lula did have 10 million more votes from catholics, whereas bolsonaro was up by 14 million with evangelicals

but it's a tricky stat: the most catholic regions in the country are the south and northeast, and while the first one voted firmly for the right, the second basically pushed lula to his win, with crazy percentages like over 76% of the votes in piauí

so, two catholic regions voting in completely different ways. my take is that it's not really that catholics support lula, as much as northeasterners do (for very material, concrete reasons - historically the poorest region in the country, but whose conditions improved massively under lula I and II), and they just happen to be very catholic

maybe that, coupled with the recent re-opening of investigations on the military (over disappearances during the dictatorship), could help us get rid of these comprador assholes in the long term because by god do i hate our military

the other time they had a similarly good result was with that other piece of shit neolib we all know, and blair might have been even worse than starner in some way or another

brits really are just hopelessly thick

it's funny because what they're calling productivity is actually just production: they're literally increasing hours rather than increasing product per hour (which is productivity, and also the only way to be more sustainable, even under capitalism)

Maybe it's that we made the Internet so full of disinformation that everyone is just automatically refusing to listen to others, maybe we have created a social group that just assumes they are more educated than everyone else cause they read some stuff in the internet.

i've always thought the decline of capitalism, or even just the accumulation of its downturns, had the consequence of people trusting authorities less than they used to, and that scientists just get thrown in the same bag ("people who mess with this convoluted stuff as if they know what they're doing and just keep making my life worse")

imperialism is responsible for conservatism there

hey i only said more responsible, iranian conservatives still had their own historical agency and are definitely our enemies. i mean, they're the ones who pulled the trigger, even if imperialism put the guns in their hands

you can say "amerikka bad" but really what it means is "western imperialism is the greatest obstacle to the left, even within 3rd world countries governed by the right-wing"

ironically, imperialists, intentionally and unintentionally, are more responsible for conservatism in iran than iran's own leaders. it's bizarre, but that's what a global system like capitalism manages to do

International communism is in its infancy as it was in Europe during the 1840s.

i'd never thought of it that way, depressing as fuck but i guess it's true

i wouldn't be surprised if both kind of were the same moment

Ahktually, Lula had a much more radical discourse during the 70s and 80s

he did, and yet he was from the PT wing that was competing against the more socialist wing. and lula's discourse has always been more radical than his actions, even today

In 1989, he got the support of the Socialist Party, the Communist Party of Brazil

the socialist party had an ok program, but pcdob was already a joke tbh, despite their program

it's funny, but while we like to say words have meaning, they seemly don't when it comes to brazilian political parties

in the second round basically everyone on the left supported him

that is not surprising, is it? he was pitted against collor. second rounds are an entirely different story

the actual leftish choice in 1989 was brizola (who correctly said, in the 90s, that lula and FHC were in the same place politically, except one came from below and the other, from above), not lula, but sadly he fell 1 or 2 points short of going to the second round. that one was an actual socdem, actually willing to do reforms with the people behind him, unlike lula, who was more in the realm of "ya'll be quiet and let me do my thing"

In 2002 he did receive the support of basically every leftist party in Brazil with exception of the trotskyists and the rival socdem party that I believe was the Vargas party, which is like Brazilian Peronism.

he did! and then he turned his back on us, starting with the "letter to the brazilian people" which was written precisely to tell the market he wasn't going to mess with the system, and then getting his first big win in government: a right-leaning pension reform, which would fuck over so many workers that some people in the party still decided to vote against it (resulting in their highly publicized expulsion and later founding of psol)

Now personally, I don't know Lula da Silva in Real-Life but he did say this about communists: And once he called Bolsonaro or someone else a stalinist but then he corrected himself and change it to nazist or something like that, lol.

in the 80s he also called brazilian communists "know-it-alls" who didn't really understand reality (basically usual socdem discourse: "it would be so cool, but unfortunately it wouldn't work in practice")

we really shouldn't be paying too much attention to lula's words tbh, except for stuff like defending palestine where words actually have an effect

communists have one good thing they can count on in Lula's government, which is that he's not going to do like the SPD and hunt down communists

only because we are not a threat. in the 2013 protests, where the anarchists and autonomists in general were very present, just before the right wing took the whole thing over, haddad and dilma went haywire on people. they actually supported our fash police beating them up and "bringing order", instead of using that opportunity to enact reforms. even in 2022, just after lula was elected, i saw people from the party saying leftists who decided to protest during this government were "NGO-funded, fifth column troublemakers" who should be put in their place by the police. when push comes to shove, the PT has always turned to the bourgeois order than to workers and students - which isn't even socdem behavior, just straight up liberalism

