Bolsonaro sports a face mask featuring Brazil's Coat of Arms. Credit: Andressa Anholete/Getty Images
States of emergency are golden opportunities for the powerful. The suspension of the status quo is at once a supreme demonstration of a government’s sovereignty and a pretext to pursue new agendas with relative impunity. That’s why political theorists like Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben and Carl Schmitt predicted that states would grow addicted to the state of emergency as a tool, expecting their use to become more frequent and expansive.
That’s also why the current shitshow taking place in Brazil is so captivating — and tragic. It’s an example of the state of emergency doctrine on crack. Suspension of normal order because of the coronavirus was forced upon Jair Bolsonaro’s populist Government from below; that Government responded with a scattershot of attempts to sometimes exploit, sometimes undermine protective measures. Meanwhile there have been conspiratorial murmurings, a scepticism of expertise rare even among anti-establishment populists, and a skyrocketing Covid-19 death toll, making Brazil one of the hardest hit countries worldwide. Rather than a display of power, the crisis is exposing a Government gripped by paranoia.
Granted, Bolsonaro had reason to fear even before the arrival of Covid in late February. Brazil appeared then to be heading into economic recession. In addition, on 14 March, Brazil’s Supreme Court initiated criminal investigations into networks allegedly promoting “fake news” and which were credited with assisting Bolsonaro’s election. Court-ordered police raids and inquiries targeted the President’s high-level supporters, including family members.
The President and his ministers responded by suggesting that police disregard orders from the judiciary, setting the stage for a constitutional showdown. Bolsonaro’s efforts to instal loyal police chiefs amid the turmoil led to the resignation of his popular minister of justice and the creation of a new investigation into his possible judicial obstruction and interference.
But this whirlwind of political woes is only part of the reason for the President’s erratic response to the pandemic. First came a short-lived alarmist response channelling his law-and-order instincts; then, an attempt to downplay the need for lockdowns while prioritising economic concerns; then yet another stance, born of his penchant for conspiracy and rejection of scientific expertise.
His opening moves came in early February, when he showed reluctance — citing logistical and health-related concerns — to repatriate Brazilians located in the epicentre of the outbreak in Hubei province, China. Any notion that this signalled a cautious approach disappeared in early March, when he described the threat posed by the virus a media “fantasy”. Days later, on 15 March, striking a more measured tone while questioning lockdown measures, he said that “the virus could turn into a fairly serious issue, but the economy has to function”. Then, following the first deaths, on 19 March, his Government strengthened all land borders and instituted restrictions for foreigners entering on international flights. Around this time, and against the wishes of his Health Minister, Bolsonaro began promoting the unproven drug hydroxychloroquine in public statements as a treatment for Covid-19.
In the absence of a national lockdown, state governors and mayors began instituting social distancing measures, notably in São Paulo on 24 March. A patchwork of lockdowns came to Brazil — driven from the bottom up. Bolsonaro condemned them as inflicting needless economic suffering on the country, even urging citizens to defy local decrees. On 16 April, with cases approaching 100,000, the economy contracting, and foreign investors fleeing, Bolsonaro fired his Minister of Health, Luiz Henrique Mandetta. By the end of the month, Brazil would have more confirmed cases than China.
Was there a strategy behind all this? A video of a 22 April cabinet meeting, released by a court order, suggests that a growing fear of outside influence had infected the administration. In the meeting, Bolsonaro dwelt on the local leaders who were getting the better of the crisis and using it to subvert his agenda of a free-market liberty-loving society:
“These guys just want to take us from behind. It’s our freedom. This is the reality. This is what they’re doing with the virus. That piece of shit governor in São Paulo. That asshole governor of Rio, and the others, exactly this.”
Damares Alves, the socially conservative Minister of Women, Family, and Human Rights, fretted about other healthcare administrators and how they might exploit the situation: “Would they allow women who had coronavirus to abort in Brazil? It will be a free-for-all.” She also suggested political opponents were infecting indigenous people with coronavirus to hurt Bolsonaro.
