Speaker 1: Hagel remarks somewhere that all great world historical facts and
Speaker 1: personages appear so to speak. Twice he forgot to add
Speaker 1: the first time as tragedy, the second time is farce.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Nick. It happened here the podcast where when
Speaker 1: we last left Jayree Bolsonaro, he had locked himself in
Speaker 1: the presidential mansion, turned off the lights, and refused to
Speaker 1: leave or talk to anyone. Now Bolsonaro has returned to
Speaker 1: his ancestral home hospital in Orlando, where he's been admitted
Speaker 1: for abdominal pain, jointing me to discuss maybe the first
Speaker 1: man in history to be his own Napoleon. The third
Speaker 1: is James Hi, man, this is I'm very much looking
Speaker 1: forward to this. Oh God. I okay, So for for
Speaker 1: those of you who I don't know somehow have missed this.
Speaker 1: I I woke up on Sunday and ten minutes later
Speaker 1: this was happening, and I was like, well, okay, I
Speaker 1: guess I'm canceling my dinner plans. Uh, we're doing this instead. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think Marx could have added to that quote and
Speaker 1: then as fast again, and then for a third time
Speaker 1: as fast. Yeah. We really, we really, we really have
Speaker 1: sort of left the tragedy cycle on or now just
Speaker 1: in the forest, over and over and over again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we kind of need a new word for what keeps
Speaker 1: happening because it's not it's not really a coup and
Speaker 1: it's certainly not a revolution. It's just like an extreme
Speaker 1: reactionary tantrum. Yeah, I mean, I kind of like storming
Speaker 1: the capital because it is what they do. But then yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like I'm upset that everyone calls it
Speaker 1: insurrectionism or insurrectionists because it's like they're not like insurrectionary.
Speaker 1: Reactionary is like a power. Yeah, it's like like I
Speaker 1: think like auto coup is closer. But the problem with
Speaker 1: COO is that cool implies that the military is actually cooperating,
Speaker 1: which it isn't. Yeah, that's why they always fail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're working get into that more and a bit. But yeah, okay, So,
Speaker 1: so the thing that has actually happened is on Sunday,
Speaker 1: supporters of of UH former former Brazilian president jay Are Bilsonaro,
Speaker 1: who I fled the country to Orlando, I sacked the
Speaker 1: Plaza of the Three Powers in Brazil, which is the
Speaker 1: home of the basically the buildings are the three branches
Speaker 1: of governments, and unlike in the US, they sacked all
Speaker 1: of them. They stored their presidential mansion, they stormed Congress,
Speaker 1: they stored the Supreme Court, and then having seized control
Speaker 1: of the buildings, as cops either sat around joking with him,
Speaker 1: which is actively walked them into the building. Like there
Speaker 1: is a video of a procession of Bolsonaro supporters with
Speaker 1: just like they're they're all walking in a line towards
Speaker 1: the plaza and there's just like two cop cars like
Speaker 1: in the middle of the thing driving with them, like
Speaker 1: it's wild. There are cops taking selfies of them taking selfies. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I that that one that was the one in
Speaker 1: Puts particularly that was like I feel like that goes
Speaker 1: slightly above and beyond even what was happening with with
Speaker 1: the American cops. Like that was some Yeah, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's okay. So they get there, they do that, they
Speaker 1: do the thing where they grab metal stuff and they
Speaker 1: break the windows and then they break in and you know,
Speaker 1: they they do classic January six stuff. Um, they take
Speaker 1: pictures there. There's one picture that I found that's I
Speaker 1: think it's in the Supreme Court. That's a picture of
Speaker 1: someone like you can't see their face. It's just them
Speaker 1: squatting on a like facing backwards, squatting on it on
Speaker 1: a filing cabinet like fully butt out about take a dump.
Speaker 1: It's wild. Yeah, this is what democracy looks like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and shifting on a filing cabinet and government office. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: so like they this this. They don't have a great
Speaker 1: plan here. Um. The thing that they do is that
Speaker 1: so they all do this. They break in, they like
Speaker 1: break stuff, they like take random stuff. Um. And then
Speaker 1: they whole bunch of people sit down on the ground
Speaker 1: and sing the national anthem, uh, waiting for the army
Speaker 1: to show up, because they think that when the army
Speaker 1: shows up, the army is going to join them. And
Speaker 1: I said, the army shows up and arrest them all.
Speaker 1: There's some people who try to fight the police. Uh.
Speaker 1: They beat up a horse cop, which I think is
Speaker 1: funny because apparently this is just every single one of these.
Speaker 1: Now someone beats up a horse cop. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: by bye bye bye, by the end of Sunday, like
Speaker 1: it's all over the government forces. We take the plaza.
Speaker 1: People try to fight the police, but they lose really badly,
Speaker 1: and you know, Okay, so obviously there's a reason why
Speaker 1: I read that versus strategy a second time. Was first
Speaker 1: line to start this, like, okay, the January six comparisons
Speaker 1: start fast and get harder. Which is this happened literally
Speaker 1: on January eight, like two days after the American Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, they stowed the Capitol buildings. But this is
Speaker 1: something I think it's kind of important to understand. This
Speaker 1: is an even worse plan than the January six plan.
Speaker 1: So the January six plan, if people remember this, so crucially,
Speaker 1: January six happens while Trump is technically still in office.
Speaker 1: And what's going on when when they're showing me the
Speaker 1: capital in January six is that Congress is trying to
Speaker 1: basically pass power to Joe Biden, right like they're they're
Speaker 1: they're doing the vote to proof the ballot totals from
Speaker 1: the the electoral College blah blah blah blah blah. But okay,
Speaker 1: so this means that you know when when when when
Speaker 1: when on Jay's on January six, right, Congress was actually
Speaker 1: in session, so the people who were there actually had
Speaker 1: a thing they were trying to do to overturn their results,
Speaker 1: and there was like there were people they could have harmed.
