President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva spoke on Sunday, after the release of the results of the first round of the 2026 elections. He said his campaign for a second round of the presidential race begins this Monday, October 5.

Lula will face Senator Flávio Bolsonaro in the runoff, scheduled for October 25.

In his speech, Lula stated that he intends to present to voters the differences between the two candidates’ platforms.

“Starting tomorrow, we begin a new campaign,” he said. “We will be able to show the difference between the proposals that exist for Brazil. The Brazilian people will have no doubt about choosing who will win the election.”

Lula also launched direct attacks on Flávio Bolsonaro’s political track record and cited the candidate’s past.

“He has a dark history,” Lula said. “With dark connections, with extremely serious suspicions, with ties to militia members and organized crime. All of this will become clear.”

The president mentioned Banco Master. He claimed that Flávio had a hand in the institution’s creation.

“Banco Master resulted in the greatest corruption scandal in this country and the biggest free-for-all involving politicians,” he said.

The accusations raised by Lula are part of his runoff campaign rhetoric and are expected to be a key point of contention between the two candidates in the coming weeks.

The president also argued that the race should be framed as a choice over the country’s future. He stated that his candidacy represents an opportunity to drive change in the Brazilian economy.

“We will show what has been done and what society expects to be done,” he said. “No one is better positioned than us to offer a future to Brazilian society.”

Lula further stated that Brazil needs to take a “qualitative leap” to become internationally competitive.

“I’m very good at the knockout stage”

Commenting on the first-round results, Lula referred to the fact that he had won the second Rond vote in previous presidential elections.

“It didn’t work out [this time],” he said. “You know why? Because the people like seeing me compete in the runoff.”

In a lighthearted tone, he added, “I’m very good at the knockout stage.”

The runoff will be a head-to-head contest between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro, after neither candidate secured more than 50% of the valid votes in the first round. The vote will take place on October 25.

“More than 20 million people didn’t turn out to vote,” he said. “We are going to make an appeal: at this historic moment for Brazil. Voting is essential to determine the country’s future.”

“Bolsonaro supporters had better get ready,” he said. “Because we are going to defeat them.”

You can watch Lula’s speech below.

This article was originally published by Revista Forum. You can read the original in Portuguese, here.

The far-right senator wins 47% to Lula's 45% and goes into the 25 October runoff as favourite

Flávio Bolsonaro surprisingly topped the polls in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday (4 October), making him the favourite to topple President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the run-off in three weeks.

The result is the latest in a series of strong performances by far-right candidates in Latin America. US president Donald Trump has been particularly invested in Brazil.

Despite lagging behind in most pre-election polls, senator Flávio Bolsonaro (45), the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, won around 47 percent of the vote, with votes from more than 99.9 percent of districts counted. Bolsonaro was strongest in the country’s southern states.

President Lula took 45 percent, after performing strongest in Brazil’s north-east, and advanced to the second round, to be held on 25 October.

Latin American experts believe that Bolsonaro will likely win the second round as most of the candidates who failed to reach the runoff are ideologically closer to him than Lula.

Although voting is compulsory in Brazil, one in five of eligible voters did not take part in the first round.

This year’s election has been widely described as one of the most significant in modern Brazilian history, its outcome exceptionally important for the United States and Europe. It is also key for the rest of the planet, given the global impact of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

Conservative forces aligned with Bolsonaro also made gains in the elections to Congress. Jair Bolsonaro’s wife Michelle won a senate seat. She had previously fallen out with Flávio but the two have since publicly reconciled. And the former president’s son Carlos Bolsonaro also won a seat, while another son, Jair Renan, was elected to the lower house of congress.

Trump’s stake in Brazil

Though the campaign focused primarily on domestic issues, particularly the economy, security and corruption, Trump’s influence loomed large.

Trump criticised Brazil’s judiciary when Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years following an unsuccessful attempted coup after he narrowly lost the 2022 election to Lula. The former Brazilian president is under house arrest due to health problems, and a court ruled he could not stand.

The US president described the trial of Bolsonaro as a “witch hunt”. Although Trump did not openly endorse Flávio Bolsonaro, Bolsonaro played up his ideological proximity to him.

In contrast, Lula sharply criticised Trump and built a reputation as a leader unafraid to stand up to Trump. Americas Quarterly editor Brian Winter said some in Brazil joke that Lula’s most effective surrogate is Trump.

Lula is known for his multipolar foreign policy. He seeks “pragmatic relations” with the US, China, Russia and others. Lula maintains friendly relations with Vladimir Putin, although he recently spoke out against the invasion of Ukraine.

If Bolsonaro were to win the second round, Brazil would probably join a coalition of countries conducting military operations against drug cartels alongside the Pentagon. It is a controversial initiative, and like other left leaders in the region, Lula has rejected it.

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Fuzis israelenses ARAD-7 apreendidos com TCP, facção que não foi classificada como terrorista pelos EUA. Israel já armou cartéis na Colômbia e México.

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Na última semana 7 fuzis ARAD-7, de fabricação israelense, foram apreendidas pela Polícia Federal do Brasil, em uma transportadora localizada em Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, enquanto eram preparados para serem remetidos para narcotraficantes da organização Terceiro Comando Puro (TCP). Estes são os mesmos narcotraficantes que controlam um território chamado “Complexo de Israel”, que reúne as favelas Cidade Alta, Parada de Lucas, Vigário Geral, Cinco Bocas e Pica-Pau.

2 anos atrás atrás escrevemos aqui no Strategic Culture Foundation um artigo sobre o perigo do “narcopentecostalismo” – a vinculação profunda entre o narcotráfico e o neopentecostalismo em algumas favelas – apontando para este novo fenômeno como uma possível ameaça de segurança nacional para o Brasil, bem como eventual foco de atividades de desestabilização do tecido social e perseguição religiosa. De fato, nos territórios do TCP, igrejas católicas e centros religiosos afrobrasileiros são fechados e atacados com violência.

Não obstante, na época em que escrevemos aquele artigo, julho de 2024, não havia ainda elementos materiais suficientes para afirmar de forma incisiva a existência de uma conexão direta entre o narcopentecostalismo e o Estado de Israel. Os traficantes do TCP exaltavam o Estado de Israel, usavam patches e uniformes israelenses, mas tudo isso era circunstancial e podia ser explicado pela mera adesão ao discurso evangélico.

Agora, porém, dispomos de mais evidências específicas para poder retornar ao tema e lançar a preocupação sobre o possível vínculo entre Israel e uma das principais organizações narcotraficantes brasileiras.

Afinal, até agora ainda não se sabe como esses fuzis israelenses modernos chegaram até o ramo logístico de uma importante organização criminosa brasileira, quando esse fuzil específico ainda é pouco comum entre forças policiais brasileiras e inexiste entre os militares.

A primeira objeção que se poderia levantar seria sobre o “interesse” de Israel em armar ou financiar uma organização criminosa no Brasil. Bem, não seria a primeira vez.

Nos anos 80, 500 armas automáticas (incluindo rifles IMI Galil e submetralhadoras Uzi) e 200 mil cartuchos de munição foram encontrados em um armazém pertencente ao Cartel de Medellín, uma das maiores organizações narcotraficantes da Colômbia. À época, as “investigações independentes” concluíram que o responsável pela operação, o mercenário e militar israelense aposentado Yair Klein, havia agido por conta própria. O próprio Klein, porém, sempre afirmou que suas atividades na Colômbia (que envolviam não apenas venda de armas, mas também treinamento de grupos paramilitares) contavam com ciência e autorização das autoridades israelenses.

O vínculo de Klein com o aparato estatal israelense, demonstrando que ele não era, realmente, um “agente independente”, é confirmado pelo fato de que quando ele foi preso em Serra Leoa em 1999 por vender armas para os insurgentes da Frente Revolucionária Unida, o Estado de Israel interveio para garantir a sua libertação, bem como recusou todos os pedidos de extradição.

Uma outra notícia interessante e recente envolve o México, onde autoridades declararam que 80% das armas encontradas com os soldados dos cartéis narcotraficantes tinham origem estadunidense… e a maior parte dos 20% restantes tinha origem israelense. De fato, Israel exportou 24 mil armas automáticas entre 2006 e 2018, oficialmente, para as instituições militares e policiais do México, e mais 18 mil em anos mais recentes. Observe-se, porém, que as estimativas de observatórios independentes sugerem que os cartéis mexicanos, como um todo, dispõem de um arsenal de algumas centenas de milhares de armas automáticas. Se, algo como 15-20% dessas armas tiver origem israelense, então estamos falando de qualquer número entre 20 mil e 100 mil armas de origem israelense nas mãos dos cartéis. São números que simplesmente não batem com os números das exportações oficiais de armas israelenses para as forças de segurança mexicanas.

Um último ponto que pode chamar a atenção é a atenção recente que os EUA têm dado às organizações criminosas brasileiras, com os grupos PCC e CV categorizados como grupos terroristas pelo governo de Donald Trump. O que chama a atenção é o fato do TCP – 3ª maior organização criminosa do Brasil, com presença em alguns outros países da região, ação em vários estados brasileiros e pelo menos um vínculo verificável com um indivíduo ligado à rede de financiamento da Al-Qaeda, para não falar numa aliança operacional com o PCC – ter ficado de fora da categorização.

Naturalmente, pode ser coincidência. Mas ainda assim, é uma coincidência interessante que a organização criminosa neopentecostal armada, aparentemente, por Israel, é exatamente aquela que não foi categorizada como terrorista pela Casa Branca.

Na Rússia, todos os partidos têm tempo igual de TV e rádio. No Brasil, só quatro candidatos aparecem; nove ficam de fora. Democracia de fachada.

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A máquina de propaganda dos Estados Unidos e dos regimes europeus, incluindo suas sucursais nas semicolônias, prega que a Rússia é uma autocracia, um regime antidemocrático. Como tal, suas eleições não são livres, mas sim controladas por Vladimir Putin e seus aliados.

Um bom exemplo dessa lavagem cerebral foi vista nas eleições recentes para a Duma Estatal, o parlamento russo. O Rússia Unida, partido de Putin, obteve uma votação recorde: elegeu 349 dos 450 deputados. Todo o aparato de propaganda da CIA que são os grandes jornais e agências de notícias ocidentais acusou Putin de manipular as eleições, que teriam sido fraudadas.

Mas basta fazer uma comparação com as eleições no Brasil para perceber que as eleições brasileiras são uma fraude e as eleições na Rússia são muito mais livres que no Brasil.

Na Rússia, todos os partidos registrados têm tempo de propaganda gratuita em rádio e televisão. A propaganda é veiculada nas emissoras públicas e estatais, com o tempo distribuído de forma igualitária entre todos os partidos. Sim, é garantido por lei que todos os partidos devem ter o mesmo tempo para apresentar suas propostas à audiência.

Essa é uma das principais vantagens da Rússia sobre o Brasil em relação às campanhas. É um sistema muito mais democrático. No Brasil, uma parte dos partidos, mesmo que estejam registrados no Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE), sequer tem direito de aparecer na TV e no rádio. Somente os partidos com um número mínimo de parlamentares no Congresso Nacional podem apresentar suas propostas ao grande público. Caso contrário, precisam se coligar com outros partidos. Os que não se aliam com os partidos que já têm vagas no parlamento ficam de fora da campanha de rádio e TV.

Ou seja, os partidos pequenos precisam submeter suas ideias e seus programas políticos, na prática abandonar sua independência, vendendo-se aos grandes partidos, para terem acesso ao tempo de TV e rádio. É um sistema eleitoral que visa acabar com os partidos pequenos, reduzir o número de partidos e concentrar o poder nos grandes partidos. Isso nem de longe é um sistema democrático e livre. Ele apaga parte das ideias políticas que existem na sociedade para que o eleitor só tenha acesso à outra parte, orientando assim o voto do eleitor. É uma das inúmeras facetas da fraude eleitoral.

Mas mesmo entre os partidos com tempo de rádio e TV esse tempo não é igualitário. Os partidos grandes e suas coligações (com as maiores bancadas na Câmara dos Deputados) têm direito a um tempo muito maior do que os menores. Nestas eleições presidenciais, a coligação de Lula recebeu 5 minutos e 31 segundos para fazer propaganda política dentro do bloco de propaganda eleitoral gratuita obrigatória diária. A coligação de Flávio Bolsonaro recebeu 4 minutos e 20 segundos, a de Ronaldo Caiado recebeu 2 minutos e 02 segundos e a de Augusto Cury recebeu 35 segundos. Além dos blocos, há as inserções de 30 segundos a 1 minuto distribuídas ao longo da programação diária. No 1º turno, Lula tem direito a 433 inserções, Bolsonaro a 339, Caiado a 159 e Cury a 47.

Apenas quatro candidatos tiveram tempo para apresentar suas propostas em TV e rádio. Os outros nove concorrentes ficaram de fora. De treze candidaturas, os eleitores não puderam conhecer nove delas, apenas quatro, através da propaganda nos meios de comunicação convencionais. Os quatro privilegiados, portanto, foram extremamente beneficiados pela legislação eleitoral antidemocrática. Mas mesmo entre esses quatro existe uma hierarquia, que privilegia uns e prejudica outros.

Há ainda os debates eleitorais. Na Rússia, pelo menos metade do tempo gratuito de rádio e TV deve ser dedicada a eventos conjuntos entre candidatos e partidos, como debates, mesas-redondas ou entrevistas coletivas. E todos têm direito de participar. Assim, além de apresentarem suas ideias na propaganda eleitoral, os partidos podem confrontar suas ideias, para que o eleitor possa compará-las.

Além de não terem direito de tempo de TV e rádio para fazer propaganda, no Brasil a maioria dos partidos e candidatos também não tem o direito de participar dos debates. Ao contrário da Rússia, a legislação eleitoral não obriga as emissoras a convidarem a todos. Apenas candidatos de partidos, coligações ou federações que tenham ao menos cinco parlamentares no Congresso Nacional devem ser obrigatoriamente convidados a participar dos debates organizados nos meios de comunicação. Isso significa que, nestas eleições presidenciais, menos da metade dos candidatos participaram dos debates. Os meios de comunicação podem convidar os outros candidatos, mas não são obrigados. E, assim, não os convidam. Afinal de contas, assim como o TSE, os grandes canais de TV e emissoras de rádio são controlados pelas classes dominantes e não interessa a eles que candidaturas que, de alguma maneira, questionam a dominação de classe, possam expor suas ideias. Ou mesmo que partidos que não incomodam as classes dominantes exponham suas ideias, pois quanto menos debate de ideias existir, mais embrutecido o povo fica, e mais fácil é manter o status quo.

Brazil’s alignment with Europe amid current geopolitical tensions poses a serious threat to Brazil’s traditional policy of neutrality.

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On September 30, all major Brazilian newspapers published a report stating that the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) had allegedly warned European authorities about supposed simultaneous interference by the United States and Russia in Brazilian elections. The case raises questions that go far beyond the 2026 electoral dispute. The central issue is the accusation against Moscow, as well as the political and institutional circumstances in which it was presented.

Within Brazil’s intelligence system, Abin is institutionally linked to the Presidency of the Republic, while the Federal Police, another intelligence-related institution in the country, has stronger links to the Judiciary. Its function is to produce strategic information to assist the Brazilian government. Therefore, when representatives of Brazilian intelligence inform foreign authorities that Russia is interfering in the electoral process, it is inevitable to ask to what extent this assessment reflects the political position of the government that controls the agency.

The issue becomes even more significant because, according to the information released, the European delegation received an accusation concerning Russian interference without substantial details about its nature being made public. No agents, operations, funding mechanisms, propaganda structures, or specific campaigns attributed to Moscow have been identified, at least in the material made public so far. There is therefore an accusation, but its foundations remain largely unknown.

