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SÃO PAOLO, Brazil—Brazilians head to the polls October 2 to vote in the first round of what is considered the most consequential presidential election since the end of almost 20 years of U.S.-backed military dictatorships.

“The fundamental choice,” stated an open letter by several Latin American figures, including ousted Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, “isn’t between [the two presidential hopefuls, President] Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva, but between fascism and democracy.”

With Brazil being the fifth-largest country by area, along with having the seventh-largest population and economy, the outcome of this election could not only significantly alter the lives of Brazilians, but impact regional politics that have recently swung left as well as the health of the planet.

And it’s not just the outcome that matters.

“Bolsonaro [trailing in the polls] has questioned democracy and camouflaged himself as the great victim of the lack of democracy,” said Danny Shaw, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Professor at the City University of New York, explained to Toward Freedom. “He has preemptively attacked the integrity of the entire voting process.”

Bolsonaro has repeatedly said he would only accept election results if they were “clean,” but that he doubted they would be. Through livestreams, he has spoken to followers about resisting a loss and helping stage a coup. A poll showed high support for a coup among members of the Brazilian Navy and the Air Force, while enthusiasm remained low in the larger army. “But, it doesn’t seem like he has institutional support from within the military to make these things into a reality,” according to Shaw.

“It’s kind of unimaginable,” said Socialist and Liberty Party (PSOL) São Paulo state deputy candidate Ediane Maria, “to see Bolsonaro passing the [presidential] sash to Lula.”

This reporter reached out to Lula’s Workers’ Party and Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party for comment, but they did not reply by publication time.

Brazil’s recent history includes a 2016 procedural coup against Rousseff in favor of her business-friendly vice president, Michel Temer. Lula himself was incarcerated in 2018, which a court has since found to have been unlawful, as well as a separate ruling that banned him from competing in the 2018 election that Bolsonaro won.

In this period, Brazil ranked as one of the 10 largest democratic backslides, according to the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute based at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

Testing Democracy

If the necessary conditions for fascism are nativism, belief in a social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation, and anti-democratism, Shaw said Bolsonaro meets the criteria of a fascist. Bolsonaro’s government has the “underpinnings and trappings of fascist rule,” Shaw explained. “The unofficial religion of Bolsonarismo is anti-socialism and anti-communism.”

Bolsonaro pressured the electoral commission to allow the military to also count votes, and that has succeeded, according to newspaper Folha de São Paulo.

The PSOL and Folha de São Paulo assert Bolsonaro created a parallel $1 billion budget to buy support in Congress to prevent an impeachment and to fund his campaign.

Bolsonaro has glorified Brazil’s brutal military dictatorships and has conveyed himself to be like Benito Mussolini, including with black-clad motorcycle rallies.

He demanded leftists be “eradicated from public life” hours after a Bolsonaro-supporting farmer murdered his Lula-favoring colleague with an ax. He also called for Workers’ Party supporters to be “machine-gunned.”

This month, an assailant reportedly announced “I am Bolsonaro” while pointing a gun at Maria and her fellow PSOL candidate for the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, Guilherme Boulos.

“It was an attack on our democracy, on our freedom of expression,” Maria told Toward Freedom. “You see horror scenes of people who are killed at work, or in the streets just for defending what they believe in. This year, people sense the violence, the fights. We have a president who says, ‘shoot them in the head,’ that encourages and defends mass gun ownership. Thank God it’s coming to an end… this moment of horror that we lived through, this process of violence against our bodies.”

Filipe Campante, professor at Johns Hopkins University, raised it is unclear whose responsibility it would be to evict Bolsonaro from the presidential palace if he opted to stay. No one is certain how such a scenario would play out, and in the disorder, the perceived legitimacy of the handover of power could be damaged. Even if Bolsonaro does give way to Lula, Campante and others have raised important questions about the strength and preparedness of Brazil’s democratic institutions. All key parties have met regularly with the military, which has played its cards close to its chest. As Campante said, this culture of keeping the military close is a sign of a “democracy that’s not healthy.”

A poll last week found 40 percent of Brazilians expect a high chance of violence on Election Day, and 9 percent might avoid voting (at risk of penalties) because of fear.

“If Brazilian [progressives] can [win] given the political climate they’re facing,” explained U.S.-based human-rights and labor-rights lawyer Dan Kovalik to Toward Freedom, “then everyone should be able to do it.” He added it would be an inspiring victory for movements as far away as Europe.