Speaker 1: There was like they had they had like a goal
Speaker 1: kind of it was like seth Abramson. But on the
Speaker 1: other side, think it was like constitutional fantasy. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, but like I I can't believe, you know,
Speaker 1: like this is the thing about about about what's happening
Speaker 1: Brazil's like I genuinely cannot believe that I am being
Speaker 1: made to defend the planning capacity of the January six crowd,
Speaker 1: like genuinely stunning. But the plan for the plan for
Speaker 1: January eighth in Brazil was even worse because Okay, the
Speaker 1: day they do this on right, Congress is not in session,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court is on holiday, and Lulu, the actual
Speaker 1: president of Brazil, has a already taken power and b
Speaker 1: is ins apollo. No money is there. Literally they store
Speaker 1: three abandoned buildings. There is nohing there they could they
Speaker 1: could have tried it. Agration was like three days before, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny. Lula talked about it in this in his
Speaker 1: speech where part of like in this speech after after
Speaker 1: this happens, is he has this line about how like
Speaker 1: all of these people were already in Brazilia, but they
Speaker 1: were too cowardly to face the people who were there
Speaker 1: for the inauguration, so instead they waited for everyone to leave,
Speaker 1: which is true. It's really funny. And this is kind
Speaker 1: of what they always do, right, They always kind of
Speaker 1: take the easy thing and then grandstand like like it's
Speaker 1: a big brave thing that they've done. Like we see
Speaker 1: this constantly on the right. Yeah, and you know, I like,
Speaker 1: I I think I think it's reasonable to ask what
Speaker 1: were they actually trying to do? Um? And I'm I'm
Speaker 1: gonna read from the Washington Post. The Washington Post is
Speaker 1: talking about, um, some of the previous attempts to do
Speaker 1: the same thing. Quote one radicalized Bolsonarista named George Washington
Speaker 1: Day Olivaria. Was it what? Yeah, all of the people
Speaker 1: involved with this are named like George Washington Olivaria. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: Do wow did they did they change their names? Or
Speaker 1: is the whole thing just being a lame partake of
Speaker 1: American conservative Well, I mean that's that is like like
Speaker 1: it really like there is a lot of truth to
Speaker 1: the analysis that, like Brazilian fascist culture is just like
Speaker 1: the fourth time of Facebook meme isn't passed around, but
Speaker 1: this time on what'sapp Like it's it's some it's it's
Speaker 1: somehow more cringe than than the American stuff, like it's
Speaker 1: wort have incredible. But here he was okay, yeah he was. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This guy named George Washington Dlafaria was arrested and accused
Speaker 1: of planting a bomb beneath a bus at the Brazilia airport.
Speaker 1: In a statement to police, he said he wanted to
Speaker 1: quote begin chaos that would lead to military intervention. So
Speaker 1: she's trying to do the strategy of tension, right, which
Speaker 1: is which is this thing from Italy where Okay, so
Speaker 1: you you have the government running a bunch of sort
Speaker 1: of like no, I mean, I don't know, calling them
Speaker 1: fake fascist groups is technically correct, but you haven't. You
Speaker 1: have them running a bunch of terrorist groups. And you know,
Speaker 1: so they they this is this happening in like the
Speaker 1: sixty seventies, and yeah, it gets a little bit into
Speaker 1: the eighties. Is that they're they're doing all these bombings
Speaker 1: and stuff, and they're doing all these terrorist attacks and
Speaker 1: the goal is to get people to like sort of
Speaker 1: trust the government and like allow like short of further
Speaker 1: state of military intervention. But the thing about that was
Speaker 1: that crucially the strategy of tension was a strategy that
Speaker 1: was done by the government. Doesn't really work if you're
Speaker 1: not the government and you are, in fact that people
Speaker 1: causing the chaos, And where did you get to military
Speaker 1: to sort of join you. So this is a crucial
Speaker 1: problem for Brazilian fascism because as much as the sort
Speaker 1: of the modern fascist movement is a cultiple scenario, it's
Speaker 1: really a cult of the military. Bulsonaro was sort of
Speaker 1: just the person who embodies the sort of desire the
Speaker 1: fascist masses from military rule. But this means that if
Speaker 1: the military just refused to do a coup, they have
Speaker 1: no idea what to do. Yeah, but they could deploy
Speaker 1: Baltonara himself. Have you seen that video of him trying
Speaker 1: to do press ups to prove that he's kind of
Speaker 1: super solidatew you know, But this is this is sort
Speaker 1: of this is a real issue for them. And Okay,
Speaker 1: so if I am pretty confident that if the military
Speaker 1: had actually decided to do a coup this would have worked,
Speaker 1: like and I think they would have pretty trivially just
Speaker 1: like smashed the rest of the forces of the state.
Speaker 1: Lulu would be in prison. But and this is the
Speaker 1: thing that's been the key to everything that's been going
Speaker 1: on in Brazil from the beginning. The army does not
Speaker 1: have the green light from Washington to do a coup
Speaker 1: because once again Biden just absolutely hates Bilsonaro, which is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know this this this is this is a coup
Speaker 1: that was planned from Orlando and not Langley. Now we're
Speaker 1: on like number four in the last few years that
Speaker 1: was planned from Florida and notably three of the four
Speaker 1: of them have failed, and this is that Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I like, to be fair, this is a
Speaker 1: better planned coup attempt than the Venezuela one that's not
Speaker 1: hard that did exist bar. Yeah, the kind of bar
Speaker 1: that you can get over by tripping. But you know,
Speaker 1: we're sold the very early process of figuring out how
Speaker 1: exactly who was involved in this and that like to
Speaker 1: what extent everyone was coordinating with each other and like
Speaker 1: you know, I might you want extent like literally governors
Speaker 1: were involved seen to have been involved in this, but
Speaker 1: we don't. We don't exactly know yet. Um. What we
Speaker 1: do know in terms of it's being planned from Orlando
Speaker 1: is that Bolsonaro for literally years has been saying ship
Speaker 1: like quote, the patience of the people has run out.