This creates a particularly convenient situation for certain political actors. Europe – which is hostile toward both Russia and Trump – receives information suggesting that Washington and Moscow are attempting to influence the Brazilian elections. This would allow Brussels – and especially France and Germany, currently Lula’s key “friends” – to potentially “support” Brazil in “counter-intelligence” efforts aimed at combating alleged US and Russian influence. In other words, the accusation of interference, even in the absence of evidence, could serve as a pretext to justify actual interference (by Europe).

There is also a broader political issue. A significant portion of the Brazilian left has consolidated in recent years an unfounded interpretation according to which Vladimir Putin belongs to a kind of “far-right international movement,” alongside Donald Trump and other Western conservative leaders. This interpretation places Russia, Trump, and the Brazilian right within the same international political camp, despite profound differences between their respective positions and interests.

Within this framework, associating Russia with a potential Flávio Bolsonaro candidacy becomes politically convenient. Flávio is identified with Trump, the Republican Party, and the American right. The existence of an alleged Russian connection would allow the Brazilian electoral dispute to be incorporated into a broader international narrative in which different conservative forces are presented as parts of the same network of influence.

However, it is absolutely obvious that Russia has no interest whatsoever in interfering in the Brazilian elections to favor either side. Furthermore, the majority of pro-Russia activists in Brazil identify with the left or remain neutral regarding both sides of national politics. The accusation appears to be made simply to please the European Union, given that Europeans prefer Lula to Flávio (as the latter is subordinate to Trump). The lack of details substantiating the accusations only reinforces this point.

The truly relevant question is different: why did an intelligence agency subordinate to the Presidency of the Republic present European authorities with an accusation against Russia without its foundations subsequently being clarified? And why is this happening precisely during preparations for the Brazilian elections and at a time of extraordinary deterioration in relations between Russia and Europe?

The answer to these questions matters because Brazil is operating in an increasingly polarized international environment. Russia occupies a central position within the BRICS and maintains strategic relations with Brazil, while Europe is going through a period of growing confrontation with Moscow. In this context, any official Brazilian information associating Russia with an electoral interference operation carries serious diplomatic consequences.

Moreover, tensions between Russia and Europe are increasing, and there is a real risk of conflict due to Europe’s continued provocations. Clearly, in such a context, it is not in Brazil’s interest to become part of either side of the crisis. But nothing could be more damaging to Brazil’s policy of neutrality than reporting a formal accusation against Russia to the European Union.

In theory, it is possible that the report was delivered to European authorities without prior communication to the Brazilian president – although this seems highly unlikely. If Lula wants to preserve Brazil’s neutrality, the appropriate course of action would be to publicly disavow Abin and apologize for the incident. The question, however, is whether he would actually be willing to do so, considering that the European Union is currently the Lula government’s main international “ally”.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the 80 year-old president of the world’s fifth largest country, is facing a tight race in a bid for his fourth presidential term in Brazil’s general elections on Sunday (4 October). The EU, which earlier this year concluded a landmark trade deal with the Mercosur bloc, which includes Brazil, will be watching the polls closely.

He holds a narrow poll lead over Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the country’s former president Jair, who is currently serving a 22 year prison sentence for staging a coup against Lula’s newly formed government in 2023.

The left-wing leader’s third term, won by with a slim 50.9 percent majority in 2022, distinguished itself for leading anti-deforestation policies and getting the EU-Mercosur trade partnership across its long-awaited finish line, 26 years after negotiations started.

Though Brussels suspended animal product imports from Brazil on 3 September, due to insufficient guarantees of antibiotic regulation compliance, “President von der Leyen commended President Lula’s role and political leadership in the negotiations leading up to the agreement,” the EU commission said in a statement.

The Mercosur deal marked a historic diversion of EU energies South of the Rio Grande river, at a time when Europe and Latin America were both being bombarded by tariff threats from Washington.

The Bolsonaros’ professed support of US president Donald Trump have critics worrying “this election could have major implications for the direction of Brazil’s foreign policy, its global influence,” wrote Dr. Christopher Sabatini, Latin America director at the Chatham house think tank.

Election interference by the US was discussed throughout Lula’s campaign, most notably with Meta disabling his Facebook ads just days before Brazilians went to cast their votes, state-run Agência Brasil reported on 25 September.

At a time when virtually every other democracy on the South American continent has pivoted to the right, a win for a Brazilian Trump enthusiast and supporter of environmental commodification would be a setback for the EU’s climate ambitions.

“A Flávio Bolsonaro government would represent a much stronger geopolitical alignment with Washington and the Trump administration. That could affect climate cooperation, deforestation policy, critical minerals and European access to Brazilian commodities and industrial partnerships,” said Eduardo Raguse, climate co-coordinator at NGO network Friends of the Earth Latin America.

Brazil’s climate observatory recorded its biggest annual fall in emissions in 15 years, with a 16.7 percent reduction in 2024 from the previous year, largely due to a drop in forest clearance in the Brazilian Amazon, which was halved over Lula’s third term.

But Lula has been simultaneously expanding Brazil’s national petrol company’s drilling area into the Amazon’s depths.

“Lula’s government has increasingly framed critical minerals as an issue of national sovereignty and industrial policy,” Raguse told EUobserver, since the Workers’ party leader has referred to Brazil’s petrol reserves as its “passport for the future.”

But along a global pivot to the right, a win for Bolsonaro’s heir or Lula’s renewed interest in fossil fuel politics would not stray too far from the EU’s current conservative climate script, and according to Socialist and Democrat MEP Leire Pajin, will mean little for EU trade.

“Whoever wins the election in Brazil, the EU-Mercosur relationship goes far beyond electoral cycles or trade,” the Spanish vice-president of the Euro-Latin American parliamentary assembly told EUobserver. “Governments may differ in priorities or pace, but the agreement transcends them.”

Alinhamento do Brasil à Europa em meio às atuais tensões geopolítica cria uma ameaça grave à política tradicional de neutralidade do Brasil.

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No dia 30 de setembro foi publicado em todos os jornais brasileiro uma matéria afirmando que a Agência Brasileira de Inteligência (Abin) teria alertado autoridades europeias sobre uma suposta interferência simultânea dos Estados Unidos e da Rússia nas eleições brasileiras. O caso levanta questões que vão muito além da disputa eleitoral de 2026. O problema central está na acusação contra Moscou, bem como nas circunstâncias políticas e institucionais em que essa acusação foi apresentada.

No sistema brasileiro de inteligência, a Abin é vinculada institucionalmente à Presidência da República – enquanto a Polícia Federal, outro órgão de inteligência do país, tem mais vínculos com o Poder Judiciário. Sua função é produzir informações estratégicas para assessorar o governo brasileiro. Por isso, quando representantes da inteligência brasileira comunicam a autoridades estrangeiras que existe interferência russa no processo eleitoral, é inevitável perguntar em que medida essa avaliação corresponde à posição política do governo que controla a estrutura da agência.

A questão ganha ainda mais importância porque, segundo as informações divulgadas, a delegação europeia recebeu uma acusação sobre interferência russa sem que fossem apresentados publicamente elementos substanciais sobre sua natureza. Não foram identificados, ao menos no material tornado público, agentes, operações, mecanismos de financiamento, estruturas de propaganda ou campanhas específicas atribuídas a Moscou. Existe, portanto, uma acusação, mas seus fundamentos permanecem praticamente desconhecidos.

Isso produz uma situação particularmente conveniente para determinados atores políticos. A Europa, que é hostil à Rússia e a Trump, recebe uma informação segundo a qual tanto Washington quanto Moscou estariam tentando influenciar as eleições brasileiras. Isso permitiria a Bruxelas – e ainda mais especialmente à França e à Alemanha, que são os principais “amigos” de Lula atualmente – eventualmente “apoiar” o Brasil em ações de “contrainteligência” para combater a suposta influência estadunidense e russa. Em outras palavras, a acusação de interferência, mesmo sem provas, pode vir a servir como argumento para justificar uma interferência real (da Europa).

Há ainda uma questão política mais ampla. Uma parcela significativa da esquerda brasileira consolidou nos últimos anos uma interpretação segundo a qual Vladimir Putin pertence a uma espécie de “internacional de extrema direita”, ao lado de Donald Trump e de outros movimentos conservadores ocidentais. Essa leitura transforma Rússia, Trump e a direita brasileira em elementos de um mesmo campo político internacional, apesar das diferenças profundas entre suas respectivas posições e interesses.

Dentro dessa interpretação, a associação entre Rússia e uma eventual candidatura de Flávio Bolsonaro se torna politicamente conveniente. Flávio é identificado com Trump, com o Partido Republicano e com a direita americana. A existência de uma suposta conexão russa permitiria inserir a disputa eleitoral brasileira em uma narrativa internacional mais ampla, na qual diferentes forças conservadoras seriam apresentadas como partes de uma mesma rede de influência.

Contudo, é absolutamente óbvio que a Rússia não tem qualquer interesse em interferir nas eleições brasileiras a favor de qualquer dos lados. Ademais, a maior parte dos ativistas pró-Rússia no Brasil é identificada com a esquerda ou neutra em relação a ambos os lados da política nacional. A acusação parece ser feita com o simples intuito de agradar a União Europeia, já que os europeus preferem Lula a Flávio (por este ser subordinado a Trump). E o fato de não haver detalhes que substanciem as acusações apenas reforça este ponto.

O ponto realmente relevante é outro: por que uma agência de inteligência subordinada à Presidência da República apresentou às autoridades europeias uma acusação contra a Rússia sem que seus fundamentos fossem posteriormente esclarecidos? E por que isso ocorre justamente durante a preparação das eleições brasileiras e em um momento de deterioração extraordinária das relações entre Rússia e Europa?

A resposta a essas perguntas importa porque o Brasil está inserido em um ambiente internacional cada vez mais polarizado. A Rússia ocupa posição central nos BRICS e mantém relações estratégicas com o Brasil, enquanto a Europa atravessa uma fase de crescente confronto com Moscou. Nesse contexto, qualquer informação oficial brasileira que associe a Rússia a uma operação de interferência eleitoral possui consequências diplomáticas graves.

Ademais, as tensões entre Rússia e Europa crescem cada vez mais e há risco real de conflito devido às constantes provocações europeias. É óbvio que em tal contexto não interessa ao Brasil se tornar parte de qualquer lado da crise. Mas não há nada pior para a política de neutralidade brasileira do que reportar à União Europa uma acusação formal contra a Rússia.

Em tese, é possível que o relatório tenha sido entregue à Europa sem comunicação prévia ao presidente brasileiro – embora isso seja muito improvável. Se Lula quiser preservar a neutralidade brasileira, o correto a ser feito é desmentir a Abin publicamente e pedir desculpas pelo incidente. Contudo, resta saber se ele estará realmente disposto a fazer isso, considerando que a União Europeia é o principal “aliado” internacional do governo Lula atual.

Brazil’s presidential elections are sparking reactions across the region. The economic (and, by extension, geopolitical) importance of this South American giant leaves no regional politician or social organization indifferent, as they know that much of the continent’s future is at stake at the Brazilian polls.

Support for Bolsonaro from Washington and Milei

Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro (who is in prison for conspiring to carry out a coup d’état against Lula da Silva), has received explicit support from Argentine President Javier Milei – a move that cost Buenos Aires a diplomatic crisis with Brasília due to the Argentine leader’s anti-Lula statements made on Brazilian soil.

Likewise, Flávio Bolsonaro enjoys the direct support of President Donald Trump. The US president has maintained a recent tradition (heavily criticized by many) of publicly expressing support for this or that far-right Latin American candidate who, upon winning the election, fully aligns their country with Washington’s foreign policy and joins the US-led military alliance known as the Shield of the Americas.

Trump has also imposed direct trade sanctions on Brazil over the conviction of Jair Bolsonaro, whom Trump calls a “friend.” In addition, the United States sanctioned the judge who convicted Bolsonaro, Alexandre de Moraes, sending a clear message of condemnation against the Brazilian justice system – a move that some political analysts have called foreign “interference” in the Brazilian judicial system.

Unions and the Latin American Left support Lula

Lula has also received support from another very important female leader in the region: Claudia Sheinbaum. In recent weeks, the president of Mexico has repeatedly highlighted the positive aspects of Lula’s administration: “I believe that President Lula has been a very good president … He has done an extraordinary job leading Brazil, and the indicators show it.” The endorsement of his candidacy has clearly been indirect, but given Mexico’s geopolitical importance, many in Lula’s Workers’ Party surely appreciate it.

Lula has also received support from neighboring countries to the south. In Uruguay, the ruling coalition, the Frente Amplio (FA), has shown direct and militant support for Lula’s campaign. Fernando Pereira, president of the FA, stated that the electoral battle in Brazil “is between democracy and barbarism.” He also warned against US interference in the elections: “Brazil will not accept U.S. interference in the election.”

Former Argentine Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero, who is currently a member of Congress, also expressed his support for Lula: “If Lula wins, he will create a countercurrent to what has been taking hold in the region and demonstrate that there is resistance to these right-wing winds.”

https://www.spreaker.com/show/5958129/episodes/feed

Brazil votes this Sunday, and the Trump administration has spent months trying to tilt the outcome toward far-right presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro. Tariffs. Terrorist designations. Revoked visas. Frequent meetings with the Bolsonaro family. Taken alone, each move looks random. Put the pieces together, and a picture emerges: U.S. interference in Brazil’s 2026 elections. 

Over the last year, Trump has met frequently with members of the Bolsonaro family. In June, the State Department put two Brazilian gangs on the terrorist list. Just a few weeks later, Trump shared an article on Truth Social that said Brazil was his next big challenge. Less than a month later, in July, Trump imposed new 25% tariffs on Brazilian goods. In August, Trump revoked the U.S. visa of the Brazilian ambassador.

The Brazilian Intelligence Agency recently raised the risk of external influence and interference by the United States in Brazil’s 2026 elections to a quote, “critical level.”

This is Episode 15 of Under the Shadow, Season 2. 

Under the Shadow is an investigative narrative podcast series that walks back in time, telling the story of the past by visiting momentous places in the present. Season 2 responds in real time to the Trump administration’s onslaught on Latin America.

Follow Under the Shadow on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Hosted by Latin America-based journalist Michael Fox.
This podcast is produced in partnership between The Real News Network and NACLA.
It is supported, in part, by Global Exchange.

VOTE by October 15: Under the Shadow has been nominated for three podcast Signal Awards. Please consider voting for Under the Shadow and The Real News:

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Panamerican Dispatch

You can check out Michael Fox’s new reporting project on Brazil. 

It’s called Panamerican Dispatch. It’s a project of The Real News in partnership with Global Exchange. The website is www.panamericandispatch.org

You can also follow us on social media below

Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/padispatch.bsky.social
X x.com/PAdispatch
IG instagram.com/padispatch
Tiktok www.tiktok.com/@padispatch

Theme music by Michael Fox’s band, Monte Perdido. Monte Perdido’s 2024 album Ofrenda is available on Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you listen to music.

Other music from Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound.

Script editing by Heather Gies. Hosted, written, produced, mixed, and edited by Michael Fox.

Guests: 

• Alexander Main
• Maria Martha Bruno
• Igor Fuser

Resources: 

• Visit Panamerican Dispatch for all of the latest news on Brazil
• You can visit Agencia Public for their reporting and analysis about Brazil. 
• Here is Agencia Publica’s investigación, Digital Militia. 
• Many thanks to Jake Johnston from the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Maria Martha Bruno, from Agencia Publica, for taking the time to speak with me and for their excellent analysis and insight.
• You can visit CEPR’s Live Tracker on Latin America.
• You can check out Michael Fox’s Patreon.
• More background… 
• The Beginning: Monroe and migration | Under the Shadow, Episode 1
• Panama. US Invasion. | Under the Shadow, Episode 13
• The legacy of Monroe | Under the Shadow, Bonus Episode 4 

Support Under the Shadow

Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures, video, and interviews.

