Hagar Chemali, foreign policy expert and host of the YouTube Show "Oh My World”, facilitates a conversation with OBP creator and host, Farai Chideya and foreign policy enthusiast and creator of the “What in the World?” podcast, Bunmi Akinnusoto about what pro-Bolsonaro Brazilians storming their congress tells us about extremism here in the US and around the world.
Farai Chideya:
I am Farai Chideya, and this is Our Body Politic Extras, where we get to share with you the extended versions of some of our best conversations. Let's dive into this edition of OBP Extras.
Each week on the show, we bring you a round table called Sippin' the Political Tea. And this week, foreign policy expert and host of YouTube show Oh My World, Hagar Chemali, is back to lead our conversation. We're talking about the rise in populous nationalism in Brazil and across the world. Take it away, Hagar.
Hagar Chemali:
Thanks Farai. It's great to be here. Joining me this week is Bunmi Akinnusoto, who's a foreign policy enthusiast and creator of the What in the World Podcast. She has spent much of her career working to bring greater diversity into foreign policy and national security careers. Welcome to Our Body Politic, Bunmi. It's so great to have you.
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
Thank you so much, Hagar. It's so great to be here and chat with you about this.
Hagar Chemali:
Yes, we're also joined by our very own Farai Chideya, creator and host of Our Body Politic and someone who's truly become an inspiration to me. Hi Farai, it's great to see you.
Farai Chideya:
It's great to see you. We are actually seeing each other face to face. We're in the same studio, which is not usually how it rolls, so it's a great, great pleasure.
Hagar Chemali:
It's very exciting. I'm happy to be here. This week we're discussing the political situation in Brazil against the backdrop of rising populism around the world. On January 1st, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, often referred to as Lula, was inaugurated as president of Brazil. He's leftist and he narrowly won the presidential election in October against far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. This is actually Lula's second stint in this role. He was Brazil's president from 2003 to 2011, and his economic reform helped lift at least 20 million Brazilians out of poverty. But his administration was also marred by corruption scandals.
Hagar Chemali:
After leaving office, Lula served 19 months in prison for corruption and money laundering allegations, but he was released because of a technicality in the law. Fast forward to today, days after Lula's inauguration, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters, under the false belief the election had been rigged, stormed Brazil's Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential offices in the country's capitol, Brasilia. After several hours, the police were able to get control and detained roughly 1,500 protestors. This scene was eerily similar to the January 6th insurrection in Washington, almost exactly two years to the day. So we wanted to discuss what led to Brazil's own insurrection, the extent to which it was inspired by the January 6th events here and what this means for global populist nationalism.
Hagar Chemali:
Bunmi, I want to start with you. Can you help us set the scene a bit and give us some insight into the general atmosphere in the run up to the presidential election in Brazil in October, and the factors that could have contributed to the violence that took place in the Capitol?
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
Absolutely. So much like the United States, as you said in your wonderful introduction, there was a lot of misinformation already leading up to the election. On the part of Bolsonaro himself outright coming out, talking about that the polls being rigged and issues with information. So misinformation just like ours up in 2020, there was just a lot of "fake news" phrases being tossed around. The second, similarly to the United States where you saw a lot of elected officials at that time also harboring hate and sharing information that wasn't accurate. Stirring the pot amongst already sensitive population, I would say. And the thing that is interesting for me, the third piece I'll mention is around the faith-based community and the evangelical contingencies in Brazil that just in the United States were kind of backing Bolsonaro and many of the insurgents and sort of spreading information or ideologies that left people in fear, frankly. And so those were sort of the three prongs that were a part of that environment leading up to the election.
Hagar Chemali:
And can you also add to that a little bit, how tense was it during the election? this was a tight race. Can you also give us a little color on that too as well.
