Nostalgic for Brazil's dictatorship, Bolsonaro sets sites on presidency
Nostalgic for Brazil's dictatorship, Bolsonaro sets sites on presidency
BY LOUIS GENOT (AFP) 9 HOURS AGO IN POLITICS
Angry Brazilians long for a return to order, and former army officer Jair Bolsonaro, a fan of the dictatorship that stretched from the 1960s to the 1980s, hopes to ride that wave into the presidency.
Often labeled a Brazilian Donald Trump, Bolsonaro, 63, made his candidacy official Sunday at a convention in Rio of his Social Liberal Party, telling some 3,000 enthusiastic supporters, "My candidacy is a mission. If I am here it is because I believe in you, and if you are here it is because you believe in Brazil."
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But like Trump, Bolsonaro actually seems to enjoy offending his critics in a campaign that seeks to tear up the rules book.
Opponents say Bolsonaro is a far-right agitator whose insults against gays and women, and his praise for the torturers of the 1964-85 dictatorship, have only deepened Brazil's already sharp political divides.
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In 2014 in the lower house of Congress he told a leftist member, Maria do Rosario, that she "didn't deserve" to be raped, because of her looks.
During the controversial 2016 impeachment of leftist president Dilma Rousseff, who had suffered torture under the dictatorship, Bolsonaro praised one of the most notorious figures of that repression.
More:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/nostalgic-for-brazil-s-dictatorship-bolsonaro-looks-to-presidency/article/527678
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PEDRO HENRIQUE LEAL 24 April 2017
They call him “the Myth”. Federal congressman Bolsonaro is Brazil’s far-right star and a presidential hopeful. He is also one of the most popular politicians in Brazil. Español
On April 4, Christian Social Party congressman Jair Messias Bolsonaro gave a racially charged speech at the Hebraica Club in Rio de Janeiro. The speech made headline news, but it is just another stone paving the path of controversies that describe his political career. During his speech before some 500 people, he claimed that people living in reservations were “parasites”, that quilombolas (black community members, descendants of runaway slaves) “weren't even fit for breeding”, that NGOs and social movements were stealing the country's resources, and that the only way to fight crime was handing out guns to the population.
Under him as president, the pre-candidate claimed – presidential elections in Brazil are due next year -, there would be zero land space for reservations, zero funds for NGOs and social movements, and a gun in each house to “fight the bad guys” – meaning members of the Land Reform Movement (MST), among others.
Bolsonaro later pretended to defend himself in a YouTube video, in which he again claimed that natives and quilombolas were draining national resources. This time, however, he went even further, stating that Funai (the National Indigenous Foundation) deliberately chose the “richest and most fertile” lands to “give away” to “Indians and blacks”, while stealing land from whites who had been “living there for centuries”.
Hosted by the Hebraica Club society, Bolsonaro’s April speech sparked much debate. Fernando Lottenberg, president of the Brazilian Israelite Confederacy, called the event “a mistake”, and protesters questioned the Jewish club’s invitation of a far right leader known for his ties with neo-Nazi movements: in 2015, he was in the news for supporting Professor Marco Antônio, a well-known Nazi sympathizer who showed up at a Human Rights commission hearing dressed up as Adolph Hitler; in the same year, Bolsonaro gave his support to - and was in turn supported by - skinhead groups, who were openly asking why is it legal to have a Communist Party in Brazil, but not a Nazi one; a self-confessed “admirer” of Hitler, he and two of his sons, Carlos, Flávio and Eduardo Bolsonaro – both politicians -, openly support eugenics.
More:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/democraciaabierta/pedro-henrique-leal/bolsonaro-and-brazilian-far-right
Monster.
