by Democracy Now!
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won a record fourth term in office, defeating far-right challenger Flávio Bolsonaro by 4 million votes in a runoff election on Sunday. Flávio Bolsonaro is the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who remains under house arrest for plotting a coup against Lula four years ago. The younger Bolsonaro, who narrowly defeated Lula in the first round of voting earlier this month, is now refusing to concede.
Lula’s surprise comeback comes after weeks of student-led organizing and campaigning on his behalf, and amid accusations that U.S.-based tech companies were suppressing Lula’s reach online in favor of his Trump-aligned opponent. “The amount of organizing, the amount of marches and rallies, campaigning, pamphlets that we’ve seen the last three weeks has been something that I have never seen in my entire life, ever, covering elections for decades in so many different countries. It is absolutely unprecedented,” says Brazil-based journalist Michael Fox. “It is an absolute game-changer for the region.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I’m in Denver to speak after the screening of the film about Democracy Now!, Steal This Story, Please!, at CU Boulder this afternoon at 3:30. But right now we go to today’s top headline.
We begin in Brazil, where President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pulled off a stunning comeback to defeat far-right challenger Flávio Bolsonaro, but Bolsonaro is refusing to concede. Just three weeks ago, Bolsonaro won the first round of voting, but on Sunday, Lula defeated him by more than 4 million votes.
Flávio Bolsonaro is the son of Brazil’s former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who remains under house arrest after being sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup following his defeat to Lula four years ago.
Lula supporters celebrated in the streets of Brasília last night.
STELA SAÍGUI: [translated] This turnaround was historic. I think we sent a message to the world that the fight against fascism is real, and it takes popular mobilization. Nothing surpasses the power and strength of the people.
ANABEL FERREIRA: [translated] Oh my god! I can’t even believe it. It was a real struggle. We fought against some very powerful forces — economic power, betting companies, Meta, the media, the mainstream media, militia members and everything else — and we made it.
AMY GOODMAN: On Sunday night, Brazilian President Lula addressed supporters in São Paulo after he was declared the winner in the runoff.
PRESIDENT LUIZ INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA: [translated] But I wanted to thank the Brazilian people for the generosity they have shown me for a long time, and in the second round, to thank the generosity of the Brazilian youth who took to the streets, took to the streets to defend democracy. …
I saw many scenes today of people being carried by their grandchildren to go vote, people unable to move around, people with cancer and other types of illness. And people went to vote because we were able to convince them that the vote was very important to safeguard democracy in the country. …
I want to thank society as a whole, what really won. This election was an election in which we had to overcome outside interference through digital platforms, which we will have to regulate … in a demonstration that this country does not accept being anyone’s backyard.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Brazilian President Lula speaking last night.
His opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, has called for the election results to be annulled, citing a decision by a Brazilian Supreme Court judge to keep polling stations open for an additional two hours because of bad weather in some regions — both candidates had reportedly requested the extension. Flávio Bolsonaro’s refusal to concede comes four years after his father, Jair Bolsonaro, staged a coup after Lula defeated him in the 2022 election. This is part of what Flávio Bolsonaro said last night.
SEN. FLÁVIO BOLSONARO: [translated] What happened today was not normal. It was downright unacceptable. A Supreme Court justice, for the first time in history, a former lawyer for Lula, with a simple stroke of the pen at the request of a former partner, changed the rules of the game in the middle of the match. At 5:01 p.m., Justice Zanin, who is not a member of the electoral court and has trampled on the specialized judicial system, decided to postpone the elections by two hours. This has never happened before in Brazil’s history. It has completely undermined equality among Brazilians from different cities and states. … It is impossible to understand the election results in context, given when these events took place. We will take legal action. I will request that these elections be annulled.
AMY GOODMAN: Brazilian President Lula’s victory bucks a rightward shift in Latin America. Over the past 18 months, Honduras, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Peru and Colombia all elected right-wing leaders aligned with the Trump administration. In addition, Trump ordered the U.S. military to abduct the leftist president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.
