Tag: Bolsonaro

On the brink – Brazil, Israel, USA go the polls

We’ve big elections, with potentially massive consequences, upcoming. The Brazilian election run-off is on Sunday, 25th, the Israeli election on Tuesday 27th, and the US mid-term election on 4th November. The French presidential election follows April next year.

Brazil looks to go far right with Bolsonaro Jnr, after he came in ahead on the first round two weeks ago. The margin may be as little as 2%, but it is of course a presidential election and the winner will take all.

The mid-terms look to be heavily weighted against Trump: the New York Times has the Democrats 11% ahead, NBC 9%. But it comes down of course to individual races, and individual states and districts, with redistricting, also known as gerrymandering, coming into play in some Republican districts.

Israeli has proportional representation so it’s multi-party. There we’ve a pro- against an anti-Netanyahu coalition. The hard right with its overt brutality toward Palestinians just might lose out by a hairsbreadth. But attitudes have changed in Israel since October 7th three years ago. It’s disturbing to read that the hard right have made gains among young people: they used to be the guarantee of social progress.

Whoever wins in the three elections in the next two weeks will win by small margins. But once the door is opened…

It used to be an assumption of post-war liberal democracies that you’d have four or five years in power and then fight another election on your record. The elections would be a level-playing field. But far-right parties (and far-left if we head back further in time) have a long record of manipulating future elections in their favour. ‘Once we’ve a right-wing, nativist, illiberal, populist government, then let’s ensure it will always be that way.’ As they might argue. Usually there’s a charismatic leader who charms and brutalises in equal measures. It’s that disavowal of the free-and-fair-election principle that could be one of the great tragedies of our times. You climb to the top, and you pull up the drawbridge. That’s the old metaphor, it’s graphic, and it’s spot-on.

We’ve seen how the tech bros have kowtowed to Trump. How might they reposition post-Trump? We’ve seen Trump align with Putin. We’ve seen a disregard for human life, with ICE and the defunding of USAID. Even the possibility of a public firing squad. We’ve seen a triumphalist Christianity with its proponents reassured by a belief in a Second Coming which would of course solve all problems. If both houses of Congress go Democrat, planned cuts to Medicaid and reining in defence spending are likely to be a focus. But foreign policy is still ultimately the President’s.

In Brazil, Bolsonaro Jnr, if he wins, will rollback deforestation regulations. Admiration for Bukele in El Salvador and a desire to mimic Trump spells danger for Bolsonaro opponents, which could include Supreme Court judges who found Bolsonaro Snr guilty on conspiracy charges.

We’re in a relatively safe space in the UK at the moment. After two years of Starmer as prime minister we can see the difference that a leader, Andy Burnham, with a clear vision, can make. Reform has, for now at least, lost momentum, a consequence in part of simple sleaziness and the reliance on massive funding from crypto-currency and property tycoons. But the hard-right mentality is deep-rooted, here, as elsewhere in Europe. The right-wing government in Italy is trying to pass reforms which might help consolidate power in future elections. But it’s stayed loyal to the EU and strongly pro-Ukraine, and anti-Russia. And PM Meloni and Trump have fallen out big-time.

Turning to France, just how far would a National Rally government, which looks likely after next spring’s election, push an anti-EU agenda? Would they maintain Macron’s focus on European defence? Would they have the sure touch that Meloni seems to have? We have to trust that the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) party in Germany stays sidelined until the Ukraine war is settled, and eyes opened to the absurdities of a backward-looking nostalgia for the imagined certainties of the old East Germany.

We have on the plus side seen Fidesz and Viktor Orban lose power in Hungary. He hadn’t pulled the ladder up quite far enough. That might serve as a warning to others to dispense with a ladder altogether.

You lose an election… OK, we’ll do better next time, you tell yourself. But there does need to be a next time.

The Greens, Zionism, the Tories – and Brazil

I wake this morning to hear that the Tories in their blissful ignorance plan to abolish the Environment Agency and Natural England. We assume it’s because they’re deemed to have green credentials. According to a writer in the Spectator it’s down to his local river not getting cleared of weeds as it used to be. Wading birds and frogs take priority. The main problem, as the rest of us see it, is underfunding. Thinking of my own backyard, Natural England administer, on a day-to-day basis, our local common, which we own: what would happen without them, we wonder?

It is always so much wiser to help find solutions rather than create or exacerbate problems.  This would apply to another news story, the Green Party conference passing a motion asserting that Zionism is racism. For sheer stupidity that takes some beating. There is a vast 120 and more year issue here: where might there be a homeland for a Jewish population, and how could that be squared with settling a territory where people were already living?

Tenant farmers back in the 1930s were displaced by Arab landowners selling territory to incoming Jews. The ultimate outcome was the displacement of vast populations, the nakba, in 1948. Also, over time, the development of a prosperous and proud and high-achieving Jewish state. The 1990s saw a chance for coming together, but moderates were pushed aside. The politics of Hamas and Likud left little room for compromise. But – none of this makes Zionism of itself racist. The attacks on Palestinian settlements and villagers by Jewish settlers with the connivance (and indeed active support by some members of) the Israeli government are another matter.

I have long supported the Palestinians. But if I was Jewish I would, I’m sure, be a supporter, right or wrong, of Israel. And, speaking as an Anglo-Saxon, originally out of Manchester, the courage and the sheer genius of the Jewish people have had a huge impact on my life.

The Economist describe the Greens’ decision to support the motion as ‘shameful’. ‘The party thereby deserves to fade back into irrelevance.’ I have to agree. I’d also add that having heard the Green mayor of Hackney outline her policies, all of them well-meaning, with no mention at all of promoting local business, I was left wondering how the community could generate the jobs and income that a prosperous local economy requires.