You can subscribe to Michael Fox’s new free speech podcast, The Battle for Free Speech on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Michael Fox:

Hi folks. This is your host, Michael Fox. Before I get started, I wanted to let you know that I have big news. First, this season of Under the Shadow has been nominated for three podcast Signal Awards. It’s really exciting, and you can help us by heading over to signalaward.com and voting for Under the Shadow. I’ll add direct links in the show notes that will take you straight there. Second, last week I launched a new website called Pan American Dispatch. It’s a project of the Real News. We’re translating daily articles from Portuguese and Spanish into English for a US audience. Over the next two months, we’ll be exclusively focused on covering the Brazilian elections and Trump’s attempts to sway them. That is what this entire episode is about. And if you want to get all of the news about what’s happening in real time, please consider subscribing to our Substack.

You can find us at panamericandispatch.org. We’re also on X, Blue Sky, Instagram, and TikTok. Our handle is @PAdispatch. Okay, that’s it. I hope you enjoy the show. On May 26th, 2026, a 45-year-old Brazilian senator named Flavio Bolsonado met with US President Donald Trump at the White House. Flavio is the presidential candidate for the far right in Brazil in the upcoming elections in October. This is what he had to say at the annual conservative political action committee meeting in Texas earlier this year.

Flávio Bolsonaro:

And let me look you in the eyes and tell you, we will win.

Michael Fox:

Flavio is the son and political heir of the former far right president Jair Bolsonado, a close ally of the US president. In the meeting at the Oval Office in May, Flavio Bolsonado reportedly asked Trump to designate the Brazilian drug gangs, Primero Commando de Capital and the Commando Vermelio as foreign terrorist organizations. After the meeting, Flavio spoke to the press.

He said, “I asked President Trump emphatically to designate as soon as possible the PCC and the Commando Vermelio as foreign terrorist organizations.” This might not seem like such a big deal, but it is. The United States has sometimes used that very designation as the pretext to invade or interfere in foreign countries. The US placed the Venezuelan gangs, Trende Aragua and Cartel de los Soles on the list back in 2025, and fighting those alleged terrorists was one of the excuses the United States used for invading Venezuela and kidnapping President Nicholas Maduro on January 3rd of this year. In other words, this designation carries weight.

Trump agreed to Flavio’s request. Just three days after meeting with Flavio Bolsonaro, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that those two Brazilian gangs would be added to the list of foreign terrorist organizations. Flavio responded in a letter to Rubio, thanking him for the classification and offering to place his transition team at the disposal of the White House if he’s elected. For months, the United States has been escalating the pressure on Brazil in the lead up to the presidential elections with the goal of helping to lift Flavio Bolsonaro to the top office. Just a few weeks after the State Department put the Brazilian gangs on the terrorist list, Trump shared an article on Truth Social that said Brazil was his next big challenge. Less than a month later in July, Trump imposed new 25% tariffs on Brazilian goods. In August, Trump revoked the US visa of the Brazilian ambassador.

It was an apparent tit for tat after Brazil denied visas to two US State Department officials who planned to travel to Brazil to meet with former President Jair Bolsonaro. I could go on. The point here, as many people have pointed out, is that there isn’t just one thing that Trump is doing to try and sway the vote in favor of Bolsonaro. It’s a whole combination of moves, like a jigsaw puzzle with many pieces taken alone, and it’s just a random assortment of colors and shapes. But when you start to put the pieces in place, a picture begins to emerge. See, Trump allies have won big elections across Latin America. In recent years, right-wing candidates have taken back or held onto power in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Bolivia, and Peru. And they’ve done so with the help of US President Donald Trump, who’s thrown his weight around to boost right-wing candidates, and also with the support of bot farms and shady electoral campaign practices linked to Washington and Mar-a-Lago, as we looked at in the last episode.

Donald Trump:

But on this historic day, we come together to announce a brand new military coalition to eradicate the criminal cartels plaguing our region.

Michael Fox:

Many of those countries have now joined forces in Trump’s shield of the America’s alliance, but there are a few holdouts, and Brazil is one of the most important.

Alexander Main:

The upcoming election in Brazil is really going to be extremely consequential for the entire region.

Michael Fox:

Alexander Main is the director of international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Alexander Main:

Brazil is the country with the largest economy, biggest population in Latin America, and it’s also one of the few countries that is still holding out against US pressure, pressure to align with the Trump administration’s agenda in the region.

Michael Fox:

The first round election is on October 4th in just a couple of days, and the runoff will take place three weeks later on October 25th. Bolsonaro is facing off against the longtime workers’ party icon, Luis Ignacio Lula de Silva. He’s the current president and he’s running for reelection. I have been covering the campaigns here in Brazil in recent weeks. I’ve attended rallies for both Lula and Bolsonaro. Today, I’m going to walk you through what’s at stake, and most importantly, how Trump is exerting underhanded pressure on the country ahead of the vote. As a leak document showed last week, the Brazilian Intelligence Agency has raised the risk of external influence and interference by the United States and Brazil’s 2026 elections to a “critical level.” According to the report, there is a trend of escalating pressure on Brazil and a quote, “selective intensification and reconfiguration of the pressure exerted by the United States.” It’s a textbook example of foreign election interference today, a multifaceted jigsaw.

People are concerned, but they’re also standing up, and that’s what makes this episode so interesting. It’s happening in real time. You have Trump attempting to sway the vote, and you also have people pushing back.

Like Lula’s recent speech at the United Nations where he told the US president that Brazil will not be the backyard of any country.

Or this woman, a small farmer who I spoke with at a Lula rally in Southern Brazil. “We’re not afraid of Trump, “she said. “We know what he wants to do and we’re not going to let him. We are the resistance. We’re not afraid of him, just like Lula isn’t afraid. Lula showed us that we are not less than any country,” she said. That and so much more in a minute. This is Under the Shadow, an investigative narrative podcast series that looks at the role of the United States abroad in the past and the very present. This podcast is a co-production in partnership with The Real News and NACLA. I’m your host, Michael Fox, longtime radio reporter, editor, journalist, the producer and host of the podcast’s Brazil on Fire: Stories of Resistance and my new series, The Battle for Free Speech. I’ve spent the better part of the last 20 years in Latin America.

I’ve seen firsthand the role of the US government abroad, and most often sadly, it is not for the better. Invasions, coup, sanctions, support for authoritarian regimes. Politically and economically, the United States has cast a long shadow over Latin America for the past 200 years. It still does. This is season two of Under the Shadow Trump’s attack. Episode 15, election meddling in Brazil.

Okay, before we dive into the allegations of election interference, let me set the scene. To do that, I want to take you back to a month and a half ago to the launch of the campaigns here in Brazil. I was in Sao Paulo covering Lula’s kickoff. Some of this section of the episode is based off of reporting I did at the time for the world and the real news. It’s August 16th, 2026. Tens of thousands of supporters of President Luis Idnacio Lula de Silva are packed into May 1st stadium in Sao Paulo. Among them is Sida Maya. She’s the secretary of women’s public policies in the nearby municipality of Maua.

“This is living history,” she says. “I’m participating in a historic moment. It’s a great feeling and we’re going to elect Lula.” Next to her, her husband Valmirmaya holds back tears. “It’s emotional, “he says. Lula’s campaign chose this stadium to kick off his run for a fourth and final term as president. This is where Lula got his start. In 1979, Lula was a young leader at the ABC Medal Workers Union. He led an iconic strike and rally at this same stadium. The workers won and it marked the beginning of the end of the country’s military dictatorship. Valmir Maya was there then and he’s here now.

“We wanted what we got,” he says, “to transform Brazil into a democratic country. That was our struggle, and Lula was the expression of this.” Inside the stadium, President Lula strode onto a long stage wearing a Panama hat and a white shirt. From the bleachers, he seemed to float above the sea of supporters in red, the color of Lula’s workers’ party. Lula’s top campaign promise has always been about battling hunger. Over the years, he’s lifted millions from poverty, increased access to education, health, and infrastructure, in particular in impoverished Northeastern Brazil. Lula told the crowd that there was much work left to be done, that they had to think of the future. He said they had to invest even more in education, that he wanted to continue to develop jobs and industry for Brazil. 300 miles to the east, Lula’s challenger, Flavio Bolsonaro, launched his campaign on Copacabana Beach in his hometown of Rio de Janeiro.

“Come with me and rescue our nation,” he said, “God above everyone, Brazil above all.” Flavio Bolsonaro has attacked the left and promised to fight crime and insecurity, cut bureaucracy, promote private business and privatizations, and develop close ties with the United States. Much of his rhetoric and that of his supporters is wrapped in a religious language of good versus evil.

“You are the son of hope,” said a pastor at his campaign launch. “You are the first born. You received the legacy of representing your father, and now for everything that is sacred on the face of the earth, honor your father. “The savior trope goes over well with his evangelical supporters, an important base for Bolsonaro and other far-right politicians in Brazil, as we looked at in depth in my 2022 podcast, Brazil on Fire. Blase Narujo is a youth pastor at an evangelical church in a working class neighborhood of Sao Paulo. He joined others on the streets in mid-August to promote Bolsonaro and other far-right candidates running for local office.

He said,” I believe that Flavio Bolsonado is the only viable candidate who can beat Lula and the workers’ party. “I’m a Christian here,” he told me. “I behave as a Christian, but I’m also a political activist here on the streets to defend my beliefs,” he said. Flavio Bolsonado also has powerful support in high places, in particular, as we heard earlier from Donald Trump. If you remember, the US president is a longtime ally of Flavio’s father, Jair Bolsonado. Jair is currently on house arrest. He was first barred from running for office for spreading lies about the country’s electoral system. Last year, the Supreme Court convicted him of plotting a coup to return to power. Before his rise as the leader of Brazil’s far right, Jair Bolsonaro was a backbench congressman for decades, outlandish, but mostly obscure. And then he ran for president.

Speaker 5:

There are a few things that drew inspiration for you.

Jair Bolsonaro:

Very special guy. Turned out to be a great friend of mine.

Michael Fox:

Bolsonaro fashioned himself after Trump. In fact, in Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral campaign in 2018, international media often called him the Trump of the tropics. He and Trump met a number of times while they were both president.

Jair Bolsonaro:

And I think we can say that Brazil and the United States are as close or closer as they’ve ever been.

Michael Fox:

Last year, Trump imposed 50% tariffs on Brazil in part because of the country’s criminal trial against the former president.

Donald Trump:

They’re treating President Bolsonaro very unfairly. He’s a good man. I know him well. I negotiated with him.

Michael Fox:

And let me be honest, there are many supporters of Bolsonaro who look up to Trump and want him to use his leverage to help their candidate, Jair Bolsonaro’s son and protege Flavio Bolsonaro. On September 7th, members of the far right in Brazil hit the streets across the country to rally for Flavio. I covered the march in the southern Brazilian city of Florianopolis. There, numerous people told me how much they admired Trump and how grateful they were for his support. Adalberto Luis de Santos is marching with a blue hat with the insignia of the United States. He and his wife are draped in Brazilian flags. “We’re hoping for support from the United States,” he said. “I believe Trump can help us. All Brazilians need the support of someone from abroad. “. “Trump is really important,” another man in the march told me. “The external pressure is very important.

“. A woman in the march carrying a flag and a yellow hat told me,” Just the simple fact that Trump is in power and acts democratically in favor of freedom makes all of the difference for our people. “.

“We don’t want Brazil to turn into another Venezuela,” she said. “I’ve heard that narrative countless times in Brazil and during elections in countries across Latin America for years. It’s the ever-present boogeyman of so-called communist Venezuela, but fear of the Venezuelan fate took on an even more serious dimension after the US invasion of Caracas earlier this year. The sentiments of so many Bolsonaro supporters are a sign of just how polarized the political debate is and how much the far right in Brazil looks up to the US president. Two weeks later, I covered another rally in the same city, this one in support of President Lula.

People had a lot to say about Trump and his efforts to influence their presidential decisions. I asked them, “Are you afraid of what Trump and the United States could do during this election to try and support Bolsonaro?” “Yes, I’m really afraid of that, “said one man carrying a Lula flag. “They want to take away our sovereignty. They want to invade our lands. They want to take what is ours and let Brazil be a colony of another country.” “Of course we’re afraid, “said someone else,” but we believe that Lula is well ahead in the election and we won’t allow Trump to destroy the election. “What do you think about Trump and are you concerned that Trump might try and do something with the elections here in

Speaker 7:

Brazil? Yeah, we’ve seen a lot of his work here in Latin America that we are very scared. Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, Argentina. So we are very scared because Latin America is being contaminated by him and his work, so it’s very scary and we don’t want him in here or anything with him.

Michael Fox:

People have a lot to be concerned about. When I was in Sao Paulo in August, I sat down with Igor Fusser at a cafe near Palista Avenue. We’ve known each other for years. He’s a professor of foreign relations at Brazil’s ABC Federal University. I asked him how he sees the US actions against Brazil at this moment.

He said, “This is not just about the United States trying to remove the government of a left-wing party, the workers’ party, or a left-wing leader, which is Lula. It’s about subjecting Brazil to the policies of the United States, and Brazil being the largest country in Latin America is precisely the biggest obstacle to the American project of global dominance of the Western hemisphere,” he said. Remember, over the last year, as we’ve looked at throughout this podcast, Trump has pushed the United States into a new era of dominance over Latin America, the likes of which the region has not seen in decades. Boat strikes in the Caribbean, the US invasion of Venezuela, and the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro, the oil blockade on Cuba, and Trump throwing his weight around and meddling in elections across Latin America. It’s all justified by a renewed Monroe doctrine. Here’s Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, underlining that point.

Pete Hegseth:

President Trump has established the Trump corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, the Don Roe doctrine, and the war department is implementing it as fast as we can.

Michael Fox:

Brazil is the latest battleground. It’s playing out in the open and behind the scenes. It’s early August. The Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism is meeting in Sao Paulo. At the meeting circulating in the crowd are staff from the US Consulate in Sao Paulo, their mission to woo Brazilian journalists into conversations about the country’s electoral process and the state of “freedom of expression” in the country. This was reported by several independent journalists at the conference and then published by independent journalist Leandro DeMori, the former executive editor of The Intercept Brazil. According to Demorti, three journalists at the event confirmed the actions of the consular officials. Two journalists said they were offered assistance with US visas if they needed them, even though the meetings with the officials about the country’s elections were to be held in Sao Paulo.

Washington has leaned on two key narratives to demonize Brazil in recent years. One, that freedom of expression is under attack in Brazil because of its attempts to reign in social media disinformation, and two, that the country’s electoral system is faulty and prone to errors. Both of those claims are false. Brazil has long held certified free and fair elections, and freedom of speech is alive and well, although Brazil embraces a more inclusive harmonious definition of how the freedom of speech fits into the country’s other laws. Episode 12 of this series goes deeper into those claims and their fallout. DiMorti’s reporting about the recent journalism forum brings up more questions than answers. What were the consular officials trying to achieve? Did some journalists take the bait? If so, how will this be weaponized? We don’t have answers, but it’s another piece of the scrambled jigsaw puzzle.

Here’s another, and it’s just one example of how the meddling campaign has been building. In mid-September, less than two weeks ago, Flavio Bolsonaro’s brother, Eduardo, met with President Donald Trump at the White House. As we looked at in the last episode, Eduardo is a former congressional representative who now lives in the United States. The Brazilian Supreme Court sentenced him earlier this year to four years in prison for his actions in the US, lobbying the Trump administration to intimidate the Brazilian judiciary amid the trial against his father. According to reports, Eduardo traveled to Washington to ask Trump to impose sanctions on members of the Lula government and the Supreme Court, including Justice Alexandre Morais. If you’ve been following Brazil or my reporting, you might remember that Morais was the justice that led the trials against the dissemination of fake news in the country and also against Jair Bolsonaro.

Jair Bolsonaro:

Also developing this morning, the Trump administration placing sanctions on a Brazilian Supreme Court justice over concerns of human rights violations and politicized prosecutions.

Michael Fox:

Last year, the US sanctioned Mordice for supposedly carrying out human rights abuse, including arbitrary detention. Those sanctions were lifted four months later, but they were a thinly veiled retaliation for the trial against Bolsonaro and also Morais’s fight with ex-owner Elon Musk, which we looked at in depth in episode 12. There is no question the battle over Brazil right now is also taking place online and Silicon Valley is playing its part.