In the midst of the exchanges, the Foreign Minister, Ernesto Araújo, referred to the outbreak of the “communavirus”. The day before he had published a statement describing the pandemic as having been appropriated by communist interests in an effort to erase national borders and institute a global reign of “sanitary correctness” where dissenting behaviour was punished. He argued that its goal was not only to vanquish capitalism but to “enslave the being human and transform it into an automaton devoid of a spiritual dimension”.
The apocalyptic language echoes that of Bolsonaro’s unofficial guru, the former astrologer and leader of a Sufi Muslim tariqa turned Catholic zealot Olavo de Carvalho, who looms over the nationalist, anti-China and pro-Trump wing of the Bolsonaro cabinet from his home in exile in Virginia. It was de Carvalho who recommended Araújo for the post.
The Minister of Education Abraham Weintraub, part of the same wing, made few comments at the late April meeting beside a call to jail Supreme Court justices. A few weeks earlier, however, he tweeted — in language mocking a Chinese accent — that the outbreak was part of the Chinese government’s plan for “world domination”. This strain of conspiracy theory buoys the cabinet’s rejection of international scientific expertise (one member at the meeting was recorded saying: “I already told my wife, if I have anything, I’ll take a litre of hydroxychloroquine”).
The Bolsonaro Government seemed consumed with waging ideological battles against imaginary enemies. Only the Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, realised that they could in fact take advantage of the situation. “While we have this moment of calm in terms of press coverage — because it’s only talking about Covid — let’s pass these bills soon, and change all the rules. Ease up the regulations,” he said to the Cabinet. Deforestation in the Amazon, indeed, has continued its acceleration throughout the pandemic.
In the weeks following the meeting, the virus ravaged the rural northern Amazonian states and pushed intensive care units to capacity in major cities. The situation was more in line with that of Italy than Brazil’s Latin American neighbours.
Meanwhile, the President continued to erode the governors’ and mayors’ protective measures by expanding the list of essential businesses in the country; continued pushing hydroxychloroquine while upping its domestic production and securing a major delivery of the drug from the United States; witnessed the resignation of his new Health Minister after just four weeks and replaced him with a military general lacking any medical training; initiated retaliatory, though not baseless, investigations of corruption among his political rivals; and participated in mass anti-lockdown protests where he shook demonstrators’ hands.
It seemed almost like the actions of someone who had stopped caring (“We are all going to die some day,” the President once responded to reporters’ questions about the pandemic). But as domestic commentators such as Oliver Stuenkel have pointed out, the aimlessness of the President’s response allows him to benefit politically from a range of outcomes. The economic crisis looming since before the outbreak? Bolsonaro can now blame it on lockdowns. If the death rate turns out to be catastrophically high? The lockdowns didn’t work — he told you so!
Bolsonaro’s future depends on his ability to position himself in relation to the wave of pain — of one form or another — that Brazilians seem destined to face.
Benjamin Teitelbaum is an American ethnographer and political commentator. He is author of War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right.
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SubscribeAlso think this is too wordy and conceptually blurry. Neocons wanted to roll out American style individualism worldwide, using intervention to flip countries along the way to ‘secure the world for freedom’, picking up financial assets as a result (for defence and oil industries).
Current progressive liberals want to role out American style diversity and rights worldwide, using intervention to flip countries along the way for ‘human rights’, globalising the world as one big financial asset (for tech and service companies).
Both sides are adamantly anti-popularist, because popularism is a lot of little people waving to stop the interventionism and focus on practical issues at home first, with no interest in dubious political theories.
Pride comes before a fall. After apparently winning the Cold War (caveat China) the US ballsed things up.
This is just too wordy. I waded through it and got some of the essence, but cannot be sure that I completely understood it, or if I am a neo-conservative or a post-liberal.
Probably I am a post-liberal, but I also noticed with alarm the suggestion that post liberalism flirts with populism. I cannot be linked to populism, which is used as a pejorative, but why? Why is a “political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups” so scorned?
Then follows a paragraph from the pits of hell “As UnHerd‘s Peter Franklin wrote in 2019, he was drawn to post-liberalism’s “respect for human dignity” that “distinguishes [it] from populism”, is “incompatible with collectivist ideas that instrumentalise the individual in service to some group identity; and also at odds with atomistic individualism”.
