Brazil at the Crossroads

 

"A truism for our times: a story doesn’t need to be factual to go viral. In June 2020, not long into the Covid-19 pandemic, an Instagram user shared a video of a mustachioed man wearing floral shorts and a cropped tank top, pouring himself some beer at a crowded bar in Santos, a coastal city in southeastern Brazil. According to the caption, the man was Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization. He had apparently decided to break the quarantine by ditching his shoes and dancing to a forró song called “Já que me ensinou a beber” (Since You Taught Me to Drink).

Of course, it wasn’t the director of the WHO in the video, which was actually recorded before the start of the pandemic. Nonetheless it circulated as evidence of the hypocrisy of international health authorities, and news of it was translated into several languages. Last August I saw an updated version of the video: this time, Ghebreyesus had been “caught enjoying his vacation in Brazil and spreading monkeypox.” So much homophobia and moral outrage in such a short phrase.

Brazilians, like many others around the world, have been exposed to a deluge of fake news and social media hoaxes over the past few years. Again and again we have been pushed toward radicalization, tribalism, and conspiracy. In this light, the results of the presidential election held in October are not surprising: the center-left candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, did prevail, but it was an alarmingly tight race against the far-right incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, who led a catastrophically irresponsible administration."

read more in the article by
Vanessa Barbara