The Global Implications of a Lula Victory

So far, the Brazilian left has been relatively united in helping Lula win. Maria’s left-wing PSOL, for instance, hasn’t presented a presidential candidate. The Latin American leaders’ letter mentioned earlier was addressed to Ciro Gomes, a centrist candidate polling around 7 percent. The letter asked him to pull out to avoid a Bolsonaro win.

“The Pink Tide seems to be back,” Kovalik said about the recent wave of progressive victories across Latin America. “But I think Brazil needs to be a part of that because other countries—Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua—are under great attack, especially economically, by the United States. To have Brazil’s support again would be huge, both their political and economic support. It’d definitely leaven the movement.”

A red Brazil is likely to not rely on special relationships with strongmen, as Bolsonaro did with former Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, former U.S. President Donald Trump and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A Lula victory, added Kovalik, “would help bring about the multipolar world that we need.”

However, as foreign policy did not form a large part of the electoral campaign, and the global dynamics are different compared to when Lula was last in power in 2010, it is difficult to predict the exact foreign implications of a Lula victory. Lula invited Palestine to the 2010 BRICS summit in Brasilia, Brazil’s capital. (BRICS is an acronym that stands for an alliance between the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.) But he also sent Brazilian troops for UN peacekeeping in Haiti, where they abused their power and stayed for years after being asked to leave.

“I think we can expect a more anti-imperialist Lula,” Shaw posited. “Even a neutral Lula would neutralize imperialism” by building a stronger relationship with Caracas and other anti-imperialist governments.

Challenges a Third Lula Term Would Face

However, a commodities boom had buoyed the original Pink Tide that had started in the 1990s and ended in the 2000s. Moreover, Bolsonaro, as Kovalik has said, has “dismantled social programs.” This raises questions about the surmountability of the challenges faced by a new government.

Lula’s last government “broke the cycles,” as Maria put it, “to break barriers, to put the bricklayer’s son and the housecleaner’s daughter into university.”

But Bruno Clima, an architect in the housing-justice group Central Homeless Movement (MSTC) in São Paulo, is worried about current challenges. “Even with the victory of a capable president, lifting the country up will not be easy or quick.”

With limited resources and enormous crises, Lula might struggle to meet such expectations in one term. Some are worried enough Brazilians would lose patience with him after that, and this turn to progressivism could be a bump in a larger turn towards neoliberalism.

For now, Maria sees the upcoming election as a battle between democracy and fascism.

“Our country is hoping that love can win over hate and that we are going to elect Lula in the first round, and elect him well,” Maria said. “We will fight for democracy in Brazil, which has never in my lifetime been as threatened as it is now.”

Richard Matoušek is a journalist who covers sociopolitical issues in southern Europe and Latin America. He can be followed on Twitter at @RichMatousek and on Instagram at @richmatico.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—An event held June 5 at the Institute for Policy Studies aimed to raise awareness and foster discussions around a new book, Survivors Uncensored: 100+ Testimonies of Resilience and Humanity, co-authored by Rwandan genocide survivors Claude Gatebuke and Delphine Yandemutso.

Not only does Survivors Uncensored bring together testimonies from survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, it documents pre- and post-genocide atrocities, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The co-authors expressed the need for healing, reconciliation, accountability and peace promotion. Additionally, they shed light on the role of the United States and the West in atrocities currently occurring in the DRC, spanning from 1996 to today.

Panelists included:

• Delphine Yandamutso, Rwanda Accountability Initiative and co-author Survivors Uncensored
• Claude Gatebuke, African Great Lakes Action Network and co-author Survivors Uncensored
• Salome Ayuak, Black Alliance for Peace Africa Team
• Dismas Kitenge, special guest live from Kisangani province, DRC

Steven Nabieu Rogers of Africa Faith and Justice Network moderated the discussion. IPS Director Tope Folarin welcomed the guests.

The co-sponsors of the event included Advocacy Network for Africa, Africa Faith & Justice Network, African Great Lakes Action Network, Africa World Now Project, Black Alliance for Peace, Friends of the Congo, and Institute for Policy Studies.

The video above is the livestream of the event.

Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom.

SAINT PETERSBURG, Florida—Three of the four U.S.-based defendants in the U.S. government’s case about a conspiracy with Russia to sow social discord spoke out May 10 for the first time since indictments dropped last month.

