The American extreme right has its eye on the Brazilian elections

A day after the first round of the elections in Brazil, Steve Bannon, former adviser to Donald Trump in the White House, spent long minutes on his

podcast trying to prove that there was fraud in the Brazilian elections.

To do this he turned to an old friend, Matthew Tyrmand, a member of the board of directors of Project Veritas, a conservative organization that uses hidden cameras to intimidate and 'unmask' liberal journalists.

"There was fraud there, there was definitely fraud," Tyrmand said.

“It wasn't clean, that doesn't look clean, it doesn't smell clean,” he said.

Throughout the day, the two shared various fake news about the election on their Twitter accounts and on Gettr, a far-right network founded by another Trump supporter, his longtime spokesman Steven Miller.

It may seem strange that two personalities of the American extreme right are so involved in an election that takes place ten thousand kilometers apart.

But the investigations carried out by the Public Agency team revealed that there is an enormous closeness and exchange of favors between the American

, those who supported Donald Trump's insane attempt to subvert the democracy of his country with the lie that there was fraud at the polls, and the family of Jair Bolsonaro, the ultra president and former Army captain who is seeking re-election.

Reproducing and translating the fake news about electoral fraud in both countries serves both sides.

In his campaign, Bolsonaro seems to copy Donald Trump.

And not only because he repeats that there has been or will be fraud at the polls without any proof.

Like Trump, Bolsonaro brought his children into politics to create his own dynasty.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, his third son, is a federal deputy for São Paulo and, being the only one who speaks English, his father tried to place him as ambassador of the Brazilian government in Washington.

He did not get it, but he was elected president of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the House of Representatives;

at the same time, he is a kind of representative of his father to the American right, with which he has held at least 77 meetings since his father took office,

The alliance with Donald Trump and his entourage was born when Jair Bolsonaro was still a budding president.

A few months after assuming the presidency, he was received with great fanfare at the White House.

Four years later, on the eve of the Brazilian elections, Trump declared his “complete and total support” for the reelection of Bolsonaro, whom he called “Tropical Trump.”

These international alliances have been key for Bolsonaro, increasingly isolated due to his anti-rights agenda.

In addition to Trump and his son Donald Junior - who recorded a video on the eve of the elections saying that "Bolsonaro is the only person who can stop the advance of communism and socialism in South America" ​​- Viktor Orban, the autocratic president of Hungary , also recorded a video supporting his re-election.

With Bolsonaro, Brazil has occupied a relevant space in the global articulation of the extreme right, led by the most radical sectors of the United States.

It is one of 32 countries that signed the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a conservative push against women's reproductive rights that states "there is no international right to abortion," and has been involved in significant lobbying for abortion. abandon pro-minority and LGBTQ+ rights agendas at the UN and other multilateral bodies.

With 215 million inhabitants, having Brazil as an ally is an enormous weight to advance conservative agendas in the world.

That is why the Brazilian elections are considered by Steve Bannon as the “second most important in the world”.

The result of the first round, which allowed Bolsonaro's party to win a significant number of seats in parliament, has allowed the former captain to solidify his power.

podcast

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"Brazil, with this dispute between Lula and Bolsonaro, is going to be the last bastion where we try to say something," Bannon said in July of this year.

The view of US extremists is that right-wing populism has advanced, but needs to confront Chinese influence in Latin America.

One of the consequences of this alliance is the advance of anti-democratic discourse in society.

Attacks on the Supreme Court, the constitutional court that has repeatedly impeded authoritarian advances, are effectively promoted by Bolsonaro and his supporters.

Bolsonaro has threatened to change the Constitution to increase the number of judges on the Court, just as Hugo Chávez did in Venezuela, in an attempt to solidify his power.

These attacks are applauded by the American right, which even repeats on its social networks that the Brazilian court is made up of “communists”.

This is the main key to understanding the alliance between radicalized groups in Brazil, the United States and other parts of the world: it is not only the advance of the right, but the advance of tactics to defeat democracy.

It is an aspect that the press still refuses to see.

Little attention has been paid, for example, to the fact that Eduardo Bolsonaro was in Washington on January 6, 2021: yes, the day of the Capitol invasion.

He went to the United States on January 4, 2021, without official preparations, at the invitation of Ivanka Trump.

She spent most of her time with close allies of Trump, including Ivanka herself, her husband Jared Kushner, and Mike Lindell, CEO of My Pillow, which helped the entire

campaign , which promoted the false narrative about drug fraud. 2020 US election.

Eduardo Bolsonaro was not only the son of the president of Brazil, but he was also chairing the Foreign Relations Commission of the Chamber of Deputies at that time.

Imagine if he were the son of Vladimir Putin, walking the streets of Washington on the day of the largest anti-democratic uprising in American history.

Until today, Eduardo Bolsonaro has never explained the purpose of his visit.

But while he was in Washington, several of his allies in the Brazilian Congress used social media to publicize the "big lie" that Trump was promoting about electoral fraud.

Six Brazilian parliamentarians praised the events of January 6.

After the attack on the Capitol, Bolsonaro was indifferent.

"You know I'm related to Trump, so you know my answer here," he told reporters, refusing to condemn the attacks.

"There were people who voted three, four times, dead people who voted," he said.

Jair Bolsonaro was the penultimate head of state to recognize Joe Biden's victory, just a few hours after Vladimir Putin and before Kim Jong-Il.

Eduardo's visit has drawn the attention of the US Congressional commission investigating the Capitol invasion.

International links are the subject of the commission's current phase of investigation, which is due to deliver its report by the end of December.

The presence of the son of a foreign dignitary is notable, according to Rep. Jamie Raskin, who sits on the committee.

Raskin told me that he is looking into relationships between autocrats like Bolsonaro, Trump, Hungarian President Viktor Orban, and also Russian President Vladimir Putin.

I have asked if we are facing an international conspiracy to undermine democracy on a world scale.

"I don't know if I would use those words, but I definitely think that democratic governments and political parties are in a battle with autocrats, kleptocrats and theocrats," he replied.

“There is a very powerful struggle between the democratic forces of each country and the forces of authoritarianism.

This is also happening globally.”

Natalia Viana