Jair Bolsonaro

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“”I never imagined that I'd be president. No one gave us victory, but I think it was God's will. He saved my life first, then he gave me that mandate. … I believe that God is Brazilian

—Bolsonaro

Jair Messias Bolsonaro (1955–) is a morally bankrupt Brazilian nut job politician worshipped by the Brazilian right. A former congressman and the current president of Brazil, Bolsonaro is considered one of the most evil right-wing politicians on the planet within the 21st century. He longs for the good old days of military dictatorship and supports "Christian" and family values. A former member of the so-called "Social Liberal Party", a far-right party that is part of the informally known "Bullets, Beef and Bible Caucus" within the Brazilian Congress, he has been labeled the "tropical Trump", and has been compared to other authoritarian statesmen such as Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte and Egypt's Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Still he leans even further right than Trump in certain aspects. His son Eduardo Bolsonaro is also a congress member with similarly cuddly politics and was being touted to become Brazil's ambassador in the USA, but that failed. In other words, he's the perfect kakistocrat.

Bolsonaro is one of the main opponents of socialism, Communism, leftism, Marxism, Bolivarianism, the gay agenda, etc. and also the current archenemy of common sense, common decency, and the lungs of the planet. Oh, and THE archenemy of Brazil, the country and its people.

Oh, and he fucked a chicken once.

Controversies

Jair Bolsonaro is well known for his controversial stands on several topics, such as minorities, LGBT population and crime. Besides being an admirer of the Brazilian military regime, in 1993 he openly supported Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori, who has been charged with several crimes ranging from corruption to supporting forced sterilization programs and even genocide. Later, in 1999, he openly supported the assassination of several people, including the then Brazilian president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso. This is ironic given that decades later he would also be targeted by an assassin, unsuccessfully.

Several other declarations make him a homophobe, misogynist and racist to non-fashy people.

Presidential proposals

Among his presidential proposals are closing unnecessary ministries (such as the Ministry of Finance, which keeps the government in control of the economy, the Ministry of Defense, which keep the military subordinate to politics, and folding the Ministry of the Environment into the Ministry of Agriculture, in order to put an end to its "fines industry"), supporting free markets and entrepreneurship, opposing an alleged "biased political education in public schools" (where teachers, supposedly, indoctrinate children into socialism, as he and many of his supporters on the right claim), and relaxing Brazilian strict gun laws. He is strongly in favor of law-and-order policies and supports lowering the age of criminal responsibility and further increase the prison population of Brazil, already the 4th-largest in the world.

"Patriotism"

Bolsonaro claims to be a patriot, however, every act of his, when it comes to actually ensuring Brazil has international credibility, goes in the opposite direction. Under his government, Petrobras, the country's state oil company, is having all its subsidiaries sold and the company itself might end up privatized as well. To get an idea of how harmful that is for a country's sovereignty, just think about this:

• The government controls, indirectly, a vast quantity of crude oil;
• Said crude oil is essential to keep the country running;
• Having a strategic resource under control of the government means that the country has a strong position when dealing with other countries (and companies);
• Having refineries as well means that the crude oil will become useful products, without external dependence;

Now, just imagine that Exxon or British Petrol decided that, you know what, they should sell everything they have to someone from another country. Or that the USA government decided that the best way for its oil reserves to be explored would be by financing another country's oil company to come. This is what's happening to Petrobras. It's refineries are being sold, it's transport lines are being sold, these two under the reason that the company should focus on finding and extracting crude oil, nothing more. Nothing says patriotism like telling your own country's companies that they suck.

Fun fact, Petrobras became an increasingly lucrative company during the years of Lula da Silva as president and had some rough years, like all other oil companies in the second half of the 2010s. However, because there is this phenomenon named Sindrome de Vira Lata (Mutt Syndrome, in a rough translation, which is basically the common notion among Brazilians that anything that's Brazilian sucks), everyone took the opportunity to blame the Dilma Rousseff government, its policies regarding the company and, of course, rampant corruption in the company. The fact that crude oil prices were at a low was completely ignored. It would have had a net profit of around US$2.9 billion in 2017 if not for some shady out of court deals, due to Lava Jato. But, since some people think "right now" is much more important than any other time in the future, sovereignty can take a hike!

