The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
498. Is Brazil on Path to Become Cuba? | Eduardo Bolsonaro
Thu, 14 Nov 2024
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with politician and son of the previous president of Brazil, Eduardo Bolsonaro. They discuss his father’s story, near-death experience, election win, and why he cannot run in 2026. They also discuss the wave of censorship across South America and the West, Elon Musk’s fight with the Brazilian Supreme Court, and the true magnitude of independent media which has tyrants scared across the globe. Eduardo Bolsonaro is a Brazilian politician, lawyer, and federal police officer. He is the third child of Jair Bolsonaro, the 38th president of Brazil. Since March 2022 he has been affiliated with the Liberal Party. Bolsonaro is also the most voted lawmaker in Brazil’s history with 1.8 million votes, securing his second term as Federal Deputy in the Chamber of Deputies. In this, he chairs the International Affairs and National Defense Committee. Bolsonaro is also one of many signatories (including Javier Milei and Giorgia Meloni) of the Madrid Charter, which reaffirms conservative allyship and draws a hard line between liberals and radical leftists. This episode was filmed on November 1st, 2024 | Links | For Eduardo Bolsonaro: On X https://x.com/BolsonaroSP?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Chapter 1: What recent events have brought Brazil into the global spotlight?
So Brazil has been on people's minds more in the United States and perhaps in the world as of late, not least because Elon Musk has had a very public dispute with, what would you say, a renowned member of the Brazilian Supreme Court. And that has a multitude of implications for the battle between free speech and government regulation and ideological control across the world.
Now, I had the opportunity today to speak with Mr. Eduardo Bolsonaro, who's a congressman in Brazil and who's also the son of Jairo Bolsonaro, who was the president of Brazil, who's ran an unorthodox campaign, mostly on social media, and became president for a four-year term. And so...
We had a chance today to talk about the culture war in Brazil, which is very similar to the culture war that's running rampant in the United States and in Canada and in Europe and in New Zealand and Australia, all across the Western world and all across the world. as a whole to a lesser degree, although that will mount.
And we delved into, well, the political structure of Brazil, the political landscape there and how it's shifting as a consequence of the social media revolution. We spoke a fair bit about the background to the dispute that Musk is having with the Brazilian Supreme Court.
And we outlined the implications of that dispute for the battle between free speech and government regulation and ideology, as I said, across the world.
It's been my experience that getting to know the political landscape on the various countries that I visited and have been able to familiarize myself with to some degree helps me deepen my understanding of what's relevant and important more locally, say in the United States, in Canada.
And I think the discussion that I had today with Mr. Bolsonaro with regard to Brazil has exactly the same consequence. There's something deep at work in the world at the moment, and you can see it reflected everywhere. And the more places you analyze it, the more positions you can analyze it from, the more the contours become clear. And so you can walk through this discussion with us.
You'll learn more about South America and Central America. You'll learn more about Brazil. You'll learn more about the political landscape in general and about the culture war. Specifically, you'll... Have some new light shed on the battle between Musk and X and the Brazilian Supreme Court, and you'll walk away smarter and more informed. So that's a good deal. So join us for that.
Well, Mr. Bolsonaro, thank you very much for coming in today. I was recently in South America. I spent a few days in Brazil. That was extremely interesting. And one of the things that
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Chapter 2: How did Eduardo Bolsonaro's father become president?
Sure. Francis, great honor to be here with you, Professor. Sure, after your trip to Brazil, you know that Brazilians usually love you, because your courage and your background, the issues about Canada, even that made you to move yourself to US, we have the same problem in Brazil.
But starting from your question before we go deep in all of this culture war and culture issues, my name is Eduardo Bolsonaro. I'm 40 years old. I have two kids, one of four, my daughter, she has four years old, and I have a boy of one. I'm very well married with Eloisa, who let me to be here. And I'm the third son of the former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. Before I talk about...
about the recent political scenario, it's very important to remark that Brazil, we lived from 64 until 1985, a military regime that started avoiding Brazil to turn itself as Cuba because we had, at that time, a communist president that was trying to bring Brazil to the same situation of Cuba.
