palace.
And the reason why that worked was that the government
that that that the Polsheviks were overthrowing was Kerensky's government,
which is just like really dipshit like interim interim governments
(24:26):
that was only supposed to be their own town election
happened and had like the most fig leaf legitimacy of
any government ever. Everyone hated them, they had no supporters
with but and any of this is why it worked,
right because when they had no power at all, and
so when the bulls sh wiks rolled in on them,
everyone else just stayed home and that is not going
to work in any modern context unless like I don't know,
(24:47):
you're like you're you two were also like two years
in a revolution and there's like three years into a war. Yeah,
there's like an incredibly fig leave government. Maybe you can
pull this off. But like that that that that is
not that is a app reolutely terrible, god awful model
for attempting to seize like any kind of power or
bring down any governments. But you know, it's it's it
(25:07):
became because that because that became the sort of like
mythology of of the Soviet Union, that you know, that
was sort of burned, the sort of false image of
that was burned into the certain memory of of Scholl
collective memory of the left, to the point where like
most people don't even remember that Kerensky was also technically
a socialist and that like and that the Actopeal Revolution
(25:27):
was a socialist like a group of socialists overthrowing another
group of socialists and both of them have a very
tenuous sort of like it's tenuous and whether they either
of them are socialists at all, Yeah, and then going
on to take power and kill a bunch too out
of socialists. Yeah, yeah, Okay, so that aside, you know,
this this crisis I was talking about, like this is
the reason why we're here in the first place. Right,
(25:49):
it's in large part because of the failure to overcome
the movement of power out of the sort of palace
where people expected to be that in the two thousand
eleven revolutions failed like that that that that that's why
we're here in how world because people people were sort
of unable to figure out a way to actually bring
down a government instead of sort of being like drawn
magnetically into these traps. But those problems sort of like
(26:12):
magnetic draw of the Capitol building to will be revolutionaries.
This is just as much a problem to the right
as it is the left. And for right now this
has saved us. Uh, It's caused the Brazilian right to
abandon things they were doing that actually like are genuinely
terrifying and you know, could could have been and have
been effective. Like for example, one of one of the
(26:33):
cleanup operations that was happening today was the Brazilian army
cleared a bunch of these people who were trying to
do blockades of state oil facilities, and you know that
actually could have worked right like that. Yeah, and you know,
and and yeah, I've talked about this before and then
the other and the other sort of bols in our episodes.
But like that, those kind of like trucker blockade things,
(26:53):
blocking highways blockades like those are tactics that the Brazilian
rights sort of natively uses. And there's a world where
the Brazilian fascist sticks to their instincts and instead of
doing this doomed attempt to strom the capital, they put
these same numbers of people into trucks with roadblocks and
burning tires and they try to shut down their Brazilian economy.
You know, in essence, there's a world where instead of
(27:14):
doing it October an impossible like January sixth revolution, where
they do an invisible committee one where they realize the
powers and logistics and attempting to shut shut down its
flow is how you do a revolution. And that is
a world that is a lot scarier than the one
that we're in. But and you know, I think we'll
see how this ultimate plays out. But I actually think
(27:35):
the fact that this was planned for Orlando is like,
you know, with the help of sort of the usual
American generation seth crowd. I think this actually really really
fucked them, like it it really deeply hurt sort of
the Brazilian fascist drivement, which is good. Um you always
(27:56):
like when I see that, I was thinking about this
recently with like um me and mar and everything else,
Like I always come back like Mark Cusa where he
talks about the false choice of masters by slaves and
like how the solution is not this like one big
sort of like like big I didn't want to call
it like symbolic kind of active violence, but like the
(28:18):
great refusal to participate in these things, which is something
that lots of people have power to do, as opposed
to doing this stupid ship which centralizes them in one
place to get some all arrested. Well, I mean it's
also likes there's another sort of part of this, which
is that like both in the US and in Brazil,
the right is not very good at fighting the cops.
(28:38):
Like they got that one horse cup pretty good. There's
a couple that like they'll get a cold people, but
like they're only they only do well when they're really
like when they outnumber the cops like a hundred or one. Yeah,
that is different. In Europe. That is a thing that
like like if you look at Whereasov comes from, right
Aso comes from right wing football hooligans who like the
front line and the minda and beat the ship into
(29:00):
the cops. Yeah. But but but in in the US,
it's like, I don't know, everyone's just like do this,
like it doesn't fight the busy shooting people. Yeah, but
there isn't that history of like like that's not I'm
not don't just want to pick on like where I
come from, but like like crowd violence, like like football
hood against like that that doesn't exist in a meaningful
(29:23):
sense in the US. It's not as commonplace. And there
isn't that like institutional memory of fighting riot police that
exists all over Europe. Yeah, well, I think I think
the thing is that, like, okay, American sports fans do
fight the cops, but they only do it once a
year if that like the super Bowl. Yeah, well you
(29:43):
know they'll do with the NHL, but things like it's
only it's only like maybe like three cities a year
that do it, right, Yeah, and everyone series too. It's
harder because the World Series has this whole sort of
like like that they have the parade, then they have
this whole stage managing to get people to get people
stop from writing. So really there's only two or three
events per year where you can get riots, whereas like
(30:03):
in Europe, any time, yeah, any given Saturday, he could
be throwing down with a cop on a horse. But
like it's outside of it. It's gone long beyond that.