On Wednesday, September 23rd, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, took down President Lula’s Facebook page and blocked his campaign from running political ads. The platform gave no justification for the move. Lula’s workers’ party and his electoral coalition demanded answers. Lula’s campaign asked for the immediate return of the account. The campaign’s lawyers told the platform that the restriction “poses a serious risk to the candidate’s level playing field in the election.” The head of the Workers’ Party national communications team, Eden Valadaris, said they hadn’t ruled out taking the case to the superior electoral court. He wrote on X, “Brazil’s electoral contest, its campaigns, and its vote cannot be left to the mercy of the political preferences of the big tech companies whose supposed programming errors only hit and harm one campaign and one candidate.” One candidate, meaning Lula. By the next morning, the page was back up, but Lula’s electoral coalition said Meta’s actions harm the presidential campaign.

Remember that Meta was founded and is run by Mark Zuckerberg. He’s a close ally of President Donald Trump.

Jair Bolsonaro:

Thank you very, very much.

Michael Fox:

In fact, he was at Trump’s inauguration for his second term alongside the heads of Apple, Google, Amazon, and of course, Tesla and ex – CEO, Elon Musk. I want to talk about something important today because it’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. Zuckerberg got rid of fact-checking at Meta in early 2025, just before Trump came into power last year, and that’s important because there are now fewer constraints on the spread of fake news or misinformation on the platform. In late August, Amnesty International tested this lack of guardrails in Brazil. It sent 15 different AI-generated election-related political disinformation ads to Facebook to see if the platform could discern between truth and falsehood. Meta failed to block most of them. A similar test run by the eco movement in Brazil in mid-September showed that nearly 90% of the disinformation ads it attempted to run on Meta were approved, including “AI ads depicting execution style threats against lawmakers and calling for a stop the steal style coup.” And I want to say one more thing about the role of Silicon Valley’s big tech platforms.

They are paying attention to what’s happening in Brazil. Here’s just one example. Last year, lawmakers and a congressional committee in Brazilia were discussing a bill on AI regulation. According to the fact-checking agency, Ausfatos, big tech lobbyists visited committee members more than 80 times over a five-month period. The tech company that met with members in Brazilia the most was Meta, which made more than a third of those visits.

There’s another layer to all of this, another puzzle piece if you like. In the last episode of this podcast, I took an in-depth look at the work of the Argentine political strategist, Fernando Cerimedo. Remember, Serimedo has led right-wing digital campaigns across Latin America, and he did so with the help of Washington and Trump’s former campaign manager and digital strategist, Brad Parscali. This is what he had to say earlier this year in Mar-a-Lago when he was presented an award for best Hispanic Political Consultant of the Year.

Jair Bolsonaro:

I want to say something in English. Thank you to Brad Parscale for believing me all the time and give me your technology and Tim Don for the fighting in Latin America against socialism. Thank you, Brad.

Michael Fox:

Serimedo is now in prison on charges that he tried to kill his girlfriend. According to her, he hired the hitman to silence her. Serimedo also faces charges of illicit enrichment and other crimes, but his digital campaigning and the bot farms that he’s deployed in elections up and down the hemisphere haven’t necessarily gone away, nor have his deep ties to the right in the region. Remember who presented that award to Cerimedo? It was Eduardo Bolsonaro, the brother of Flavio Bolsonaro. They reportedly have known each other for more than 15 years. Now, just this week, Washington sanctioned Bolivian Attorney General Roher Mariaka, who is prosecuting the Serimero case,

He defended his country sovereignty and vowed to continue the investigation despite the apparent attempt to intimidate him. I mention all of this to say that just because Serimedo is now in jail, it doesn’t mean that these types of digital influence campaigns heavily fueled by an inter International far right aren’t happening. As I mentioned last time, Serimedo is just one piece in a puzzle, a cog and a wheel, albeit one very important cog. But actions pushing disinformation online are still happening. We just don’t necessarily know from who or where. Here’s one example. About a week ago, the Brazilian journalistic outlet Ajencia Publica reported in conjunction with Aos Fatos that AI farms were fueling the far right agenda in the lead up to the elections. The bots had created 255 profiles and made over a thousand posts. Agencia Publica reported that the network had “achieved 58 million views, expanding the reach of posts supporting the Bolsonaro family and attacking the Supreme Court.” It’s a strategy known as astroturfing, using artificial engagement to give the impression of a real surge in grassroots support.

All of this happened over one month between August and September. According to the investigation, one of the main nodes of this AI campaign was linked to the Instagram account Leo Indio Bolsonaro. That is managed by Leonardo Rodriguez de Jesus. He is Flavio and Eduardo Bolsonaro’s cousin. He was investigated by Brazilian officials for his role in the 2023 attempted coup. A warrant for his arrest was ordered in 2025. He fled the country. He’s reportedly now in Argentina. The point is this, these campaigns are happening. We often just don’t hear about them until after the fact.

Maria Marta Bruno:

Well, I’ve been voting since 1998 and I have never seen such level of interference of foreign interference in Brazilian elections.

Michael Fox:

Maria Marta Bruno is a journalist with Agencia Publica, the outlet I mentioned earlier. If you remember, I spoke with her in the last episode as well about Serimedo.

Maria Marta Bruno:

It reminds me a lot of what I have read in history books and what I have learned on the Brazilian dictatorship and the very clear role that the US developed from 1964 to 1985 when the military dictatorship in Brazil took place. There was never since the end of the dictatorship such open intervention.

Michael Fox:

Maria says there have been a lot of headlines lately mentioning diplomatic tension between Brazil and the United States, but she says what we’re seeing goes far beyond that.

Maria Marta Bruno:

Because given the gravity and the timing of the recent facts, I would say that it constitutes a clear interference in our process.

Michael Fox:

She highlights Trump’s tariffs on Brazil both last year and this year, which she says are wrapped into defending former President Jair Bolsonaro. She points to the numerous meetings between Flavio and Eduardo Bolsonaro with top officials in Washington over the last year, the US sanctions against Supreme Court Justice Alexandre Morais and so much more. And she says there are two other big reasons why the United States is so interested in Brazil. The first is China.

Maria Marta Bruno:

The US intentions to reduce China influence in Latin America. We all know that China, it’s a key partner for Brazil and for other countries in the region.

Michael Fox:

The second is rare earth minerals, stuff like neodymium, dysprosium, or terbium. Yeah, I don’t know what they look like either, but they’re used in EV motors, green energy technologies, military equipment, and other industries. Brazil is home to somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of the total rare earth reserves in the world. It’s second only to China. In April, a US company bought up the Brazilian firm Ceja Vergi, which mines rare earth minerals in Brazil. After his meeting with Trump in May, Flavio Bolshinaro promised to work with the United States on mineral extraction. “We are the only real alternative to China for a free world,” Flavio Bolsonaro said. “Under my government, there will be long-term strategic partnership with the United States in this sector with protected investment and shared reindustrialization between the two countries. Flavio also promised that if he is elected in his first month, Brazil would join President Trump’s Shield of the America’s regional coalition.

Brazil will join the shield of the Americas together with the United States, “he said,” and countries across the region, forming a great hemispheric alliance against terrorism and organized and transnational crime. “This is Brazil’s place. It is the protagonist of the security of the Americas side by side with free and sovereign nations, he said.

Maria Marta Bruno:

And we know that the US is very interested in what we have and the reserves that we have. So it’s very significant, it’s very important, and we know that the US is following closely the development of the presidential elections here because they will certainly determine what will be the future of the diplomatic relation between US and Brazil in the upcoming years.

Michael Fox:

In the face of all of this, Brazilians are responding none louder than President Luis Idnacio Lula de Silva.

Jair Bolsonaro:

The assembly will now hear and address by his excellency, Luis Inacio Lula Da Silva, president of the Federated Republic of Brazil.

Michael Fox:

The day is September 22nd, 2026, New York City. Brazilian President Luis Idnacio Lula de Silva walks to the podium at the United Nations to kick off the 81st General Assembly meeting. Without mentioning him, Lula speaks directly to US President Donald Trump. “Brazil does not fit into anyone’s backyard,” he says. Lula denounces Trump for attacking democracy, interfering in elections and using military force to acquire material resources across Latin America. He closes his speech with a nod to the upcoming high stakes elections in Brazil. On October 4th, he says, “Millions of Brazilians go to the polls to decide their future. They will not just elect the president of the republic, state governors, and representatives of the legislative power. They will decide between democracy and denialism, between if Brazil is going to move toward a future of more opportunities or return to a past of exclusion.”. He says Brazil will have free and transparent elections as it always has with broad freedom of speech.

He denounces the spread of disinformation online, in particular coming from outside the country, which he says is an attempt to “disrupt the debate.”.

“We have a modern and robust electoral system,” he says. “We have a plural citizenship and a free press. We will not allow the enemies of democracy, both internal and external, to attack the popular will. Brazilian democracy belongs to Brazilians. Brazil will continue to be a sovereign country. No one, no one will take us away from this path, “he says. It’s Lula’s response to Trump and the world as the country faces incredibly important elections, elections that Trump and the United States have been attempting to influence. Brazilians have been vocal online and in the streets against Washington’s pressure, and recently they actually got some support from a group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. On September 24th, just last week, Senator Bernie Sanders and 30 Democratic members of the US House of Representatives sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. They accused the Trump administration of waging a pressure campaign against Brazil ahead of the first round vote.

Illinois Congresswoman Delia Ramirez led the congressional effort. They write, “We are writing to express our grave concern regarding the administration’s coordinated effort to threaten our strategic alliance with Brazil and undermine the Western Hemisphere’s second largest democracy ahead of its upcoming presidential election in October 2026. Over the course of President Trump’s second term,” they write, “We have seen US officials engage in a sustained multifaceted campaign of interference and destabilization in Brazil. They point to the shocking 50% tariffs Trump levied on the country last year amid the country’s trial against Jair Bolsonaro. They also underscored Trump’s appointment last year of Darren Beattie as a senior advisor on Brazil issues in the State Department. Beattie, a noted far-right extremist and white supremacist,” they write, “came into this post with a clear record of public statements signaling an overt ideological commitment to undermining Brazil’s democratic institutions.” The congressional representative singled out Trump’s current tariffs, his meeting with Flavio Bolsonaro at the White House, and his designation of the Brazilian drug gangs as foreign terrorist organizations.

They write, “Given the Trump administration’s repeated military strikes in the region, justified in part by alleged foreign terrorist organization threats to US security, the designation has also fueled fears of potential US military intervention.” They recall comments from White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt last year that threatened Brazil could potentially face the United States’ military might.

US military action in Brazil isn’t likely, but it’s not out of the question. Nothing is under Trump’s Dunro doctrine. The lawmakers highlight that Brazil is just the latest in a quote, deeply troubling pattern of interference by the United States in foreign elections, including in Argentina, Honduras, and Columbia. Rather than helping defend democracy, they write, the United States is acting as an agent of interference and destabilization using diplomatic economic and political pressure in ways that risk weakening the country’s democratic institutions, undermining confidence in Brazil’s electoral process and inflicting further damage on our relationship with a strategic US ally and trading partner. They demand that Washington commit to recognizing the certified election results. Here’s the thing, the stakes are high. Remember Igor Fusser? He’s the professor I met at the Sao Paulo Cafe. He told me, “It’s clear that the United States is doing everything and will do everything possible to prevent the reelection of Lula in the next elections.” And Igor told me there was a reason for that, because if Flavio Bolsonaro wins, he will bow to Trump and the United States.

Igor says, “Brazil will become a country under the tutelage of the United States, a colony or almost a colony of the US as already happened with Argentina, Columbia, Venezuela, and many others. And if Lula is victorious in these elections, we will live a very intense period of confrontation between the two countries,” he says. And Igor has a really interesting analysis here. He says, “The US dominance over Latin America imposed by Trump is analogous to the control of the Soviet Union over the Eastern block countries during the Cold War under a Russian foreign policy imposed by Soviet leader Leonid Brezniv in 1968.” He says, “Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, all of those countries were formally independent nations with their own government, their own laws, their own representation in the United Nations, but these countries were not autonomous. They didn’t have sovereignty. Any movement that they made that clashed with the interests of the Soviet Union was repressed.

Some of them were even invaded,” he says. “So we’re living in Latin America, a Breznev doctrine, capitalist, imperialist, dictated by Donald Trump. “That is why this election is so important. Brazil is the outlier, the counterweight to the United States and the region, and the US is fighting hard to bring it to heel.

We’re going to see this all unfold not in a couple of months or weeks, but in just a few days. The first round of the election is on October 4th. Brazilians are voting for their president and vice president. They’re also voting for all of the country state governors, all 513 members of the Chamber of Deputies, two-thirds of senators, and more than a thousand state assembly seats. Lula is ahead in the race, but he appears shy of the 50% needed to win outright. If no presidential candidate wins more than half of the vote, it’ll go to a second round. There, polls show the margin between Lula and Bolsonaro even tighter, and it will undoubtedly be a tough campaign. The second round, if it’s needed, is on October 25th.

That is all for this episode of Under the Shadow. Things are going to get intense in the coming days. Please consider following our new website, Pan-American Dispatch and our social media accounts for ongoing reporting on Brazil and these elections. Some of the reporting in this episode was based off of stories I produced recently for the world and The Real News. Many thanks to those outlets for all that they do. Let me remind you that if you’re craving even more backstory here, you can always go back and listen to episode 12 of the second season of Under the Shadow about Brazil’s fight against fake news in the country and the US attempt to roll it back. And please also consider checking out my 2022 podcast about Brazil under Bolsonaro. It’s called Brazil on Fire. It’s still totally relevant today. You can find that wherever you listen.

As always, you can find me at patreon.com/mfox.

There you can also support my work, become a monthly sustainer, or sign up to stay abreast of all the latest on this podcast and my other reporting across Latin America. You can find a ton of content there exclusively also for my supporters. If you’re looking for more information, news and reporting on Trump’s onslaught, both in communities within the United States and abroad, please check out The Real News and NACLA. Both of them are publishing daily indispensable reporting. The theme music is by my band, Monte Perdido. You can find us on Spotify or wherever you stream music. This closing song playing right now is off our 2024 album, Ofrenda. I hope you check it out. Under the shadows of co-production of The Real News and NACLA, it’s produced in partnership with Global Exchange. This episode was written, researched, reported, and produced by me, Michael Fox. The script was edited by Heather Geis.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

The close relationship between the Bolsonaro family and key figures in the international far right like Steve Bannon and U.S. President Donald Trump has been public knowledge for over eight years. In this article, tech specialist Miguel Manso looks at the state of that relationship, right now, just days before Brazil’s first-round presidential elections. – ed.

Just days before the first round of Brazil’s presidential election, a confidential report from the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) warns that the United States is influencing the country’s electoral process. Titled “Threats to the 2026 Electoral Process,” the report was sent in late August to the presidency, the Superior Electoral Court and the Justice Ministry, warning that U.S. interference has reached a “critical” level.

Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign has become the target of legal action over claims that it benefited from paid ads and mass messaging originating in the United States.

The coalitions backing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party and Renan Santos of the Missão party asked the Superior Electoral Court and the Supreme Federal Court to investigate the senator for economic and political abuse of power and foreign interference.

The court filings allege the following:

Foreign amplification: U.S.-based right-wing profiles and influencers, including American political figures, allegedly ran paid campaign content on X in support of Flávio Bolsonaro.

Paid partnerships: The posts, labeled “paid partnership,” cited figures from the foreign betting platform Polymarket to claim that Bolsonaro was the favorite, distorting the actual state of Brazilian polling.

Prohibited financing: The parties allege that this amounts to the use of funds from outside the official campaign structure and financed from a foreign source, both of which are strictly prohibited under Brazilian electoral law.

The lawsuits ask for the immediate removal of the posts, a Federal Police investigation, and, if the irregularities are confirmed, the loss of candidacy and ineligibility for those involved.