And there is also the case of him giving the green light for Boeing to buy Embraer. Again, the best way to look into this is making a thought experiment: how would the US citizens react if their government decided to sell Boeing to the Chinese or Russians. You know, one of the companies full of industrial and military secrets being bought by someone else. To add even more salt to the patriotic wound, Embraer is the sole loser of the deal, giving its full portfolio of planes and technology while receiving pretty much nothing in exchange. Oh, and the Brazilian Air Force did a technical statement noticing that, yeah, the whole deal was meant to save Boeing and that, unlike the government said, selling Embraer was not the "only way" to save it.. It should be telling that this statement was leaked to a site that is infamous for being extremely pro-Bolsonaro.

Famous quotes and context

Bolsonaro became known in Brazil and internationally chiefly because of his controversial statements on a number of subjects. However, if everything he has declared since the 1980s is taken into consideration, several contradictions can be observed. Although he is typically viewed as conservative or far-right, he has also expressed admiration for the communist Hugo Chavez, pro-choice views, support for topless rights, among other things.

Criminality

Heated argument between Rosário and Bolsonaro in the Chamber of Deputies.

“”A teenager can rape and kill 200 people and he is still not treated like a criminal in Brazil. Most minors know that if they are going to commit a robbery, it is better to kill the victim as there is less chance of being caught, and if they are, the punishment will be the same.

—Bolsonaro advocating for lowering the age of criminal responsibility.

“”I will not rape you because you do not deserve it.

—Bolsonaro to Maria do Rosário

In 2003, Brazilian teenagers Liana Friedenbach and Felipe Caffé were brutally murdered by five assaulters, one of which was 16 years old. This sparked a debate over a possible reduction of the age of criminal responsibility, as in Brazil nobody under 18 is considered fully responsible for even the most serious crimes. While Bolsonaro supported such reduction to 16 years old, fellow congress member and human rights advocate Maria do Rosário was against it. In an incendiary argument over the case, Rosário called Bolsonaro a rapist and he replied: "I will not rape you because you do not deserve it".

Eleven years later in 2014, Bolsonaro and Rosário had another argument (this time about the military dictatorship in Brazil) in which he repeated his words. This brought wide media attention and, in one of his interviews about the case, Bolsonaro explained: "It was a reflexive response. A word said to her by me over the rape accusation". In another, he clarified what he originally meant: "She doesn't deserve it because she is too bad, too ugly. She is not my type. I would never rape her."

Women

“”I have five children. Four are men. The last time I did it weakly and the result was a woman.

“”No, I'm not against it. As long as it isn't with someone else's wife. When everyone's wives are doing it, mine will be allowed too. Microkinis used to be a scandal but today they are normal. Everything is evolution.

—Bolsonaro about legalizing toplessness.

“”It must be a decision of the couple.

—About abortion in 1999, but he holds the opposite view nowadays.

Despite his past and present sexist comments, Bolsonaro voted in 2006 for the Maria da Penha Law (a law targeting domestic violence against women) and in 2015 for the inclusion of femicide in the Penal Code of Brazil. As President in 2019, he sanctioned measures that made Maria da Penha Law even more strict.

Dictatorship and communism

Bolsonaro with his wife Michelle and his predecessor Michel Temer during his inauguration.

As a former army captain, Bolsonaro openly admires the anti-communist military regime that ruled the country between 1964 and 1985, which practiced censorship and torture.

“”I support a dictatorship. We will never resolve serious national problems with this irresponsible democracy.

—Bolsonaro in 1993.

“”In honor of Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, the dread of Dilma Rousseff.

—Jair Bolsonaro dedicated his vote in 2016 for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff of the corrupt PT to the deceased General Brilhante Ustra, a former general convicted of torture and kidnapping during the military dictatorship who was in charge of DOI-CODI, a facility where she was held imprisoned as an anti-government guerrilla fighter. As several others, this statement was reprehended by several politicians and other society sectors. In response, left-wing deputy Jean Wyllys spat at Bolsonaro in the parliament chamber.

However, despite his opposition to socialism in Brazil, Bolsonaro has also expressed support for Hugo Chavez' socialistic regime in Venezuela:

“”He is a hope for Latin America. I very much wish that this philosophy comes to Brazil. I find him unique. I plan to go to Venezuela and try to meet him. [...] He is not anti-communist and neither am I. In fact, there is nothing closer to communism than the military environment. I don't even know who is a communist nowadays.

—About Hugo Chavez, 1999.

Homosexuality

Gay protesters kiss in front of an amused Bolsonaro.

He said that he would "be incapable of loving a homosexual son" and would "rather let his child die in an accident than be gay" according to a 2011 Playboy interview. He also claimed that "We Brazilians don't like homosexuals."

