BRASILIA, Brazil — Brazil on Friday gave social media giant Meta 72 hours to explain its fact-checking policy for the country, and how it plans to protect fundamental rights on its
I fully agree that Bolsonaro was a straight up demon, but I also agree with the idea that - currently - the administration of Brazil is probably about as good an example of a good world citizen as it gets
Abso-fucking-lutely not. Fascists would NEVER be able to gain power in a truly democratic society. No ifs, ands or butts.
Fascists are funded into power (and into existence) by CAPITALISTS - adherents to an ideology that is violently incompatible with anything that can be called democratic with a straight face.
Brazil is not a democratic society. It is a (so-called) “liberal democracy” - something that can be more accurately described as 95% capitalism with some fake democracy substitute thrown in as a legitimising measure.
Democracy isn’t a magic anti-fascist spell, sorry to break it to you. If someone can convince enough of the population to elect them, then they get into power, fascist or not.
By your definition, there really hasn’t been a “real” democracy ever, frankly, since it depends on there being a state with no imbalance of wealth whatsoever. If that’s how you want to define it, sure, go ahead, but I’m going to keep using a definition of democracy that’s based on how the institutions of elections and the state are built, because that’s a useful way to discuss political systems, and “democracy is when only leaders I like are elected” is not.
Brazil’s leaders are elected through universal suffrage, its speech and media are (relatively) free, that’s a democracy by any reasonably useful definition. There’s plenty to criticise in how that democracy functions, especially how money and power can influence those outcomes, but there is no perfect democracy, just the best attempts at what people can build within their existing social systems.
Democracy is a political system, while capitalism is an economic system - understanding how they interact with each other is useful and important, but pretending they’re mutually exclusive is unnecessarily reductive, and closes the space to actually discuss those things.
Edit: the mere fact that Bolsonaro attempted to retain power by force, but was unable to do so in the face of losing the election is direct evidence that there are functional democratic institutions in Brazil
Uhhh, did you forget that Brazil was being run by a fascist war criminal just a short while ago?
So were lots of countries. At least they learned from their mistake, unlike the US.
And now it isn’t, that’s democracy, baby
I fully agree that Bolsonaro was a straight up demon, but I also agree with the idea that - currently - the administration of Brazil is probably about as good an example of a good world citizen as it gets
Abso-fucking-lutely not. Fascists would NEVER be able to gain power in a truly democratic society. No ifs, ands or butts.
Fascists are funded into power (and into existence) by CAPITALISTS - adherents to an ideology that is violently incompatible with anything that can be called democratic with a straight face.
Brazil is not a democratic society. It is a (so-called) “liberal democracy” - something that can be more accurately described as 95% capitalism with some fake democracy substitute thrown in as a legitimising measure.
That is THE WHOLE POINT of liberalism.
Democracy isn’t a magic anti-fascist spell, sorry to break it to you. If someone can convince enough of the population to elect them, then they get into power, fascist or not.
By your definition, there really hasn’t been a “real” democracy ever, frankly, since it depends on there being a state with no imbalance of wealth whatsoever. If that’s how you want to define it, sure, go ahead, but I’m going to keep using a definition of democracy that’s based on how the institutions of elections and the state are built, because that’s a useful way to discuss political systems, and “democracy is when only leaders I like are elected” is not.
Brazil’s leaders are elected through universal suffrage, its speech and media are (relatively) free, that’s a democracy by any reasonably useful definition. There’s plenty to criticise in how that democracy functions, especially how money and power can influence those outcomes, but there is no perfect democracy, just the best attempts at what people can build within their existing social systems.
Democracy is a political system, while capitalism is an economic system - understanding how they interact with each other is useful and important, but pretending they’re mutually exclusive is unnecessarily reductive, and closes the space to actually discuss those things.
Edit: the mere fact that Bolsonaro attempted to retain power by force, but was unable to do so in the face of losing the election is direct evidence that there are functional democratic institutions in Brazil