4 ms·

Can we stop equating populism with fascism? Populism can be good, actually. Lula is arguably a populist.

andrenth 4y ago
Lula is a populist and a fascist. His campaign ran on a platform of “regulating the media” and has succeeded in censoring a major news channel and the release of a documentary film about the attempt to murder the president in the previous election.
- cassianoleal 4y ago
  I can understand (if disagree with) your view of Lula as a populist. Why do you call him a fascist though? > His campaign ran on a platform of “regulating the media” It didn't, but in any case the media is regulated. Everything that's being argued in this regard is about breaking trusts and monopolies in the media. Trusts and monopolies are widely regarded as counter to working democracies, and free markets. Seeing liberal right-wingers fight against it is at least somewhat ironic. > succeeded in censoring a major news channel and the release of a documentary film about the attempt to murder the president in the previous election. Could you please post references to this?
  - andrenth 4y ago
    https://jovempan.com.br/noticias/brasil/jovem-pan-sob-censura.html https://jovempan.com.br/noticias/brasil/jovem-pan-sob-censur... https://revistaoeste.com/politica/eleicoes-2022/tse-censura-brasil-paralelo-2/ https://revistaoeste.com/politica/eleicoes-2022/tse-censura-...
    - cassianoleal 4y ago
      Thank you, but I would hardly consider these references unbiased. The first is the acutal supposedly censored media vehicle complaining. That's expected. In any case, the decision is at best in a grey area. A lot of people cry about freedom of press but the decision was around electoral laws and was simply trying to get better isonomy for both candidates. The other decision was about avoiding the use of an incredibly loaded and polemic at best situation that happened 4 years ago to influence this year's elections. Mind you, there's nothing more than hearsay and conspiracy theories to try to link the event to Lula, PT or others related to the elected President. This is an interesting topic, certainly one where there's a non-obvious balance between freedom of press and speech, and just and isonomic elections.
      - andrenth 4y ago
        They were prevented by the State to mention facts about a candidate. Facts, not opinions. This is not a grey area, it’s plain old censorship. About the documentary: it was censored based on its title only. It was not even watched by the sensors. When questioned about it, the president of the electoral court basically said something like “Let’s not fool ourselves, we know what will be there”. In other words, preemptive censorship. At the same time, a “documentary” that explicitly invited watchers to vote the opposing candidate was aired for free on YouTube on the week of the election, with zero concerns about isonomy or its influence over it. This kind of double standards casts a shadow of partisanship and illegitimacy on the electoral and supreme courts (they’re ridiculously basically the same people anyway), especially in a close election like this one.
        cassianoleal 4y ago
        > They were prevented by the State to mention facts about a candidate. According to their own website which you linked above: “Não podemos, em nossa programação (...), falar sobre os fatos envolvendo a condenação do candidato petista Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva” Translated to English: “We are not allowed, in our programmes, to speak about facts involving the condemnation of the _petista_ (Workers Party member) candidate Luís Inácio Lula da Silva” Well, given that the condemnation was unlawful, I imagine it’s not very hard to understand why talking about it without also speaking clearly about the unlawfulness and facts around it would be misleading to the public. To your other point: > At the same time, a “documentary” that explicitly invited watchers to vote the opposing candidate > This kind of double standards I don’t know which documentary you’re talking about, but here’s some food for thought. Generally, explicitly asking for votes for one candidate makes it pretty clear what the bias in the publication is. On top of that, the other, supposedly censored work, was speculative at best - given that despite Bolsonaro’s 4 years in power and effectively commanding the Federal Police, the alleged attempt on his life was never fully solved. Publishing it during the electoral campaign was considered an attempt at misleading the public opinion against one of the candidates based on hearsay and opinions. That’s not a double standard. It’s perhaps just one that happens to inconvenience one more than the other but it’s a fairly clear one.