By the way, I don't know how popular his minister of economy is, but I don't think he's that popular. He could win a presidential election simply because the right is so bad at winning presidential elections without cheating. I saw something on Twitter about the Brazilian Senate ending re-election and returning to the old system, which is similar to the Mexican/Paraguayan system of one term, but with 5 years to govern. And I also thought that Lula's real successor was that Boulos guy.

don't you feel like haddad has been more impactful than lula? which is pretty sad, because his impact is actually bad - there are reasons why he's complimented by so many bankers, none of them are good

boulos does look like lula 2.0

edit: btw, my dad was a mayor from the PT once (still in the party, just not running for seats anymore - at least that i know of) and he's as close to an american senior democrat as i can think of, which admittedly might make me more cynical than average about the party

it's the main reason why i'm perfectly ok with independent unions being illegal in communist countries

that makes sense, what's really sad is that each of those professors has something he wants more investment for: some want more money for the archives, others want newer projectors for the classrooms, others want more scholarships, and all of that could be improved by them simply affording - gasp - 1 or 2 fewer trips to paris a year

tbf that one has been cancelled by commies since the 90s or even the 80s, he's never really liked us and we've never liked him

still better than bolsonaro obviously... i'd much rather have my university falling into pieces than outright closing its doors

most federal universities in brazil are currently striking against lula's neoliberal government, and more have been joining every month (my campus is deciding today)

but the biggest demand from professors is a wage raise... when they already earn more than like 95% of the population and universities are seriously lacking in stuff like capital for infrastructure, scholarships, etc. i mean, salaries already account for 90% (not a typo; it really is 90%) of federal university expenses

always sad to see how capitalism can turn unions into selfish orgs

It's practically a miracle that he was elected president when everything and everyone was against him

he was just the figurehead of the liberal side of the bourgeoisie, which at that time was fighting the more openly fash wing for hegemony

i'm ok with it, i'm just saying... the fascists were against him. the liberals were not, and were, in fact, in their majority, helping him out

i think sometimes we equate liberals to fascists too easily. liberals don't like fascism. it's disorganized, unpredictable, it has a distorted "popular movement" tinge to it that makes it way too volatile. it's a weapon they might use, and usually do use, but when facing serious threats. but lula was an open ally, not a threat, and proved to be the only electoral option for the bourgeoisie (which they happily used, or the fascists would eat them up)

edit: it's funny, but lula had always tried to be accepted by brazilian capitalists, and yet they were always going after him, to the point of putting the guy in jail and shit. then it took bolsonaro for lula to get the embrace that he'd always wanted

i hate everything here, from the ridiculous price to the guy treating a degree like a simple matter of value exchange

it's like even the pursuit of knowledge has become just a tool to help or hinder your survival under capitalism and i really fucking hate it

"a degree is like a car" no it fucking isn't??

i love how that dude makes an absolutely ridiculous assumption, as i've never seen a "tankie" deny that current russia is reactionary as fuck, but since he's saying Bad Thing about The Tankies everyone just goes "hmm yea those tankies amirite? smh"

liberals are fucking idiots, they never have any idea what they're actually talking about and just throw around concepts and categories with the level of understanding of a monkey playing with a power tool

not only that but have you seen how much bottom 95% academics have been earning, like if you're not at top 5% or something you're probably gonna have to share an apartment

after what, 10 years of busting your ass off trying to study shit. it's humiliating, no one wants that crap

he represents the overly online debate lord liberal loser demographic, so of course he's gonna have a lot of fans - people like him, who will defend their avatar at all costs

it's like taylor swift with the utterly mediocre

i think it's a matter of degree, russia's smo definitely did accelerate things in europe for instance (which, in turn, makes things worse for america)

it definitely feels like america is stretched thin right now (at least politically, if not yet economically), and that is weird because they've been involved in more concurrent conflicts in the past and it didn't feel that way then