Speaker 1: I want to tell those who will make me unelectable
Speaker 1: in Brazil, only God removes me from power. There are
Speaker 1: three options for me, jail, death or victory. And I'm
Speaker 1: telling the scandal rules. I will never be imprisoned. Even
Speaker 1: thing is literally years and years and years just saying
Speaker 1: said like that, like just over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: And you know, Okay, So the other thing that we
Speaker 1: know right now and this this this is being recorded
Speaker 1: on what day? Is it is the ninth Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: been a court on Monday to night, so this is
Speaker 1: this is the next day. Uh. If by the time
Speaker 1: this goes out there's more information, there will be more
Speaker 1: information was going on what we have right now. One
Speaker 1: of the things that we know is that the guy
Speaker 1: who was in charge of security for the Federal District,
Speaker 1: which is like the Federal District is basically like what
Speaker 1: if washing d C. Was a state, but like a
Speaker 1: tiny one. So the guy who was in charge of
Speaker 1: security for that, uh, was a Bulsonaro supporter who just
Speaker 1: so happened to be on vacation in Orlando, where Bulsonaro
Speaker 1: was staying with an mm A fighter whose mansion has
Speaker 1: a Minion Stein room. Uh. He's just coincidentally onification in
Speaker 1: Orlando with Polsonara. Well, this is happening, so you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: the Brazilian state seems to be being a lot faster
Speaker 1: to sort of crack down on everything that's happening than
Speaker 1: the American state was. Um that the guy who was
Speaker 1: in charge of security, I who was in who's in Orlando.
Speaker 1: That the Brazilian federal defender has already asked the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court to arrest him. A Supreme Court justice like deposed
Speaker 1: the governor of the federal district for allowing this to happen.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's wild. The Brazilian Minister of Justice as
Speaker 1: they've already entified people in ten states who helped plan
Speaker 1: or fund the operation. They've arrested like well the Totalsome
Speaker 1: yesterday said that they arrested four hundred people. I saw
Speaker 1: somewhere that arrested twelve. I don't know about that. I
Speaker 1: could be wrong, but yeah, there was at least four
Speaker 1: hundred people. Um, there's a huge like there's a huge
Speaker 1: track down on people involved in this LULA. It's much
Speaker 1: better than the January six response. And yeah, well like
Speaker 1: like part part of what's happening, right, is like like
Speaker 1: Lula literally like basically declared a state of emergency in
Speaker 1: the federal zone and like got basically like I guess
Speaker 1: you call it, like he basically sent in the FEDS
Speaker 1: and like has like his people now have direct control
Speaker 1: over security in the capital because because because the police
Speaker 1: there are so unreliable, and you know, and like he's
Speaker 1: been yeah, it's moving very very fast, just sort of
Speaker 1: better than the US charge and probably yeah, and and
Speaker 1: also like Lula Lula, unlike Biden, Lula, Lula has like
Speaker 1: like literally like three hours as this was happening, he's
Speaker 1: making a speech about like that him vowing to go
Speaker 1: after everyone who's involved in this, including Bullsonaro and Um.
Speaker 1: A Brazilian member of Congress is formally asked to Foreign
Speaker 1: Ministry to extradite Bulsonaro to the US. Who knows what's
Speaker 1: going to happen there? Uh, there have been there has
Speaker 1: actually there's been like a surprising amount of sort of
Speaker 1: support for that in the US. And you know, I
Speaker 1: mean that's everything that's been kind of interesting for this,
Speaker 1: like before we take the ad break, is that like
Speaker 1: he's gotten Lula is getting support from like everyone, like
Speaker 1: this is this is one of the rare we we
Speaker 1: we we have the great capitalist triumvirate of Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 1: Joe Biden and and Macron have all said that they're
Speaker 1: backing him, which is wild real international Lincoln Project vibes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I mean that that that that that that is.
Speaker 1: I guess like Hulula is abroad extent, right, Like you know,
Speaker 1: if you go back to Lula episodes, like he was
Speaker 1: close with the Bush administration, but also like close with
Speaker 1: the World Social Forum people. So he's he's always kind
Speaker 1: of like been the guy who straddles the divide between
Speaker 1: like yeah, he's not and he's the guy he straddles
Speaker 1: a divide between the sort of like international imperialists and
Speaker 1: what was the left. Yeah yeah, So all right, we're
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're we're gonna go to ads and then
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're gonna talk more about how
Speaker 1: everything is actually sort of gone. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I think is very interesting
Speaker 1: about for all of the sort of planning and organizational
Speaker 1: capacity that's gone into building the sort of like transnational
Speaker 1: fascist movement the American right, like that that the American
Speaker 1: rid has been setting up Uh, the American right has
Speaker 1: just actively been making their allies worse here, like the ideas.
Speaker 1: It's it's sort of incredible. I mean, this is something
Speaker 1: I think that that's genuinely very scary about the Brazilian
Speaker 1: right is that their regular combination of tactics are really effective.