We go now to Porto Alegre, Brazil, where we’re joined by Michael Fox, freelance journalist, former editor of NACLA. He’s the host of Under the Shadow podcast, a joint project of NACLA and the Real News Network. He’s also the co-founder of the independent news site Panamerican Dispatch.
You’re there on the streets of Porto Alegre, Michael. Can you talk about the response? This is unprecedented for a candidate to win after losing in the [first round], which just took place three [weeks] ago. Talk about the significance of Lula’s victory by 4 million votes and Flávio Bolsonaro refusing to concede.
MICHAEL FOX: Yeah, it’s just unprecedented, absolutely, Amy. I mean, it was just incredible to be on the streets last night, to be there seeing people voting. My wife votes near here in a town called São Leopoldo, and she said that there were people coming in from the hospital, that they — like, they literally left the hospital. They were in their hospital rooms, but they had to get there. They had to vote. This is something that we’ve just never seen before. The amount of organizing, the amount of marches and rallies, campaigning, pamphlets that we’ve seen the last three weeks has been something that I have never seen in my entire life, ever, covering elections for decades in so many different countries. It is — it is absolutely unprecedented.
And that’s why people, when they went out to vote, and last night when they started to see the results coming in, they weren’t quite sure what they were going to see. This poll, the latest, the latest numbers, it said it was neck and neck. Like, they could not tell who was ahead. And the only thing that they said was going to make or break the difference was abstention. If Lulu was going to be able to get enough people out there to win the vote, then he would win; otherwise, it’d be Flávio. And he got way more than enough, double, right? Like, I think it was 10 million more votes. And also, just one other detail here, Amy, he won by double the percentage that he beat Jair Bolsonaro four years ago. It’s just shocking. And it is really important for Brazil and really important for the region.
Now, the fact that Flávio Bolsonaro came out and said he’s not going to recognize the results, it’s almost as if you can’t expect anything else. We know that four years ago, his father didn’t respect the results. And in a lot of ways, this is really just a justification for him then to whip up a storm amidst his supporters.
Already, the Supreme Electoral Court, the two — so, the Supreme Electoral Court in Brazil is made up of two, three judges from the country’s electoral court — from the country’s Supreme Court and other court bodies within Brazil. The two main judges that are on the Supreme Electoral Court were both appointed by his father, Jair Bolsonaro. So, these people, who many people saw them kind of trying to help the Flávio Bolsonaro campaign, and the president, Kássio Nunes, the president of the Supreme Electoral Court, has already said that he thinks that everything that went down in the elections was legitimate and fine. And like you mentioned already, many of the — the extension of the voting extension, Flávio Bolsonaro himself had requested it in five different states because of adverse rain, in fact, here in Porto Alegre, Santa Catarina, São Paulo and a bunch of other places. So, this is not something that is likely going to impact the results of this election, but he’s going to use this as justification to whip his people up and to attempt to create denialism and to undermine the vote, without a doubt.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Michael, I wanted to ask you specifically about this whole issue of the turnout, because Flávio Bolsonaro actually got more votes in this election than his father did four years ago, but it was just the enormous increase in Lula’s vote, where he had gotten about 60 million votes when he defeated Jair Bolsonaro, this time he got 64 million votes. And so it was just the enormous increase in the turnout. How was that accomplished? And also, what was the impact of the debates, from what you could tell, that Lula had with Flávio Bolsonaro during this runoff period?
MICHAEL FOX: So, this is so important, because I think this is one of those lessons that, everywhere, people need to learn from what Brazil has just done. It was organizing on the ground, grassroots, and it was every day. Like, one of the biggest things was, literally, the day after that first vote, people were just — you know, Lula supporters were just — they couldn’t believe what had just happened, right? He had just lost two points. He was supposed to be ahead in the polls. Now it looked like Flávio Bolsonaro was six points up. What are we going to do? And the very next night, you saw students hit the streets in Niterói. And it was these images of students saying, “Uh-uh, not going to happen.”