We need the Greens to pick up and run with their old agenda. We need them. The likely election of another Bolsonaro in Brazil could have terrible consequences for the Amazon, with loggers and farmers spreading deeper into the forest. Reading that wonderful travel writer Norman Lewis recently I was made aware of how, over many decades, bible-toting American evangelists brought notions of sin and salvation to Amazonian tribes, displacing and resettling, allowing the forest to be felled and given over to agriculture feeding American and European markets. Protestant evangelists have also brought American-style mega-churches and an effective funding model to Brazilian cities. The bonds of the old Catholic communities have been fractured. The evangelical right is little focused on environment and heavily focused on money and the immediacy of salvation.

If you detect cynicism on my part, you would be right. In my book, care and compassion, in their widest sense, come before sin and salvation. Without the former the latter are worthless. In the words of a 17th century Quaker, ‘sin … means losing he way of the heart’. 

We have of course the same evangelical and funding model in this country, and they surface in such people as Paul Marshall, proprietor of GB News and the Spectator, and the recently disgraced (attempting to bypass electoral law by enlisting American funding) head of policy at Reform, James Orr. This brings us, almost but not quite, full circle back to the Tories and their conference, trying to make a mark by trashing old institutions. There are many older, more centrist Tories who are horrified by what’s happening. Maybe the current crew will implode over the next few years and wiser folk regain their party. But as things stand I don’t hold out much hope.

Making the case for rebellion

My last blog made the case for silence. I argued that silence needs to be more active, more pro-active. Can I now make the case for rebellion? I’m thinking of Extinction Rebellion. Yesterday at the Hay Book Festival I listened to Mike Berners-Lee discussing his new book, ‘There is No Planet B’, and to a panel discussion involving three Extinction Rebellion activists. There’s optimism in the Rebellion ranks, much greater caution from Berners-Lee.

Berners-Lee advises businesses. He’s well aware of the abject failure of the fossil fuel industry to invest more than paltry sums in renewables. But what of the consumer? As the recent Committee on Climate Change Report made clear in its recommendations, changing public behaviour is key to meeting its ‘net zero’ emissions target by 2050.

Individual targets (for example, setting your thermostat in winter at 19 degrees) catch the eye. But far more important is the national mindset. By that I mean the extent to which the public accepts the need for a fundamental and wide-ranging change of attitude, in the way that attitudes to gender and to smoking have changed radically over the last forty years. There is a point where the consensus tips the other way.

Extinction Rebellion I love for its enthusiasm, and self-belief. The Economist sees problems with its ‘inchoate enthusiasm’. It matches another, opposite problem, cynicism. A false opposition in this case, they have this wrong – but they highlight a danger.

I’m on-side, and accept its methods are eyecatching and have helped change the mood and generate debate. But there is, and I’m speaking in the most general of terms, a faith in human goodness, almost a sense of a new age dawning, which takes me back to the 1960s and the Age of Aquarius, Hair and Woodstock. That degenerated into disillusion, cynicism and at worst violence in the 1970s. It took on an overly political ‘them vs us’ aspect and fostered an anti-capitalist agenda. It has been agitating out on the sidelines ever since. Never getting close to the mainstream.

My concern, my interest, has always been how we how we work within existing systems. To effect change, and it could be radical change. But you have to build and maintain consensus if change is to embedded. Obamacare is an example of a battle between an old and new consensus, now being fought through the US courts.

We may sense that opinion on climate is changing, that the consensus is moving toward radical action. But how confident can we be in the age of Trump and Bolsonaro, carbon champions both, that high-minded sentiment will win out over national governments in alliance with big business?

Trump has undermined the Environmental Protection Agency, and is busy signing new executive orders to facilitate the building of pipelines.  Brazil’s new president Jair Bolsonaro aims (I quote the New York Times) ‘to open up the rain forest — which has already lost 20 percent of its cover — to new development.  …. Satellite data shows that deforestation has grown steadily since his victory in October. In the first month after his election, deforestation increased more than 400 percent, compared to the previous year.’

The news from Australia has been equally depressing. The right-wings Liberals were hit hard in the cities but (quoting The Economist) ‘in the end the election was won in Queensland, a state full of marginal constituencies. Global warming is exacerbating its frequent floods and droughts…. But the state’s economy is dependent on exploiting natural resources, notably coal, and many of its voters are wary of environmental regulation.’

Climate is indeed up there as an issue as never before, but the battle lines of old are simply being built higher. The battle is – to win and hold the public consensus.

And that is where Extinction Rebellion might just be different from the old Aquarians. But they should hold to the issue, and avoid adding anti-global or anti-capitalist agendas to the mix. Which won’t be easy. Too wide an anti-establishment agenda and all agendas could be swept aside, climate change among them.

Maybe not surprisingly one of the objections of old-guard journalism, supposedly echoing the views of ordinary people, is that we, we Brits, have nothing to gain by going alone – we will simply be disadvantaged compared to other countries. The argument may be false but it strikes a chord. We also have to deal with market enthusiasts, who may accept that the market needs to be primed a little, or nudged – we can be nudged to insulate our homes, or use less plastic, but that should be the limits of our interventions, The market, it’s argued, is ultimately the best guarantee of effecting environmental change. The fact that it may be far too laggardly doesn’t get mentioned.

Trump and Bolsonaro notwithstanding, climate change now has a wide acceptance as a stark reality. But don’t we have other priorities, more pressing? The effects on us as individuals are minimal… and what, in any event, can we really do? The planet will go its own way.  And we won’t, we older folk, be around anyway.

Indifference, ideology, entrenched interests – there is much to rebel against.