Trump’s Shield of the Americas and the Fernando Cerimedo Case

The attempted murder of Nadia Beller has drawn investigators toward Fernando Cerimedo and a web of other connections, including drug-trafficking flights and Bolivia’s top anti-narcotics police official, who allegedly identified the hitmen. Cerimodo is known for his work with far-right political leaders in Latin America.

On August 17, 2026, two gunmen on a motorcycle shot Nadia Beller, a Bolivian lawyer and Cerimedo’s girlfriend, outside a hotel in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. She survived but was wounded in the neck, chest and arm.

Bolivian police have identified Colombian national Aldúbar Henry Silva Peña as the lead shooter. He fled immediately after the attack, then released a video in September 2026 admitting his role in planning the crime, though he claimed the original plan was only to “scare” Beller. He led a group of five, including four other operatives — two Colombians and two Brazilians — whose identities have not been released by investigators. All four remain at large.

Police detained Víctor Hugo C.Z. and formally charged him as an accomplice who worked directly with the gunmen. They arrested Róger Aguilera on charges of supplying the .32 caliber weapon used in the attack, and arrested Paola Andrea Vargas on charges of hiding and storing it.

Bolivian authorities arrested Argentine political consultant Fernando Cerimedo, known for his work with Trump’s MAGA movement and Beller’s former partner, at Viru Viru International Airport. Bolivia’s public prosecutor’s office accuses him of masterminding the attempted femicide.

A forensic review of Cerimedo’s phone revealed real-time messages with Erik Correa González, the Bolivian government’s head of intelligence, confirming that the shooting took place at the exact moment the two were exchanging messages. Beller has said publicly that the attack was ordered to silence her before she could expose corruption, money laundering and illicit dealings involving Cerimedo and local government officials.

Investigators found two key pieces of evidence: a text note written six days before the attack that used the phrase “La Nadia” alongside an intent to “eliminate” the victim, and a message sent at 8:54 p.m. on August 17 to a contact identified as “E.C.G.,” reading, “Brother, they just shot her.”

The investigation also dug into Cerimedo’s finances. On his phone, police found a note referring to a “virtual wallet” that had moved about $66,000 over the previous 11 months across more than 320 transfers, and a larger “pass-through wallet” that had moved $1,386,997. In searches, police seized about $400,000 in cash, along with 500,000 Bolivian bolivianos, weapons, vehicles and equipment for a “bot farm” — automated accounts used to manipulate social media and elections.

The Earthquake Caused by Survivor Nadia Beller

Beller’s allegations against her former partner are shaking the governments of Rodrigo Paz in Bolivia, Javier Milei in Argentina, José Antonio Kast in Chile, Nasry Asfura in Honduras and Colombia’s Abelardo De La Espriella, along with their ties to the Bolsonaro family. Her account has helped expose a techno-fascist network aimed at manipulating and interfering in elections in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Colombia — and even in Mexico’s upcoming election — through bot and troll farms that Cerimedo’s team ran from Argentina and Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia.

The goal, investigators say, was to install leaders who would serve U.S. and Israeli interests, backed by the Shield of the Americas alliance, promotion from the outlet La Derecha Diario, and financing from Trump and his allies channeled through Milei. Cerimedo has been described as a CIA and Mossad asset.

Fernando Cerimedo, known as the “king of bots” for the Latin American far right, is also under investigation for money laundering and alleged ties to drug trafficking. Prosecutors are trying to determine whether he was part of a network that facilitated irregular flights carrying up to 500 kilograms of cocaine per trip and returning with large amounts of cash.

Searching properties tied to Cerimedo in Bolivia, authorities seized large sums of cash and found evidence of a technical setup built to automatically create fake online accounts — commonly known as a “bot farm.”

Fernando Cerimedo’s Ties to Donald Trump, Marco Rúbio and the Bolsonaro Family

It was already known that a global network links Donald Trump’s MAGA movement with right-wing leaders across Latin America, funded through an international web of businesspeople and drug traffickers and operating through artificial intelligence manipulation and integrated data networks used for cyberattacks.

These groups organize at high-profile political events and forums, such as Mar-a-Lago and the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where strategists and data operatives share methods for digital engagement and fundraising.

Cerimedo has said in interviews that no one formally introduced him to Eduardo Bolsonaro. The two say they met by chance at Harvard University in 2010. But when news outlets asked Harvard directly, the university said it had no record that either Eduardo Bolsonaro or Fernando Gabriel Cerimedo had ever been enrolled there. Confronted with this, Cerimedo later claimed he had only taken open, non-degree classes.

As part of the Federal Police investigation into the attempted coup in Brazil, investigators found that in 2022, military officers and aides brokered Cerimedo’s ties to the hardline core of the Bolsonaro movement, producing false reports attacking the integrity of Brazil’s voting machines.

Reports based on the plea-deal testimony of Mauro Cid identify Army Col. Ângelo Denicoli as the officer who contacted Cerimedo and coordinated the technical details needed to carry out broadcasts and attacks on Brazil’s electoral system.

The Federal Police obtained electronic records showing that Cerimedo’s phone number and contact information were passed directly to Denicoli. Forensic analysis of seized phones showed that Denicoli became the main point of contact with the Argentine consultant, coordinating the materials sent to him.

Cid formally confirmed in testimony that Denicoli was the direct link between the criminal organization and Cerimedo, saying Denicoli was part of the group tasked with gathering data to support claims that the electronic voting machines had failed.

Technical evidence linked Denicoli, Cerimedo and technology entrepreneur Eder Balbino. Balbino and Denicoli compiled reports containing false arguments and data based on outdated voting-machine models, then passed the files to Cerimedo, who used them as visual material for his broadcasts.

Digital cross-referencing by the Federal Police showed that the data Cerimedo presented in his broadcasts from Argentina contained the same mathematical inconsistencies and formatting as the documents manipulated by the Liberal Party’s technical committee in Brazil. Investigators concluded that Cerimedo had not discovered the material independently, but received it from the structure Denicoli managed.

Investigators also found that Denicoli was part of what they called the Disinformation and Electoral System Attack Unit. The Federal Police traced digital records linking Denicoli directly to fake ballot-audit files stored in a public Google Drive folder belonging to Cerimedo, with Denicoli listed as the folder’s original owner and editor.

Denicoli coordinated the technical compilation of false reports with Balbino. The material was passed to Cerimedo, who used it in the “fraud livestream” broadcast from Argentina in November 2022 and amplified in Brazil by Eduardo Bolsonaro.

In a trial concluded by the Supreme Court, Denicoli received the harshest sentence among the defendants in his group: 17 years in a closed prison regime, on charges of attempting a coup, seeking the violent overthrow of Brazil’s democratic order, and participating in an armed criminal organization.

Billion-dollar Technology Infrastructure Serving Lies and Fraud

The connection between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rúbio and Argentine digital strategist Fernando Cerimedo took shape starting in 2023, with lobbyist and political consultant Damián Merlo acting as the intermediary.

Merlo, who owns the Miami-based Latin America Advisory Group, serves as a link between conservative Latin American politicians and power centers within the U.S. MAGA movement. According to filings under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, Merlo used his relationship with Viviana Bovo, a senior adviser to Rúbio, to introduce Cerimedo and his data tools directly to the office of the then senator, who is now secretary of state.

Cerimedo founded the agency Numen and the outlet La Derecha Diario, specializing in “bot farms” and algorithm manipulation to shape social media trends. In Chile, he worked on the campaign that defeated the 2022 constitutional referendum. In Brazil, he helped the Bolsonaro family spread disinformation about voting machines after the 2022 election. And in Argentina, he led the digital strategy behind Javier Milei’s election in 2023.

Brad Parscale, the top digital strategist for Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential campaigns, became Cerimedo’s business partner at the political consulting firm Numen, based in Buenos Aires.

Through that partnership, Cerimedo took over managing the Latin American operations of tools such as Campaign Nucleus and Eyes Over — data-mining and artificial intelligence platforms created or linked to Parscale. The partnership combined Parscale’s expertise in U.S. data operations with the infrastructure Cerimedo had built across Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia.

Brad Parscale, Peter Thiel and the Data Ecosystem

Brad Parscale earned the trust of the Trump family and went on to design websites for their businesses, before being chosen to lead the digital strategy for Donald Trump’s 2015 presidential campaign.

In 2016, as the campaign’s digital media director, he led a data operation called Project Alamo, directing much of the budget toward highly targeted social media ads and producing as many as 60,000 different Facebook ad variations a day.

In February 2018, Trump named Parscale campaign manager for his 2020 reelection bid.

Parscale’s ties to Big Tech and to Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies span strategic data cooperation, political alignment and technology supply.

Thiel, a Palantir cofounder, was one of the major Silicon Valley billionaires who directly backed and funded Trump’s 2016 campaign. Palantir builds surveillance and analytical intelligence software for governments and defense agencies.

Parscale created Campaign Nucleus, a platform meant to build a communications structure and data ecosystem. The data-mining and AI model it uses mirrors the mass-processing and information-control concepts associated with Palantir.

The ecosystem functions as an integrated chain: Thiel’s Palantir develops surveillance and data-intelligence technology, which feeds into political software such as Parscale’s Campaign Nucleus, and Parscale in turn distributes that technology across Latin America through Cerimedo’s Numen.

The Link between U.S. and Israeli Companies

These companies’ ties to Israel and its government center on two main areas: artificial intelligence for military targeting, and cyberwarfare and digital influence operations.

In January 2024, Palantir signed a direct strategic agreement with Israel’s Defense Ministry to supply advanced AI technology supporting “war-related missions.”

In July 2026, international journalistic investigations revealed that Parscale was registered as a foreign agent of Israel in the United States. The Israeli government hired Parscale’s main firm, Clock Tower X, through a $46.5 million contract to carry out a digital influence operation.

According to the reporting, the company built a network of pro-Israel propaganda websites and blogs while also producing search-optimized content designed to shape the databases artificial intelligence systems draw on.

Cerimedo’s Numen is described as the Latin American link in that network, applying Campaign Nucleus data concepts and bot infrastructure through La Derecha Diario.

The relationship is described as symbiotic: Israel provides public contracts, Palantir supplies data technology, Clock Tower X uses that funding for digital influence operations, and Numen carries out the messaging and bot infrastructure in Latin America.

The Use of Artificial Intelligence and “AI Poisoning”

The tactics have evolved from spreading disinformation on social media to manipulating institutional digital ecosystems.

Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO, is described as a technique meant to flood the internet with doctrinal texts and fake academic research centers, so that the crawlers used by systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude absorb that propaganda as factual information. As a result, when people ask artificial intelligence systems about geopolitical topics or elections, those systems can end up repeating narratives that this network planted beforehand.

The dismantling of Cerimedo’s structures in Bolivia also revealed the use of tens of thousands of automated phones running AI software designed to simulate human behavior, making it harder for social media platforms to detect and block them.

Trump’s MAGA strategists, working with Eduardo and Flávio Bolsonaro, continue trying to interfere in Brazil’s election despite Cerimedo’s arrest — evidence of a powerful alliance working jointly to manipulate and defraud the political landscape and bring Latin America under U.S. control. The question is: for how long?

This article was originally published in Brasil 247. It has been translated to English by Panamerican Dispatch and can be read in its original Portuguese, here.

The election campaign in Brazil is at its peak. Candidates are stepping up their speeches, campaign ads are airing more frequently, and attacks on opponents are the order of the day. Brazilian political life has found its focal point, and that is the contest – as it is being portrayed – between two titans.

On one side is the country’s current president, the legendary labor union leader and head of the Workers’ Party, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – a representative of progressivism and Brazil’s center-left – who has stated that he has chosen to run for reelection to prevent the far right from conquering one of the last countries to have resisted the new wave of far-right politics in South America.

Leading the charge is Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator from São Paulo who has stepped into the long shadow of his father, the neoliberal and ultra-conservative former president Jair Bolsonaro (a close friend of Trump’s) who is currently in custody, according to Brazilian authorities, for his role in an attempted coup d’état aimed at preventing the swearing-in of the current president, Lula.

The latest polls

For now, polls predict a potential runoff election (October 25) to determine the president, as neither candidate is expected to reach the 50% needed to win in a single round.

According to the polling firm Quaest, Lula continues to hold a slight 5% lead over Bolsonaro. Thus, the center-left candidate would reach 39% and Bolsonaro 34%. Meanwhile, the polling firm BTG Pactual/Nexus reports that Lula has 42% and Bolsonaro 37%.

The remaining candidates would not receive more than 4%, while undecided voters account for 5%. About 10% of those surveyed said they would cast a blank or invalid vote.

In a potential runoff, the race is much closer. Quaest reports that Lula and Bolsonaro would be tied in a future runoff, each with 42%. Nexus, on the other hand, gives Lula a lead in the runoff with 46%, compared to Bolsonaro’s 44%.

Two models, one possible path

From a media and strategic perspective, portraying the South American giant’s current situation as a crossroads can sometimes be a bit misleading. Both candidates advocate capitalism as the only viable economic system, and both are open to international cooperation with necessary trading partners.

However, the major differences – and the significant possibilities that accompany them – undoubtedly point to two distinct paths the country could take. Bolsonaro advocates for a radical reduction of the state and the full opening of the country to international capital, which has once again turned its attention with great interest to South America’s immense natural resources. Minerals, gold, oil, and Brazil’s enormous hydroelectric potential are fundamental to the new material distribution of the imperialist economy.

And while Lula is by no means an isolationist (in fact, he promotes investment) he is not a politician willing to hand over those resources at any cost without a significant state presence and without promoting the economic interests of Brazilian capital. Furthermore, Lula has based his campaign, among other things, on the country’s sovereignist rhetoric.

This issue is probably the most important in geopolitical terms. Lula is not part of Trump’s political-military coalition known as the Shield of the Americas, the true operational arm of Washington’s hemispheric strategy – namely, securing Latin America as its zone of control and influence.

Flávio Bolsonaro, on the other hand, asserts that during his potential presidency, the United States will be not only his main political partner but also his security partner (a relationship that has historically held over the past few decades).

And Trump, of course, has not been a bystander in this dispute – even from a personal standpoint. When he learned of Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction for an alleged coup attempt, he stated that he would impose sanctions on the Brazilian economy for having imprisoned the man he called “his friend.”

In response, Lula has played a game that carries high economic costs but maintains a firm diplomatic stance. Whenever tariffs have been raised, Lula has ordered a similar response, which has put him in direct conflict with the Trump administration.

This issue is likely of much greater significance than it appears, given that Brazil alone accounts for nearly 50% of the region’s total GDP. Therefore, what is at stake in Brazil’s upcoming elections is more than just a presidential election; it is also the continuation of a right-wing wave in the region or a halt to it – one that, given Brazil’s economic and territorial importance, could mean more than just a statistical anomaly.

On 4 October Brazil will hold an election which involves more than just the choice between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro. It is a struggle concerning sovereignty, democracy and Brazil’s position in a rapidly changing world, with Washington keeping a close watch. Brazil will vote on 4 October, in just a few days, in an election […]

Militants and supporters of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva participated, this Sunday, September 27, in demonstrations as part of the national mobilization “Let’s go, Lula,” held a week before the first round of elections. In Rio de Janeiro, “CarnaLula 2026” spanned the length of Copacabana beach.

With a microphone, PT Senate candidate Benedita da Silva spoke about the importance of Carnival as an expression of popular culture and called on those present to also vote for a progressive bloc in the Rio de Janeiro Legislative Assembly and the Federal Chamber of Deputies. She reinforced the discourse that, in this election, not only democracy is at stake, but also national sovereignty. “We will not be anyone’s backyard,” she repeated Lula’s phrase.

