Thread by @IRDC_DY

What is Happening in Brazil: the largest and most significant South American nation in economic and military terms.

A thread 🧵 on the #BrazilianSpring

The young nation of Brazil, many of you may not know, has a very significant history, filled with twists and turns.

It has been a colony, a territory, a United Kingdom, an Empire, a Republic and a dictatorship, the latter two, three times over, each.

It has lived through many revolts, revolutions and a short lived civil war.

In the 19th century, the Brazilian Empire held the second largest and most powerful navy in the world, right after the British Empire.

It's literacy rate was in fact higher than that of the British Empire. Its economy strong and commecing to industrialize.

However, it took less than 10 years for the land owning gentry to depose the monarchy in a coup, after the same granted the slave class freedom.

From that point onwards, the nation found itself ruled by different groups of corrupt oligarchs, competing with one another for power and wealth, at the expense of the people.

In WWII a contingent of 25,000 strong from the Brazilian Armed forces were in effect responsible for Italy's liberation, a fact that to this day Italians celebrate every year.

In the mid 20th century, Marxist ideology began spreading throughout the South American continent, which with its largely miserable and uneducated population, often hopeless, was fertile ground for such disingenuous but hope enducing ideology.

The country survived a communist take over in 1964 by means of a military counter-coup.

The military for all their faults, did establish order, lowered crime, invested heavily in education and development. No rulling General retired wealthy and they did relinquish power back to the people in increments; by 1989 Brazil was again a democratic federalist republic.

Desastrous economic policy decisions leading to a currency debasement event and various currupt governments later and the far left rose into prominence in Brazilian politics starting in the early 2000's.

Many felt that the drastic change might be the answer to do away with so much dysfunction, corruption, crime, and the loss of faith in the institutions of governance.

Yet, the Brazilian Worker's Party led by Lula, systematically plundered the public coffers, legislated business out of business, coerced MEPs to vote per their proposed policies, be it with bribes, positions of power in government agencies, and when all else failed, violence.

A number of key political figures died under suspicious circumstances during the reign of the Workers Party, which lasted almost 2 decades.

In this time, Brazilian tax payers' money, without the people's knowledge or consent, funded totalitarian regimes such as those of Cuba and Venezuela.

The largest government corruption scandals to ever come to light, anywhere in the world, derived from this period. Billions upon billions of US Dollars gone missing through countless corruption schemes.

Lula was eventually convicted on charges of fraud and corruption and accordingly jailed.

The Supreme Court, which had 7 of its 9 current Justices, appointed by Lula, dismissed Lula's trial and charges years later, on a technical matter. He was never equittted, but was made a free man and the court allowed him to run for office again.

Skip to 2022, and Bolsonaro, the incumbent presidential candidate, and Lula, delivered on what has become the most contested run off election in Brazilian history. Per the official count, Lula won be a margin less than one percentage point of the votes.

Much of the population is highly skeptical of both governmental institutions and the media alike, due to years of lies, propaganda and heavy censorship, which reached all time highs leading up to this election.

The Supreme Court, ordered various outlets reporting unfavorably towards Lula to effectively be closed down, and prohibited certain topics from being published by the media or even discussed in social media.

Some prominent journalists we're in fact arrested on trumped-up charges.

This is only the tip of the iceberg but it should give you some context into the environment under which the 2022 Brazilian elections have taken place.

To make matters worse, the Body responsible for the running of the elections has been less than transparent.

Experts have pointed out concerns and irregularities with regard to the counting of votes, chief among them, that Lula, obtained 100% of the vote in hundreds of cities through the country (a statiscal impossibility), even in areas where the candidate was not seen favourably.

Further to the announcement of Lula's victory, there have been scuffles on the streets and it's been reported that there have been instances of Bolsonaro supporters being brutalized or murdered by Lula supporters.

Since then, the armed forces have been deployed and stationed throughout the nation, upon the seeming reestablishment of public order, Brazilians began leaving their homes for the streets in droves.

Families, elderly people, young people, wealthy, poor, white, colored, all out in droves throughout the country, congregating outside military bases and demanding military intervention.

Many fear that Lula's radical policies will turn Brazil into Venezuela 2.0 . Many would rather die than see their nation regressing into a distopian state of soul crushing human misery.

The situation is very uncertain, while there is prescedent for the Armed Forces to act, it is hard to tell if the appetite exists in 2022 for this type of action; the country could well descend into civil war.

It is impossible to tell how this contentious situation will unfold, but it must be said, the Brazilian people are brave, they are putting on display what it really means to fight for liberty and freedom.

I, for one, who, admittedly have always had very little faith in my country of origin and people, must say that come what may, I have never been so proud to be able to say that I am Brazilian.

#BrazilianSpring