So people on the street with the support of the Catholic church and some other sectors of our society approved to the Congress to impeach this president. And then we start to have a period of time from 64 until 85 electing Indirectly, because in these elections, the senators and the congressmen voted for president only, not the popular vote, only the Congress voting.
But every five years, a new president, a military general president during this period of time. So after 85, we get back again with the democracy that we have nowadays and start to elect new presidents as pretty much as like in United States. And during this period of time, my father, in the end of the 80s, he was a army captain. So I born in 84, 1984.
My father was an army captain and two older brothers than me. And in the end of the 80s, my father had some problems inside of the army because he was complaining about the salary of the militaries, and he did not have the permission of his superiors to do interviews. So he did an interview for a famous magazine in Brazil and he became very famous.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of the culture war in Brazil?
But because of that, as he didn't have the permission of the superiors, he went 15 days in jail, in the military jail. And to calm down the situation, he ran for city council in Rio de Janeiro in 1988. Because when you do that, you receive three months off in the army. And I'm not sure if he did expect to get elected, but he did get elected city council of Rio de Janeiro in 1988.
And then 1990, he run for congressman, so federal representative, got elected. And every four years, he stayed 28 years inside of the Congress getting reelected, mainly through the votes of the militaries and their families. So in this situation, there is a very key point around 2010, I can tell you, where the politically correct in Brazil starts to increase a lot. Around 2010.
Yeah, around this year. And my father, he did an interview and it got, I think it was his first viral interview on internet where he's talking about a situation in a jail in Brazil. There was a jail in Brazil. The name of the jail is Pedrinhas Jail. In this jail, criminals start to kill each other.
And my father was running to be the chairman of the Human Rights Committee in the Congress, in the House. and a lot of microphones around him, and journalists start to do some dumb questions and trying to say, oh, don't you care about the life of the prisoners? They are prisoners. It's a human life. And he said, come on, you don't want to go to the jail?
It's just to do not rob, do not murder, do not kidnap anyone else, and start to say some bad words because it was very explosive. And this interview came very viral. And at that time, I was in the federal police. I'm a lawyer. And I was in the federal police. My first service was on the border between Brazil and Bolivia. And then I moved myself. I was transferred to Sao Paulo.
But during that time, in 2014, I asked my father, hey, father, I see you most, like almost alone in some of the debates that you face inside of the Congress. Would you support me to run for the Congress? So maybe instead of only one congressman, we could be two. And he supported me. I ran from the state of Sao Paulo.
I received a little bit more than 82,000 votes because in Brazil, when you vote for someone, you vote in the state. and actually go to the House. So in the state of Sao Paulo, I received 82,000 votes, and we spent a little bit less than around $10,000 in my campaign. So he financed my campaign too. And I became a congressman.
And so he was still a congressman at that time.
Yes.
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Chapter 4: How did social media influence political campaigns in Brazil?
All right, you drive your car, but you cannot drive your car on the wrong way because you are going to put in risk other people's life, crashing other people's car. So to somehow rule these kind of situations and the situations where the individual cannot do, for example, Everybody knows that, have the sense that kill each other is a wrong thing, all right? Everybody believe in that.
We should not be a society where everybody's killing everybody. So we need police. We need somehow defend our territory from other countries, because maybe you have in our neighborhood a dictatorship that want to invade your country.
If you look nowadays to Ukraine and Russia, to Venezuela and Guyana, Maduro saying that he wants to get the territory of Ezequiel and some other parts of the world, makes sense that you need an army. So to defend your country, preserve your culture, to have a civilization on the streets, police, and one or two points, You need the state, you need the administration.
So it's a limited government vision. Would you regard your view... Now, first of all, I guess I'd like to know, are your father and yourself relatively united in your political views? So, yes, okay. So we can just discuss that, the two of you, as a unit in some ways. Yeah, I do not talk... in his name, but- Right, okay, I got the picture.