Read more: Brazil’s presidential campaign heats up

In São Paulo, the event began with Carnival parades, circus performances, and bike rides on Paulista Avenue, where candidates gave speeches in defense of democracy. “Denialism will not prevail,” said Senate candidate Simone Tebet. Federal deputy Erika Hilton echoed Tebet, speaking about the importance of electing candidates who will steer Brazil away from fascism and who are in favor of the working class, as well as defending the end of the 6×1 work schedule. Also present at the event, actor Humberto Carrão told Brasil de Fato that he urged voters to decide the presidential election in the first round.

The capital of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, was one of the cities with the largest number of activities in support of Lula’s re-election. Among them was a flag-waving demonstration in the city center, where hundreds of activists unfurled a banner that read “Lula of Brazil.” In a review of the event, Pedro Martins, a member of the Alvorada collective, one of the organizers of the action, spoke of the need to occupy the streets. “It was a spectacular event, with all the social movements gathered. This week was an important week, showing that we need to go to the streets, and only in this way can we turn the vote around and achieve victory,” he told Brasil de Fato.

In Florianópolis and Curitiba, supporters held a bike ride carrying flags in defense of Lula’s candidacy. In Brasília, the gathering was on the Eixão, a fast road that connects the Plano Piloto from north to south.

Lula’s campaign reported that the day’s events were organized in a decentralized manner, with more than 500 activities planned across the 27 state capitals and hundreds of municipalities. The program included walks, motorcades, leaflet distribution, and cultural performances.

First published by Brasil de Fato in Portuguese.

The bizarre trend of grown-ups acting like babies is bad enough, says Steven Tucker. Other adults pretending to believe them is even worse.

The post Act Your Own Age, Not Somebody Else’s: The Infantile Trend of Adult Babies and Children appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

On September 22, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gave the opening speech of the 2026 U.N. General Assembly in New York City. He discussed the concerning state of the world, demanded diplomacy to resolve conflicts and said, “this is the most critical moment of the United Nations.”

He also denounced attempts to influence upcoming Brazilian elections.

“Brazil does not fit into anyone’s backyard,” he said. “We need partners with a positive agenda that promotes development.”

Full Speech by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in English.

My compliments to the President of the General Assembly, Ambassador Khalilur Rahman from Bangladesh.

I greet each of the Heads of State and Government and the delegates present. I address in particular the Secretary-General of the United Nations. During his two terms, António Guterres was a direct witness to the growing mismanagement of the superpower.

Mr. President, this is the tenth occasion in which I open the General Debate of this Assembly. Since I stood at this podium for the first time in 2003, this is the most critical moment of the United Nations. The feeling that moves me today is that of indignation.

The United Nations is failing in one of its highest missions, to free humanity from the fray of war. Its credibility has never been so low. Its ability to protect the most vulnerable, those who have no army or arsenals, has never been so small.

We are all victims of the immobility of a Security Council that does not fulfill its role. In 1946, already in the first session of this assembly, Brazil warned of the high price that the international community would pay for the right to veto. This vice, which gave rise to the U.N. Charter, conferred the great powers the privilege of insensitivity.

This original sin is now added to a profound crisis of leadership. The year 2025 recorded the highest number of armed conflicts since World War II. Trillions of dollars financed a new arms race.

Geopolitical tensions threaten to turn regional disputes into a conflict of global proportions. Those who hold the reins of crucial decisions must act responsibly and in a sense of urgency. The leaders of the countries that make up the Security Council must come together.

I know the realities of power, but the concessions to the law of the strongest have already crossed the limits. This is not idealism, it is pure realism. War is not the continuation of politics by other means, it is the total failure of politics.

In an interdependent world, to lead is to reconcile the interests of the homeland with that of humanity. This is the statement of someone who represents a nation that loves peace and freedom. Someone who fought against a military dictatorship and defended his country against a coup d’état. It is the conviction of a factory worker, who was elected president three times and who won the fight against hunger in Brazil.

This assembly has recently corrected historical distortions. It has recognized the trafficking of enslaved Africans as the most serious crime against humanity. It has approved the most precise representation of the world map. Now we must debate about determining themes for the future of humanity. We are called to choose between multilateralism and unilateralism, democracy or extremism, sovereignty or subordination.

These choices demand courage, political will and clarity of objectives. This is what is expected of a statesman. Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin were statesmen.

They challenged the past to design a future of peace. They were defeated by hatred. Generations of Palestinians will carry the pain and trauma left by the genocide practiced by the Netanyahu government against women and children in Gaza.

Israeli civilians paid the price of radicalism and intolerance of the terrorist acts of Hamas. Pursuing the International Criminal Court and its members is an incentive for these crimes to be punished. The U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese cannot be silenced for telling the truth.

Illegal settlements in the West Bank are becoming less and less viable. The two-state solution is essential so that Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace. Threatening the extinction of a civilization will not bring stability to the Middle East.

The Strait of Hormuz became a trench of war when it should remain a vital passage for international trade. Families all over the world pay for the increase in the price of fuel, fertilizers and food.

The war between Russia and Ukraine has dragged on for five years in a humanitarian drama that continues to save lives.

We all know that there will be no winners on the battlefield. Diplomacy is the only option. Initiatives such as the Group of Friends of Peace, created by Brazil and China, reveal the strength of the international community willing to work for dialogue.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the geographical proximity to the world’s largest military power is inescapable, especially in the context of the worsening of hegemonic temptations. Brazil does not fit into anyone’s backyard. We need partners with a positive agenda that promotes development.

Ideological differences should not be an obstacle to greater integration between neighbors. Countries in the region have recognized the horrors of regimes of exception. We have come a long way to restore popular will.

Democracy is once again in check. We are once again witnessing foreign interference in electoral processes. The division of the world into areas of influence and neocolonial attacks for strategic resources constitute anachronistic gestures.

The Venezuelan people deserve to define their own destiny. Nicaragua will not solve its problems by preventing the opposition from running for office. The crisis in Haiti continues to test the limits of the indifference of the international community. In Cuba, the world is suffering. The collective punishment imposed on 10 million people by an illegal economic embargo and energy blockade.

Mr. President, Brazil does not underestimate the challenge posed by organized crime. We are prepared to face criminal organizations that terrorize our communities. Workers are robbed, mothers lose their children, police officers do not return home. People are tired of violence.

But we will not outsource the responsibility of defending our borders and guaranteeing the population the right to live without fear. We do not need aircraft carriers guarding our waters. We need cooperation to stop the flow of weapons and money that supplies organized crime.

This is the spirit of the proposal that I personally delivered to the president of the United States. We want to fight the money laundering carried out by Brazilian criminals abroad.

For a long time, Brazilian states have acted in their own way. Criminals took advantage of the lack of coordination. But this is changing. In Manaus we created the International Police Cooperation Center of the Amazon, bringing together the public security officials of the nine Amazon countries.

In 2025, we carried out the largest organized crime operation in the history of Brazil. We broke records in the seizure of drugs, goods and illicit resources. We are confronting all levels of organized crime, including crime magnates.

The Anti-Faction Law, which we have just passed, imposes more severe penalties on organized crime than those stipulated for terrorism. Organized crime and corruption go hand in hand. The fight against corruption will continue to be relentless, no matter who may be hurt. No one is above the law.

Ladies and gentlemen, the pillars of multilateralism are being corroded. The World Trade Organization is on life support. When governments capitulate in the face of those who use tariffs as a weapon of coercion and blackmail, the consequences are disastrous. In the age of disinformation, those who fight progress and knowledge resistthe evidence of science. We will never forget the millions of lives lost by negligence in the fight against COVID-19. Campaigns against vaccines are bringing back diseases that we considered eradicated. Weakening the World Health Organization makes everyone more vulnerable.

Until recently, the response to climate change was consolidated in the center of the international agenda. This year, the issue disappeared from the G7 debate and the G20 debate, forums that bring together the largest carbon emitters in the world. It is time to resume the offensive and impose a defeat to negationism. Nature reminds us every day that we have but one planet.

The Himalayan glaciers are melting. A super El Niño can cause torrential rains, droughts and forest fires in different parts of the globe. Its effects will impact, above all, the most vulnerable.

Brazil has been demonstrating that it is possible to combine economic growth with emission reduction. We have achieved our self-sufficiency in oil and we will continue to research the potential of new reserves such as the Equatorial Margin.

We will not renounce the environmental agenda. We will carry forward the roadmap for the decarbonization of the Brazilian economy. The Forever Tropical Forest Fund, launched at COP30 in Belém, shows that it is possible to change old paradigms. The forest is worth more standing than destroyed.

We will continue to reduce deforestation, which fell by half in the Amazon and reached the lowest level of deforestation in 11 years. We have the moral authority to reject protectionist measures disguised as embracing the environmental cause.

Brazil is a global leader in green energy. We have the critical minerals and rare earth minerals that the world needs to carry out the energy transition. Our natural wealth belongs to the Brazilian people and it is for their benefit that they will be exploited. Access to our minerals will be a mandatory counterpart to the generation of value in our territory, the transfer of technology and the supply of national strategic sectors.

Mr. President, we live in an unprecedented technological revolution, with great risks and opportunities. It would be an unforgivable historical omission not to face the challenge of regulating big tech and artificial intelligence. A handful of oligarchic technicians want to revive a version of digital neoliberalism without rules or transparency.

They are promoting a race without ethical restraints, beyond the backs of the U.N. and the Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence. As Pope Leo XIV warns, decisions on technology should never be separated from conscience and responsibility. Companies that know the risks of their products transfer to families the impossible task of facing algorithms.

The millionaire industry of betting apps turns addiction into profit. Its dizzying dissemination is indebting and destroying millions of homes. Brazil will not tolerate this business model. We approved one of the most advanced laws in the world to protect children, teenagers and women in the digital environment. We will ensure the joint remuneration of artists, musicians and audiovisual content creators. We will not give in to the pressure of multinationals who want to privatize our Pix, a public and free payment infrastructure that has made financial inclusion a reality for millions of Brazilians.

Ladies and gentlemen, sustainable development goals are the target of attacks from reactionary forces that want to naturalize injustice. Inequality and underdevelopment result from political choices. It is possible to put the poor in the budget and make the rich pay their share.

It is necessary to roll back privileges and invest in free, quality education and healthcare.

There is a legitimate desire for change in the world. But changing is not going backwards. Changing is not taking away rights. It is not rehashing theories of racial supremacy or of female submission. It is not recolonizing the Global South.

Changing is advancing to a future of more participation and more achievements. It is creating and sharing effective public solutions for the challenges of development through a democratic, strong, efficient and capable state. It is betting on the spirit of solidarity and cooperation with Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Initiatives such as the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty and the International Panel on Inequality are born from this political will. Brazil is in a hurry to become a developed and socially just nation. We have adopted an economic model that focuses on income distribution, creating jobs and wage increases.

We are betting on improving productivity, on increasing credit and on building a robust social protection network. Brazil has grown again in a sustainable way. We are the third largest destination for foreign foreign direct investment.

Despite the U.S. tariffs against our economy, this year we will hit a new record of exports. There is still a lot to be done. The labor market is transforming.

Older people want to remain active. Young people want to start a business. Workers need time to rest, to improve their skills and be with their families.

In Brazil, achieving this goal means ending the so-called 6×1 scale to guarantee workers two days off a week. This change is essential to alleviate the domestic overload that still falls on women.

We are building a Brazil where women don’t have to ask for permission to occupy positions of power or enter the labor market.

A country free of femicide where no woman, in or outside the home, lives under the threat of violence. This is a cause that the world needs to embrace.

Mr. President, upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. King said, “I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, other-centered men can build up.”

The UN was born under the symbol of hope. Over eight decades, it has contributed to decolonization, promoted human rights and supported sustainable development. It protected immigrants and refugees. It condemned racism, anti-Semitism and religious intolerance.

These were the achievements of leaders who stood at this podium, moved by indignation in the face of the injustices of their time. Men and women who refused to accept war as their destiny, colonialism as their right, apartheid as their legitimate system. This ability to say “no” to the inequalities gave birth to some of the greatest transformations that we have lived.

Faced with the paralysis of the United Nations, we need to rediscover the political will so that it can, again, be a temple of peace.

I want to conclude with a message about my country to all who listen to us.

On October 4, millions of Brazilians go to the polls to decide their destiny. They will not just elect the President of the Republic, state governors and representatives of the legislative power. They will decide between democracy and negationism. If Brazil is going to move toward a future of more opportunities or return to a past of exclusion.

We will have a transparent and competitive election where candidates enjoy the broadest freedom of expression. We know that some abuses of this freedom seem to be associated with the interests of foreigners, contrary to those of our country.

We do not underestimate the challenge of the disinformation network that intends to disrupt the public debate during the campaign.

But we have a modern and robust electoral system. Under the watchful eye of a plural citizenry and a free press, we will not allow the enemies of democracy, both internal and external, to attack the popular will.

Brazilian democracy belongs to Brazilians.

Brazil will continue to be a sovereign country.

No one, no one will take us away from this path.

May God bless us all. Thank you.

This speech was translated into English by Michael Fox at Panamerican Dispatch. You can read the original in Portuguese, here. You can watch his speech, below.

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As Trump chose the path of barbarism, threatening to annihilate the Islamic Republic and dismantling international institutions, Lula took the UN pulpit to defend another path: diplomacy, dialogue and civilisation, and questioned a foundational idea of International Relations. The main international politics and geopolitical messages in Lula’s UN General Assembly speech can be summarised as […]

The Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN) has raised the risk of external influence and interference by the United States in Brazil’s 2026 elections to a “critical level.” The confidential report was sent to the Presidency, the Supreme Electoral Court, and the Ministry of Justice. In it, the agency points to escalating pressure from the administration of Donald Trump on Brazil. It ties Washington’s actions to a broader strategy to politically reorient Latin America.

The document is titled, “Threats to the 2026 electoral process.” It was forwarded to authorities in late August, and its contents were revealed this Saturday, Sept. 19, by journalist Mônica Bergamo’s column in the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper.

According to the report, there is a “trend of escalating pressure on Brazil” and a “selective intensification and reconfiguration of the pressure exerted by the United States,” albeit within a historic pattern of U.S. influence over the region.

The report’s assessment does not mention ballot tampering or altering the election results. The intelligence agency’s warning addresses the possibility that political, economic and diplomatic pressures could interfere with the institutional environment and with public debate during the electoral process.

The agency places these actions within the strategy adopted by the second Trump administration to reaffirm U.S. hegemony in Latin America.

According to the analysis, strategic documents released by the U.S. government between November 2025 and May of this year point to its objectives as reducing the influence of powers considered rivals and preventing their access to the region’s “strategic assets, natural resources and infrastructure.”

ABIN identifies China as one of the primary targets of this policy. In the agency’s assessment, Washington seeks to expand its direct or indirect control over these resources, whether through the U.S. government or the country’s private investment.

Support for conservative governments

The report pays special attention to the actions of U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio. According to ABIN, his policy toward Latin America has an ideological bent and he seeks to “influence and reorient the foreign policy of countries in the region.”

According to the document, this strategy involves steering Latin American countries away from China and promoting a domestic political shift “by supporting the rise of conservative governments.”

The agency cites a U.S. Senate hearing held in June, during which Rubio linked the restoration of U.S. hegemony in Latin America to the presence of governments aligned with Washington.

At the time, Rubio stated that the region had come to rely on several governments “friendly” to the United States during Trump’s second term. He singled out Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela as exceptions.

The document also noted statements in which Rubio held Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva responsible for U.S. tariffs on Brazilian products, alleging that Brazil had not negotiated “in good faith.”

In ABIN’s view, this approach personalizes the pressure exerted on the country and has the potential to impact public debate in Brazil during the electoral period.

Brazil targeted for defending autonomy, says ABIN

The intelligence agency assessed that Brazil holds a unique position in U.S. strategy, because it has a government with “greater political will and the means to defend its strategic autonomy” in the face of Washington’s pressure for concessions and geopolitical realignment.

The report states that, despite periods of easing tensions between Lula and Trump, actions taken by the United States since May indicate a trend of increasing pressure.

