For those who still have faith in , it is recommended by senator , pre-candidate for President, at Cpac, the largest conservative conference in the United States.
Over the weekend, in Dallas (Texas), Flávio followed to the letter his father, the former president, disseminating conspiracy theories, calling into question the fairness of the Brazilian electoral process and wearing the guise of authoritarian and anti-system populism that is plaguing democracies around the world.
The speech contrasts with what the senator’s pre-campaign tries to build, in search of the independent electorate that will be the balance of a fierce electoral dispute against the president.
Flávio Bolsonaro appealed to the Maga conservatives (“Make America Great Again”, a movement led by the president) for “diplomatic pressure” to guarantee free and fair elections in Brazil.
“My appeal not only to America, but to the entire free world, is this: watch Brazil’s elections with enormous attention, learn about and understand our electoral process, monitor our people’s freedom of expression, and apply diplomatic pressure so that our institutions function properly,” he said.
In his speech, Flávio said he was certain of victory and, like his father and leaders of populist lineage, such as the dictator, whom he criticizes so much, he used the possessive pronoun to refer to the electorate. “I will win because it is the will of my people,” he said.
The senator, however, issued a warning: for this will to be preserved, there must be “free and fair elections”. This, according to him, is “a great challenge” and will only happen “if our people can express themselves freely on social media and the votes are counted correctly.”
In the months before the 2018 elections, when he faced , Bolsonaro stated that “the big concern” was not losing the vote, but rather “losing to fraud”. “This can only happen through fraud, not through voting, I am convinced,” he said in a live broadcast on social media in October.
In his speech at Cpac, before the appeal to the “free world”, Flávio offered a means and an end to convince Trumpists of the need to get involved with Brazilian electoral matters.
First, the middle. Five times, he mentioned Brazil’s drug cartels, stating that criminal groups export weapons and drugs to the United States. The accusations of “” have been used by the Trump administration as a basis for American intervention in other countries, as occurred with the government in Venezuela.
Second, the end. Flávio sold the image of Brazil as the “battlefield where the future of the hemisphere will be decided”, essential to breaking US dependence on Chinese exports of critical minerals. Thus, the senator positioned the country as a potential supplier of rare earths — a group of chemical elements used in high-technology products and clean energy.
“America needs secure supply chains for critical materials, a reliable partner in the hemisphere, and a massive market for American goods and services.”
With this speech, Jair Bolsonaro’s son inserted himself into the ecosystem of the global radical right, replicating the conspiracy theory that former American president Joe Biden had financed Lula’s election in 2022. Flávio repeated this accusation four times without evidence.
this theory was born at the beginning of last year, from a video conversation recorded between ideologue Steve Bannon, a former Trump advisor, and Mike Benz, who presented himself on X as a former State Department employee and director of an anti-censorship NGO.
In this recording, Benz stated that USAID, a federal agency later dissolved by Trump, had worked for Lula’s election, financing projects to combat disinformation and lawyers who would have worked with the TSE to repress Bolsonaro’s content on WhatsApp.
The narrative was quickly hailed as a major scandal by the former federal deputy, who usually bridges the gap between the Bolsonarist and Trumpist right-wing, and who once again spoke at Cpac.
In his speech, Flávio also alluded to narratives and terms embraced by the American and European radical right, as when he stated that he will fight against the “woke agenda” (in reference to groups that fight for the reduction of social, racial and gender disparities), against the “radical environmental agenda” and against “the interests of the global elite”.
The senator also made a promise that reveals his disbelief in relation to the accelerated democratic erosion with the presidency in Trump’s second term, amid attacks on federal agencies, universities, the Judiciary and the press.
“Trump 2.0 is being much better than Trump 1.0, right? Bolsonaro 2.0 will also be much better.”
