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Brazil's Government is Falling Apart...and it's Good News?

2016-03-18 · explainer · Hank · 10:17 · watch on YouTube

Topic: World affairs · mode: News analysis · tags: timely hook

Hank explains Brazil's political crisis (the Petrobras kickback scandal, recession, an unpopular President Rousseff, Judge Moro and social-media polarization) and argues it is bad short-term but good long-term, with Brazil's culture of peaceful evolution as good news.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting; Americans' bubble; Brazil's government falling apart; Twitter replies and the saying 'Brazil is not for beginners'

  • ★★ Hank says Americans easily get caught in their bubble, but the world goes on, and Brazil's government is falling apart in a way that makes House of Cards look boring. (playful) — 00:00:00 · United States

  • ★★ Hank says Brazilians answered his Twitter question mostly with gifs, and a diplomat told him Brazilians have a saying: 'Brazil is not for beginners'. — 00:00:12 · Twitter, Brazil is not for beginners

    “Brazil is not for beginners”

00:00:27 — Brazil basics: size, inequality along racial and political lines, economy, the 1964-1985 military dictatorship, peaceful transition, economic success

  • ★★ Hank says Brazil has 200 million people, as many as the UK, France and Germany combined, and could fit those countries inside it at least three times. — 00:00:27 · United Kingdom
  • ★★ Hank says Brazil is very ethnically and economically diverse; its wealth gap follows racial and political lines, with wealthy white city dwellers mostly conservative and poor people of native or African descent more liberal. — 00:00:35
  • ★★ Hank says Brazil is the ninth largest oil producer, second largest beef producer, third largest iron ore producer, and has the world's seventh-largest economy. — 00:00:54
  • ★★ Hank says Brazil was ruled by a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985, which (he says sarcastically, 'in a stunning turn of events') had much bribery and corruption. — 00:01:01
  • ★★★ Hank calls it remarkable that Brazil moved from dictatorship to democracy slowly, with relative ease and little violence, so its government, though it seems mature, is only thirty years old. — 00:01:13
  • ★★ Hank says that after troubled decades, hard work and China's appetite for iron ore and beef ('hamburgers', said playfully) put Brazil's economy on track, making it a developing-world success story until recently. (playful) — 00:01:32 · China

00:01:45 — Culture of bribery from the dictatorship meets a strong independent judiciary and police

  • ★★★ Hank argues Brazil's culture of bribery, inherited from the dictatorship, has collided with an unusually strong independent judiciary and police, and something had to break. — 00:01:45

00:02:14 — Lula: union organizer, Workers' Party, 'Lula lite', presidency 2003-2011, school-attendance program, 80% approval; Rousseff as successor; 2005 vote-buying scandal

  • ★★ Hank says Lula was a revolutionary socialist union organizer against the dictatorship, then head of the new Workers' Party, which gained traction only once he became 'Lula lite', willing to work within the system and help big corporations. — 00:02:14
  • ★★★ Hank says Lula, elected after three losses, was president from 2003 to 2011, ran a program paying poor families to send children to school, credited with lifting tens of millions out of poverty, and left with an unprecedented 80% approval. — 00:02:56
  • ★★ Hank says Lula's chief of staff, an economist and former guerrilla captured and tortured by the dictatorship, was elected as his successor because he could not run a third time; he admires her life. — 00:03:16
  • ★★ Hank says in 2005 Lula's government was in a scandal paying members of Congress $12,000 a month to vote his way; Lula was never directly implicated, though several officials resigned. — 00:03:32

00:03:48 — 'Ending in pizza'; Petrobras and its contract kickback scheme; the largest corruption scandal in any democracy; a fifth of Congress investigated

  • ★★ Hank says huge Brazilian scandals so often fizzle out with nobody punished that Brazilians call it 'ending in pizza', literally pizza. — 00:03:48 · Ending in pizza

    “They call it ending in Pizza.”

  • ★★★ Hank says the days of scandals ending in pizza appear to be over, for several reasons, the first being the massive scale of this scandal. (hedged) — 00:03:59 · Ending in pizza

  • ★★ Hank says Petrobras, Brazil's only oil company, is majority government-owned and government-controlled, Brazil's largest company and one of the world's largest, providing 10% of GDP and much government revenue. — 00:04:04
  • ★★★ Hank says Petrobras officials and the politicians who appointed them gave inflated contracts to construction companies whose CEOs kicked part of the overcharge back to them, which in the US is called graft. (hedged) — 00:04:23 · United States
  • ★★★ Hank says kickbacks grew with Petrobras under high oil prices into the largest corruption scandal in any democracy's history, billions of dollars; one man offered to return $100 million in bribes. — 00:04:56
  • ★★★ Hank says many people are going to jail and around a hundred current members of Congress, almost a fifth of it, are under investigation: this is not ending in pizza. — 00:05:26 · Ending in pizza

00:05:39 — Workers' Party takes the blame; awful timing: recession, Zika, China, oil, austerity; Rousseff unpopular, two-thirds want impeachment

  • ★★ Hank says no party is blameless, but the Workers' Party, in power at the time and supposedly against such corruption, takes most of the blame. — 00:05:39
  • ★★ Hank says the timing is awful: Brazil is in a giant recession, with jobs lost to the scandal, Zika hurting tourism, China's slowdown, failed trickle-down loans, low oil prices and austerity. — 00:05:46 · China
  • ★★★ Hank says Brazilians mostly dislike President Rousseff; two-thirds want her impeached according to a recent poll. — 00:06:17