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
Yeah, so again, I keep going back to the United States, but there's so much violence. I mean, actually I want to go back to a situation from 2018 that I think I would call as like a prelude to this, and that is the assassination of Mario Franco, who was an elected official. She was assassinated. That sort of stirred a lot of conspiracy theories around her assassination, who assassinated her and so on and so forth. So this violence is not new to Brazil when it comes to elected officials. So yes, so I would say that in the lead up to the election, there were online. If you want to even look like at the digital space, just a lot of online sort of banter. I believe from what I have read, similar to the United States, a lot of this had been monitored by federal agencies in Brazil. But I don't know if people were thinking of, "It's just not possible that things could happen and we've got it under control," but they didn't. And so we saw what happened that day.
Hagar Chemali:
So safe to say things were tense. A few American influencers and allies of Donald Trump made a number of public remarks regarding the election in Brazil. For example on his podcast, Steve Bannon pushed a theory that the election in Brazil was stolen. And he encouraged opposition even after Bolsonaro said he would step down. Ali Alexander, who organized the Stop the Steal movement, told Bolsonaro supporters on social media to "do whatever is necessary." Farai, is the United States now exporting far-right populism. What do you think is motivating these far-right Americans to wade into Brazilian politics?
Farai Chideya:
Well, first of all, let me start with something that is a little to the side, but very much related, which is that Meta, formally known as Facebook, made the decision to re-platform Donald Trump. This is being just very heavily decried by people in the global and national security worlds. It's basically scholars and experts who form something called The Real Facebook Oversight Board and they wrote a piece Re-platforming Trump on Facebook Is a Grave Threat to Democracy; "He Has Put Down the Dog Whistle and Picked Up a Bullhorn."
Farai Chideya:
So one way to understand the people you're talking about, Steve Bannon and Ali Alexander, is they are people with bullhorns and they are heavily funded. They're not just like, "Hi, I'm here to create an ethnonationalist movement in every country that I can get my hands on," they're being paid to do it. I get very disappointed when people don't follow the money and realize how deeply funded this is and where you can have Steve Bannon waning around Europe with people like Viktor Orban of Hungary, like, "Folks, let's not make this a preview of what's going to happen in the United States." And we have a real interest in understanding that the weaponization of ethnonationalism could lead to national civil wars as well as a global war. I'm just not going to sugarcoat it.
Farai Chideya:
And so the way that I think about the sort of ethnonationalist movement that Steve Bannon is heavily profiting from is it's like the mafia. The mafia in Sicily is not the mafia in Philadelphia, but they're both mafia. And in some cases they have beef with each other and in some cases they collaborate. I think of the sort of ethnonationalist movement as a bunch of global mafiosos who are out there for profit. And unfortunately, a lot of people are buying into them just because they believe they're right. But these dudes are out there making major bank. They have a lifestyle supported by whipping up hatred and being what the book How Civil Wars Start, and Barbara Walter calls ethnic entrepreneurs, who are people, often from traditionally powerful groups like white Americans in the United States, who fear declining influence and then go on the war path against everyone else.
Farai Chideya:
So I think that one of the differences is for Jan 6th, Donald Trump was a lame duck president. He was still the president of the United States with a pending inauguration, but he was still the president and he failed in his duty as commander in chief in terms of January 6th. With Bolsonaro, he was no longer in office. Another difference is that Brazil had a dictatorship and there's kind of these echoes in the civic structure of people... I mean, dictatorships don't happen when everyone thinks they're wrong. They happen when some people think they're right. And so there are echoes in the Brazilian political system of people who felt empowered and strong. And there are people all over the world who dictatorships if they're on the winning side of the equation.
Farai Chideya:
So I think that it's a feedback loop. I think Americans have always been in the modern era dominant in media, like Hollywood is one form of media and storytelling that we dominate, but we also spend a lot of time both in governmental and non-governmental ways messaging about democracy, sometimes for very selfish reasons, sometimes for very healthy reasons. So all of which is to say I think it's important for people to understand how people are selling ethnonationalism for profit in a bunch of different countries with different politics, but for the same reasons, money and power.