I think much of the difficulty in comprehension – I suffered from it too – is due to the failure to define “liberalism”. There are at least two accepted meanings. One is Classical Liberalism, which is very similar if not identical to Libertarianism. The second is what we here in the States might call New Deal Liberalism, which is really quasi-Socialism. The two match up very poorly, at least on economics, and yet the author never specifies of which one he writes.
“he was drawn to post-liberalism’s “respect for human dignity” that “distinguishes [it] from populism”, is “incompatible with collectivist ideas that instrumentalise the individual in service to some group identity;”
This is Post-Modernism, that evil, Nihilist philosophy which denies any universality, such as all traditional cultural rules, morality, ethics, religion, patriotism, family, and any point, or in fact reality, in existence other than self. And the self is gone once dead, so that is no validity either. It is all about tearing down all which humanity has built up, reducing all to Solipsism and Nihlos, and thus basically the philosophy of Satan. (Came from Wiemar Republic existentialism/Marxism/Freudism of the Frankfurt School – then to Foucault and Derrida in the 70s. There was unparalleled evil (and creativity, but much of it turned very dark) in 1930s Germany, Critical Theory came from this all – and so CRT.
Neo-Cons and Neo-Liberal were way too evangelizing, and way too into the Industrial Complex though. I wish for a return to Conservative and Traditional Liberal values – and none of this Neo, and Post crap. Anything which can look at the 10 commandments, 5-10, and think – ‘those look good to me’.
How is it going Leslie? I am canning garden figs and pears this week, and off to do my constant fishing as I need to be on the water pretty much daily. I feed quite a few non-red meat eaters, and myself and family fishing, I no longer commercial fish, but instead give it away, being on the water fishing is the thing which always brings my mind back to peace – thinking of the world today requires I then be outside hours to get over the grimness of politics man is destroying him self with. I will leave here with the dogs, drive 1/4 mile to a marsh and get into it and catch bait for 1/2 an hour, then out on the big water and just be out there alone for 2 hours, then 1/2 hour cleaning fish, and home, mentally refreshed.
Well said. I consider myself a small “c” conservative.
As such I don’t believe in revolutionary change but in conserving what is best. And I also believe, within the bounds of freedom, society should operate for the benefit of everyone within a democratic framework. I most certainly don’t believe people should be told what is good for them by a pseudo elite.
As a classical liberal conservative, I hate neoconservatives. Neocons have redefined freedom as freedom to do whatever we want to you for your own good, strong national defense as screwing around and blowing stuff up in other countries without a plan, and capitalism as corporate monopolies in cahoots with government regulators. My opinion of neoliberals, the horrible inheritors of mid-19th to mid-20th progressivism, the modern followers of Wilson and Bernays, is just as low.
It is actually not too hard to tell the difference between neocons and neoliberals. See if someone says we are bombing another country in the name of “freedom,” that person is a neocon, but if someone says we are bombing another country in the name of “human rights,” that is a neoliberal. Now if someone says they are kissing corporate ass in the name of “free markets,” that person is a neocon, but if they say they are kissing corporate ass in the name of “social justice” that person is a neoliberal. Now if you are a traditional liberal or conservative you might wonder how they have anything to with your principles or values. Not to worry! As far as they are concerned all of your principles and values are outdated and they are smarter, better, and more moral than you ever were. What evidence they base this on given how questionable many of their current policies and actions are is still a mystery.
A lot of us on the right remember the damage that was done to the United States by the neocons and now we are watching the transformation of the Democrat party in overdrive with some of it being the absolute worst impulses of the left and yet some of it feels suspiciously familiar. Of course, Bush era neocons being treated as political rockstars and self-proclaimed Marxists being overly friendly with corporate monopolies just because they chant the right slogan might have been a bit of a red flag. I’m getting flashbacks to when the elite pretended to care about Middle America, just to send rural kids overseas.
