“Why is Washington so silent about Brazil’s decline into tyranny and full-scale government censorship?” Aaron Kheriaty asks.
I’m not sure why D.C. is silent. I do know that the American left, which includes the media, has, to one degree or another, been whitewashing leftist authoritarianism since Walter Duranty.
Just recall the recent coverage of Argentinian President Javier Milei — who is about as removed from being an authoritarian as ideologically possible. A “right-wing populist,” a “far-right outsider,” a “far-right populist,” on the “far-right,” a “rightist,” a “far-right libertarian,” and a “radical” were how he was described.
When the corrupt, far-leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — who Milei once fittingly described as an “angry communist” — won back the presidency in Brazil last year, the media gave us headlines like, “Lula beats far-right President Bolsonaro to win Brazil election,” and “Brazil’s Lula sworn in, vows accountability and rebuilding,” and “Lula wins Brazil presidential election in historic comeback,” and “‘Olê, olá, Lula!’ Brazil’s voters sing for a heroic comeback to banish Bolsonaro,” etc.
Recall, as well, that the media and Democrats were obsessed with the alleged fascistic inclinations of Brazil’s right-populist Jair Bolsonaro — no George Washington, to be sure. Bolsonaro was conveniently lumped in with Donald Trump, Vlad Putin, and Viktor Orbán as a harbinger of the growing fascist threat. Alex Burns, in an embarrassing puff piece in Politico, praised Lula as a symbol of “endurance of democracy in an era of extremism.”
Bolsonaro was no more authoritarian than Lula — or Nicolas