Hagar Chemali:
You hit a very interesting point that is the perfect segue to Bunmi, which is that the Brazilian Bolsonaro supporters after the election last October, camped out outside the military headquarters in Brazil and called on the military to take over.
And so Bunmi, if you could unpack a little bit the comparison to our own 2020 election. Unlike in the United States, Bolsonaro supporters stormed their Congress after the president was inaugurated. But they believed something, and a lot of that is part of the misinformation that you highlighted. So can you dive a little deeper into what was their goal, what did they believe their goal was? What was it they were calling for? Maybe can you offer a little bit of some examples of the misinformation that may have driven them?
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
Yeah. Whoo! This is so much. What I understand is within the Brazilian military itself, there were factions that were supporting those who attacked in Brasilia that day. Similarly to the United States, we know that the capital police, there were individuals who supported what happened on January 6th as well. So that's one aspect of the groups of people. I would also go right back to the beginning where I talked about some of the faith-based leaders who want to ensure that the "moral compass" of Brazil is protected. You had highly respected evangelical individuals saying that Lula was going to erase sort of the morality of Brazil and turn Brazil backwards and all of this. So I guess you could look at it in terms of the faction. So then you had, sort of similar to United State, men, young men, who felt left out or feel left out of the economic and social apparatus of the country. Same thing here in the United States where there's been lots and lots of studies and look research and op-eds about white American men who don't benefit from globalization and who don't benefit from the advances in technology.
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
And so I think it's the same thing in Brazil where you see segments of young men who feel like they're just not being considered as it relates to the advancement of the country and it's been sinking in their minds that they will go extinct, that they won't have jobs, that they can't be the head of household, et cetera, et cetera. All these things are going to eliminate their existence. And so elected officials, religious leaders, obviously other folks in the community have sort of fed into these ideas of sort of elimination that our values, our ways of living are at threats because of the way Lula wants to support the country or lead this country.
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
So it runs deep, Hagar. I can't even begin to explain all the other aspects. I did want to touch on what Farai was talking about with the media, and perhaps you all can relate in this idea of WhatsApp. WhatsApp has been a huge platform for misinformation and for these smaller groups to share what's going on or spread additional false information. And so I'm really curious, maybe we could talk about this later, about the level of accountability that's going to come on the part of the tech industry and also others who have those platforms that Farai talked about that have been fueling this conversation and these actions.
Hagar Chemali:
Sure. Actually, one of the examples of in addition to other American influencers that egged on Bolsonaro supporters was Elon Musk. I just didn't listen because there were a huge list of examples, but he went on Twitter after taking over Twitter and said that as they were doing their studies of their... Oh as you remember, when he took over, they were examining Twitter and policies and firing people and so on. He came out to say that he was questioning whether Twitter was over censoring the Bolsonaro, for example, for the statements that he made. There was a lot of misinformation going on. Some of it was back and forth by the way. But that ended up instilling this lack of trust and further fueling this idea that, "Oh, wait a minute. So maybe Twitter fed into supporting one side more than the other." And so I think you're absolutely right, is that they play a large role in swaying people and activating them.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. Can I just get on my soapbox again? I'm sorry. I'm going to have to pull it... Pulling this soapbox over multiple times. This was not about what you said, but it's about how people think about this. Free speech is about your relationship to the government. Your, as a citizen of America's, relationship to the government, it is not about what Facebook/Meta does. It's not about what Twitter does. Just like you don't try to sell strollers that harm children, like there are these horrible strollers where kids have gotten their hands caught and their fingers cut off, that's basically what we've got. Right now, social media weaponized by people who want these ethnonationalist movements, they're like exploding cars and strollers cutting off the fingers of kids. It's just been proven that this is an accelerant that helps ramp up everything from outright civil war to Jan 6th situations, whatever.