00:06:28 — Judge Moro: methods, popularity, political ambitions

  • ★★★ Hank describes Judge Moro as using lessons from Italy's nineties anti-mafia campaign, dealing with criminals, bending rules for public support and accepting adulation; Brazilians moved their love for Lula to him. — 00:06:28
  • ★★ Hank says Moro claims no interest in politics but doesn't seem to act that way; with two impeachment hearings under way, many want Moro to run if Rousseff is impeached. (hedged) — 00:06:52

00:07:06 — Partisan divide: social-media polarization, the released Rousseff-Lula call, Lula made chief of staff, parties exploiting the crisis, Maluf's slogan and Lula's 1988 quote

  • ★★★ Hank says Brazil also has a deep, ugly partisan divide: nobody knows how involved Rousseff and Lula were in the Petrobras scandal, yet no one waits for due process before judging. — 00:07:06
  • ★★★ Hank says social media has hyperpolarized Brazil as in America: filter bubbles make people hear the worst about opponents, and justified cynicism breeds credulity toward negative stories. — 00:07:22 · United States
  • ★★★ Hank says Moro released a recorded call in which Rousseff appeared to tell Lula how she'd protect him; some saw obvious corruption, others asked why a judge made it public three hours after recording without due process. — 00:07:45
  • ★★★ Hank says Lula and Rousseff call it purely partisan attack and the opposition calls it purely an investigation; even a cursory look shows it is definitely both. — 00:08:09
  • ★★ Hank says Rousseff, facing collapsing approval and impeachment hearings, made Lula her chief of staff, possibly to shield him from prosecution, and that this is as fishy as it seems. — 00:08:25
  • ★★ Hank says conservative parties, some fed by classism and racism, are exploiting the crisis to gain power, while many on the left abandon the Workers' Party as too centrist and corrupt, deepening the divide. — 00:08:36
  • ★★ Hank says every major party is involved: five members of Rousseff's impeachment committee are under investigation, and many respected leaders will be damaged, making it hard for Brazil to lead its way out. — 00:08:52

  • ★★ Hank says Paulo Maluf, wanted by Interpol and unable to leave Brazil, won re-election with the slogan 'I steal, but I deliver'. — 00:09:10

    “I steal, but I deliver.”

  • ★★ Hank says Lula's 1988 line - in Brazil a poor man who steals goes to jail, a rich man who steals becomes a minister - is thrown back at him on social media as predicting his own future. — 00:09:19

00:09:31 — Conclusion: bad short term, good long term; Brazil's culture of peaceful evolution is great news

  • ★★★ Hank thinks the crisis is bad for Brazil in the near term but good in the long term, because it shows being a crooked politician is not worth it. (hedged) — 00:09:31
  • ★★★ Hank says nobody knows what happens next; Brazilians are cynical but pragmatic, with a culture of peaceful evolution rather than violent revolution that few want to give up, which is great news. — 00:09:42

00:10:01 — Sign-off; thanks to diplomat Rafael Prince, journalist Alex Cuadros (book out in July) and the Brazilian Nerdfighter Facebook group

  • ★ Hank thanks diplomat Rafael Prince, journalist Alex Cuadros, whose book Brazillionaires is out in July, and the Brazilian Nerdfighter Facebook group for their help. — 00:10:03

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Hank's description says Brazil has corruption but actually rather little for a developing country; Brazilians have come to expect more and have been let down. — video description
  • ★★ Hank's description says President Rousseff chaired Petrobras during the period of corruption, but no one knows whether Lula or she was involved or aware. — video description
  • ★★★ Hank says Lula was already under investigation when Rousseff appointed him her chief of staff, a move that means a normal court can no longer prosecute him. — video description
  • ★★★ Hank thinks the whole affair speaks very highly of Brazil: a reckoning had to come, and he is pleased its citizens are holding the government accountable. (hedged) — video description
  • ★★★ Hank says he keeps seeing parallels between the awful partisan situation in the US and how readily people in Brazil's story believe awful things about their political opponents. — video description · United States
  • ★★★ Hank says using the scandal to clean up Brazil must be done, but using it to score political points or gain power will rip the country apart. — video description
  • ★★ Hank calls it an epic story with no known ending: whether Rousseff keeps power and who is elected once the house is cleaned out will show how this very young democracy handles its growth when social media largely shapes people's perceptions. — video description · social media
  • ★★★ Hank thinks there are many good things in Brazil's future, but its leaders will have to do more than fight for power: they will have to actually lead. (hedged) — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Brazil · Dilma Rousseff · judicial independence · Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva · Operation Car Wash · Petrobras · political corruption · political polarization · Sergio Moro

Also: People: Paulo Maluf

Works: Brazillionaires · House of Cards

Organizations: Interpol · National Congress of Brazil · Twitter · Workers' Party (Brazil)

Concepts: cynicism · democracy · due process · echo chamber · racism · recession

Places: China · France · Germany · Italy · Latin America · Military dictatorship in Brazil · United Kingdom · United States

Events: 2015–2016 Zika virus epidemic · Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff · Mensalão scandal

Policies: Bolsa Família

Memes: Brazil is not for beginners · Ending in pizza

Only in the description or credits: Alex Cuadros · Brazilian Nerdfighters · Rafael Prince

Also centred on Brazil: Cheating Cheaters of Cheatery: The Amazing Story of Brazil's Cotton War with the U.S. · The Amazon isn't "Burning" - It's Being Burned

Also centred on political polarization: Idiotic Governance: How Our Political Discourse Hurts Our Economy · Policy and Politics: Brotherhood 2.0 Week Begins · The Lowdown on the Shutdown · Thoughts from the Edge · The Politics of "Parks and Rec" · Coming Out, Goats, Government, and Attack Ads with Denise Juneau

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