https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/21/bolsonaro-nicaragua-lula-brazil-election
As the Brazil presidential election approaches, far-right incumbent Bolsonaro becomes more and more desperate to discredit leftist former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro attempts to win over Catholic voters by claiming that the authoritarian Nicaraguan president’s attack on the Catholic church would be mirrored by Lula if he’s elected. These bold claims are not new, however. Lula has been facing accusations of his hatred for Christians since his first presidential campaign in 1989, and more recently in the last presidential election of 2018. Lula seeks to stay neutral, he claims that he hasn’t had contact with Ortega in years and feigns ignorance of anything going on in Venezuela.
Propaganda used to have some sort of basis in reality, it was generally just distorted. This new variety of propaganda is incredibly dangerous because a huge amount of people will believe it, even if there’s no basis in reality. This whole situation, in my opinion, was reminiscent of Hillary Clinton and the email debacle. Bolsonaro likely overestimates the number of people that will believe his nonsensical claims, and it’s shown in the numbers of his Catholic supporters dropping from 53% to 52%.
This story connects to what we’re doing in class because when talking about world order, we generally cover current events and the impacts they could have on the future. If Bolsonaro were to be reelected it could come with great implications for surrounding countries; we can see here that he has no problem with weaponizing other countries’ internal issues to get ahead.