Speaker 1: Um that you know, that they've been able to successfully
Speaker 1: will this combination of sort of electoralism, of lawfare or
Speaker 1: sort of like using the legal system against their political
Speaker 1: enemies off road blockades, mass marches, and you know, just
Speaker 1: straight up paramilitary death squads of various kinds. You know,
Speaker 1: you have your sort of urban death squads, you have
Speaker 1: these like genocidal logger death squads, and that's been very effective.
Speaker 1: And you know, Okay, so like they lost this one election,
Speaker 1: but you know, their their position inside Resilian politics is
Speaker 1: still really strong. They control all a bunch of like governorships,
Speaker 1: they like Bolsonoo's party and his coalition like control control
Speaker 1: the Brazilian parliament. Okay, so you know, like they're in
Speaker 1: a very strong position. But then they talked to the
Speaker 1: Americans and they imported January six and the storm the capitol,
Speaker 1: and at least right now it looks like it's going
Speaker 1: really badly for them. Like even even the sort of
Speaker 1: like right wing all the great process turned on them, Globo,
Speaker 1: which is like it's Brazil's biggest newspaper, wells biggest newspaper,
Speaker 1: It could be second biggest. I'm prett sure it's the biggest.
Speaker 1: It's funded by like right wing ship at billionaires um.
Speaker 1: But you know, their entire fret page right now is
Speaker 1: just them yelling about the coup and like gleefully reporting
Speaker 1: them like like that they had a frit page thing
Speaker 1: for an individual sociology professor who stepped off a bus
Speaker 1: coming back from Brazilian immediately got arrested. Like this is
Speaker 1: this is the kind of sort of jubilation that it's
Speaker 1: really it's kind of it's kind of amazing too, because
Speaker 1: like kind of cut sociologies is also a boson Arst
Speaker 1: insurrection rate. Yeah well okay, I feel like that if
Speaker 1: you're a sociologist, there were exactly two you have, ok
Speaker 1: you have three paths. One has you become a cop.
Speaker 1: Two is you is you do the Italian thing and
Speaker 1: you become the Red Brigades. Yeah. That was that. That
Speaker 1: was That was Italy's first sociology department. By the way,
Speaker 1: I turned out the Red Brigades, or three you become
Speaker 1: a Nazi. Those are your three options. Yeah, there are. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've never been unfortunate enough to run into any of
Speaker 1: the chid sociologies to be a very right, they are there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we we stayed away from them in the anthrow department.
Speaker 1: We're like nope, Yeah, I've taught in sociology before, and
Speaker 1: you definitely do get a lot of students who are
Speaker 1: there to be a cop I've forgotten about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sucks. So I will say Brazil has had at
Speaker 1: least one. I feel like they've had at least like
Speaker 1: a couple of sociologist presidents. For Fernando Henrique Cardoso was
Speaker 1: what yeah, what was the sociologist who was president for
Speaker 1: a while and then he got replaced by Lula Um.
Speaker 1: This is this has been this has been a tangent
Speaker 1: about what happens when you put sociology professor's lefted out
Speaker 1: of their cages. Uh so okay, And you know, I
Speaker 1: would say this is going back to global for a second,
Speaker 1: like some of the stuff that they're saying is not
Speaker 1: exactly true, Like they're they're they're trying to sort of
Speaker 1: make a separation between the like extremist Wilsonario eastas and
Speaker 1: then like the people in Parliament and it's like okay,
Speaker 1: so like, yeah, they have this whole thing about these
Speaker 1: are streamists with no support in Parliament, and it's like okay, buddy,
Speaker 1: Like there are literally people like in Congress who are
Speaker 1: in Congress because they were elected because they filmed themselves
Speaker 1: doing right wing trucker borodblocks like you know, okay, like
Speaker 1: well if one of these other things, one of the
Speaker 1: other stories was them talking was them talking about I
Speaker 1: Brazilian politicians frantically deleting the social media post in in
Speaker 1: support of the protests. So okay, you know, like I
Speaker 1: mean it is it is actually true that like a
Speaker 1: lot of like even both people in both to know
Speaker 1: his own party like denounced it. But you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we saw the same ship, right, and then
Speaker 1: they'll gradually reimagine it over the next two or three
Speaker 1: years to where like that they're they're not denounced again. Well,
Speaker 1: well we'll see what happens, because there is also a
Speaker 1: chance here that like everyone who was even intgentially like
Speaker 1: everyone's like we'll back out of this. I'm not a
Speaker 1: big pro prison guy. But the video of them arriving
Speaker 1: in a coach at the jail was pretty immediate. That
Speaker 1: was pretty funny. Yeah, So okay, so right now it
Speaker 1: looks like this has gone pretty badly for them. Again,
Speaker 1: this is this is This is being recorded one day
Speaker 1: after it happened. So I don't know if if the
Speaker 1: army has actually done the coup tomorrow. It's not my fault.