Farai Chideya:
I think it's irresponsible not only of Elon Musk, but backers like Larry Ellison, another one of the great tech gods to go on some [inaudible 00:16:04] claiming this is about free speech. It's like, you want power and you're empowering other people who want power, but if America goes to hell in a hand basket, I don't think that it's going to be good for Elon Musk's business model. There are people who are ethnonationalist trying to take down the power grid. What happens to electric cars then? So I think that the failure to distinguish between the concept of free speech as it applies to citizens in government and private industry is one thing, but also to understand that the manipulation of politics results in real world death, real world harms, and I don't think we've begun to see the beginning of what is possible.
Hagar Chemali:
It makes you wonder actually also, did Bolsonaro himself, by the way, play a large role in encouraging this violence? Bunmi, can you shed a little light on that as well? What was his reaction to all of this?
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
Yeah, so we know he fled... Or not fled, that's my phrase. But he found his way to Florida, but the damage had already been done, right? I mean, as we've been saying, this has been happening back last year. And even if you want to argue, once he started in his position, his political actions. And not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic and his handling, or lack thereof, of the pandemic and the way he talked about the pandemic or COVID-19 as though it wasn't a big deal, as though it wasn't real or that it wasn't as harmful as the world was making it seems.
Hagar Chemali:
Is he still in Florida?
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
I think right now he's still there. I believe he's still there. Representative Castro and some others have called on additional investigations into anything that the US or US citizens or organizations may have done to fuel what's happening in Brazil. But for sure, Bolsonaro has not helped the situation. And while he did try to come out like President Trump, late in the game, tried to come out and say, "Y'all need to chill out," the damage had already been done. I would actually argue that the power isn't in Bolsonaro. The power isn't in those enablers. The influential individuals, again, from various parts of the government in Brazil and also in the media and then also in those sort of other powerful groups, the religious groups, the sort of social groups, there are voices in those spaces that have the levers of power to control what is being said and thought of amongst their followers.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. And Bolsonaro at this time is still in the US, which discomforts a lot of people. He's kind of got this Elvis meets some kind of religious shrine thing going on where people are showing up just trying to see him and touch the hem of his garments. It's all very creepy.
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
Gross. Gross.
Farai Chideya:
Farai, I want to bring it back to the United States and then go global from there. Our political developments and movements have ripple effects around the world. How do you see far-right populism growing here since the midterm elections last year in particular? Do you see far-right feminism growing and do you see an effort on the part of the right to differentiate from the right and the far-right?
Farai Chideya:
Whoo. The last part is really interesting differentiation between the right and the far-right. I think what you saw is that the center-right has essentially mainly caved in America. There was an exodus of center-right Republicans from the House of Representatives. They just resigned or failed to... I mean, they didn't resign. They declined to run again. They saw the writing on the wall that their brand of the George H.W. Bush, i.e, President Bush, the first, style politics was no longer welcomed. There are some people of prominence left from that wing, which includes people like Mitt Romney. But you really saw a hollowing out of the center and certainly of the ideological neocon movement, which is very disenfranchised right now in Washington. Then there's the right, which I would say is House Speaker McCarthy, but he's playing footsie with the far-right. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's now trying to present herself as the new center-right. So if you followed all of that, it's kind of like doing the hustle, but we're getting hustled, you know?
Hagar Chemali:
Or hijacked.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that honestly, I'm not always on our round tables quite this breathless because first of all, I'm usually in the host seat and there's going to be a lot more round tables hosted by you and other folks, and I'm really excited about that. But I'm really disturbed as someone who's covered every presidential election since 1996, who has been to the Colorado River Tea Party convention in Arizona and shown up for... I've show up for everybody. I've interviewed Klan people in person, tea party, Black Lives Matter, immigration activists. I show up to hear what Americans have to say, but the level of dissociation from fact and truth is palpable. And once again, it comes to money.