And so the way that you laid out the Brazilian political landscape since 1985 is basically an argument between two parties on the left. And so I'm still trying to place the Brazilian political spectrum because in Canada, say, and also in the United States, you have the socialist types, let's say, and then you have the classic liberals who are more in the middle.
And in Canada, traditionally, that was the liberal parties. Classical liberal Brazil to be on the right. Yeah, yeah, and so, and the right wing that you're talking about in Brazil, would you describe that, could you characterize it as more libertarian, would you call it more classic liberal, or would you call it more classic conservative?
We, I consider myself classical conservative. Okay. But I'm very friend, for example, of the classical liberal when you talk about economy. Because if you go to Brazil and you say, I'm a liberal, they are not going to link you with the left. They're going to link you with the right. Okay, that's what I was wondering. Liberal here,
is people who want to control your life, control the free speech on social media, want a huge administration, increase the taxes. Right, liberal here increasingly means progressive, right? And that means left. Liberal in Brazil is less taxes, free market. Yeah, okay. And the difference between our liberals and me, who in the position of conservative, it'll be about maybe drugs.
They want to have a more flexible rules about drugs. I'm against to open, you know, to have more flexibility on the drug law, for example, the regulations. But you have some, as in Brazil, we are deep in a moral crisis. This is not a priority.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Jair Bolsonaro face during his presidency?
Still nowadays, he's almost 70 years old and he's every time traveling, every time. I really admire him because I don't know if I, I'm 40, if I could have the same energy of my father to do all of the work that he does. So he starts to think, if Dilma Rousseff did that, why not me? Why I can't be the president? So he starts to go for that. He had a plan, all right? He has a project.
He starts to go around, not saying that he's going to be the president, but... After this work, people start to realize that he could be a president.
Okay, now explain to us how the president is elected in Brazil. The prime minister in Canada is the leader of the party with the most seats, and the president of the United States is elected directly. What's the situation in Brazil? How is the president elected, and how is that position related to the other major branches of government in Brazil? Just lay out the structure.
Yeah, Brazil is a... is a little bit, it's different from Canada because it's presidentialism, not parliamentarism, and different from US because here who win in the state get all the votes of the delegates. In Brazil, every vote counts. Every voter, every people count. If you have more than 18 years old, you vote. From 18 until 70 years old is mandatory. You have to vote.
If you do not vote, you pay a fee. You are fined in $1. It's not a big deal, but it still is mandatory. And every country votes. So we are 210 million people living in Brazil. I guess around nowadays 130, 140 million people in Brazil, they are able to vote. So you have to go all over the country. Here, I know the presidential candidates, they usually look
Their focus is on the swing states, not in Brazil. In Brazil, you have to be everywhere, everywhere, which makes a little bit harder. You need more energy to do your campaign. And in 2018, my father did his campaign basically with a cell phone. I can tell you, my father didn't spend, to be very conservative in my accounts, he didn't even spend $1 million in his campaign.
This is how powerful was the support in favor of Jair Bolsonaro. He, his flags, defend the family, get back again the patriotism, reduce the size of the administration, respect the kids, no gender ideology in the schools, support the law enforcement, get the criminals to the jail, like as much time as you can send them to the jail. So it's the opposite of the left.
When you say that all of these flags, the left, they say, no, no, no, we need gender ideology, we need to respect everybody, and all of this narrative that they start to build. But the mainstream media all the time was labeling my father, like racist, xenophobic, you don't like poor people, you don't like women, you don't like black, you don't like no one.
It's even funny because in the end of the day, I don't even know if someone like that exists. And people through mainly by internet, the social media of my father was controlled by my brother, Carlos. The message that we gave to the people is this message.
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Chapter 6: Why did Jair Bolsonaro lose the 2022 election?
Bolsonaro, your father, he's the best. People start to accomplish me on the water. This is not common. Usually surfers, when they go to the water, maybe you can talk with one or other, but it's not common you gather in the water, you know, with others. So it was proven that Bolsonaro is the same one in front of the cameras and behind of the cameras.