“”I don’t run the risk of having children who are gay or date black women because my children were very well raised.

He accused the openly gay, left-wing politician Jean Wyllys of "heterophobia" when Wyllys refused to sit next to him on a plane.

Race

In 2006, Bolsonaro proposed a law that would require 50% of seats in congress to be occupied "by the black and brown population". This, however, was an attempt to ironize racial quotas.

“”The lightest man of African descent" in a community of descendants of former slaves "weighed 7 arrobas They don't do anything. I think that he is not usable even as a breeder. More than R$ 1 billion are spent yearly on them.

“”Have you ever seen a Japanese person begging? They are a race with self-respect!

“”I do not know how the commanders are positioning themselves, but, should they ever reduce the effectiveness (of the Army), there are going to be fewer people to oppose the criminals of MST (Brazilian left-wing movement that supports reforms related to agrarian properties), Haitians, Senegalese, Bolivians and all the scum of the world that, now, the Syrians are coming too. The scum of the world is coming to Brazil as if we did not already have enough problems to solve.

Bolsonaro has also had some unsavory views on his country's indigenous people, somehow even finding a way to be xenophobic to them in their own country.

“”The Indians do not speak our language, they do not have money, they do not have culture. They are native peoples. How did they manage to get 13% of the national territory.

“”The indians are evolving, more and more they are human being like us.

Environmental Supervillain

Smoke from the record-breaking wildfires in southwestern Brazil. Satellite image taken by NASA in 2019.

“”Only vegans are complaining about the environment. Once we run out of commodities, what are going to do? Turn vegan? Live off the environment?

—Jair Bolsonaro, destroying and degrading commodities.

Bolsonaro does not hide his contempt for the notion of ecological reserves. He was fined for illegally fishing in 2012, but it eventually expired in December 2018. After he took over the presidency, the auditor responsible for fining him was fired. He also claimed that, once president, the indigenous populations wouldn't get "one more centimeter of land" from him; The fact that these lands are rich with valuable minerals like gold and copper might have something to do with him despising the indigenous population of Brazil, calling them "slaves kept in pre-historical conditions by NGOs".

The risk of his election sparked worry around the world, because he was promising to open the lands within the Amazon rainforest for exploration. The man he named for the Environment Ministry, Ricardo Salles, is a climate change denier who was condemned for ilegally editing ecological reserve maps to the benefit of mining companies as a state Environment Secretary in São Paulo, to the point of slashing the funding for fighting climate change by 96% and also stated that the Brumadinho tragedy, where a dam containing mining scum broke, could've been avoided if there were less "auditing bureaucracy" in place. Currently, the duo is doing their very best to make the risk of turning half the rainforest becoming an strip naked wasteland of abandoned mines a reality. And, because he's such a patriot, he wants other countries' mining companies extracting all the goods. On ecological reserves where there are no minerals to be extracted, like the bay of Angra, he wants to turn them into Cancúns.

When Angela Merkel told the German parliament that she would do everything in her power to stop Brazil's deforestation efforts, Bolsonaro replied, during the G20 summit in Japan, that "[Germany] uses a lot of fossil fuels. We don't. They have a lot to learn from us". That was reassuring.

Perhaps the most alarming thing Bolsonaro actually managed to do thus far (besides starving funding for fighting climate change) was fire the director of the INPE (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espacias, or National Institute of Space Research), Ricardo Galvão. The reason? The institute published the numbers of the deforestation for the first six months of 2019, and it showed an increase of 88% comparing the month of June 2018 to June 2019, plus 278% for July 2018-19. Once Bolsonaro ordered the Institute to retract (after accusing them of data tampering, working for NGOs and claiming the instruments were unreliable), the director stood his ground and also openly complained about how his boss behaved like a "14 year old, not a president". Although Bolsonaro complained that publishing those numbers was "bad for the country", he's either too stupid, ignorant or arrogant (possibly all three and more) to realize how much his own actions are bad for the country's image.

And it only gets worse

Carbon monoxide released by the wildfires in August 2019.

As more data came in pointing that the fires raging around the rainforest have increased almost 300% compared to the previous year, Bolsonaro kept denying and blaming everyone but the actual culprits, big farmers, who organized a "fire day" via a WhatsApp group, for it:

“”You want some proof that the NGOs are burning the amazon? I'll give you proof, that will get completely distorted by the press tomorrow. Some of the images, someone in a car, is burning the highway from the side. The fire of the exact same height. You can notice, the fire of the same height, one kilometer, typical of fires started how? Someone in a bicycle or motorcycle, a burning pole, dropping that in the side of the road.

—Bolsonaro, the master of PIDOOMA.

“”The forest isn't on fire like people are saying. They're happening where people are deforesting.

—Bolsonaro, trying to imply the fires are happening in already devastated areas and failing miserably.

Emmanuel Macron, France's president, was humiliated time and time again by Bolsonaro and even his Education Minister, Abraham Weintraub. When Macron accepted, with the rest of the G7, to negotiate and send some funds to help fight the fires (despite his absolute indignation with the Brazilian treatment), the donkey kicked again. First, accusing the group of seeing the Amazon as a no-man's land and accusing Macron specifically of "throwing gratuitous attacks at the Amazon". The next day, Bolsonaro went back and considered getting the help, but he insisted that Macron was wrong: "[...]Firstly, mister Macron must retract the insults he directed at me. He called me a liar. Then, the information I received, is that our sovereignty is open in the Amazon."

In case of oil spill

Brazilian beach fouled by oil in 2019.

Starting August 30, spilled oil started to show up on beaches of the northeastern coast. After the whole month of September doing nothing and pretending nothing was happening, despite more oil showing up on even more beaches, the very first action that came from the government was to claim it was Venezuelan oil. Really. When that claim caused facepalms all over the world and was very easily proven to be false, Bolsonaro doubled down on stupidity:

“”Coincidence or not, we have an auction. I ask myself, we have to be very responsible in what we say. Could it be, you don't need to answer, a criminal action to jeopardize the auction? The question is in the air

Unlike the government, the people living near the affected areas decided to do something that wasn't pointing fingers at those obviously not involved. This is important: it is within the president's powers to order the navy to take immediate action in case of such disaster. Without his express order, they don't do anything. Also, the Environment Ministry has a contingency plan to minimize damages, but took 41 days since the first spill to put it into action.

• Fun fact: The Bolsonaro government dismantled several federal-civil councils and committees back in April, including two that were responsible for taking quick action in the face of oil spills. At the time, Bolsonaro was happy that he was getting rid of "entities filled with ideology [...] that were purposefully hindering development and not worrying about the real necessities of the people".

However, because reality, common sense and good behavior are the polar opposite of Bolsonaro, the man continues to blame (without an atom of evidence) his own enemies as responsible for the oil: Greenpeace, Foro de Sao Paulo, Dilma Rousseff, PT (Worker's Party), Nicolas Maduro, NGOs, other left parties. Given his track record, when the actual reason of the spill becomes clear, it's very probable he'll bark "VENEZUELAN COMMUNIST CONSPIRACY".

In November 2019, he and his government have once again become the subject of ridicule, as the Federal Secretary of Fisheries stated in a Facebook livestream that "fish are smart, when they see an oil spot, they flee", and that, therefore, it was safe to eat fish from contaminated areas, despite multiple samples of seafood being found with dangerous levels of chemical contamination. This is the same Secretary of Fisheries whose family was fined a dozen times for illegal fishing practices, and the officers responsible for the fines were fired after Bolsonaro's election. Anyone else seeing some kind of pattern here?

Record Fires of 2020

As if 2020 wasn't a bad enough year on its own due to COVID-19, the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul registered record fires and deforestation, partly due to the long drought, partly due to human greed and stupidity, partly due to the government's purposeful inaction. To make matters worse, the Amazon also registered another increase in deforestation, compared to 2019, which was already record breaking. Bolsonaro, being Bolsonaro, claimed that the media was overblowing the whole thing, both in regards to the Amazon fires and the Pantanal fires and the the indigenous populations were responsible for the fires just to make him look bad. As if he needed any help with that.

The Agriculture Minister, Teresa Cristina, claimed during an interview that if there were more cattle in the area, there would be less fires, "cattle are firemen of the wetlands (...) they trim the pasture and don't leave as much dry foliage or organic mass to burn.". Considering that cattle ranchers are the main source of illegal fires and several other illegal activities, including but not limited to assassination and arson, that is some stellar level of ironic bullshit. To the surprise of no one, Bolsonaro approved of that message.

Meanwhile, the man put in charge of the ministry that was supposed to fight those things, Ricardo Salles, pretends there's nothing out of the ordinary going on, that it's being overblown and, because he can't resist even a figurative smoke screen, points that Africa and California are burning even more, which, as usual from anyone from the Bolsonaro gov't, is diversionist bullshit.

Bolsonaro and his ministers have yet to complain that NASA is being taken over by communists or that their instruments are unreliable, things they always do when it's INPE and other Brazilian institutes, despite both showing the same thing: that the fires are without precedent.

COVID-19 Response

“”Wouldn't it be cheaper to invest in the cure instead of the vaccine?

—The clown himself, 26 October 2020.

When the SARS-CoV-2 hit Brazil in late February, most states actually responded with significant lockdowns and social distancing rules. However, Bolsonaro was against all that. Publicly, he said that it was just a little flu, that it wouldn't kill more than the common cold. He openly denounced governors that took preventive measures and always ignored every rule about not wearing a mask or to avoid large gatherings. His followers did exactly the same, complaining about masks, ignoring restrictions and dumbly believing it was a communist plot. In a book that Luiz Henrique Mandetta, the first Health Minister that was later fired, is writing, he explains that part of the problem is that Bolsonaro truly believes that the virus is a biological weapon created by the Chinese for the latin american left parties to get to power. Let that sink in for a moment. That is the level of stupidity Brazilians, and to a lesser extent, the rest of the world, are dealing with. The second Health Minister, Nelson Teich, resigned after a month in office, as he quickly understood that he was there to be Bolsonaro's puppet, to approve and endorse every stupid thing the president said, not to actually come up with a plan to fight the pandemic.

Bolsonaro's calls for the people to act stupid and ignorant probably would have had a smaller effect if he didn't have a large reach in social media, mainly Twitter, and Whatsapp groups. That is due to the large botnet he kept from the 2018 election, aptly named Gabinete do Ódio (Hate Cabinet), which, despite being illegal and also being ilegally funded during the elections, was never deactivated. During the pandemic, it ran full throttle to spew falsehoods everywhere it could, whether it was to say chloroquine was the miracle drug with 100% efficiency, that "the cousin of a friend died but the cause of death was registered as COVID-19", that the coffins were actually empty or, more often, to attack anyone that dares say Bolsonaro might be wrong on anything. Ex-supporters only "find out" about that once they get on the wrong end of the attack campaigns.

As of October 13, Brazil has surpassed 150,000 deaths officially confirmed to have been caused by COVID-19. It's important to take that number with some skepticism, as the Bolsonaro government, and some states', are actively trying to make the pandemic look like something small. The Health Ministry, which had a page keeping track of all deaths, took it down to pamper the dear leader. The numbers come from what news outlets can gather from state and municipal Health Secretaries.

With the rush to create a vaccine having a Chinese one in the lead, CoronaVac, Bolsonaro was quick to state that the vaccination won't be mandatory and that the Chinese vaccine, specifically, won't enter the country, citing that it doesn't have approval from government agencies. Of course, that is a blatant lie, first because the vaccine would be produced in Brazil, as a partnership between Sinovac, the Chinese company, and Butantan Institute, a Brazilian public institution that develops several vaccines, antidotes and drugs. Second, Anvisa, the agency that regulates drugs and vaccines, never found any problems with Sinovac in the years that the company worked within the country. While it's easy to attribute Bolsonaro's decision to just him being a sinofobic sociopath, this was also a political maneuver, as the state governor of São Paulo, João Doria, a possible competitor for the 2022 elections, led the negotiations between Sinovac and Butantan to get the vaccine to São Paulo. Update: Sinovac's vaccine has turned out to be somewhat problematic, so this might be a stopped clock moment for him - though, given his lack of common sense, it might just be coincidential luck. Expect something along the lines of "the Bible told me that".

To put that in perspective, the other leading vaccine, Oxford vaccine, with a partnership between Astrazeneca laboratory and Fiocruz, did not find any resistance from Bolsonaro.

Family and Militias

Flavio Bolsonaro, Senator from Rio de Janeiro.

At the end of 2018 came his first crisis, as accusations emerged of a close friend of his, Fabrício Queiroz, being a member of the militia that runs parallel to Rio de Janeiro's government. Said militia is composed mostly of cops (retired and active) that took over the very lucrative drug trafficking business and protection racketeering after the old criminal leaders were either killed or jailed. Not only that, there was strong evidence pointing that Flavio Bolsonaro, one of Jair's sons, had hired Queiroz to collect a percentage of his assessors' salaries. So far, Queiroz failed to come up with a "Plausible story" and there is a high probability that the case will be archived and forgotten by the justice system, as the initial investigation didn't have a court order, despite many previous cases, including Lava Jato, having their initial investigations begin without a court order, but a request from COAF, the agency that controls and audits suspicious money movement.

As if having one of his sons directly involved wasn't enough, there is also the possibility of the family being involved, even if indirectly, with the murder of Marielle Franco. Context: Marielle was a rising left-wing politician in the state of Rio de Janeiro, being black and from a poor background (like the vast majority of the population) and also being lesbian. On March 14th 2018, she was ambushed and shot dead, along with her driver. A very obvious political crime, the investigation went everywhere but the most likely culprits, the Rio de Janeiro militias, one with the charming name of Escritório do Crime (lit. Crime Office). The reason for successive "mistakes", including loss of footage that could help reveal the perpetrators, is as stated above: the criminal group has active cops in its midst and is well connected to the higher ups, so it's easy for them to disrupt the investigation. As of November 2019, the crime is still unsolved.

The current suspects of the shooting, Ronnie Lessa and Elcio de Queiroz (no relation to Fabricio), had their movement traced and it led the investigation to the condo where Bolsonaro has a mansion. At first, any relation to him could be discarded as mere coincidence, as the house the duo visited was of another person, who got busted for possessing a stock of 117 M-16 rifles, this in March 13th. However, the condo's porter stated to the police that he remembers people asking to go to Bolsonaro's house on the day of the crime, which is what he also wrote down on the entrance papers. Once the news broke out, Bolsonaro and his family went into a frenzy, with the patriarch doing a livestream and bellowing at Globo, threatening the group to remove their TV concession and effectively shutting down the channel. Not only that, Jair immediately ordered Sergio Moro, Justice Minister, to take care of the porter. It took two hours for the prosecutor responsible for the investigation, Carmen Eliza Bastos de Carvalho, to evaluate the audio logs and make a press conference to state that the porter lied. Said prosecutor was later shown to be an avid supporter of Bolsonaro and she also posed together with Rodrigo Amorim, the deputy that broke the honor plaque that renamed a street after Marielle. At first, she denied that this would influence the investigation at all, but stepped down after she realized nobody would believe that.

On another front, Carlos Bolsonaro very quickly posted on his twitter (and later deleted) the audio logs of the porter's calls on the day of the murder. However, this raised more questions than it answered:

• How did he have access too ALL audio logs, including those for other houses?
• What proof is there that he didn't tamper with any of them?
• Why did the police evaluate a copy of the logs, instead of the originals?

Jair Bolsonaro later claimed that his son got the audios on his behalf, before the logs could be tampered with. Needless to say, their interference completely ruined the evidence, casting doubt over whether they didn't tamper with any of it.

While it is possible that they had nothing to do with the crime, the speed at which they and their lackeys responded, as well as the overall intentionally slow and faulty execution of the investigation, raises serious suspicions. Given Brazil's track record, don't expect the factual truth to come out anytime soon.

Olavo de Carvalho

Carvalho in the Brazilian Embassy in Washington DC. He's the guy in the beige jacket next to Bolsonaro.

One of Bolsonaro's chief intellectual sources is Olavo de Carvalho, often described as "Bolsonaro's guru" (or, by Nick Burns, described as "part Roger Scruton and part Alex Jones"). Carvalho is a batshit crazy lunatic, foul-mouthed conservative, (USA) nationalist, self-educated (or self-described) philosopher, who began as a Trotskyite but switched to the right in a cloud of irrationality. He combines a deep hatred of the PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores, Workers' Party) and all things of the left and opposition to homosexuality with a mindset rooted in every conspiracy theory and a lot of deeply weird occultism and irrational ideas such as astrology. He appears to be skeptical of Einstein's Theory of Relativity and of heliocentrism and other non-geocentric worldviews. Here's a small rundown of other nice characteristics of him:

• He's an Obama birther.
• Claims that Nazism was planned by Stalin
• Claims every Brazilian political party, and therefore every politician, is communist
• Also states that Brazil was always ruled by communists
• Thinks 9/11 was a leftist job
• Doesn't really believe in evolutionism
• Believes in the flat earth conspiracy theory

Considering the really low bar for most of his ministers, it's a real surprise Bolsonaro didn't formally name Olavo for anything.

External links

• See the Wikipedia article on Jair Bolsonaro.
• Jair Bolsonaro Is Elected President of Brazil. Read His Extremist, Far-Right Positions in His Own Words. — Even more quotes
• What Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, has said about Brazil's Indigenous Peoples — A compilation of Bolsonaro's quotes on Brazil's indigenous people, with links