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    > Could you please post references to this? Yes. I posted the news here on HN as it was happening. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33312582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33312582 > granted the nation’s elections chief unilateral power to order tech companies to remove many online posts and videos > one of the most aggressive actions taken by any country to combat false information > the elections chief can order the immediate removal of content that he believes has violated previous takedown orders Whatever this guy believed became the only allowed truth. He was clearly biased towards the left. Censored plenty of people calling attention to the fact Lula is known to be corrupt and many other instances.
- NoThisIsMe 4y ago
  Even if all that is true (I have my doubts) that wouldn't make Lula a fascist.
  - andrenth 4y ago
    https://www-cnnbrasil-com-br.translate.goog/politica/interesse-de-lula-em-regular-midia-levanta-temor-de-controle-e-censura-segundo-especialistas/?_x_tr_sl=pt&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=pt-BR&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-cnnbrasil-com-br.translate.goog/politica/interes... Lula’s party has a history of totalitarian tendencies and of siding with dictatorships (Cuba, Venezuela, Libya, Angola, etc) and a well known desire to control the media (of course, they call it “democratizing the media”). If dictatorships, totalitarianism and state-sponsored censorship are not fascist, I don’t know what is.
    - NoThisIsMe 4y ago
      Sounds like the word you're looking for is "authoritarian". All fascists are authoritarians, but not all authoritarians are fascist. A few more key characteristics of fascism: nationalism, overt anti-egalitarianism, militarism. Bolsonero is the fascist here. Lula is not.
      - andrenth 4y ago
        The defining slogan of fascism is “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State”. Bolsonaro tried to reduce the size of the state, in direct contradiction with that. Please list concrete actions by his government that can be reasonably characterized as “anti-egalitarian” or “militaristic”. In fact the military in his government was mostly used in the process of helping Venezuelan refugees escape their country into Brazil.
        biimugan 4y ago
        Brazilian politics aside, just because Mussolini said it doesn't make it the definition. Of course Mussolini would describe it in such a way -- it's an incredibly self-serving definition. How else is a totalitarian dictator to mask the fact that his regime is entirely about his own personal power and not some Platonic ideal called "the State"? How else is he to rally normally sensible, everyday people around a cause other than to appeal to their sense of nationalism, probably the only commonality they all share? There's a very good reason Hitler was called Fuhrer and Mussolini the Duce. It should give you a very strong clue about the important aspect of fascism that your comment tries to elide
sofixa 4y ago
It's because the new brand far-right politicians that have shown up, and are popular, are nothing but empty populists. They have no substance, no real beliefs, they just say whatever gets the people's interest so that they can get power, and then do the things they actually want/believe in (usually around money and power). They're mostly fascist or close to fascist as well, but that's not, IMO, their defining trait. Boris Johnson and similar British politicians absolutely fit the empty populist description (even though for him it's purely a façade, for someone like Trump it's his persona), but they haven't exhibited any fascist traits that i know of. For Bolsonaro, he's a fascist, if nothing else for glorifying the previous dictatorship and threatening an army coup (but there's plenty else).
- NoThisIsMe 4y ago
  > It's because the new brand far-right politicians that have shown up, and are popular, are nothing but empty populists. That's half of it, yeah. The other half is the centrist technocratic hegemony exploiting the situation to malign the working-class-power left in the same stroke.