And why students? It was because what happened with Jair Bolsonaro four years ago — or, six years ago, right? Under his term, 2019 through 2022, one of the major things he went out at the very beginning of his term is he tried to cut budgets across the board for federal universities. He slashed budgets, froze budgets. And students rose up, and they saw — some of the very first, the biggest marches against Jair Bolsonaro were the student marches. And so, the students were the ones who were really in the streets, front and center, helping to lead, helping to guide these marches.
But it wasn’t just that. You saw people, like — and they were talking, “Look, you have to talk to your neighbors. You have to talk to your relatives. You have to go — you know, you have to travel, you know, to go back to your place of voting.” It was this massive vote-getting campaign, people asking, “Hey, do you need rides to get to the polls?” big marches, big rallies to show their support, and so much hope.
This was another thing I think that was really important, that Lula, literally the night that he lost, he said, “Don’t worry. It’s all good. I like — I like sudden death. I like the second round. You know, Bolsonaristas, get ready, because, you know, I’m going to defeat you.” And he did. And people felt that kind of excitement. So, I think that was really important.
The other thing was online. So, this is huge. First off, Bolsonaro, just like the far right in general around the world and in the United States, they know how to use the memes. They know how to use AI, Meta, Instagram. And, of course, Meta, in this case, was clearly also biased and doing favoritism for Jair Bolsonaro. But what we saw was Lula supporters, they had an organized campaign of trying to use memes, using AI to get around — they call it fora da bolha — you know, break through the bubble that they had, to try and get into other areas, to try and get to those independents, to the 33 million people in Brazil who didn’t vote. And they were just able to do this incredible campaign online. And they really, really — and, of course, online, here’s the problem, is the fact that Big Tech, we know, it is under the control of Big Tech. They control the algorithm. We don’t know what it is. And they’re playing favorites. That was clearly the case in this moment, except for the fact that Meta says that they didn’t interfere in the elections. But that’s what happened. But, definitely, Lula and his supporters organized and organized and organized, and it is a lesson for people elsewhere.
In terms of the debates, the very first debate was just — it was just insane, right? Because it was an attack show. There were no rules. But I think that what people got out of it was just how aggressive Flávio Bolsonaro was, how many lies he was doing. But it was just this back-and-forth. Now, the second debate had all these specific rules. You couldn’t stand behind each other. You couldn’t just directly attack each other. You actually had to kind of respond. But then, when they did fact-checking afterwards, it showed that, you know, most of Lula’s answers were true, and most of Flávio Bolsonaro’s answers were false, and he was actually throwing out false information. So, it’s hard to tell exactly, like, the impact the debates had, but I think that, overall, Lula came out looking just a little bit better, because people said, you know, he is — he’s a statesman, right? He is a diplomat, and that’s what he represents. And this is, of course, the difference between the attacking of the far right and what we see kind of all elsewhere, their use of language and hate and discourse in order to undermine kind of the democratic debate.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael, I wanted to go to the debate Friday night, the final debate. This is Lula speaking after Bolsonaro called him “nine fingers.”
PRESIDENT LUIZ INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA: [translated] I am going to use my time, because he said something extremely stupid, and I am not going to let that go. He called me “nine fingers.” I want him to understand something. There is someone here in this audience who knows what the world of work is like. That person is me. There is someone here who lost a finger while working. I lost my finger while working. I had to work at night. I had no choice but to work. I will not allow him to call me that again. I will not allow it.
CÉSAR TRALLI: [translated] Silence in the audience, please.
PRESIDENT LUIZ INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA: [translated] He has never worked a day in his life. He doesn’t know what a work permit is. The first job he ever had was given to him by his father. He worked with his father and stayed in Brasília, and now he comes here and calls me names. He will have to apologize. He will have to apologize, because Brazilian workers are watching. Millions of workers have suffered because of employers who force people to work long hours. I was underage, and I worked at night, because I either worked or I didn’t eat. I will not accept some rich guy with a highly questionable political practice coming here and calling me “nine fingers.”
AMY GOODMAN: That was President Lula responding to Bolsonaro calling him “nine fingers.” Michael Fox, if you can talk about the difference in the class base between Bolsonaro and Lula, and, actually, if you see comparisons to what’s happening in the United States now with President Trump?