Like I remember in like just before this two thousand
eleven moment, like the two the earlier two thousands antig
eight movement, like the institutional knowledge on how to deal
(30:24):
with large volumes of police and still get your point across,
just as we saw in twenty did not exist here
and had to be imported from Hong Kong and other places,
badly imported in Yeah, but you know infographic from Hong Kong. Yeah,
(30:48):
So Okay. Having said all of this, this is not
to say that everything is fine. It's not. You know,
I think something that's that's very important that I have
not seen any want to talk about either in either
sort of generay sic of January eight, is that the
immediate reaction to the coup on the left, and this
(31:09):
is as true of the Brazilian left as it was
with the American left. In fact, I think the American
lifted American lefted way worse. In January six was paralysis,
right even in Brazil, which has these sort of one
body social movements kind of mobilizations, took almost a full
day and materialized by the type, you know, by which
point the threat already dissipated. So you know, for a
for a full day, the only thing standing between the
(31:29):
fascist and power was their own stupidity. And you know,
as boundless as their stupidity seems, like watching these people
like taking a dump on a cabinet, like with a
camera in front of them, like it's not actually a
shield against fascism, Like every every fascism after Boussolini and
even Napoleon the third who's like the sort of modern
prototype of fascism, has at least one and usually two
(31:50):
or three comically stupid like uprisings and coups that just
fail and they failed and everyone lasted them. And then
number four, they're suddenly in power, and it's like, wow,
you can't you can't actually write these things off because
they're funny, because again they're always funny for the first
like two, and then on number three, like all your
friends are being bars into a camp and shot and
it's like wow, yeah, and like we don't want to
(32:15):
be in a place where like one growing up in
the room is all that's between us and fascism, right
like and adult making a plan. And I think there's
there's a specific like I actually I think social media
actually plays a really big role in this because you know,
I can I remember this January six, like, there was
this kind of like the way that just turns everyone
(32:35):
into a spectator. Everyone was just like, you know, I
think it was Vicky Austen, while I think was the
first person who said this was like Twitter twit. Twitter
is a machine that turns action into discourse. Yeah, and
so you know what, while it was going on, right like,
everyone turned the action of the thing into discourse. Everyone
just sort of like sitting there paralyzed watching it. And
(32:56):
that is fatal like like that if if you look
at the actual stress test of the sort of machinery
of power, right like, it's actually I think it's actually
much less of a big deal that the cops were
on their side of the cops didn't responder because the
cops eventually did clear them out right. It took it
took a long time. The cops eventually did it but
I think I think the thing is actually more dangerous
is that like there was there, like there wasn't a
(33:18):
response to the left at all. There's nothing right like
there there were there were rallies and sell Polo, like
the next day was actually funny because both both both
the rallies both like the people sacking the capital and
the people in sal Polo were both were both seeing
the national anthem, which is some real fun politics moments.
It's another thing to talk about. Yeah, but yeah, you
(33:40):
compare that to Spain, which is obviously where I'm most
familiar with. Well, like people immediately got guns scott in
the street and started killing soldiers when they had much
more effective and organized coup, right, and that coup would
have failed were it not for fascist intervention from abroad.
But yeah, Brazil has powerful unions who did shit. Yeah, well,
and partially I think that's that's like that has to
do with hallowing out of the unions and there's a
(34:02):
there's sort of long story here, but like you know,
and even if you look at like I think this
is this is a sign really of sort of how
actually dynamic the left is, because you know, if if
if you want to look at like like a dynamic
Latin American left, like they you know, there there was,
there was, there was a very very well organized US
backed coup against Hugo Chavez. He doesn't want I was
(34:25):
just one. It was. It was just before I moved there,
so I think it would. Ah, there were other coup
attempts in Venezuela, two that were less well organized. Yeah
she doesn't too. Yeah, he doesn't too. And that one't
got far enough that like the New York Times was
like had an article out about how democracy had been
(34:46):
restored to the Cuba to Venezuela. And then you know
the thing, the thing that happened after that, and there's
there's a very famous movie of this from from a
filmmaker who was just there. Is that over over the
next forty seven hours, like the left mobilized and they
put so many people in the street that like the
(35:07):
coup plotters had to back down and Hugo travil has
got to be president. And you know that that's the
thing that that's the thing that a strong left can do, right,
they can actually defeat the military. And yeah, but you know,
but this didn't the US just we fell down on
the job, like there wasn't much of that in Brazil.
Like I like like it, like it is true, as
(35:28):
Lulu was saying, that they picked a day when everyone
was gone. But it's still, I think really alarming that
just by just by sort of acting first, they have
so much of a sort of time advantage, sort of
an advantage of reaction over us. Yeah. That film, by
the way, people want to watch is called The Revolution
(35:49):
Will Not Be Televised, which is kind of a great title.
Spectative things that you were talking about. And yeah, I
watched that bat Boy and VHS back in the day
in Caracas. Wow, yeh, big kids. So Okay, Finally, in
a broad sense, I wanted to ask, like, what are
(36:09):
we doing here right? Um, the sort of dominant mode
of quote unquote anti fascism, and this is the model
that's being adopted by Lula and the rest of the
sort of liberal and even sort of moderate conservative ruling
class in Brazil. It's what's been adopted by the Democrats
is their anti fascism is posing their opposition to fascism
as a defensive democracy and the rule of law. Mhm.
(36:34):
But yeah, okay, let's look at what's actually happening these
coups aren't working. That's the sort of actual power. Military
attempts to take power, they're losing every time. But do
you know how the fascists are taking power by democracy?
Their greatest success has been in taking power but just
winning elections. Like look look at what happened in India, right,
that is a country that has been like very nearly
(36:55):
totally consumed by fascism, and it was done by just
elections over and over and over again. Hungry. Yeah, even
here on a fundamental level, like what we're seeing right
now out of the sort of broad swath of social
sort of liberalism, conservatism and social democracy is an unsustainable strategy,
anti fashion, anti fascism as a pure defensive democracy is
(37:18):
just preserving the machine that will hand the power of
the state over to the fascist of a silver platter.
And you know that like this, this defensive democracy in
the abstract is a death march. Right, you know, if
you can, you can you can look at the sort
of course of of the late nineties, the late century, Right,
why did the bobs fall over Backdad? Well, protect democracy
when when the Mexican government was shooting the zapatisas they're
(37:39):
protecting democracy when the cops rated the when the cops
rated the Forest Defenders in Atlanta, Oh, it's because they
were domestic terrorists who are threatening democracy. But what's happened
here is that the threat of fascism has sort of
press ganged armies of people who otherwise would be enemies
of sort of capitalist quote unquote democracy into protecting the
very institutions that alrea inevitably going to bring these people
(38:00):
back into power. And that's really grim because it means
that something has to change or we're just going to
come back here again and again and again until eventually
enough of the ruling class flips to back into fascist
that they seiz power once and for all. So, you know, something,
we have to do something else that's not just this
that sort of desperate treading water. Yeah, like like fighting
(38:23):
to stand still in this terrible place where people can't
pay their heating bills and feed their families. Yeah, it's
it's pretty dire sucking outlook for us, isn't it. Yeah?
But I mean, you know I would say this like
that there was a vision in of what that something
else could be, right, Like it's it's it's not it's
it's it's not like we're in the depths of like
(38:43):
the two thousands where no one has ever seen like
anything that's taking possible, right, Yeah, Like there are a
lot of people probably listening because they saw that vision
and it changed who they want to be and how
they want the world to be. And I think that's
really good and uh for me at least, I think
once people around in the streets, which people weren't able
to do in time in Brazil, that they will tend
(39:06):
to find that solution outside of institutions. That the response
has been almost entirely institutional, at least in here in
this country to a fascist coup because people didn't and
people were tired from your industry and they've all been
fucking arrested and half of them have been shot. And
but part of the problem also is just like there's
there's like the US just has a sort of geographical
(39:27):
problem and Brazil has this to to sub extent, which
is that like, yeah, this is not like Belgium you
can very quickly get people to the capital, Like you can't.
You can't actually like it is actually genuinely very hard
to get a bunch of people to a place quickly here, right,
which you know, is a thing where we're lucky that Yeah,
like that the capital kind of like holding the capital,
(39:48):
doesn't you know. It's it's it's not a thing that
actually allows you to sort of take power. But it's
also a real sort of concerned about politics in the
US because it can't work the same way it works
in a lot of places that are smaller. Yeah. Yeah,
like Bolivia for example. Yeah, yeah, even Venezuela. Right, like
so much of the institution, almost everything is in Caracas,
(40:10):
even it's a big country. Yeah, that's that's That's pretty
much all I got. Um, Well, we'll see, we'll see
if Bolstaro when when he gets out of the hospital,
if he gets out of the hospital, he's returned to
his social home. Yeah, yeah, it's it's always good to
see people with with takes on situation in Brazil who
(40:32):
also think the capital is Rio. That's always a fun
thing that I can see on Twitter talk on it's
okay not to post you know, this is my okay,
I have what what are my rules of thumb about
talking about a place is if if you can't name
five cities in a country, don't talk about it. Yeah,
(40:53):
this is the thing that like so many like people
people people who get paid to write articles about places
like just fail all that. People who get this is like, frankly,
you should be able to like like, if if I
was doing due diligence, I would I would be learning.
I would be actually learning Portuguese right now instead of
like relying on my Spanish to sort of like power
(41:15):
me through it. But you know, like the lowest bar
is you should go the capital and you should be
able to name five cities in it. And if you
can't do that, like, maybe don't post. Yeah, it's fine
not to post. In fact, when dealing with coups, maybe
consider options that are not posting. Yeah, and and yeah,
go go out and stop them. Mhm, make friends. Yeah.
(41:38):
So this this has gonna make it happen here. You
can find us in the places on social media. It
could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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(42:00):
Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com.
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