Why Bolsonaro has problems with holes

MORE INFORMATION

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• The "captain" who confronted Salvini and lives where her backpack is posed

On February 18, the anti-president Jair Bolsonaro needed to divert attention from the death of the militiaman Adriano da Nóbrega, a key person to clarify the system of diversion of money in Flavio Bolsonaro's cabinet, the relationship of the Bolsonaro family with the militias - Criminal groups made up of police and firefighters who control various areas of Rio de Janeiro - and also who ordered the murder of Councilor Marielle Franco and why. The elimination of Nóbrega, in which there are several indications that he was executed, once again highlighted the Bolsonaro's relations with the militias. It was necessary to divert attention. As usual, Bolsonaro used his tricky trick: he created a new fact by attacking journalist Patrícia Campos Mello, from Folha de S. Paulo . The reporter, one of the most competent of her generation, was part of the group of journalists who denounced the fraudulent use of names and tax identification numbers to shoot WhatsApp messages for the benefit of Bolsonaro during the 2018 presidential campaign. One of her sources Hans River, when he testified in the parliamentary committee about false news, affirmed that Patricia had tried to obtain information "in exchange for sex", although the exchange of messages between the two shows exactly the opposite. In an informal press conference in front of the Alvorada palace, the same one in which he usually cuts journalists, Manga, Bolsonaro attacked: “She [Patrícia] wanted a furo [word that in Portuguese means 'hole' but that in journalistic jargon means 'scoop']. I wanted to give the furo [pause to laugh] at any cost. ”

This widely broadcast episode reveals much more than the new fascists' manual trick to divert public attention. Bolsonaro has problems with holes. In several ways. His obsession with what each one does with his anus is notorious. He's always trying to regulate where everyone sticks his penis. Occasionally he manages to talk about poop, like young children do. For him, the vagina is a hole, a rather surprising vision for a man over 60 who, for his own sake, should already know a little more about the sexual organ of women. He went on to say that the Amazon "was a virgin that all the perverts outside want." Only a psychoanalyst who someday received Bolsonaro on his couch could find the clues of what this reduction of sexuality means to a collection of holes, some made for rape, others prohibited for sex. We, ruled by that man, can only understand that he is obsessed with holes, poop and penis. And that determines your government.

Bolsonaro is also obsessed with furos in the journalistic sense of the word, the first fruits, the journalist's revelation about what no one knew. Patrícia Campos Mello, when revealing with her colleague Artur Rodrigues the illegal use of WhatsApp during the 2018 campaign, gave a scoop that greatly angered Bolsonaro and his court. And that made her his target. However, the history of the firsts and Bolsonaro's troubled relationship with journalists is much older. He inaugurated Bolsonaro's own relationship with the press more than 30 years ago, when he was still an Army captain. But the story of the misogyny of the Brazilians whom Bolsonaro represents and also of the Brazilians whom he does not represent is even more dangerous, because it does not begin or end with Bolsonaro. Misogyny determined the events that culminated in his election.

The week in which the world has celebrated women's day (March 8) and two years have passed since the murder of Marielle Franco (March 14) without knowing who ordered her to be killed or why, it is worth observing carefully what the facts about Bolsonaro and also about Brazilian society. Bolsonaro only became the first anti-president in history because part of Brazilian society wants women to be "beautiful, demure and homey" again. And not only the brutes like Bolsonaro want it, although only they go around proclaiming it with pride.

The journalist who denounced Bolsonaro for planning to explode bombs in barracks

The relationship of Jair Bolsonaro, then Army Captain, with the press began in September 1986, with Veja magazine. At that time, Veja was the main weekly magazine in the country and that was something very important. It had a circulation of almost a million copies, which is a lot for a country of non-readers. Everyone who had any power, in different areas and levels, read Veja magazine on Saturday mornings. On Mondays or even Sundays, the country's main newspapers often echoed some scoops from Veja. In this media scenario, Bolsonaro made his successful debut in politics: in an article entitled "The salary is low", the young captain complained about the salary policy for the military of José Sarney, the first civilian president after the dictatorship that had oppressed the country from 1964 to 1985.