Speaker 1: It wasn't out yet. But you know, I think we
Speaker 1: should we should ask, we should take a step back
Speaker 1: and ask why is this happening? And I think we
Speaker 1: should we should ask why did this happen in the
Speaker 1: same way in both the US and Brazil and why
Speaker 1: did it not work? And the answer to this is
Speaker 1: that the capital is a trap. What what what the
Speaker 1: American and Brazilian right has ran into, sort of ironically,
Speaker 1: is the crisis of the century revolutionary movement. So to
Speaker 1: explain what I mean here, I'm gonna I'm gonna read
Speaker 1: a bit of to our Friends, which is a work
Speaker 1: produced in late by the Invisible Committee, which is the
Speaker 1: pen name of some French anarchists who are most famous
Speaker 1: of writing The Coming Insurrection. Um. I'm not normally a
Speaker 1: huge fan of their work. But they got they got
Speaker 1: one thing very very right, and that's this occupation of
Speaker 1: the Kasba and Tunis, and of the Stagma Square and Athens,
Speaker 1: siege of Westminster and London during the student movement of
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, encirclement of the Parliament in Madrid
Speaker 1: and September twelve, or in Barcelona on June five, thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: riots all around the Chamber of Deputies in Rome, December four,
Speaker 1: attempt on October fifteenth, thousand eleven in Lisbon to invade
Speaker 1: the Assembly at the republica birding of the Bosnian presidential
Speaker 1: residents in February. The places of institutional power exert in
Speaker 1: magnetic attraction on revolutionaries. But when the insurgents managed to
Speaker 1: penetrate parliaments, presidential palaces, and other headquarters of institutions, as
Speaker 1: in Ukraine, in Libya or in Wisconsin, it's only to
Speaker 1: discover empty places that is empty of power and furnished
Speaker 1: without any taste. It's not to prevent the people from
Speaker 1: taking power that they are so fiercely kept from invading
Speaker 1: such places, but to prevent them from realizing that power
Speaker 1: no longer resides in the institutions. There are only deserted temples, there,
Speaker 1: decommissioned fortresses, nothing but stage sets, real traps, revolutionaries. The
Speaker 1: popular impulse to rush onto the stage to find out
Speaker 1: what is happening in the wings is bound to be disappointed.
Speaker 1: If they got inside, even the most ferbrate conspiracy freaks
Speaker 1: would find nothing ur cane there. The truth is that
Speaker 1: power is simply no longer that theatrical reality to which
Speaker 1: maternity accustomed us. Yeah, he gets very prescient and like
Speaker 1: and it's we're raised on these myths, right, based on
Speaker 1: left and right, like on the on the right, like
Speaker 1: there are these myths of these American institutions which took
Speaker 1: great and unique and shining cities on the hill and
Speaker 1: on the left, like we're raised with the storming of
Speaker 1: the Bastille and stuff like that. As he's the Winter Palace, right,
Speaker 1: these moments have kind of revolutionary change. But yeah, and
Speaker 1: I want to I want to specifically, I want to
Speaker 1: take a second talk about the Winter Palace because this
Speaker 1: is actually something that I think sort of worryingly this
Speaker 1: is uh Nick what is actually talking about this in
Speaker 1: one of his podcasts, Which is that like and he's
Speaker 1: right about this, which is that like the like there
Speaker 1: there there are like you can't actually just store with
Speaker 1: Winter Palace and take power right doesn't work anymore. And
Speaker 1: but but but I think it's actually worth like taking
Speaker 1: like two minutes to lay out why that's true. And
Speaker 1: because the Winter Palace was like a once in like
Speaker 1: a like like a once in a century historical moment,
Speaker 1: and it only worked because and this is something that
Speaker 1: I think people forget. The storming of the Winter Palace
Speaker 1: was not the thing that overthrew the czar. That was
Speaker 1: later That was that was the Febrary Revolution, that is
Speaker 1: a completely given revolution, the stormy of the Winter Palace.
Speaker 1: And the reason why that worked was that the government
Speaker 1: that that that the Polsheviks were overthrowing was Kerensky's government,
Speaker 1: which is just like really dipshit like interim interim governments
Speaker 1: that was only supposed to be their own town election
Speaker 1: happened and had like the most fig leaf legitimacy of
Speaker 1: any government ever. Everyone hated them, they had no supporters
Speaker 1: with but and any of this is why it worked,
Speaker 1: right because when they had no power at all, and
Speaker 1: so when the bulls sh wiks rolled in on them,
Speaker 1: everyone else just stayed home and that is not going
Speaker 1: to work in any modern context unless like I don't know,
Speaker 1: you're like you're you two were also like two years
Speaker 1: in a revolution and there's like three years into a war. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like an incredibly fig leave government. Maybe you can
Speaker 1: pull this off. But like that that that that is
Speaker 1: not that is a app reolutely terrible, god awful model
Speaker 1: for attempting to seize like any kind of power or
Speaker 1: bring down any governments. But you know, it's it's it
Speaker 1: became because that because that became the sort of like
Speaker 1: mythology of of the Soviet Union, that you know, that
Speaker 1: was sort of burned, the sort of false image of
Speaker 1: that was burned into the certain memory of of Scholl
Speaker 1: collective memory of the left, to the point where like
Speaker 1: most people don't even remember that Kerensky was also technically
Speaker 1: a socialist and that like and that the Actopeal Revolution
Speaker 1: was a socialist like a group of socialists overthrowing another
Speaker 1: group of socialists and both of them have a very
Speaker 1: tenuous sort of like it's tenuous and whether they either
Speaker 1: of them are socialists at all, Yeah, and then going
Speaker 1: on to take power and kill a bunch too out
Speaker 1: of socialists. Yeah, yeah, Okay, so that aside, you know,
Speaker 1: this this crisis I was talking about, like this is
Speaker 1: the reason why we're here in the first place. Right,
Speaker 1: it's in large part because of the failure to overcome
Speaker 1: the movement of power out of the sort of palace
Speaker 1: where people expected to be that in the two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven revolutions failed like that that that that that's why
Speaker 1: we're here in how world because people people were sort
Speaker 1: of unable to figure out a way to actually bring
Speaker 1: down a government instead of sort of being like drawn
Speaker 1: magnetically into these traps. But those problems sort of like
Speaker 1: magnetic draw of the Capitol building to will be revolutionaries.
