Bolsonarists and trumpists have been struggling in recent weeks in the manufacture of a scandal that targets the president, the former US president, and the 2022 election.
Without evidence, they claim that USAID, the federal agency in the target of the president, funded Lula’s victory over.
Founded in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, it offers financial aid, such as the implementation of health programs and in relief to catastrophes. Created during the Cold War, it was also part of a “Soft Power” strategy to promote a positive image of the United States.
In his new term, Trump has and improper use of public resources and promoted an aggressive dismantling, with. He heads the Billionaire, owner of the X (former Twitter), now ahead of a team that coordinates the cutting of federal spending.
The logo came to Brazilian lands, from a video conversation recorded between the ideologist, former counselor of Trump, and Mike Benz, who performs at X as former employee of the State Department and director of an NGO against censorship.
In that conversation, earlier this month, Benz stated that the agency spent “tens of thousands of dollars” funding projects that they pressured for the approval of laws against misinformation in the Brazilian Congress. He also said that Usaid funded lawyers who worked with the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) to repress Bolsonaro’s tweets and messages in applications such as WhatsApp.
“Usaid declared a holy war of censorship against all populist groups, including Bolsonaro. I’m telling you now, if the United States did not exist, Bolsonaro would still be the president of Brazil and Brazil would still have a free and open internet,” he said .
Benz, however, did not present any elements that proved his accusations. The was buried in Congress and there is no evidence of any USAID financing to lawyers in Brazil. Still, the narrative was quickly boasted as a great scandal by the federal deputy, who usually bridges the Bolsonarist and Trumpist right.
“This is a strategy already applied in several Latin American countries: injecting resources into organizations aligned with a particular ideological spectrum, undermining governments and candidates who do not bow to globalist interests. This interference is not restricted to public debate, but affects Directly the democratic balance of the country, “he wrote on X on February 4.
Eduardo began to collect signatures to open a CPI to investigate the case and said he would send information requirements to the TSE and submit a formal complaint to.
In video posted on the networks, the deputy commented who reported the accusations he had made without evidence. “That is, it came back the ‘no evidence’, as if I were talking some bullshit,” he said.
Then, in an attempt to prove his lines, Eduardo showed a note published on the TSE website in 2021, which talked about the participation of the then president of the Court, in an event on misinformation promoted by USAID. “This is just one of the examples of what we are talking about, but there is a lot more to come around,” he said.
Fostered by Eduardo, the narrative soon spread through the digital Bolsonarist universe. According to a survey by the Xeque Democracy Institute, there were over 1 million publications and 5 million interactions in Brazil involving the term USAID from February 4 to 10.
Bolsonaro was the author of the publication with the most engagement on the 5th. Next to a photo next to Trump, he wrote: “The US government of @realdonaldtrump has been revealing for days the gigantic grinding machine that the previous government used to direct to direct The sweaty money from the American tax payer to the sponsorship of dictatorships and the annihilation of democracies, in the name of the fallacy of maintaining the Democratic Rule of Law and impositions of evil global agendas in other nations. “
The former president, however, was not always a critic of USAID. During his term, he signed cooperation with the Amazonian agency for the development of actions and celebrated the donation of pulmonary fans in the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition to serving to reach two leaders of the opposing field, Lula and Biden, and the 2022 electoral process itself, the narrative against USAID fits the embraced by the national-populism that unites Trump, Bolsonaro and the Hungarian Prime Minister,.
In practice, the alleged defense of national sovereignty and patriotism acts as a subterfuge to criticize and sometimes considered by them as left, contrary to their interests.
It was not just Bolsonaro that surfed in the agency’s dismantling to move his bases – ORBAN made at least three posts on the subject. “The liberal globalist elite used the money from US taxpayers to force their own progressive political agenda in people’s throat around the world. We better start looking for new conspiracy theories because the ancients have proven true,” he wrote.
On Wednesday (12), American Senator Mike Lee also echoed the X-range accusations: “If the US government had funded Bolsonaro’s defeat to Lula, it would bother him?
Musk responded by choir: “Well, the deep state of the US actually did it.”
The controversy continues to move Brazilian social networks for ten days. It has been consolidated, so far, as the most significant example of union of the global populist right under the new term of Trump and signals continuity in the last decade. Bolsonarists expect the new trumpland government, whose ineligible leader faces limitations in the domestic space.
