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https://apnews.com/article/brazil-bolsonaro-supporter-riot-c...
Context:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36543423
It is 2024 and the "fake news" inquiry is still ongoing.
Everything lies?
Even the worst campaigns use sprinkles of truth to make them more believable.
You know what's funny? Actual murderers here routinely get lesser sentences than those people got.
I don’t know why you thought it was sensible to mention two opposite ends of the abuse of power spectrum as comparable.
A coup attempt is a lot more than a protest.
Honestly, I think the sentences are being too light, especially considering they can leave prison much earlier than that (I am unsure of for this crime it is after a third or a sixth of the sentence).
They, perhaps, should still be charged with damaging public infrastructure (which has much lighter sentences).
Equating those two events mean you are either arguing in bad faith, or you disagree that what happened in Jan 8th was a coup attempt (which is simply denying facts)
It's funny. The 2016 people also claimed that Dilma's impeachment was a coup. They still claim that, to this day. Everything in this country is a coup apparently. Everything but the supreme court giving itself limitless powers and becoming a political party made up of unelected officials.
Elderly or not, they were demonstrably colluding with parts of the army to create a situation where a GLO (Law and Order Guarantee) would be invoked. Lula, as much as I despise the guy, was very smart in seeing through the plot.
In 2016 the protesters were claiming that Dilma ousting was a coup, and as much as they are wrong (the legal rites of her impeachment were satisfied), they were not themselves attempting a coup.
You might be under the wrong impression that I agree with their bullshit in 2016. I do not. But the events of January 8th were as clear cut a coup attempt as it gets.
The only real disgrace is that no one in the armed forces was punished yet.
Seeing the coup for what it was doesn't mean we forget or downplay what happened before, but these circumstances were clearly different.
Bolsonaro might well have been. Whatever it is that he tried or wanted to do clearly didn't work out. He threw his hands up, flew out to the US and did absolutely nothing.
The people protesting were hoping the military would show up and save them. Or something like that. This naiveté pretty much eliminates any possibility that those people were "colluding" with anyone. If they had been colluding with the military, they would not have been arrested.
The army could and should have removed their encampment in the capital, and even forbid the police to dismantle that same encampment.
This, among many other things, show those parties were colluding for a coup.
You may argue that the coup attempt was foolish and had little chance of succeeding. Oh well, if I try to murder someone and fail because I am too much of a retard to murder someone I should still be charged with attempted murder.
Sorry if I have little empathy for those that wanted to undermine democracy. They should be rigorously punished.
Showing up at the capital with flags and bibles is not an attempt to take power by force. So the "attempted murder" analogy is not convincing either. To take power by force, you actually need force.
Every day on the internet people publicly wish fates worse than death on others. This does not amount to attempted murder or anything of the sort. So logically, wishing for coups doesn't amount to an actual coup either.
Hard disagree here. Free speech is not unlimited, and in most countries there are limitations to it. Calling for violence is one of those things. Demanding a military coup is not, and should neve be, protected speech.
> Showing up at the capital with flags and bibles is not an attempt to take power by force.
You know full well that what happened there was a lot more than elderly people with flags and bibles. If you don't know, you are willfully blinding yourself.
> So the "attempted murder" analogy is not convincing either.
Murder, while a serious crime, in my opinion, is generally a less serious offense than the abolition of democracy.
> To take power by force, you actually need force.
Brazil has a long story of military coups, in more than one occasion invited by portions of the civilian population.
> Every day on the internet people publicly wish fates worse than death on others. This does not amount to attempted murder or anything of the sort.
We are not talking about people merely "wishing" a coup. They in fact, and very plainly, attempted to make it happen.
Sure it should. That is a valid political position. They wanted the military to rule them.
If you're gonna ban that speech, then I demand the complete erasure of speech I deem far worse. I demand the complete annihilation of the vast majority of brazilian political parties and literally everything they stand for, especially those which contain the words "communist" and "socialist" right in their names. Those ideologies are demonstrably far more damaging than the brazilian military dictatorship ever was.
I simply do not accept the validity of the notion that militarism, fascism and nazism are all banned wrongthink while literal communists and socialists walk the soil of my country completely unpunished. I am not capable of the cognitive dissonance necessary to accept that. In order for me to maintain my sanity, one of those ideas must go.
> You know full well that what happened
I know the military didn't actually enact or even try to enact a coup. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant.
> Brazil has a long story of military coups, in more than one occasion invited by portions of the civilian population.
Yes. Military coups. Emphasis on military.
> Murder, while a serious crime, in my opinion, is generally a less serious offense than the abolition of democracy.