After the publication, Bolsonaro was punished with 15 days of disciplinary imprisonment, but he became very popular with soldiers, officers, and even with generals in pajamas. Bolsonaro enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame so much that he personally went to thank the head of the magazine's branch in Rio de Janeiro. At that time, he saw in the press the possibility of acquiring the importance he believed he deserved and perhaps "getting rich", a wish he expressed on more than one occasion.

However, a year later, Bolsonaro would hate Veja magazine. The "fault" was of a woman: the journalist Cassia Maria Rodrigues, who revealed the "Dead End" plan, idealized by Bolsonaro and a colleague known as Sheriff (Fábio Passos). This consisted of putting bombs in the barracks, but without hurting anyone, to draw attention to the low salaries of the military. This story is meticulously told in the book O cadete eo capitão (The cadet and the captain), by the journalist Luiz Maklouf Carvalho, whose reading I recommend.

The Army leadership, which had harshly criticized Bolsonaro for the article a year earlier, this time was closed to supposedly protect the institution. Having two crazy, out-of-control officers planning to put bombs in the generals' noses, and all of this during the delicate transition to democracy following a military dictatorship that had formally ended just two years ago, was news that the military had not they wanted.

Cassia Maria Rodrigues and Veja magazine were accused of making up the whole story. Bolsonaro denied having spoken to the journalist. Years later, when she was already a federal deputy, he would call her "crazy." Then Veja published in the next edition two sketches that Bolsonaro made by hand when he granted the interview to the reporter, to show her how the plan would work: in one, according to the magazine, the pipes of what would be the conduction of Guandu were seen, that the city of Rio de Janeiro supplied water and, next to them, the drawing of a dynamite charge (“TNT firecracker”). Bolsonaro and Passos continued to deny the magazine's information. Veja never backed down.

To write the book, Luiz Maklouf Carvalho analyzed the recording of the entire trial of the case in the Superior Military Court, in 1988. Two of the three graphical expert reports concluded that Bolsonaro was the author of the sketches. Five months earlier, an Army justification council had already found the captain guilty by 3 votes to 0, for "irregular conduct and practicing acts that affect personal honor, military pride and class decorum."

When Cassia was waiting to be called to testify in court, Bolsonaro threatened her. The then captain made the sign with his fingers that would become his trademark in the presidency: he pretended to point a gun at him. She asked him if it was a death threat. Bolsonaro said no, but that "he could be hurt if he continued with this story."

The rapporteur magistrate of the case, General Sérgio de Ary Pires, did not hesitate to attack the journalist in a way very similar to the one that Bolsonaro used against Patrícia Campos Mello and other journalists already in the presidency, saving the differences in language, time and references. "The lie is present in all the statements and affirmations of this infamous journalist, Cassia Maria," he said. "This girl does not stop being a ditcher, because the dummies provide services, wash the clothes of the soldiers, and she wants to wash the dirty clothes of the barracks." In one of its meanings, the vivanderas are the prostitutes who accompanied the troops in times of war. As you can see, Bolsonaro was never without inspiration in the Brazilian Armed Forces.

The way the trial was manipulated to free Bolsonaro is evident. Everything indicates that Bolsonaro was acquitted on the condition that he leave the Army. Six months after the trial, already elected councilor for Rio de Janeiro, Bolsonaro entered the reserve. He then began his successful career as a professional politician, who would also make three of his sons professional politicians. Successful career in the physiological sense, since, in his almost 30 years as a federal deputy, Bolsonaro only managed to approve two projects, a fact that did not prevent voters from electing him president of the Republic in 2018.

The germ of everything Bolsonaro would become was there, in the episode of the bombs. His hatred of the press that does not eat from his hand. His hatred for the journalist who denounced his plan and, almost, does not abort his incipient political career and the great hopes he had for himself, which could have happened in the event that the Superior Military Court had condemned him. The gesture of making a weapon with your hand to threaten your enemies, who today are a part of the Brazilian population.