Among the actions cited is the U.S. designation of Brazilian criminal organizations as terrorist groups and sanctions announced in July against two Brazilians and companies based in Brazil and Portugal. The U.S. government accused them of ties to money-laundering networks linked to the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) drug gang. For ABIN, these sanctions represented a “transition” because they caused U.S. pressure to have concrete effects on Brazilian individuals and companies.

“As a result, U.S. external interference now directly impacts financial relationships, corporate reputation, access to the dollar, international operations, and the exposure of third parties to the risk of secondary sanctions,” states an excerpt from the report released by Folha de S. Paulo.

According to the analysis, the U.S. strategy is happening in a “gradual, combined and adaptive” manner, linking Brazilian organizations to threats against U.S. national security. This is then followed by measures capable of affecting the country’s companies, banks and other institutions.

The Brazilian Intelligence Agency warns that these types of sanctions could prompt Brazilian and foreign economic actors to alter their decisions out of fear of losing access to the U.S. financial system or being impacted by secondary sanctions.

U.S. Makes Demands Over Brazilian Election

The report has also emerged amid tensions between Brasília and Washington directly related to the 2026 elections.

During negotiations held in 2025, the Trump administration presented Brazil with a draft joint statement that outlined a Brazilian commitment to not “arbitrarily” detain, arrest or limit the participation of “political dissidents” in the electoral process. The proposal stated that Brazil should commit to holding “free and fair” elections and ensure the participation of such individuals in the vote.

On Thursday. Sept. 17, Lula stated in an interview with Rádio Itatiaia that the proposal had become a “dead issue” for the Brazilian government. The president also rejected the possibility of granting the United States preferential access to the country’s mineral resources.

The confidential agency report delves deeper into the concerns previously raised in public analyses by the Brazilian Intelligence Agency. In a document released this year regarding intelligence challenges for 2026, the agency identified foreign interference as a threat to sovereignty. It warned that a combination of technological dependence, disinformation, espionage, and coercion could enable foreign actors to influence public debate and decision-making processes in Brazil.

Edited by Geisa Marques. This article was originally published by Brasil de Fato. It can be read in its original form, in Portuguese, here.

On October 4, nearly 160 million Brazilians will go to the polls to elect their next president, vice president, members of Congress, governors, and state legislators from the country’s various states. If no presidential candidate receives more than 50% of the valid votes, a runoff election will be held on October 25.

At this time, 13 presidential candidates are vying for the presidency in Brasília, although polls clearly point to two candidates vying for the presidency of Latin America’s most economically powerful country.

On one side is Brazil’s current president, the former union leader and progressive Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula served as president from 2003 to 2011 with very high approval ratings, although following corruption allegations, he was imprisoned and sentenced to nine years.

However, after over 500 days in detention, a judge ordered his release, ruling that the proceedings were flawed. The Supreme Court of Justice called the incident a “historic error.” Following that, Lula faced off against then-far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and defeated him in the 2022 election. Now Lula hopes to be re-elected once again.

At the forefront is none other than Jair Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio Bolsonaro, who has leveraged his father’s reputation to boost his own. This is because Jair Bolsonaro was found guilty of several crimes that, according to the Brazilian justice system, were intended to prevent Lula’s inauguration and promote a coup d’état. Jair Bolsonaro is currently in house arrest for those crimes.

Consequently, a significant portion of Brazilian society, as well as international politicians such as Donald Trump, consider Bolsonaro’s imprisonment to be unjust. This explains how his son Flávio – a lawyer and businessman who currently serves as a senator – has managed to garner significant support in his bid to win the presidency on October 4.

Thus, two clearly distinct political and economic models are pitted against one another. Lula belongs to a political tradition that seeks to strengthen the state, reduce extreme poverty, invest in social programs, and diversify trade partners (such as China and India), all in line with a clearly pro-sovereignty discourse.

For his part, Flávio Bolsonaro promises to continue on his father’s path: economic neoliberalism, reducing the size of the state, building closer ties with the private sector, and – perhaps most importantly – placing Brazil once again under the influence of the Trump administration, which supports the far-right candidate.

Read more: Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro all set to face off this October in Brazil’s presidential election

Clearly, a victory for the far right – which is close to Washington – would represent a sharp shift in the region’s current economic and political course. Brazil accounts for nearly 50% of the region’s total GDP, so a victory for a Trump ally would drastically alter not only the political landscape but also the economic one. On the other hand, a victory for Lula would signal a “halt” (probably the most significant of all possible outcomes) to the wave of victories by the Latin American right and far right – allies and supporters of US hemispheric and military policy – that have swept the electoral landscape in recent years.

What do the polls say?

Since the start of the presidential race, Lula has maintained a lead over his political opponent. However, that lead has been narrowing as the weeks have gone by, raising the possibility that the runoff election, scheduled for October 25, will be a very close race. This is because, it appears, neither candidate will manage to secure more than 50% of the vote to win in a single round.

According to a poll by the MDA Pesquisa Institute, Lula holds a solid lead over Bolsonaro: 40.06% to 30.4%. Augusto Cury comes in third with 6% of the vote, while the remaining candidates trail behind this mark. According to this poll, in the event of a runoff, Lula would win with 47.3% against Bolsonaro’s likely 40%.

However, other polls paint a different picture, in which Lula remains in the lead but by a very narrow margin. This is according to an AtlasIntel poll, which shows Lula with 46% of the vote, while Bolsonaro would receive 44% in the first round. In the runoff, the gap would disappear, and both candidates would receive nearly 47% of the vote (a technical tie).

A corruption scandal that is shaking up the political landscape

However, everything could change in the wake of a scandal that has rocked Brazilian politics. In late 2025, the former owner of Banco Máster SA, Daniel Vorcaro, allegedly committed a serious case of bank fraud. Since his arrest in March 2026, his conversations, friendships, and connections have all been under close investigation.

One of the people who has come under scrutiny is Flávio Bolsonaro, who confirmed that he had asked the banker for money to make a film about his father called “Dark Horse”. The Federal Police are investigating this case to determine whether Bolsonaro participated in any illegal activity.

Meanwhile, Lula’s inner circle has also been affected. The judge who ordered Jair Bolsonaro’s arrest, Alexandre de Moraes, is alleged to have exchanged messages with Vorcaro. Moraes has been portrayed as a judge close to Lula and thus Bolsonaro and his supporters have seized on the revelation of the messages to call for Moraes’s removal and indirectly accuse the government of suspicious activities.

The debate has led to a serious crisis within the Brazilian judiciary because a decision to investigate Moraes was postponed, prompting accusations of political bias among the judges.

https://www.spreaker.com/show/7063186/episodes/feed

This is a particularly important episode, coming just two weeks ahead of the 1st round of high stakes presidential elections in Brazil.

Host Michael Fox speaks with Artur Romeu. He’s a Brazilian journalist and the Latin American Director for Latin America of the international NGO Reporters Without Borders. 

They spoke ahead of Episode 6 of The Battle for Free Speech, about Brazil’s fight against disinformation. He has an important analysis, which helps to deconstruct how Trump, Silicon Valley and the far-right in the United States, and around the world is “instrumentalizing the idea of free speech for their own political purpose and abandoning key dimension of freedom of expression, which is this more social and collective dimension to receive plural, reliable, diverse, and free information from others.”

This is the third bonus episode of The Battle for Free Speech. The Battle for Free Speech Podcast is a production of The Real News Network hosted by Michael Fox and Marc Steiner. 

Guests: 

• Artur Romeu

Resources: 

• You can check out the full Battle for Free Speech podcast series here.

Many thanks to everyone who has supported this show.

Follow The Battle for Free Speech on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Support Michael Fox’s reporting at patreon.com/mfox. Never miss an episode — sign up for The Real News newsletter at therealnews.com. 

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Michael Fox:

Hi folks. I’m your co-host, Michael Fox. This is the Battle for Free Speech, and this is the third bonus episode in this series. So this one is particularly important and timely as Brazil is heading into high stakes presidential elections this October. The race is between current leftist president Luis Ignacio Lula de Silva and Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. If you have listened to episode six of this podcast series or my podcast series Brazil on Fire or the entire season two of my podcast Under the Shadow, then you know a little bit about where things are and where they’re headed. And this is another deep dive. Today, I’m bringing you my full conversation with Arturo Romeo. He’s a Brazilian journalist and the director for Latin America of the International NGO Reporters Without Borders. I spoke with him specifically for my episode about Brazil of the battle for free speech, but there was so much more from our conversation that I couldn’t fit into that episode.

In this conversation, Artur mentions a couple of things and I want to give you some context. First, Alexandre Morais is the Brazilian Supreme Court justice who led the investigations into fake news and Bolsonaro’s hate cabinet. He also oversaw the electoral court in the 2022 elections, and he was the guy who had the showdown with billionaire Elon Musk over Twitter back in 2024. In fact, Morais blocked the social media platform in Brazil for roughly two months after Musk refused to suspend a series of Brazilian accounts who were disseminating fake news. Then Musk pulled Twitter’s legal representation from the country. Musk later acquiesced and Twitter went back online. But that escapade has been used by the far right and even President Donald Trump to claim that Morais and the Lula government have been censoring free speech in the country. And in fact, that was one of the top reasons for the 50% tariff on Brazilian goods that Trump imposed last year on the country.

And it has been at the heart of Trump’s campaign against Brazil and Lula in an effort to influence the outcome of Brazil’s presidential elections this year. Okay, I think you are up to speed. Here is my full conversation with Artur Romeo in its entirety. We spoke last year, 2025, but it is more relevant than ever today. I hope you like it. Arturo, thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you so much for your availability. I really, really appreciate. Super excited to talk with you about all these things.

Artur Romeu:

Thank you, Michael. I’m also excited to talk about those issues with you. I

Michael Fox:

Say the same question to everybody. For you, what does free speech mean?

Artur Romeu:

It seems like a simple question, especially for an NGO working with press freedom for 40 years at the institution that I work for, the NGO, that I work for Reporters Without Borders, we have been working defending press freedom, not exactly free speech, but they kind of free speech and press freedom drink on the same fountain or same roots of freedom of expression more broadly. So free speech is the ability to essentially being able to impart ideas, opinions, views on the world around us without being harassed, persecuted, prosecuted, attacked by governments or other groups, can be religious groups, but also economic interests. So the ability to be able to, as an individual or a collective, to express yourself and your ideas and contribute to the public debate without fear for reprisal essentially.

Michael Fox:

And Artur, what is your analysis of the state of free speech today in the world in Brazil and the United States and elsewhere? Where are we?

Artur Romeu:

I think that there is a lot of confusion. Maybe I never saw as much confusion around those issues as we are seeing today. Basically, one of the things that scares me is the fact that free speech is being weaponized against press freedom, for example. Another issue is that we are focusing too much on the individualistic aspect of free speech, and we have to have this understanding that at least coming from a freedom of expression perspective, there are an individual dimension, but also a social and collective dimension of freedom of expression. It’s not just our ability to being able to express ourselves and to impart information and ideas, but also to receive those information and ideas from others. So the way we are talking about, or at least the way that some political groups and specifically the far right nowadays everywhere in the world, not specifically in the US, has been instrumentalizing the idea of free speech for their own political purpose and abandoning a key aspect, a key dimension of freedom of expression, which is this more social and collected dimension to receive plural, reliable, diverse and free information from others.

And a third issue, and I think that’s behind most of this confusion as well, is the role that big tech social media platforms are having on this discussion because we have the idea that regulating this economic activity sector would be the same as censorship, but actually better regulation, good regulation, democratic supervision, improve the condition for free speech and press freedom and the integrity of information in general. So this opposition between the ability to be able to impart your ideas and the need that governments have to find a way to regulate the digital sphere arena online is they are not opposed to each other, but it’s a complex discussion because emerging technology always poses new problems. And even if we are not saying that social media platforms are necessarily new to our political landscape, AI is becoming something more popularized and we don’t know the impact that AI will have in this cacophony, this, I don’t know, some people are calling it epidemics or this crisis of reliable information.

And the key problem here is all those things together are fragmenting public conversation, public debate, and public debate is at the core of our democracies. So there is a clear link between this fragmentation of public debate due to all this and the erosion of democracies everywhere.

Michael Fox:

Arturo, you’ve just mentioned everything you said, I was like, we need to talk more about that because this is at the root of all this is why it’s so important. Before we dive into more specifics of all those things that you just mentioned, I have this idea, this hypothesis, are we in a moment where the far right folks like Trump and Bolsonaro are trying to redefine free speech in their favor instead of what you mentioned, “Oh, we need actually some regulation so that we can have a field where we’re actually getting not just random information and fake lies and everything else for everybody else, but we’re actually getting information that is what we should be receiving.” Are we in a moment right now where certain groups are trying to redefine what free speech means so that they can use it to push their agenda?

Artur Romeu:

Of course, it’s very clear. It’s been happening for a while and it’s crazy how effective it is because I think people are very concerned with society in general every day on our daily lives, every citizen is concerned with their ability to basic freedom. And I think that for a very long time, at least in other democracies, this is something that was kind of taken for granted. And even if there were some complex discussions from time to time, there was at least this frame, this common ground, this common denominator where there were international standards in terms of human rights related to free speech, very clearly defined. But sometimes there is this complex issues where you have limits to free speech, right? It’s not an absolute right as a series of human rights. They are not absolute in themselves. There is a balance between rights. And for a long time, I think it generated some stress and tension, but it was kind of relevant discussions, philosophical discussions.

People may disagree, but still we had a common ground. And what we’ve been seeing lately for the past, I don’t know, 10 years at least, is that the way those limits are defined and their political appropriation is stressing this debate. And we are seeing a relevant debate for democracies and to ensure rights and public participation in general being distorted, inverted in a sense that a specific political group is using this to play the victims and saying that they are being oppressed by those ideas. And they made a political flag out of this, and it’s being very effective in terms of how this idea has permeated society and gaining capularity. And I think our field of organizations that are defending freedom of expression is having a lot of difficulty to fight back or reframe the debate. So we are talking about those issues from a rights-based approach and not from a political biased approach.

Just to give an example, specific example, in Brazil, there was a very important milestone march protest during the Independence Day of 2021 with Bolsonaro, thousands of people in the streets supporting Bolsonaro, supporters of Bolsonaro going to flooding the streets in every major capital. And researchers were the streets trying to survey why people were, in their views, going to protest. And one question was about what was their main motivation? And the first motivation was freedom of expression. So in theory, something good. But when they asked them, “And what are you fighting against?” And the first was the Supreme Court in Brazil, which is, I won’t go into the political context in Brazil, but a key issue here in terms of how the constitutional court and Supreme Court has been limiting transgressions and abuses of the executive branch. And the second was the press. So they were fighting against the press.

So they were defending press freedom by attacking the press. And so I think it’s a kind of a paradox where you see a very individualistic perspective. People want to be able to say whatever they want and less and less are accepting that the fact that we are living in a society, there are symmetries of powers, this speech has to be balanced with other rights. So this imbalance and the way it has been appropriated by and kind of really weaponized by the far right is having a major effect in creating this imbalance and making people forget why it’s important to balance a free speech, which is kind of incoherent, at least when you see what happened with Charlie Kirk and people were expressing their views on the fact that criticizing him some very harsh level and the same group that is defending that people should be able to speak wherever they want are doing their own witch hunt.

So you see how politically biased and how this weaponization appropriation of the idea of free speech or freedom of expression is a power struggle more than a philosophical and conceptual one.

Michael Fox:

Do you think that part of how we got to this point goes back to what you were mentioning before, the splintering of society. Now with social media, I get all of my news from here, you get all of your news from there, and so we’re allowed to attack the other because they’re the other rather than having this open debate. Is that part of what led us to this moment?