Surely we can agree that actual committed murder is worse than an hypothetical attempt to abolish democracy. A crime with actual victims must be more severely punished than one with zero victims.
If we can agree on this, then we can agree that these people were punished in a completely uncivilized manner. They got worse sentences than literal murderers and rapists routinely get here. That's just stupid even if I were to accept the idea that they tried to take power, and I don't accept that idea.
We should also be able to agree that this sends a very dangerous message: if you intend to protest these judges, you want full measures instead of half measures. They're going to punish you as if you had gone all the way anyway, you might as well go all the way.
> We are not talking about people merely "wishing" a coup. They in fact, and very plainly, attempted to make it happen.
Not at all. They were just generally protesting, and the protest was not in any way different in its violence compared to any prior ones. That they called for a coup at the same time does not make it an attempt to enact a coup.
An attempt to enact a coup would be the people with guns showing up, beginning their operation and then failing. That's an actual attempt to seize power. An actual coup would end with them succeeding at it.
They tried to get the military to do it. But they didn't try to do it themselves.
As you said, democracies do vote in socialists, or communists, which are far worse.
Banning 'wrongthink' while at the same time allowing murderous ideologies like socialism to roam free, so that ideas have killed hundreds of millions of people in history, are actually scot-free, does seem paradoxical, at the very least.
Hell, they elect them. An actual socialist president was elected in 2022 and is in power right now. And he appointed another communist to act as a judge in the supreme court. The brazilian government is absolutely filled with these people. Our economics minister wrote a dissertation on the soviet union's economics shortly before it collapsed. An economics minister who doesn't believe in private property. I wish I was making this stuff up.
Most brazilians apparently think that communism died with the soviet union and that any talk of socialism in Brazil is just baseless conspiracy theory. Despite the fact we have lots of political parties which feature the words "socialist" and "communist" in their literal names.
I fear for the future of this country. Compared to this, military rule would not be so bad. At least there's a chance for Brazil to prosper that way.
But that is all beyond the point. You don't mind the coup attempt in January 8th because you are sympathetic to the idea of a military dictatorship in Brazil.
The only possible reading is that you are an authoritarian, as long as the ones you are aligned with politically are in power. You don't value democracy. This conversation is moot.
The funny thing is that you think that a military dictatorship would not be so bad and thst Brazil might prosper, ignoring how hilariously incompetent the military in Brazil is.
The reason for that is in my world view I am already living in a dictatorship of the judiciary. So it's not that I don't value democracy, it's that Brazil is not really a democracy to begin with.
If I have to choose between a dictatorship of the military and a dictatorship of a communist judiciary, I'd rather live under the military one. An actual democracy would be nice but it doesn't seem to be one of the available choices.
I'm not sure that I'm politically aligned with the military either. It's not like its a right wing haven. Lots of communists in there too and it got even worse after Lula reached power.
I chose my words very carefully specifically because I wanted to avoid even the implication that I think the military is competent. I refer to the brazilian military as the "armed pensionists", they do literally nothing other than suck up our taxpayer money. I wish it was different. I still think they are preferrable to communists in power but that's a very low bar to begin with.
Even so, it would be unwise to underestimate what a military state is capable of. The brazilian dictatorship was responsible for major industrialization and the imports replacement policy. This contributed to the creation of the Lua programming language, for example. I sure as hell want Brazil go even further than that, and these communists aren't getting the job done.
Now, the country, thru the usurpation of previously separated powers, has devolved into something else. What that is is hard to say but it looks like autocratic socialism, fascism or communism. Its hard to say at this point since the executive and executive are mostly looking the other way.
I agree that it's hard to say what specific class of clown world Brazil has degenerated into but whatever it is it sure as fuck isn't a democracy. Hearing the word "democracy" come out of the mouths of these judge-kings makes me laugh psychotically like the joker.
You keep repeating that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Have you tried asking the CIA?
His supporters openly asked for military intervention in case he didn't win reelection, something Bolsonaro didn't try to defuse.
In fact, when he lost, he just fled the country.
When truck drivers threatened to stop the country indefinitely in an illegal movement he didn't try to tell them otherwise. When his supporters marched towards Brasília asking for military intervention, he didn't try to say nothing against that. Up until the point where soldiers arrived to contain the situation in Brasilia, because the police wasn't doing anything, being complacent with the situation, these invaders were thinking these soldiers were there to help them! They applauded these soldiers that were there to arrest them.
None, not a single one of these facts were present in 2013 or 2016.
And you are trying to tie these events together? Come on now.
Our countrymen begged on their knees for the military to intervene only to be arrested and placed in a concentration camp as political prisoners while their "hero" abandoned them like the cowardly rat he is.