At that time, Bolsonaro deeply absorbed two lessons that would guide his life as a professional politician: 1) it is legitimate to manipulate truth and justice to protect your interests, as the Army leadership did by acquitting him despite all the evidence; 2) It is possible to plan up to a terrorist attack, deny what you did and what you really said, and not only come out unscathed, but chosen.

In the presidency, Bolsonaro has come to deny himself. No other politician has corrupted the truth like him, by becoming the leading exponent of self-truth: the concept that truth is a personal, individual choice, disconnected from the facts.

In 1993, in an interview with investigators Maria Celina D'Araújo and Celso Castro, General Ernesto Geisel, the fourth military man who presided over Brazil during the dictatorship, stated: “Bolsonaro is a completely unusual case, even a bad military man " When a part of the generals supported Bolsonaro's candidacy, in 2018, it did not matter that Bolsonaro was a "military evil". They knew who it was, and it was exactly who they wanted. There is no responsible high-ranking military group that has suddenly been surprised by Bolsonaro's lack of control. Not one responsible military group and another crazy group, the good and the bad, the ideological and the non-ideological. This is all a narrative to create opposition without opposition.

Bolsonaro's lack of control is helpful. Some generals may have the illusion that, at the right time, they will be able to control it. However, for the moment, Bolsonaro is doing exactly what he was expected to do. The military have returned to power, which seemed unthinkable only a few years ago, and some see themselves as temperance wells compared to the Cavalão - a nickname that Bolsonaro had when he was in the Army and which means "lout" - who holds the most senior position. high of the Republic. The script runs its course. An exaggeration here, an accident there, but as originally planned.

Bolsonaro is, in several ways, the product - and not an anomaly - of an influential part of the Brazilian Army. It is time for this to be understood.

We have to talk about Dilma Rousseff

If Jair Bolsonaro were just an aberration in Brazil's trajectory, a kind of dystopian nightmare that could be overcome in four years, as some believe, the situation in the country would be much more reassuring. The problem is both that Bolsonarism goes much further than Bolsonaro and that Bolsonaro was not chosen by chance. There is a Brazil that he represents. On the one hand, there is the 30% that polls show that he stays with him unconditionally, that is, regardless of what he does (or doesn't do). And 30% is not a small thing. On the other hand, Bolsonaro did not invent the Brazil he represents, although he has helped create it and continues to shape it. This is the most complicated part. So it will be more difficult to face it than to face the man who embodies it.

You cannot analyze the last decade of Brazil without looking closely at women's resistance and resistance to women. Misogyny and machismo were not the direct causes of Dilma Rousseff's impeachment . But she was the first female president in history to be removed without any legal basis. Misogyny, machismo, racism and homophobia were not the direct causes of the murder of Marielle Franco. But it was a black, lesbian, and favela-raised woman who was killed in the most shocking political crime of recent years. The largest demonstration organized by women in the history of Brazil was against Bolsonaro. The "Ele Não" (He No) was also the largest resistance movement against Bolsonaro's election. Like the group that most rejected Bolsonaro as a candidate was that of black and poor women.

Matches do not exist. Bolsonaro channels various forces, including that of men who fear losing their place and who blame all the precariousness of their lives on a world whose signs they no longer recognize. Men who think that everything can be solved if boys wear blue again and girls pink. Some men who think it is a great joke to talk about the journalist's furo , because seeing the vagina as a hole calms her fear of failure.

It is no coincidence that the economy is a bastion of men led by Paulo Guedes, the Chicago School enlightened man who commits one act of verbal violence after another and is much more like Bolsonaro than anyone. The neoliberals of the economy and the defenders of patriarchy belong to the same world. It is no coincidence that they are in the same government. This mania for compartmentalizing things clouds any serious analysis.

When a part of Brazilian society is shocked by Bolsonaro's violence against women journalists, it is necessary to look back at former President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers' Party (PT). And wondering why there is so much hatred against her, which is very different from disagreeing with her ideas and her government. Hate belongs to another category, it is motivated by other types of circumstances.

