Brazil's January 6th

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 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 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, 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,

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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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

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, 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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. 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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

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, 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 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. 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 cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

listen to podcasts. You can find horses for It could Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com. Slash sources thanks for listening,