That's not a coup. A coup would have been the military actually intervening. A coup would have been those people showing in the capital with weapons and executing authorities then seizing power.
You simply cannot convince me that a bunch of elderly folks with bibles and brazilian flags angrily protesting the election amounts to a coup d'etat.
Let me get this straight, you mean to say that Bolsonaro's mistake was not taking these protests far enough?
Whether it was a mistake or not, I dunno. I just don't fault him for trying whatever clumsy thing it is that he tried. I don't fault him because I don't believe this country is a democracy. I think it's a judiciary dictatorship. Watching those unelected judges say the word "democracy" actually makes me cringe.
Whatever distorted view of nationalism and the role of the military forces is just a smokescreen for partisans trying to seize power and failing.
EDIT: I lay out in my blog a bit of what I think is the correct path in starting to defuse this democratic crisis we see worldwide at the individual level https://xd1.dev/2024/07/against-political-realism
I don't know either. This is often my experience trying to discuss this.
For what its worth I will read your blog and try to better understand your position.
> You don't just bully yourself into power when there is a crisis, however long it is.
Who are we supposed to turn to when the Surpeme Court grants itself limitless powers? Gives itself the right to be the victim, investigator, prosecutor and judge? Starts creatively interpreting and selectively applying the constitution of the nation? Basically doing whatever they want, backed by the fact their pens move armed police forces?
It's the supreme court. There is no higher court you can appeal to. Is there anyone you can turn to?
Anyone other than the military? Which is actually listed as the "moderating power" that's meant to intervene in exactly such extreme situations?
I don't have a good answer to that. No one has has ever been able to give me the answer either. That's why I don't fault those folks for asking for military intervention.
I don't believe there is a democratic solution to this because the supreme court is not actually a democratic institution to begin with. They are not elected by us, they are appointed by our representatives. Once in the supreme court, their mandates are lifetime. Short of suffering impeachment by the other politicians, they're basically untouchable. There is a 100% chance that the politicians who can impeach them are hopelessly corrupt though, I seriously doubt they're gonna screw around with judges who can put them in the ground.
If we had went through all the due process for debating and processing these issues in the public sphere I would tend to agree. Or if it reached such catastrophic outcomes as we have seen in other countries.
However we went from a mostly systemically dysfunctional government, which is very common, to having fear and despair unilaterally incited by Bolsonaro. When he blames all the issues on communism and the workers party, incite people to kill the opposition, which some supporters took to the extreme of actually gunning down people celebrating the election, spend the entire time in power questioning the election system without actually improving it, we skip the entire democratic process without giving it a chance to work.
Yes, the workers party spent almost four mandates and nothing changed. But brazillian democracy itself is quite young, it's not even 40 years old. Things take a while to get better, and we already see our democratic institutions get better over time.
After saying all that I kind of agree that these folks asking for military intervention aren't all at fault. I think they are victims of a strategy of fear Bolsonaro used to gain power. However, I don't think that movement is legitimate and I think if not for the judicial system we might have had way worse problems to worry about than Moraes having talked to two assessors when investigating rioters, or having Moraes close down X for not complying with sovereign country laws. We might even see investigations against de Moraes, just as we have seen against Moro. We have precedence for this.
But in general I don't disagree with you. Bolsonaro is a moron and it's pretty sad that he was the brazilian right's most viable candidate. His mandate had good points but was also full of completely unnecessary controversy. He was obssessed with saying insulting and outrageous things for the sake of it. He actually could have won if he had simply kept his mouth shut.
> spend the entire time in power questioning the election system without actually improving it
He's not at fault for that. He tried. He's always advocated for the paper trail. Our congress tried too, multiple times. The supreme court wouldn't let them improve the system. They declared the paper trail unconstitutional.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36543423
Had the paper trail system been implemented, there would have been zero reasons to question or doubt the election results.
But we just can't have nice things. The judge-king declared that the machines are INQUESTIONABLE!! And started censoring and fining anyone who questioned anything. It's just pathetic. The judge and his obstruction is a major reason why things got to the point they did. He didn't just obstruct progress, he doubled down on his nonsense and started getting arbitrary with the punishments, fines and censorship. It's all "fake news" to him.
I am completely opposed ideologically to the current system but I don't think they're the real problem. The problem is these judges.
Have you ever heard the saying? "Doctors think they're gods, judges know it". Brazil will not be fixed until those words are gone.
> We might even see investigations against de Moraes, just as we have seen against Moro. We have precedence for this.
I hope so. We agree on this.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/14/americas/brazil-congress-...
Couldn't find a translation for the first one, but in a gist you don't need to when, first the GSI is complacent in the coup and when there would have been a bombing attack.