My first gig as a political analyst was on CNN during the '96 election with someone named Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, who is now Kellyanne Conway, who coined the term alternative facts. That is a hell in a hand basket phrase. When you no longer believe in the truth, that you believe that your opinion is the truth and everyone else's truth is an opinion, that's a problem. That's where we are. And to me, the difference between the sort of ethical right, and I have Republican relatives, Black Republican relatives, you want to talk about wandering in the wilderness without a glass of water, like the sort of Colin Powell wing of Republicanism, not doing so great right now. But in any case, to me, the ethical right is something I want to see in American politics. They're really disenfranchised. Some of them are breaking with the far-right, and some of them, the current Speaker of the House are playing footsie.
Hagar Chemali:
When you're seeing this play out on a global scale too, over the last several years we've seen an increase in far-right populism and nationalism around the world. So for example, in France, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Brazil, and the United States of course, in some of these countries, the left won recent elections. But these were not easy wins. Bunmi, why is this trend growing and to what extent are political developments, movements, or far-right groups here in the United States playing a role in this?
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
Yeah. Ooh, why is it growing? That's such a big question. There are lots of factors. I would like to highlight just maybe two of those. The first is I think people are just tired. People are just tired from their perspective being left out, being criminalized, feeling like they're not getting anywhere with their families or their communities or what have you. Being forgotten the old ways, right? Like the way we used to do things and the way we used to rear our families and the way we used to engage. So I think that across the board around the world.
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
And I would like to say that I think that if you look at migration patterns, I think a lot of that has to do with fueling some of the sort of alternative "facts" that are out there. I think when you look at countries that you mentioned like France, like Italy, like Hungary, they're experiencing large numbers of migration. I'm not saying that this is their fault. I'm just saying that there have been studies that looked at. As particularly Black and brown immigrants or refugees come into these spaces, you see a direct correlation with the amount of hate and sort of visceral disdain for change, right? And so you start to see that people feel left out. "Well, now there's a mosque when there wasn't a mosque. Does that mean that they're going to in invoke Sharia law in my community?", right? It starts and we saw that here in the United States. So I think that that's one aspect, is just people are tired of change, tired of feeling like they're left out, that they're not heard, and they're feeling frankly threatened.
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
And then I will also say that I do think that America, for better or worse, is like the adult in your life who you admire but also hate. So whatever they do, you kind of do or kind of signals to you that you can do. So if you had a parent or an uncle or an aunt who was a musician and they were always bringing their guitar to the house party or whatever, that has an effect on you one way or another, right? And so I do think that America's sort of issues with democracy, issues with racism, I mean, look at the voting rights issues that we've had, certainly the assassination or the killing, the murder of George Floyd. Going back further, all of the things that we have been dealing with in the United States, I think has been giving further fuel to others to do similar things or to act in similar ways. And that's what I think is the result.
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
And certainly, across these groups, there are certainly, I'm sure, people who've studied social movements. With the advent of technology, it's so much easier now for hate groups to connect in the same way that it's easier for those who believe in Black Lives Matter or whatever, climate justice groups, we can all connect now so much more easily. So the tactics and the ideologies, the lessons learned from all of these groups, it's just so much easier to share that... Look at Ukraine and the number of American soldiers or veterans who went over to the Ukraine to fight on behalf of the Ukrainians, right? I think that has a lot to do with the access to media and to technologies and movement to being able to connect in these ways. And so that's what I see as the reasoning behind some of this, is the spread.
Hagar Chemali:
Farai, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how much you see all this as a threat to democracy. I know you can't predict the future. None of us clearly can. But how much will this hurt our democracy? And just generally, what concerns do you have? But also, is there a light at the end of the tunnel? I mean, are there signs that give you hope as well that this phase will die down?