Jair Bolsonaro became presidential on the day he committed an act of violence against Dilma Rousseff and, once again, was not punished. By voting in favor of Rousseff's dismissal paying tribute to a torturer, Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, Bolsonaro turned the impeachment into a new torture against the then president, who was one of the women tortured by the dictatorship. It was April 17, 2016, the date when Brazil was embarrassed before itself and before the world. Bolsonaro, then a federal deputy, went on to add a disgusting apposition: "Ustra, Dilma Rousseff's dread". Symbolically, that moment was both Rousseff's last day in government and the first day of Bolsonaro's campaign.

Bolsonaro only got to that point because he could. And today it only exceeds all limits because it still can. Bolsonaro discovered, in the 1980s, that justice would not stop him, be it military or civilian. To this day, he has no reason to doubt this certainty.

And why could he against Rousseff? Because a significant part of the Brazilians called Rousseff "fox" and "harlot" leaning out of windows and balconies, while they beat their pans, without that brutality causing great indignation. A part of the press, which rightly denounces Bolsonaro's violence against women journalists, at the most regretted the lack of elegance and the wrong choice of terms, but treated the misogynist, macho and violent attacks against Rousseff as freedom of expression .

I affirm and will continue repeating that Dilma Rousseff was a bad ruler and that she committed various authoritarian acts, especially in the Amazon. But this debate is in relation to facts and ideas. What was seen in Brazil, especially during his second term, was a misogynistic attack on Rousseff. Not for disagreeing with her ideas and actions, but for being a woman. Sometimes that attack, as journalist Cynara Menezes pointed out on her page, came from women journalists who today denounce Bolsonaro's attacks. It is not about justifying one assault with another. They are all terrible and must be regretted one by one. Furthermore, violence against women practiced by a President of the Republic will always have greater consequences, because there is no greater responsibility than that of those who occupy the highest position in a country by majority vote. But that does not exempt the press from reflecting on its role in the escalation of recent years. Lack of respect for Rousseff, even while he was still in office, was treated as "natural."

One of the most embarrassing attacks was the image of the President's recurring rape. In the second half of 2015, a sticker appeared on the automobile gas tank across the country. It represented the figure of a smiling Dilma Rousseff, with her legs spread. When you put gasoline, the pump sexually penetrated the president of the country. Whoever wore the sticker justified the criminal assembly as a protest against the increase in gasoline, but the message was as explicit as the act. The president was raped every time the tank was full.

Similar images are now being disseminated to attack female journalists and intellectuals. And it is not only the extreme right. Also the extreme left. The forerunner was violence against Dilma Rousseff. If all victims of violence are to be regretted, it is also clear that violence against women who hold the highest office in the nation, when tolerated, has another level of consequence and message for the population of the country that governs . Most of society and also a significant part of the press were much less outraged than they should be with the serial and collective rape of Dilma Rousseff by petrol pumps across the country. Against Rousseff, apparently, you could do anything.

In April 2016, shortly before the vote that would decide whether to start the impeachment , IstoÉ magazine published the following headline: "The President's nervous outbursts." In the cover photo, Rousseff was screaming. The photograph documented the moment in which the president celebrated a goal of the Brazilian team in the 2014 World Cup. But it was taken out of context and, together with the title, was used to convey the idea that Rousseff was out of control, so that it had to be removed from power. In the text, it was literally said that she would have lost "the emotional conditions to lead the Government." The report reported on the tranquilizers the president was taking, using persistent prejudice against mental disorders to disqualify her. Rousseff was presented as the classic cliche of the hysterical woman.

Before she was ripped from the government for which she was elected, through an impeachment without facts to justify it, Dilma Rousseff was treated with the two stereotypes that are commonly used against women. In the "good citizens" gas tank she was the whore; in the magazine she was crazy. The first “deserved” to be raped, the second they had to take away their rights, as was done to the madmen in the logic of the madhouse, which returned with all their might. And, in fact, they took away the right to govern that their voters had guaranteed with their vote.

What is chosen to disqualify who wants to destroy is not secondary. When the passions surfaced and the calculations of the calculators instrumentalized them to overthrow an elected president, the subjectivities burst in to wrest Dilma Rousseff from the most powerful place in the country and return her to the traditional place reserved for women who dare to demand equality. . The ease with which a Congress with a majority of proven corrupt deputies annulled the vote of the population with the support of part of society and the press cannot be dissociated from tolerance, encouragement and, often, protagonism. of this same society and press in the acts of violence against the first woman who became president of the Republic. No one has the right to deceive themselves: options like these have a cost.

It is also worth noting something that tends to cause discomfort to readers who have been enjoying the text so far. Many downplay the role of equalizing the rights of domestic workers with those of other workers, the so-called "Domestic Constitutional Amendment Bill," which was associated with the name Dilma Rousseff. In my opinion, it was decisive for a part of the middle class to start hating the president. Domestic workers, mostly black, were considered an acquired right of the middle class. Female emancipation in Brazil was not done with public policies, such as day-care centers and schools with full hours, nor with the division of domestic work between men and women. What guaranteed a career for middle-class women was the exploitation of the poorest women, who left their own homes and children to take care of the home and the children of the richest, in exchange for a grueling day and a salary that it only guaranteed that misery would reproduce.

I am referring to the middle class because the income of the richest was not affected by the increased cost of keeping a domestic servant, although one part also complained a lot: “Where are we going to stop ?! Soon they will want to go to Disney. " Equating these domestic workers - who often had slavery-like jobs - with the precariousness of other workers was something that many - and many - did not forgive Dilma Rousseff. He had gotten where he shouldn't have: in the tiny windowless room at the back of the house and the apartments of the Brazilian middle class.

Anyone who thinks that this was not one of the determining questions for what was hatred - and not discrepancy of ideas - must remember the recent episode of the Minister of Economy Paulo Guedes, who complained about the times of the "party" of the low dollar, when "even the domestic workers went to Disneyland". Again, it cannot be compartmentalized. Racial and social inequality, patriarchy and economic policy have always been viscerally linked in Brazil.

The year that the “new right” led the street protests against the first woman in the presidency was also the year of what would be called the “feminist spring” in Brazil. Thousands of women took to the streets to denounce machismo and fight the threat of setbacks in progress in Congress. The #PrimeiroAssedio (First Harassment) campaign, launched by the feminist website Think Olga , in which women recounted the abuse they had suffered, had a huge impact.

The new generation of feminists moved freely on social media and gave enormous power to the movements started by their mothers and grandmothers. She was further strengthened by the increasing prominence of black women, many of them the first in their family to reach university. Even men who considered themselves feminists were frightened by what they saw as "excesses" and "radicalism" and bore persistent questions badly. In the same way that happened with blacks and racism in the debate on racial quotas at the university, the confrontation of gender privileges impacted those who had never before been perceived as macho, or had never before been accused of being macho. .

The privilege of considering yourself "a good guy," like that of considering yourself a "good white guy," is much more ingrained than it sounds. Leftist intellectuals severely beat women in articles and on social media, as they were unable to physically beat them. Squeezing out all the rhetoric and customary name-dropping , several articles were written just to say, with much hatred and resentment, that women are unable to think well and should not occupy the space that some men wanted to continue to maintain as a reserve of natural market. Like the opinion columns published in the press, for example. Women should only write sentimental chronicles, not analyze politics. Of course, these unsophisticated feelings were not confessed, but were disguised in academic language and protected with intellectualized theses. Even so, for those who are dedicated to listening, they were explicit.

Dilma Rousseff's impeachment and the increasing occupation of the streets by women was not a coincidence of dates. The strength of the new feminisms and the violent reaction towards them, expressed both in politics, through bills, and in the increase in the number of rapes and feminicides, can be closely related. What happened and is underway in Brazil is expressed in an intricate cloth. The pressure of the new women - and the consequent displacement of the man's place - are one of the threads of this plot.