MICHAEL FOX: Well, there are obviously comparisons with the United States, and that’s something that I dug into a lot in Brazil on Fire, my podcast, back from 2022. And part of this is the fact that it is class-based, but it’s also race-based. Like, you know that in northeastern Brazil, it’s kind of the poorest region of the Brazil, and it’s the largest Afro-Brazilian region. This is the area that Lula came from, right? This is where he’s from. He understands this place. This is the region that’s always voted en masse for Lula — right? — and in high, high percentages. Why? Because his social programs, his poverty alleviation programs, his development projects have completely changed the map of northeastern Brazil. It’s been extremely important.
The southern Brazil, in general, is white. It’s middle-class, descended from Europe, Italy, Germany and whatnot. And these people vote more in favor of Flávio Bolsonaro or the Bolsonaro family, right? This is an area that was actually back — and I did some reporting on this a while back. Like, Santa Catarina, the state where I actually live, they had the largest Nazi party outside of Germany during the 1930s. This is an area where there are still neo-Nazis. And so, this is extremely important to understand the role these connections that it plays within the support for Flávio Bolsonaro.
And it absolutely is a response, kind of a pushback from the white lower class, middle class — the same thing we see within Trump’s — to kind of the poverty alleviation programs, to the social programs that Lula has been able to roll out over the last 20 years, just kind of in a similar way that we saw with Obama. And so, the reaction that we’ve seen for, first, the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, and then the attempt for also Flávio Bolsonaro of the far right, this rise of the far right, is very, very similar in this sense.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Michael, I wanted to ask you about the impact of this result in the rest of Latin America. Of course, we’ve heard much about the rightward turn in many Latin American governments. But the two largest countries in Latin America, Mexico and now Brazil, remain under the leadership of left-wing leaders. In fact, Claudia Sheinbaum was among the first to congratulate Lula on his victory last night. And Mexico and Brazil still represent half of the total population of Latin America.
MICHAEL FOX: I saw an article yesterday or the day before that said this is the most important election, if not in Latin America, in the world, after the U.S. election. And it’s exactly for that. Lula and Brazil set a mark, in that they said, “No, we’re not going to go down that route.” And it is — it is an absolute game-changer for the region. In my podcast, Under the Shadow, I focus on U.S. intervention in Latin America, and I’ve spent this entire year looking at what Trump has been doing in the region, from, you know, his invasion of Venezuela, the turning the screws around Cuba and everyplace else, meddling in elections up and down. This is the one country that’s been able to stand up and say no. And this is one of the most important countries in the region, because it’s the largest GDP. Literally, the population, the size is the same as all the rest of the countries of South America combined.
And Trump knows that. This is why this was a huge priority for him, getting this to flip and getting a good friend of his, like Flávio Bolsonaro, in here. Remember, Flávio Bolsonaro literally traveled to the United States six times this year. He met with Trump in May and convinced Trump to put two Brazilian gangs on the foreign terrorist organization list of the United States. That’s the same kind of the excuse that the United States uses to meddle in other countries, right? So, clearly, Flávio Bolsonaro was clearly aligned with Trump. He had already told Marco Rubio that he was more than willing to hand over his transition team to the State Department, which is just mind-boggling.
But so, this, that’s why this is so important, because, literally, we now have someone like Lula, who is going to continue to stand up. Brazil is going to continue to stand up, demand sovereignty. Don’t forget that just last year we saw Trump levy 50% tariffs on Brazil, and then, you know, Brazilians rose up and said, “Uh-uh, that’s not going to happen,” and until, finally, like, you know, he had to — they negotiated, and then he removed them, because that’s not — you know, so this is an extremely important moment for the region. Brazil is a shining beacon for the region at this moment. And Brazilians know it, and so do so many people elsewhere.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Fox, we want to thank you so much for being with us, freelance journalist, former editor of NACLA, the host of Under the Shadow podcast, which is a joint project of NACLA and The Real News Network, co-founder of the independent news site Panamerican Dispatch, speaking to us from Porto Alegre, Brazil. To hear this interview in Spanish, you can go to democracynow.org.