That's another thing that's very interesting about the social media landscape. I mean, I know a lot of the main players, obviously, who are pioneers, particularly in YouTube, particularly in the podcast domain. And all the ones that I know are the same in front of the camera as they are off. Rogan, he's a classic example of that. I mean- You see he's the same or he's not the same?
He's exactly the same. All right. All of the people that are hyper popular as podcasters, that I know are exactly the same on their podcasts as they are off. There's no persona. And part of that is that lack of professionalism. And it isn't exactly lack of professionalism.
What's happened is that as people have become more and more able to do video editing themselves, for example, they're much more video literate than they were 10 years ago.
Nowadays you hide that.
Yeah. People on YouTube, for example, nobody trusts edited YouTube videos because they don't trust editing. And so you want to see the conversation unfold as it does unfold. And I've talked with Rogan about this to some decent degree about interviewing people, you know, and his experience too is that You can tell who's an empty suit after about 20 minutes, right?
Because we're having an unstructured conversation and we both have to be able to track it and it has to go where it's going to go, but it has to stay coherent and it has to stay interesting and we both have to be engaged. And there's really just no way of staging that. And if you try to stage it, it just falls flat.
The other thing that happens too, we experienced this at the art conference in London, is that... If it's politicized in a way that's ego-driven, it also fails. So at Arc, the discussions that were more political were much less successful on YouTube and at the conference than the ones that were more philosophical and that were more direct.
So the new media landscape, I think it's partly a consequence of bandwidth. There's no bandwidth restriction, right? I mean, 20 years ago, a minute on network television was extremely expensive. And so everything had to be crafted and edited and produced. And now there's no bandwidth limitation whatsoever. So none of that's necessary.
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Chapter 7: How does Brazil's voting system work?
Chapter 8: What is the relationship between the military and politics in Brazil?
Is it the same in Brazil? It's the same situation. But I have to go back to 2018. We had way more freedom. Like, no one... Nowadays, I can guarantee to you that sometimes people think, maybe even right on X... but they do not post that to not have problems with the Supreme Court. Right, right, we'll get into that.
And I'll tell you how I can make you believe that my father didn't spend even $1 million and almost all of the campaign we did through the social media is because he got elected in 2018 and he took office on January of 2019.
Since 2019, the Supreme Court of Brazil, they opened an investigation called the Fake News Investigation, trying to prove that Jair Bolsonaro, he had kind of AI or an office fitted with public money to destroy the reputation of the journalists and the reputation of the communists and all the other players in the election. since 2019, we are in 2024, this investigation is still open.
They just turned our life towards, they just did everything that I can do in terms of investigation against my family, against my father, the federal police, went to my father's house to take his vaccine card. It's funny, this is other things that we have to talk about. The accusations that they say, the accusations against us, And still, they cannot prove.
So they were, were they, okay, so two things could be happening there. I mean, one, and maybe both are happening, one could be that it's merely an organized harassment campaign. But the other thing is, is that perhaps they're also completely stunned at how successful that tactic was and couldn't believe that it could possibly be managed with no budget whatsoever and merely by communicating.
See, one of the things... We do not believe all could build a narrative to destroy us. Yeah, yeah. Nowadays, the reality is just a piece of something. Yeah. Reality doesn't matter. The matter is the narrative that they build inside of the mind of the people. Because in the end of the day, the elite, the radical left, they are smart enough.
They knew that we won the elections doing everything that we did in social media, traveling all over the country, because the majority part of Brazil, they're conservative.
Well, it's funny though, you know, in the U.S., Recently, I think it was within the last six months, Gavin Newsom, who's the governor of California, made some denigrating comments about Joe Rogan, calling him, his son watches Joe Rogan and me, which I'm quite happy about. And he described Joe Rogan as a fringe figure.
And I thought, see, that's really relevant because Gavin Newsom is a fringe figure compared to Joe Rogan. I think Joe's podcast is number one in 192 countries. I'm not sure it's 192, it might be 92, but it doesn't matter. It's a lot of countries. And so he's definitely the most powerful journalist who's ever lived by a large margin. And CNN is a fringe organization compared to Rogan.
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