It is no coincidence that the one who replaced the first woman in the presidency, the one who was accompanied by a daughter and not by a husband at the investiture, was a vice president like Michel Temer. He brought to the government the image of a "beautiful, demure and homey" first lady, as Veja magazine titled. Who Marcela Temer really is, we never knew, which says a lot. Perhaps we would be surprised. The naphthalene portrait of Temer's first ministry was just the transition to Bolsonaro's colorful and explicitly violent meme, peppering the old elites who support him with uniforms and evangelical neo-Pentecostalism.

Among the many losses caused by an authoritarian government is the cancellation of differences in positions, characters and ideas. When there is democracy, when there is no need to write about a president who creates factoids as a way to keep the country at war, the debate moves forward, becomes sophisticated and broader. And the country advances with him. Unfortunately, this process is often interrupted in Brazil, as it has been interrupted today. The role of authoritarianism is also to prevent debate.

Today, once again, it is necessary to make alliances with people who, until yesterday, committed acts of violence similar to those they denounce today. Because Bolsonarism is a threat not only to democracy, which is already crumbling, but to civilization, for lack of a better word. Bolsonarism is a threat to the planet, since it is destroying the Amazon at an unprecedented speed. When a threat of the proportion of Bolsonarism occurs and advances, it is necessary to suspend the pains that are more than just and to sew the alliances that are possible to avoid the destruction of the fundamental values. However, we should never give up memory. Alliances, yes. No blackouts. Let no one forget: we will continue to remember.

When Bolsonaro attacks journalist Patrícia Campos Mello, he reveals how much he fears good journalism, the same that decades ago denounced his plan to explode bombs in the barracks. Bolsonaro is also desperately trying to dodge another woman. Whoever hangs over his government, his family and his political future is a black woman: Marielle Franco. As long as the execution of the councilor of the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) is not resolved, she will continue to stalk Bolsonaro. This is the scoop that Bolsonaro fears the most.

By common sense, the president should be the first person interested in solving the crime. Unfortunately, for reasons that reason itself may not be unaware of, it does not seem to put much effort into it. This Saturday, March 14, it will be two years since the shooting that broke the head of a brilliant woman and we still do not know who ordered the killing of Marielle. Therefore, we will have to keep asking, and louder and louder: Who ordered Marielle to be killed? And because?

Bolsonaro - it is necessary to affirm it once more - is not a product of the dictatorship. Bolsonaro is the product of the deformed democracy that came after the dictatorship. This often cowardly and cowardly democracy, complicit in both impunity for crimes under the exceptional regime and torture and death of the poorest, has guaranteed impunity since the 1987 terrorist plan. The anti-president who now governs Brazil is el principal ejemplo de toda la corrupción del sistema que finge que denuncia.Only the institutions that have hitherto failed, deliberately or not, to hold him accountable for his actions and speeches can prevent Bolsonaro from continuing to commit acts of violence against women, against blacks, against indigenous people, against the Amazon, against the planet he depends on. from the Amazon. Against Brazil. Only effective democracy can stop Bolsonaro.

The blows of the 21st century - it bears repeating - no longer happen suddenly, as they did in the 20th century. In Brazil, just as it happened and happens in other countries at the moment, democracy is devouring it as parasites do: from within, a little every day. The chances of this weakened body resisting decrease with the passing of the hours. There is no miracle or magic. Only with what remains of democracy, as long as it remains, it is possible to prevent the violent from exercising their violence, the coup plotters completing the coup.

I end with the wish that, inspired by Marielle Franco, Brazilian women and feminist men —because feminism is a political position, does not depend on sex or gender— get going. Together, we can resist and compel the Brazilian institutions to meet again with shame while still possible. Time is running out.

Eliane Brum is a writer, reporter, and documentary filmmaker. Author from Brazil, ruin builder: um olhar on the country, from Lula to Bolsonaro . Web: elianebrum.com . E-mail: elianebrum.coluna@gmail.com . Twitter, Instagram and Facebook: @brumelianebrum .

Translation by Meritxell Almarza

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