Speaker 1: This is just as much a problem to the right
Speaker 1: as it is the left. And for right now this
Speaker 1: has saved us. Uh, It's caused the Brazilian right to
Speaker 1: abandon things they were doing that actually like are genuinely
Speaker 1: terrifying and you know, could could have been and have
Speaker 1: been effective. Like for example, one of one of the
Speaker 1: cleanup operations that was happening today was the Brazilian army
Speaker 1: cleared a bunch of these people who were trying to
Speaker 1: do blockades of state oil facilities, and you know that
Speaker 1: actually could have worked right like that. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: and and yeah, I've talked about this before and then
Speaker 1: the other and the other sort of bols in our episodes.
Speaker 1: But like that, those kind of like trucker blockade things,
Speaker 1: blocking highways blockades like those are tactics that the Brazilian
Speaker 1: rights sort of natively uses. And there's a world where
Speaker 1: the Brazilian fascist sticks to their instincts and instead of
Speaker 1: doing this doomed attempt to strom the capital, they put
Speaker 1: these same numbers of people into trucks with roadblocks and
Speaker 1: burning tires and they try to shut down their Brazilian economy.
Speaker 1: You know, in essence, there's a world where instead of
Speaker 1: doing it October an impossible like January sixth revolution, where
Speaker 1: they do an invisible committee one where they realize the
Speaker 1: powers and logistics and attempting to shut shut down its
Speaker 1: flow is how you do a revolution. And that is
Speaker 1: a world that is a lot scarier than the one
Speaker 1: that we're in. But and you know, I think we'll
Speaker 1: see how this ultimate plays out. But I actually think
Speaker 1: the fact that this was planned for Orlando is like,
Speaker 1: you know, with the help of sort of the usual
Speaker 1: American generation seth crowd. I think this actually really really
Speaker 1: fucked them, like it it really deeply hurt sort of
Speaker 1: the Brazilian fascist drivement, which is good. Um you always
Speaker 1: like when I see that, I was thinking about this
Speaker 1: recently with like um me and mar and everything else,
Speaker 1: Like I always come back like Mark Cusa where he
Speaker 1: talks about the false choice of masters by slaves and
Speaker 1: like how the solution is not this like one big
Speaker 1: sort of like like big I didn't want to call
Speaker 1: it like symbolic kind of active violence, but like the
Speaker 1: great refusal to participate in these things, which is something
Speaker 1: that lots of people have power to do, as opposed
Speaker 1: to doing this stupid ship which centralizes them in one
Speaker 1: place to get some all arrested. Well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: also likes there's another sort of part of this, which
Speaker 1: is that like both in the US and in Brazil,
Speaker 1: the right is not very good at fighting the cops.
Speaker 1: Like they got that one horse cup pretty good. There's
Speaker 1: a couple that like they'll get a cold people, but
Speaker 1: like they're only they only do well when they're really
Speaker 1: like when they outnumber the cops like a hundred or one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is different. In Europe. That is a thing that
Speaker 1: like like if you look at Whereasov comes from, right
Speaker 1: Aso comes from right wing football hooligans who like the
Speaker 1: front line and the minda and beat the ship into
Speaker 1: the cops. Yeah. But but but in in the US,
Speaker 1: it's like, I don't know, everyone's just like do this,
Speaker 1: like it doesn't fight the busy shooting people. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: there isn't that history of like like that's not I'm
Speaker 1: not don't just want to pick on like where I
Speaker 1: come from, but like like crowd violence, like like football
Speaker 1: hood against like that that doesn't exist in a meaningful
Speaker 1: sense in the US. It's not as commonplace. And there
Speaker 1: isn't that like institutional memory of fighting riot police that
Speaker 1: exists all over Europe. Yeah, well, I think I think
Speaker 1: the thing is that, like, okay, American sports fans do
Speaker 1: fight the cops, but they only do it once a
Speaker 1: year if that like the super Bowl. Yeah, well you
Speaker 1: know they'll do with the NHL, but things like it's
Speaker 1: only it's only like maybe like three cities a year
Speaker 1: that do it, right, Yeah, and everyone series too. It's
Speaker 1: harder because the World Series has this whole sort of
Speaker 1: like like that they have the parade, then they have
Speaker 1: this whole stage managing to get people to get people
Speaker 1: stop from writing. So really there's only two or three
Speaker 1: events per year where you can get riots, whereas like
Speaker 1: in Europe, any time, yeah, any given Saturday, he could
Speaker 1: be throwing down with a cop on a horse. But
Speaker 1: like it's outside of it. It's gone long beyond that.