Farai Chideya:
Well, first, thank you. I've loved this conversation, Bunmi and Hagar. It's been such a pleasure. I want to leave people with a two book reading list. And very much to the question of will it ramp down or is there hope? No and yes, it's going to get worse before it gets better. I believe we're entering a period of increased threat for domestic terrorism because we are a very divided, heavily armed country with people in elected office who say stupid things like, "Next time we'll win," or something like that. Marjorie Taylor Greene. We had a reporter on here who said Marjorie Taylor Greene was scared for her life on January 6th, but now she's acting like her people got the boot from the People's House, so "Hmm" on that.
Farai Chideya:
But a book that I really enjoyed was What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing. And this was by Oprah and Dr. Bruce Perry who's an expert on trauma. It talks about how trauma comes from things happening too much, too soon, or too fast. There are a lot of things that happen to people, like changes in the labor economy that destabilize people. I think we're going through a trauma, and we have the potential for what Oprah and Dr. Perry called post-traumatic wisdom. We will never be the same after this. Brazil will never be the same, America will never be the same, but we could be better if we get ourselves together.
Farai Chideya:
The other one, which I'm just starting to reread, is Future Shock, which is a 1970 bestseller by Alvin Toffler. It basically talks about how this too much, too fast, too soon applies to rapidly advancing technological societies and how you think about 1970, you're at the end of the '60s, beginning of the '70s, birth control, much more electronic technology in the homes and disruption of the labor economy through technological advances. And so we're kind of re-experiencing a future shock. So I'm going back to the reading material because I don't think we can be the same. I think it's going to get worse before it gets better both globally and in the United States, but I am hoping for some post-traumatic wisdom.
Hagar Chemali:
I'm going to hang on to the fact that you think it will get better eventually.
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
I love that. Yeah, I love that. I love that.
Hagar Chemali:
Before we go, Bunmi, you work to amplify experts of color in this space. Can you just tell us quickly more about how you do that?
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
Yes, absolutely. So I work at Howard University on a program that does this, that. So we, for 20 years, have been bringing diversity into the diplomatic course, specifically at the Department of State. I work with not just undergrads, but those professionals who've been out in the working world and are trying to figure out how to break into this space. It's not easy to do. It's not intuitive. Fortunately, the sector is opening up in a lot of ways. We see now paid internships that were a barrier for students of color and people of color to just get into, for example, into the Hill or the White House. We're seeing more paid internships, we're seeing more mentorship and pipeline programs. We're seeing a lot of organizations or companies, foundations funding study abroad programs because we know international experience or international affairs is contingent on some travel abroad. So yeah, that's what I do. I'm happy to talk to parents, students, professionals, anybody who's interested in breaking into this space.
Farai Chideya:
And I just have to give a shout out. I love this. A shout out to Tiaji Sio who I met at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is a German diplomat who is a woman of African descent who runs diplomats of color and who's doing something parallel to you in Germany. So I think you too should connect.
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
Oh, that's amazing. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'd have to say that I think a lot of what we're doing in this conversation is divine timing. I don't think that it's comfortable by any means, but I do think that unfortunately the situation with George Floyd sparked a lot of action that is necessary, and I just can't wait to continue to connect with people such as the women you mentioned, and of course, you, Farai and Hagar. Shout out to you for all the work that you've been doing because these topics are so, so important for our healing, for our growth, and so on.
Hagar Chemali:
Amazing. Thank you so much, Bunmi.
Bunmi Akinnusoto:
Thank yo, Farai. Thank you, Hagar. This has been great.
Hagar Chemali:
And thank you. Thank you for letting me host this.
Farai Chideya:
Hey, Hagar, this has been 110% my pleasure.
Hagar Chemali:
That was Bunmi Akinnusoto, foreign policy enthusiast, creator of the What in the World Podcast, and Deputy Director of the Rangel Fellowship at Howard University, and Farai Chideya, creator and host of Our Body Politic.
Farai Chideya:
And that was Hagar Chemali, foreign policy expert and host of the YouTube show Oh My World. Thanks for listening.