Word Salad, so I needed to get to grips with some of the terms being tossed around and this was the top of my search:
“We can initially define post-liberalism by distinguishing it from liberalism and neo-liberalism. From liberal governmentality post-liberalism retains the “conduct of conduct” through the manipulation of interests, and from neo-liberal economic theory it adopts the idea that the market as a locus of veridiction”
“We can also define post-liberalism more formally by its peculiar political or, rather, a-political rationality. Whereas liberalism (and neo-liberalism as well) subscribed to a political reason of order, as did absolutist reason of state, which liberalism criticized and supplanted, post-liberalism adopts what we call the reason of regulated chaos or managed non-order. In contrast to the strategic and totalising ambitions of politics understood as the quest for order, be it hierarchical or reciprocal,”
“*This short article draws on material from: Laurence McFalls and Mariella Pandolfi, “Therapeusis and Parrhesia”, in: James Faubion, ed., Foucault Now (forthcoming).” (*it is not a short article)
FFS! (Foucault though – so you know it is going to be pretty evil and hopeless – so – is Post-Liberalism some kind of Post-Modernism/Liberalism?, is Derrida Post Liberalism too?) I look forward to reading some poster summing all this up into something which makes sense to me. I do wonder if people who talk in this manner are actually making sense, or if they have some thought in their head and just cannot explain it.
“I look forward to reading some poster summing all this up into something which makes sense to me.”
Okay: Don’t blame the author. What you see is a simplified run-through of the weapon’s grade self-indulgence, career grubbing and intellectual dishonesty that passes for political science in today’s academy. When something seems to make no sense to you, nine times out of ten it is because there is no sense to be made.
Nicely put, in all honesty when I look back then the whole thing didn’t make one bit of sense, but what do I know?
What even is “post-liberalism”? Almost like “antifa” , it is a term invented by a loose alliance of people who define themselves in opposition to something. Yet those who define ourselves as classically “Liberal” don’t even recognise the definition of liberalism that “post-liberals” apply. It is a nonsense
Let me make this clear: the original neoconservatives were New York liberals, mostly Jews, who had been literally and figuratively “mugged by reality.” It was a domestic political position, not a foreign affairs or globalist one.
I was there. I know. One only had to read the columns in the tabloid New York Post — Murray Kempton, Harriet Van Horne, Jimmy Breslin, Albert Shanker, Dr Rose Franzblau, Max Lerner and the editorial page editor, James Wechsler — all of them old Lefties, to understand the change that was happening. As Daniel Bell is quoted in the article, they were culturally conservative and were totally put off by the New Left and the counter-culture…unless it was being “Clean for Gene” (McCarthy).
The 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville school teachers’ strike, not any foreign policy issue, was absolutely pivotal in the creation of neoconservatism. Second in importance was the seizure of Columbia University’s administration building by students led by Mark Rudd. Both events traumatized NY Jews and liberals. For the first time since MLK blacks and Jews were screaming at each other and the sacredness of higher education was being questioned. Both of these developments boggled the minds of liberal NYers, especially Jews.
And exacerbating everything was the unprecedented increase in violent crime, the literal muggings, then as now the wildly disproportionate province of blacks. Suddenly the Upper West Side, Greenwich Village, Central Park and Ocean Parkway were not safe for people’s mothers and grandmothers…and everybody knew why.
It’s not an accident that in 1969 Norman Mailer ran for NYC Mayor (with Jimmy Breslin as his running mate) as a self-styled “Left Conservative.”
The foreign policy stuff came a lot later. In 1968-9, Jews were against “The Imperial Presidency” (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s book) and against Vietnam. Allard Lowenstein was crucial to getting McCarthy to run against warmonger LBJ.
So today the real comparison of neoconservatives to post-liberals is not one based on aversion to global capitalism and the Great Reset. It is Bret Weinstein, Dave Rubin, Bari Weiss and Nick Christakis (just like their daddies and uncles) reacting to events at Evergreen College, Yale and the offices of The NY Times (“the Jewish Bible”) and to the “1619 Project Riots” of last summer, a title Nicole Hannah-Jones cheerfully accepted.
Talking about foreign affairs and the imperatives of capitalism is only intellectual window dressing for cultural revulsion.