“It’s important to note where theres’s some troubling aspects of this case, where the federal government is using federal criminal law to stifle dissenting voices,” said Leonard Goodman, attorney for Penny Hess, chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee. The committee formed in 1976 in Saint Petersburg for white people to organize in the white community for reparations to Africans.

The attorneys of the newly dubbed “Uhuru 3″—Hess, as well as African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) Chairman Omali Yeshitela and Uhuru Solidarity Movement Chair Jesse Nevel—appeared remotely on Zoom, while the defendants stood at a podium in the Uhuru House, one of the party’s properties in Saint Petersburg.

“There’s been a misunderstanding about my connection to Russia because my first and most significant contact I had with Russians was when I was in Berlin, Germany,” said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party.

That’s when his attorney, Ade Griffin, intervened. “I ask that you not to get into any specifics about contacts with Russia at this point.”

Yeshitela said he wanted to explain his experience in the U.S. Army dating back to 1961, when he saw the Berlin Wall erected, which split Germany into east and west. “That’s something that’s not been mentioned at all,” he said, adding, “My crime is my absolute belief in free speech.” Yeshitela went on to recount that he has faced charges and abuse at the hands of police, usually for demonstrating on behalf of the right to free speech. “This is no different,” he said. “They kill Black people for talking in this country … If it’s not afforded to us, there can be no free speech for anybody.”

White Defendants Make Their Case

Hess, a white woman who has been part of the movement since 1976, spoke of the wealth stolen from African people.

“The chairman has done what cities and states don’t do,” she said in explaining the work of the party to build institutions that support African people.

“[These charges] are false to an idiotic and laughable extreme,” Nevel of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement told the press, adding later in his address the U.S. government knows Yeshitela is not a Russian agent. “They know who he really is. Just like they knew who Martin Luther King really was. Who Marcus Garvey really was. Who Malcolm X really was. Who Fred Hampton really was. A freedom fighter for his people and for the oppressed peoples of the world. But they can’t openly say that. They can’t openly charge Chairman Omali Yeshitela with being an agent for freedom. So they lie, and charge him as an agent of some foreign power we’re all supposed to be afraid of.”

Similarly, Nevel spoke of his and Hess’ roles as white people.

“They know who we work for: The African liberation movement,” Nevel said. “We speak not for some foreign malign influence, but for millions of other white people out there who refuse to be complicit with our own government’s unceasing state sanctioned violence against African people.”

Nevel then said that despite the U.S. government’s best efforts to scare white people away from liberation movements, “More and more of us are becoming co-conspirators, too.”

Yeshitela told the press the party was forced to start its own radio station because a white-owned station kicked it off the air.

“They’ve never accused us of hurting anybody or stealing from anybody. It’s [about suppressing] free speech.”

Pointing to Colonialism

The APSP opposed U.S. support of Ukraine after Russia intervened in Ukraine in February 2022. They have connected the U.S. position to a longer history of European colonialism. Yeshitela has noted African countries have not supported the Ukraine position en masse, despite U.S. threats, as discussed in this Toward Freedom article.

Yeshitela denounced the press for only relying on the U.S. government’s press release to report on the party. He tied that to the colonial relationship that has dominated the world for more than 500 years, since Christopher Columbus accidentally landed in the Americas after trying to reach India, intent on exploiting the wealth of that land.

“For the longest period of time, white people have been subjects of history and African people have only been the objects of history,” Yeshitela said. “When we begin to speak for ourselves, we don’t tell the same story … It can be disturbing … And you find out to your surprise that the slave doesn’t feel the same way about the slavemaster as the slavemaster feels about himself.”

Next Steps

The party, nor its attorneys, announced during the press conference the next date for a court appearance. If found guilty, the accused face up to 15 years in prison.

The APSP has launched a campaign called “Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa!” through which it is fundraising to cover the cost of legal fees.

The fourth U.S.-based defendant, Augustus C. Romain, Jr., better known as Gazi Kodzo, faces up to five years in prison. When the indictment dropped, Romain had been in prison on unrelated charges since July. Romain was the APSP’s secretary general until late 2018. They have since gone on to start another group, Black Hammer, which lost many of its young members in the summer of 2021 following the group’s attacks on other political groups. Romain’s attorney, Stacey Flynn, did not reply to Toward Freedom‘s inquiry as of press time.

Toward Freedom has reported on the FBI’s raid of the APSP’s properties, provided information on Regions Bank ending its 20-year relationship with the party, and covered the U.S. Department of Justice’s announcement of indictments as well as the recent arraignments.

Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom.