by Bruno De Oliveira. Fake news and its propagation via social media has created a suspension of critical thinking. We have people simply believing everything and nothing; accepting the absurd whilst disregarding factual information as fake news. In Brazil, this wave of fake news is creating a state of collective paranoia where ordinary people cannot […]
History will not not forgive the cowards and the fence sitters. by Marcelo Zero The results of the first round, although shocking to some due to the last minute surge of the fascist candidates, is not that surprising if we take some basic factors into consideration: 1) The main candidate became a political prisoner and was barred […]
The most fraught election since re-democratisation ended with extreme-right Jair Bolsonaro on 46,03%, short of a first round victory, to the relief of progressive democratic forces in Brasil and the region as a whole. As occured with Donald Trump’s election in the US and Brexit in the UK, polls uniformly failed to pick up a […]
By Aline Piva. 1968 was a decisive year. It was a year in which the civil rights movements rose with a force never seen before. The world watched as the streets of Paris were taken over by students and workers, causing an intense revision of society and advancing fundamental social rights. But it was also […]
by Karina Patrício and Thomas Cooper Patriota. The first round of the forthcoming Brazilian presidential election is set to take place on 7 October 2018. This is probably the most unpredictable election since redemocratisation, with 13 different candidates on the ballot – the largest number since 1989, when Brazilians were first allowed to directly elect their president […]
by Marcelo Zero. The growth of Bolsonarian fascism in the final stretch of the election campaign, turbo charged by an avalanche of fake news disseminated on the internet, is not surprising. It is an old tactic developed by American and British intelligence agencies, with the goal of manipulating public opinion and influencing political processes and […]
As Mark Zuckerberg jumps through hoops to show he can limit the damage to democracy caused by fake news on Facebook, his WhatsApp platform has been used to convince a large segment of the Brazilian electorate that out of control gays are about to force homosexuality on their children unless they elect an actual fascist. […]
by Gaía Passarelli. I never thought I’d get here. And sometimes I want to believe that it will not get worse. But then I pinch myself: I did not think Dilma would fall, I did not think Doria would be Mayor of São Paulo, I did not think Trump would be US President. I never […]
Brazilian Economist Marcos Arruda, from the PACS Institute (Alternative Policies for the Southern Cone) in Rio de Janeiro, and the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam, makes a political economy analysis of possible scenarios in the 2018 presidential elections. by Marcos Arruda Understanding a very complex historical situation, like that of Brazil today, is not an easy […]
Fascism isn’t funny, but I had to smile when I saw a photo from the ‘Ele não’ (not him) protest in São Paulo last Saturday in which a smiling woman is holding a sign that reads ‘Sou coxinha, mas não sou fascista!’ (I’m a coxinha, but I’m not a fascist) A coxinha is a fried […]