Artur Romeu:

Yeah. Social media had a major impact in the information ecosystem as a whole for better or for worse, kind of changed everything, how people are receiving, how we are less dependent of a few broadcasters. And now we feel that we are in this environment where we can speak freely. But actually what happened was the privatization of a public space, and you have this impression that you are in Agora, this public arena where there is this idealized perspective of the free flow of information, the free market of ideas, the better ideas will win. And actually this is happening in a specific space controlled by specific groups, interest groups, a very profit oriented perspective. No transparency at all on how those information are being moderated and gaining more or less reach. So yeah, definitely. I think the major shifts that those technologies had on our information space are partly not necessarily too blamed by their own, because I think also when we talk about censorship, it’s easier for us to think of a more classic censorship approach in the same way that when we think about a dictatorship or a coup d’etat, we have references from our past and we kind of compare what is happening now and our collective memory of what those words mean.

And freedom of expression was kind of invented to protect citizen rights, individual citizen rights to oppose all powerful state in a very different political landscape from centuries ago. And now censorship is not only having a propaganda ministry and having censors within newsrooms and journalists being detained and killed because of what they’re saying. Of course, it still happens a lot in several parts of the words, but censorship or at least freedom of expression and free speech is also eroded when not only the state. Because the idea behind this is that the state should restrain itself from any interference in the free flow of information. So any kind of interference equals bad, equals censorship. People should be able to speak freely without government or state interference, but that’s not enough. You also need positive obligation. And positive obligation means that the governments and states have to develop, establish public policies that will help the information space, the information ecosystem to balance assymetries.

For example, pluralism, diversity, reliability of information are key aspects of this, of a healthier information space. So for this to work, you need governments to create those policies, to establish these laws, policies, how antitrust policies, for example, to fight excessive media ownership concentration in the hands of few groups to help balance market asymmetries and to ensure that the rights of their citizens is assured also in terms of access to pluralistic and reliable information. With the social media and big text, what they are saying is that any regulation is bad, they are self-regulating by themselves, and they are at the end protecting their commercial interests and creating those regulatory backups where they can operate without accountability or any kind of accountability. And if we don’t do anything about it, we will keep seeing a disintegration of this information space.

Michael Fox:

Following from that point, can you talk a little bit about what we saw over the last year? For instance, this whole battle between Brazil, Aleshande Morais, Twitter, X, Musk, because I feel like that’s a perfect example of exactly what you’re talking about. And also these two visions where Brazil has this vision of saying, no, we’re going to regulate more because you can’t have just a get out of jail free card completely. And whereas the United States is much more laissez-fraire backed by Donald Trump and particularly now, but this was even before he came to office.

Artur Romeu:

First of all, you have different traditions, different countries, you have different traditions in terms of how you interpret law. Brazil’s approach to freedom of expression is closer to the European approach where there is a focus on this balance between rights than the US one where there is a broader, I don’t know, more elasticity when you are talking about freedom of expression. You have to have in mind that our legal tradition is closer to the European one in terms of philosophical, conceptual jurisprudence expiration. Within this context, have a very specific example. When former President Bolsonaro started saying that people should not trust on electoral results because digital ballot box are not reliable when he did not and still has not any kind of proof of this. And much on the contrary, by the way, the electoral system in Brazil is widely recognized and as a very strong electoral system.

When he started doing that, for example, calling a meeting with ambassadors from a bunch of different countries to give a press conference saying that before the election, one year before the elections, that people should not trust electoral results if we kept the system as it was. It’s very, very, very serious because he has a lot of supporters and echo chambers on social media, and this kind of information erodes trusts of society, on their political institutions and their electoral institutions. So basically you cannot argue that that’s within his absolute right of print of expression because it has very serious impact for democracy and it’s not because you are the president that you can say whatever you want without any kind of accountability. But from there, what happened is that this idea was widely spread by his supporters and political groups, and the social media had a huge impact on this.

So this is clearly organized, this information, casebook. It’s pretty straightforward. And this information in the sense that it has a set of cogs in the machines, and it’s not just one person saying something false, it’s how this information is being spread and the structure of this information, the different levels, actors, stakeholders involved in this, financed with public money, public funds, and social media companies within their codes of conduct, you cannot just let this level of disinformation spread, including the reach they’re having without, again, any accountabilities, they could have acted to limit the reach, not necessarily censoring the presidential Twitter account or something, but at least putting contextual information, whatever those links, I don’t know. But there are several possible strategies for those social media to limit those kinds of harmful disinformation. But since we did not have a regulatory framework for this, the Supreme Court took the responsibility to act and to investigate this fake news industry or disinformation industry, how it was being structured and its impact.

And by doing that, said explicitly that, I don’t know, judges could not be threatened, basic stuff. And starting, for example, Alishanj Morais, which is at the epicenter of all this, even if he’s, and I think this is a parenthesis here, Morais was very important within all this, but he himself, I mean as an individual judge, but we have to take into account always that his decision were being systematically validated by the other judges of the Supreme Court. So even if he was the one being more visible on all this, and even though that there were tensions between and discussions between the judges, the vast majority of all those decisions went through the plenary, all the judges. So we talk a lot about him, but it’s more like the Supreme Court itself. I think he’s the image of these fights in a way, but he wasn’t alone doing that.

It’s not all powerful judge that is doing that as a rogue mode and acting on his own. We had strong institutions and it worked in the sense that we had the highest body in the judiciary power acting on this and investigating those issues, how they were spreading and taking harsh measures to prevent the impact of what everything was happening be even higher. For example, closing, requesting for the suppression of individual accounts on social media, and that’s something that led to the blockage of acts here in Brazil because what happened is that Elon Musk decided that he would not accept sovereign decision from the Brazilian highest court. He just moved his policy team away from Brazil. There was no legal representation as a way clearly to escape Brazilian jurisdiction in a clearly politically motivated move. And what the court said is that you cannot do that if you are operating You have to operate within our laws.

So if you don’t have a legal representation here in Brazil, and if you do not accept court orders related to several specific measures to mitigate the impact of this information of what was happening, you could not operate. And he was not blaffing. I think for, I don’t know, 50 days, it took a while. And there was a lot of support because you could imagine that this kind of decision, it’s very unpopular. You have tons, millions of social media users, including a lot of journalists using those tools for their daily work. But the way it was done showed that there was at least an understanding from Brazilian society that it was a fair fight, that it was something legitimate. And you can go even backwards with the pandemic. I won’t go all the way there, but the way that Bolsonaro governed during the pandemic was a big disasters for several reasons, but also in terms of access to reliable information on health issues and the way that false information was spreading for, again, politically biased moves.

And I think he had a bet in the sense that he thought that by going this way, he would show a different path than other global leaders, but it was a big disaster, no surprise. And there was a lot of discussion around this time about disinformation as well. So it’s a discussion that has been going on in Brazil on how public and democratic institutions have to respond to widespread disinformation strategy, especially those coming from the highest ranking officials. It’s gained a lot of track and legitimacy. And I would dare even to say that we have now more than other countries an awareness about those issues where, for example, there was a, I don’t know if it’s very recent survey, I have to double check the numbers, but what I know for sure is that most of Brazilian society, a survey showed is in favor of regulating social media.

So you have this support, even of course, if it’s not, if you have clearly political groups which are very strong and a lot of debate on how you do it. I think the major question is how you do it because it’s not that the fact that you have to act, I think that’s pretty clear here and from every perspective. What is more difficult is how you do it to avoid a very obvious trap where by doing this, you are creating a censorship mechanism and more control over those tools, those technologies. So this should be actually the discussion, how you do it and not if you have to do it or not, why it’s important. I think we are well over the time where those discussions should have passed and now, I don’t know. I really don’t know. I feel that we are living parallel universes sometimes.

When you see, for example, Trump’s speech on the UN and Lula’s speech in the UN, we feel that we are living in parallel universes. So different periods of time. I think it’s clear for, there is a consensus among digital rights activists, organizations, even a part of mainstream progressive groups, NGOs working with freedom of expression that you have to create mechanisms to improve democratic supervisions of how those emerging technologies, especially social media, are creating those rifts in our democratic systems.

Michael Fox:

Artu, thank you so much. I just have two more really quick questions. And this is so important, this last point that you touched on, because particularly in the United States, even amongst folks on the left, because historically, obviously censorship has been used against usually marginalized communities, minority communities. And so the discourse is always, well, once you start to say, well, you can’t say this and these people can’t say that, well then that’s going to be used against always, eventually it’s going to be used against and particularly against minority communities and marginalized communities. The people with the least amount of voice are the ones that are going to have their voice taken away completely. And yet this question no one meant, I feel like this huge elephant in the room is always this question of fake news. I can believe what I want to believe, you can believe what you want to believe.

More or less we can talk, but you still can’t be spreading just complete disinformation and lies and yet that’s what we’re seeing. And unless you actually take that on and say, okay, well this is here and how do we try and roll this back? But I feel like so many people or organizations or individuals, it’s just kind of give it, well, no, we don’t want to do that because then that’s stopping people. But no, there are lies. There are people trying to manipulate this. And so it’s a huge, it’s a complicated debate to ask that question of even how do we do this? But I think that is the question of saying, no, we absolutely have to. We can’t even be discussing if we are going to or not. We need to be talking about how we do it in the most democratic way possible or else we’re just going to see more and more of our rights willed away and more and more of our ability to communicate as a people whittled away.

So it’s crazy.

Artur Romeu:

Yeah. Talking about more on journalism and how specifically on journalism, the way things are told nowadays, I mean in terms of how all this has been appropriated by this fear of censorship or by saying that any kind of regulation is censorship is creating this environment of a crisis of trust and polluting democratic public debate, but also it’s creating something that science and journalism are put in the same level as any other opinion. So this is my opinion. So I can say it because it’s my opinion. And if you have 30 pages special dossier done by one of the journalists working that biggest newsroom in the country and you take this and you say, “Well, they can say wherever they want, that’s my opinion and I’m against this.” Same thing with, I don’t know, climate denialism just to keep one specific issue related to science. So when you put everything, conspiracy theories, opinions, ideas at the same level of other kinds of expressions, they should not be able to say to disagree, of course, or to question, this is healthy for democratic debate, but you cannot dismiss investigative journalistic piece on a very key issue and that had multiple sources done in journalistic processes.

You have a process to doing journalism. It’s not ChatGPT, it’s those investigations in the same way that science has its processes of verification, experimentation, peer review, et cetera. Journalism has its own. And if this is not recognized as a positive incentive, a society to receive this information and to criticize or to discuss what is being said in a different way than just someone saying what they think, journalism have foundations in terms of what is being said. And ideas can have more or less, opinions can have more or less depending from if it’s coming from someone that has studied all his life, all her life about the specific issue and then is expressing of course an idea, a different idea or a position on this topic. But if we put everything at the same level, we won’t have a real conversation. We will be just everyone saying what they want.

And for democracies to work, we have to find commonplaces and those commonplaces have to be based on some kind of logic or some kind of method or some kind of common ground. And so this is a problem right now with journalism because it’s being treated as just another opinion.

And on our newsfeed on social media, it’s being treated as just another opinion. Even sometimes even dismissed or the reach of news articles and links are having a worse reach than other kinds of videos posted by influencers. But there’s no due prominence of journalistic content or scientific content. So the conversation

Is becoming more and more based on the rule of the stronger. If you appear to be stronger than others, your position can overlap all the others because you say so. That’s extremely dangerous for the kind of democracy we have been building. So this is a specific issue with journalism. And the other issue is media sustainability and news deserts and how those new technologies have shifted completely the business model of the media industry in just a few years. And it’s creating more fusions, less pluralism. You have this illusion of pluralism because you feel that there’s more people speaking than before where you have the gatekeepers and all this, but it’s noise. So there’s a lot of noise happening and noise is not necessarily pluralism because pluralism needs some kind of framework to be effective for a democratic debate. If it’s just a bunch of people in a room saying what they think about the problem, not necessarily the best idea or the idea that has the stronger chance to work will win.

So also this idea of a free market of ideas, we don’t live in a political vacuum. So a free market of ideas is completely dependent on the correlations of force between the different stakeholders in the ecosystem, the political landscape. You have a lot of social and economic inequalities. So talking about a free market of ideas with no kinds of balancing this just don’t work because ideas will step on others anyway. When we talk about AI regulation or digital service acts to regulate the social media and the whole industry behind it, you need to have some kind of how you can create mechanisms to create financial compensation for media. And there are a lot of taxating profits from big tech revenue, advertisement revenue of big tax, for example, and creating a fund and this fund being. I don’t know. There are several ideas going on, bargaining codes.

But the point is if we do nothing, what we are seeing is that the economic pressure on journalism, on public interest journalism is becoming asphyxiating. And what we will see soon is an environment, a media landscape with a lot of concentration of power and local news markets disappearing and being replaced by, we don’t really know, but what we’ve been seeing is that when a local news media disappear, there’s no empty space. This space is immediately occupied by propaganda, by this information, by other interests. So preserving journalism, especially local journalism, is a democratic imperative. And we have to understand how we can do this when discussing democratic regulations for social media and AI.

Michael Fox:

Artur, so great. My last really quick question is you mentioned toward the beginning something I thought was really important, you want to forget it, free speech being weaponized against press freedoms. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Where are we seeing that? What does that look like?

Artur Romeu:

We are seeing that in a daily basis in the US for sure. And I have very specific example. When Trump wrote a letter to President Lula to justify the tariffs, the letter mentioned Bolsonaro, the prosecution of Bolsonaro in Brazil, mentioned big tax and the fact that the rights of American citizens was being violated and companies was being violated by the judiciary in Brazil. And just after the letter itself, there was some kind of, I don’t know the name of it, but an order where there were more explanations of the reasons. It was like a one and a half page document and the expression like freedom of speech or free speech or freedom of expression or censorship was repeated at least 10 times in a letter basically saying that the US was imposing tariffs on Brazil because Brazil was promoting censorship. So when I say that free speech is being weaponized against freedom of expression, in parts it connects to this example where you make yourself look like as a free press paladin, but actually what your distorted vision of free speech is doing is fragmenting the idea, the different ideas behind what freedom of expression really is, and mostly the social and collective dimension of freedom of expression.

You are only saying that people should say whatever they want without any kind of interference. If that’s the case, you are basically ignoring completely the fact that people live in a society and part of the freedom of expression right is related to receive pluralistic, diverse, reliable information. When we see these kinds of marches that I’ve talked about in Brazil as well where you say you are there to defend freedom of expression, but actually your enemy is press freedom, you are again weaponizing this idea because what you are really interested in is being able to express your ideas without any kind of repercussions, any kind of accountability, because it’s a very empowering feeling. So I think what those leaders, Bolsonaro, Trump, Edogan, Obam, and others, Milei have been doing the media bashing and fueling general hostility towards journalism and not just journalists, but journalism, like the ideal of journalism, again, not just against the press, but the idea really of journalism is at the core of their political strategy.

It’s not isolated. It’s not something that’s part of their personality. It’s really something that has the ability to keep their electoral basis very mobilized. It’s a very effective way to polarize public debate. And those leaders, they are dependent on polarizations. They cannot leave, have a political career without these kinds of systematic polarization and attacking the press systematically. The press, the media institutions, journalism in general is very effective for your strategy and that’s why they keep doing. In Argentina, for example, recently Mile said, “The problem is we don’t hate journalists enough.” So these kind of ideas, Bukele in El Salvador, it’s really at the core of the political strategy. So again, instrumentalizing, weaponizing free speech to erode press freedom, to have more control over the public debate and less scrutiny in society. It’s much easier to kill the messenger than have to deal with whatever the report or the news article is discussing.

Michael Fox:

Artur, incredible. Thank you so, so much. I really appreciate your time. I know we went over a little bit, but I really appreciate it.

Artur Romeu:

Thank you, Michael.

Michael Fox:

Hi folks. I hope you enjoyed our conversation. As I mentioned before, this is the third bonus episode of this series. There are more on the way. Please watch out for those in your feed. This is the battle for free speech. This podcast is co-hosted by myself and Mark Steiner. This show is produced by The Real News. You can find out more about my work and this show on my Patreon. That’s www.patreon.com/mfox. As always, please make sure to sign up for the Real News Network’s newsletter so you never miss an episode. You can find that at therealnews.com. Thanks so much again for listening to this podcast. See you next time.