Speaker 1: Like I remember in like just before this two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven moment, like the two the earlier two thousands antig
Speaker 1: eight movement, like the institutional knowledge on how to deal
Speaker 1: with large volumes of police and still get your point across,
Speaker 1: just as we saw in twenty did not exist here
Speaker 1: and had to be imported from Hong Kong and other places,
Speaker 1: badly imported in Yeah, but you know infographic from Hong Kong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Okay. Having said all of this, this is not
Speaker 1: to say that everything is fine. It's not. You know,
Speaker 1: I think something that's that's very important that I have
Speaker 1: not seen any want to talk about either in either
Speaker 1: sort of generay sic of January eight, is that the
Speaker 1: immediate reaction to the coup on the left, and this
Speaker 1: is as true of the Brazilian left as it was
Speaker 1: with the American left. In fact, I think the American
Speaker 1: lifted American lefted way worse. In January six was paralysis,
Speaker 1: right even in Brazil, which has these sort of one
Speaker 1: body social movements kind of mobilizations, took almost a full
Speaker 1: day and materialized by the type, you know, by which
Speaker 1: point the threat already dissipated. So you know, for a
Speaker 1: for a full day, the only thing standing between the
Speaker 1: fascist and power was their own stupidity. And you know,
Speaker 1: as boundless as their stupidity seems, like watching these people
Speaker 1: like taking a dump on a cabinet, like with a
Speaker 1: camera in front of them, like it's not actually a
Speaker 1: shield against fascism, Like every every fascism after Boussolini and
Speaker 1: even Napoleon the third who's like the sort of modern
Speaker 1: prototype of fascism, has at least one and usually two
Speaker 1: or three comically stupid like uprisings and coups that just
Speaker 1: fail and they failed and everyone lasted them. And then
Speaker 1: number four, they're suddenly in power, and it's like, wow,
Speaker 1: you can't you can't actually write these things off because
Speaker 1: they're funny, because again they're always funny for the first
Speaker 1: like two, and then on number three, like all your
Speaker 1: friends are being bars into a camp and shot and
Speaker 1: it's like wow, yeah, and like we don't want to
Speaker 1: be in a place where like one growing up in
Speaker 1: the room is all that's between us and fascism, right
Speaker 1: like and adult making a plan. And I think there's
Speaker 1: there's a specific like I actually I think social media
Speaker 1: actually plays a really big role in this because you know,
Speaker 1: I can I remember this January six, like, there was
Speaker 1: this kind of like the way that just turns everyone
Speaker 1: into a spectator. Everyone was just like, you know, I
Speaker 1: think it was Vicky Austen, while I think was the
Speaker 1: first person who said this was like Twitter twit. Twitter
Speaker 1: is a machine that turns action into discourse. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so you know what, while it was going on, right like,
Speaker 1: everyone turned the action of the thing into discourse. Everyone
Speaker 1: just sort of like sitting there paralyzed watching it. And
Speaker 1: that is fatal like like that if if you look
Speaker 1: at the actual stress test of the sort of machinery
Speaker 1: of power, right like, it's actually I think it's actually
Speaker 1: much less of a big deal that the cops were
Speaker 1: on their side of the cops didn't responder because the
Speaker 1: cops eventually did clear them out right. It took it
Speaker 1: took a long time. The cops eventually did it but
Speaker 1: I think I think the thing is actually more dangerous
Speaker 1: is that like there was there, like there wasn't a
Speaker 1: response to the left at all. There's nothing right like
Speaker 1: there there were there were rallies and sell Polo, like
Speaker 1: the next day was actually funny because both both both
Speaker 1: the rallies both like the people sacking the capital and
Speaker 1: the people in sal Polo were both were both seeing
Speaker 1: the national anthem, which is some real fun politics moments.
Speaker 1: It's another thing to talk about. Yeah, but yeah, you
Speaker 1: compare that to Spain, which is obviously where I'm most
Speaker 1: familiar with. Well, like people immediately got guns scott in
Speaker 1: the street and started killing soldiers when they had much
Speaker 1: more effective and organized coup, right, and that coup would
Speaker 1: have failed were it not for fascist intervention from abroad.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Brazil has powerful unions who did shit. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and partially I think that's that's like that has to
Speaker 1: do with hallowing out of the unions and there's a
Speaker 1: there's sort of long story here, but like you know,
Speaker 1: and even if you look at like I think this
Speaker 1: is this is a sign really of sort of how
Speaker 1: actually dynamic the left is, because you know, if if
Speaker 1: if you want to look at like like a dynamic
Speaker 1: Latin American left, like they you know, there there was,
Speaker 1: there was, there was a very very well organized US
Speaker 1: backed coup against Hugo Chavez. He doesn't want I was
Speaker 1: just one. It was. It was just before I moved there,
Speaker 1: so I think it would. Ah, there were other coup
Speaker 1: attempts in Venezuela, two that were less well organized. Yeah
Speaker 1: she doesn't too. Yeah, he doesn't too. And that one't
Speaker 1: got far enough that like the New York Times was
Speaker 1: like had an article out about how democracy had been
Speaker 1: restored to the Cuba to Venezuela. And then you know
Speaker 1: the thing, the thing that happened after that, and there's
Speaker 1: there's a very famous movie of this from from a
Speaker 1: filmmaker who was just there. Is that over over the
Speaker 1: next forty seven hours, like the left mobilized and they
Speaker 1: put so many people in the street that like the
Speaker 1: coup plotters had to back down and Hugo travil has
Speaker 1: got to be president. And you know that that's the
Speaker 1: thing that that's the thing that a strong left can do, right,
Speaker 1: they can actually defeat the military. And yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: but this didn't the US just we fell down on
Speaker 1: the job, like there wasn't much of that in Brazil.
Speaker 1: Like I like like it, like it is true, as
Speaker 1: Lulu was saying, that they picked a day when everyone
Speaker 1: was gone. But it's still, I think really alarming that
Speaker 1: just by just by sort of acting first, they have
Speaker 1: so much of a sort of time advantage, sort of
Speaker 1: an advantage of reaction over us. Yeah. That film, by
Speaker 1: the way, people want to watch is called The Revolution
Speaker 1: Will Not Be Televised, which is kind of a great title.
Speaker 1: Spectative things that you were talking about. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: watched that bat Boy and VHS back in the day
Speaker 1: in Caracas. Wow, yeh, big kids. So Okay, Finally, in
Speaker 1: a broad sense, I wanted to ask, like, what are
Speaker 1: we doing here right? Um, the sort of dominant mode
Speaker 1: of quote unquote anti fascism, and this is the model
Speaker 1: that's being adopted by Lula and the rest of the
Speaker 1: sort of liberal and even sort of moderate conservative ruling
Speaker 1: class in Brazil. It's what's been adopted by the Democrats
Speaker 1: is their anti fascism is posing their opposition to fascism
Speaker 1: as a defensive democracy and the rule of law. Mhm.