Lula is a populist and a fascist. His campaign ran on a platform of “regulating the media” and has succeeded in censoring a major news channel and the release of a documentary film about the attempt to murder the president in the previous election.

cassianoleal 4y ago
I can understand (if disagree with) your view of Lula as a populist. Why do you call him a fascist though? > His campaign ran on a platform of “regulating the media” It didn't, but in any case the media is regulated. Everything that's being argued in this regard is about breaking trusts and monopolies in the media. Trusts and monopolies are widely regarded as counter to working democracies, and free markets. Seeing liberal right-wingers fight against it is at least somewhat ironic. > succeeded in censoring a major news channel and the release of a documentary film about the attempt to murder the president in the previous election. Could you please post references to this?
- andrenth 4y ago
  https://jovempan.com.br/noticias/brasil/jovem-pan-sob-censura.html https://jovempan.com.br/noticias/brasil/jovem-pan-sob-censur... https://revistaoeste.com/politica/eleicoes-2022/tse-censura-brasil-paralelo-2/ https://revistaoeste.com/politica/eleicoes-2022/tse-censura-...
  - cassianoleal 4y ago
    Thank you, but I would hardly consider these references unbiased. The first is the acutal supposedly censored media vehicle complaining. That's expected. In any case, the decision is at best in a grey area. A lot of people cry about freedom of press but the decision was around electoral laws and was simply trying to get better isonomy for both candidates. The other decision was about avoiding the use of an incredibly loaded and polemic at best situation that happened 4 years ago to influence this year's elections. Mind you, there's nothing more than hearsay and conspiracy theories to try to link the event to Lula, PT or others related to the elected President. This is an interesting topic, certainly one where there's a non-obvious balance between freedom of press and speech, and just and isonomic elections.
    - andrenth 4y ago
      They were prevented by the State to mention facts about a candidate. Facts, not opinions. This is not a grey area, it’s plain old censorship. About the documentary: it was censored based on its title only. It was not even watched by the sensors. When questioned about it, the president of the electoral court basically said something like “Let’s not fool ourselves, we know what will be there”. In other words, preemptive censorship. At the same time, a “documentary” that explicitly invited watchers to vote the opposing candidate was aired for free on YouTube on the week of the election, with zero concerns about isonomy or its influence over it. This kind of double standards casts a shadow of partisanship and illegitimacy on the electoral and supreme courts (they’re ridiculously basically the same people anyway), especially in a close election like this one.
      - cassianoleal 4y ago
        > They were prevented by the State to mention facts about a candidate. According to their own website which you linked above: “Não podemos, em nossa programação (...), falar sobre os fatos envolvendo a condenação do candidato petista Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva” Translated to English: “We are not allowed, in our programmes, to speak about facts involving the condemnation of the _petista_ (Workers Party member) candidate Luís Inácio Lula da Silva” Well, given that the condemnation was unlawful, I imagine it’s not very hard to understand why talking about it without also speaking clearly about the unlawfulness and facts around it would be misleading to the public. To your other point: > At the same time, a “documentary” that explicitly invited watchers to vote the opposing candidate > This kind of double standards I don’t know which documentary you’re talking about, but here’s some food for thought. Generally, explicitly asking for votes for one candidate makes it pretty clear what the bias in the publication is. On top of that, the other, supposedly censored work, was speculative at best - given that despite Bolsonaro’s 4 years in power and effectively commanding the Federal Police, the alleged attempt on his life was never fully solved. Publishing it during the electoral campaign was considered an attempt at misleading the public opinion against one of the candidates based on hearsay and opinions. That’s not a double standard. It’s perhaps just one that happens to inconvenience one more than the other but it’s a fairly clear one.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  > Could you please post references to this? Yes. I posted the news here on HN as it was happening. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33312582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33312582 > granted the nation’s elections chief unilateral power to order tech companies to remove many online posts and videos > one of the most aggressive actions taken by any country to combat false information > the elections chief can order the immediate removal of content that he believes has violated previous takedown orders Whatever this guy believed became the only allowed truth. He was clearly biased towards the left. Censored plenty of people calling attention to the fact Lula is known to be corrupt and many other instances.
NoThisIsMe 4y ago
Even if all that is true (I have my doubts) that wouldn't make Lula a fascist.
- andrenth 4y ago
  https://www-cnnbrasil-com-br.translate.goog/politica/interesse-de-lula-em-regular-midia-levanta-temor-de-controle-e-censura-segundo-especialistas/?_x_tr_sl=pt&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=pt-BR&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-cnnbrasil-com-br.translate.goog/politica/interes... Lula’s party has a history of totalitarian tendencies and of siding with dictatorships (Cuba, Venezuela, Libya, Angola, etc) and a well known desire to control the media (of course, they call it “democratizing the media”). If dictatorships, totalitarianism and state-sponsored censorship are not fascist, I don’t know what is.
  - NoThisIsMe 4y ago
    Sounds like the word you're looking for is "authoritarian". All fascists are authoritarians, but not all authoritarians are fascist. A few more key characteristics of fascism: nationalism, overt anti-egalitarianism, militarism. Bolsonero is the fascist here. Lula is not.
    - andrenth 4y ago
      The defining slogan of fascism is “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State”. Bolsonaro tried to reduce the size of the state, in direct contradiction with that. Please list concrete actions by his government that can be reasonably characterized as “anti-egalitarian” or “militaristic”. In fact the military in his government was mostly used in the process of helping Venezuelan refugees escape their country into Brazil.
      - biimugan 4y ago
        Brazilian politics aside, just because Mussolini said it doesn't make it the definition. Of course Mussolini would describe it in such a way -- it's an incredibly self-serving definition. How else is a totalitarian dictator to mask the fact that his regime is entirely about his own personal power and not some Platonic ideal called "the State"? How else is he to rally normally sensible, everyday people around a cause other than to appeal to their sense of nationalism, probably the only commonality they all share? There's a very good reason Hitler was called Fuhrer and Mussolini the Duce. It should give you a very strong clue about the important aspect of fascism that your comment tries to elide

sofixa 4y ago

It's because the new brand far-right politicians that have shown up, and are popular, are nothing but empty populists. They have no substance, no real beliefs, they just say whatever gets the people's interest so that they can get power, and then do the things they actually want/believe in (usually around money and power). They're mostly fascist or close to fascist as well, but that's not, IMO, their defining trait. Boris Johnson and similar British politicians absolutely fit the empty populist description (even though for him it's purely a façade, for someone like Trump it's his persona), but they haven't exhibited any fascist traits that i know of. For Bolsonaro, he's a fascist, if nothing else for glorifying the previous dictatorship and threatening an army coup (but there's plenty else).

NoThisIsMe 4y ago
> It's because the new brand far-right politicians that have shown up, and are popular, are nothing but empty populists. That's half of it, yeah. The other half is the centrist technocratic hegemony exploiting the situation to malign the working-class-power left in the same stroke.