Speaker 1: But yeah, okay, let's look at what's actually happening these
Speaker 1: coups aren't working. That's the sort of actual power. Military
Speaker 1: attempts to take power, they're losing every time. But do
Speaker 1: you know how the fascists are taking power by democracy?
Speaker 1: Their greatest success has been in taking power but just
Speaker 1: winning elections. Like look look at what happened in India, right,
Speaker 1: that is a country that has been like very nearly
Speaker 1: totally consumed by fascism, and it was done by just
Speaker 1: elections over and over and over again. Hungry. Yeah, even
Speaker 1: here on a fundamental level, like what we're seeing right
Speaker 1: now out of the sort of broad swath of social
Speaker 1: sort of liberalism, conservatism and social democracy is an unsustainable strategy,
Speaker 1: anti fashion, anti fascism as a pure defensive democracy is
Speaker 1: just preserving the machine that will hand the power of
Speaker 1: the state over to the fascist of a silver platter.
Speaker 1: And you know that like this, this defensive democracy in
Speaker 1: the abstract is a death march. Right, you know, if
Speaker 1: you can, you can you can look at the sort
Speaker 1: of course of of the late nineties, the late century, Right,
Speaker 1: why did the bobs fall over Backdad? Well, protect democracy
Speaker 1: when when the Mexican government was shooting the zapatisas they're
Speaker 1: protecting democracy when the cops rated the when the cops
Speaker 1: rated the Forest Defenders in Atlanta, Oh, it's because they
Speaker 1: were domestic terrorists who are threatening democracy. But what's happened
Speaker 1: here is that the threat of fascism has sort of
Speaker 1: press ganged armies of people who otherwise would be enemies
Speaker 1: of sort of capitalist quote unquote democracy into protecting the
Speaker 1: very institutions that alrea inevitably going to bring these people
Speaker 1: back into power. And that's really grim because it means
Speaker 1: that something has to change or we're just going to
Speaker 1: come back here again and again and again until eventually
Speaker 1: enough of the ruling class flips to back into fascist
Speaker 1: that they seiz power once and for all. So, you know, something,
Speaker 1: we have to do something else that's not just this
Speaker 1: that sort of desperate treading water. Yeah, like like fighting
Speaker 1: to stand still in this terrible place where people can't
Speaker 1: pay their heating bills and feed their families. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty dire sucking outlook for us, isn't it. Yeah?
Speaker 1: But I mean, you know I would say this like
Speaker 1: that there was a vision in of what that something
Speaker 1: else could be, right, Like it's it's it's not it's
Speaker 1: it's it's not like we're in the depths of like
Speaker 1: the two thousands where no one has ever seen like
Speaker 1: anything that's taking possible, right, Yeah, Like there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people probably listening because they saw that vision
Speaker 1: and it changed who they want to be and how
Speaker 1: they want the world to be. And I think that's
Speaker 1: really good and uh for me at least, I think
Speaker 1: once people around in the streets, which people weren't able
Speaker 1: to do in time in Brazil, that they will tend
Speaker 1: to find that solution outside of institutions. That the response
Speaker 1: has been almost entirely institutional, at least in here in
Speaker 1: this country to a fascist coup because people didn't and
Speaker 1: people were tired from your industry and they've all been
Speaker 1: fucking arrested and half of them have been shot. And
Speaker 1: but part of the problem also is just like there's
Speaker 1: there's like the US just has a sort of geographical
Speaker 1: problem and Brazil has this to to sub extent, which
Speaker 1: is that like, yeah, this is not like Belgium you
Speaker 1: can very quickly get people to the capital, Like you can't.
Speaker 1: You can't actually like it is actually genuinely very hard
Speaker 1: to get a bunch of people to a place quickly here, right,
Speaker 1: which you know, is a thing where we're lucky that Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that the capital kind of like holding the capital,
Speaker 1: doesn't you know. It's it's it's not a thing that
Speaker 1: actually allows you to sort of take power. But it's
Speaker 1: also a real sort of concerned about politics in the
Speaker 1: US because it can't work the same way it works
Speaker 1: in a lot of places that are smaller. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like Bolivia for example. Yeah, yeah, even Venezuela. Right, like
Speaker 1: so much of the institution, almost everything is in Caracas,
Speaker 1: even it's a big country. Yeah, that's that's That's pretty
Speaker 1: much all I got. Um, Well, we'll see, we'll see
Speaker 1: if Bolstaro when when he gets out of the hospital,
Speaker 1: if he gets out of the hospital, he's returned to
Speaker 1: his social home. Yeah, yeah, it's it's always good to
Speaker 1: see people with with takes on situation in Brazil who
Speaker 1: also think the capital is Rio. That's always a fun
Speaker 1: thing that I can see on Twitter talk on it's
Speaker 1: okay not to post you know, this is my okay,
Speaker 1: I have what what are my rules of thumb about
Speaker 1: talking about a place is if if you can't name
Speaker 1: five cities in a country, don't talk about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the thing that like so many like people
Speaker 1: people people who get paid to write articles about places
Speaker 1: like just fail all that. People who get this is like, frankly,
Speaker 1: you should be able to like like, if if I
Speaker 1: was doing due diligence, I would I would be learning.
Speaker 1: I would be actually learning Portuguese right now instead of
Speaker 1: like relying on my Spanish to sort of like power
Speaker 1: me through it. But you know, like the lowest bar
Speaker 1: is you should go the capital and you should be
Speaker 1: able to name five cities in it. And if you
Speaker 1: can't do that, like, maybe don't post. Yeah, it's fine
Speaker 1: not to post. In fact, when dealing with coups, maybe
Speaker 1: consider options that are not posting. Yeah, and and yeah,
Speaker 1: go go out and stop them. Mhm, make friends. Yeah.
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