{"id":121243,"date":"2018-11-05T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T12:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=121243"},"modified":"2018-11-12T12:08:09","modified_gmt":"2018-11-12T12:08:09","slug":"psyops-images-from-bolsonaros-illegal-whatsapp-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/11\/psyops-images-from-bolsonaros-illegal-whatsapp-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Psyops: Images from Bolsonaro\u2019s Illegal WhatsApp Campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bolsonaro\u2019s illegal slush-fund financed social media campaign appears too sophisticated for his tiny political party to be doing on its own.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Brasil Wire<\/p><\/div>\n

21 Oct 2018 – <\/em>On the Friday before the October 7 Brazilian presidential elections, Brasil Wire ran two articles that proved to be prophetic. In the first I warned that the integrity <\/a>of the election was being compromised by presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro\u2019s use of thousands of WhatsApp groups of 256 people each to spread hate speech, lies and character assassination against PT presidential candidate Fernando Haddad and his running mate Manuela D\u2019\u00c0vila. In the second article Marcelo Zero spoke about <\/a>how international intelligence agencies use the internet to disseminate false information and destroy the reputation of their targets. \u201cthis isn\u2019t just any type of information,\u201d he said, \u201cthe information is chosen to cause great emotional impact, not to promote debate or rebut concrete information.\u201d Zero argued that, due to the previously disorganized nature of Bolsonaro\u2019s tiny PSL party, it was fair to assume that support for his social media campaign was coming from foreign intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n

On October 7th<\/sup> Bolsonaro outperformed all predictions by a wide margin and came close to winning the election in the first round. The previously unimportant PSL party gained 44 new congressional seats and passed up Brazil\u2019s big three conservative political parties, DEM, MDB and PSDB to become the second most powerful party in the House of Representatives. Then, on October 18th<\/sup>, a bomb dropped. Folha de S\u00e3o Paulo reporter Patricia Campos Mello revealed <\/a>that a group of business elites had helped the Bolsonaro campaign create an illegal slush fund worth several times more than his official campaign fund. This money was channeled into 4 companies that sold private information and phone numbers of huge groups of WhatsApp users and helped them target specific segments of the population, like evangelical Christians and North-easterners, with a non-stop barrage of lies and misinformation which was planned to greatly intensify the week before the final elections. As Ms. Mello received death threats<\/a> from Bolsonaro supporters, the Brazilian Federal Police launched an investigation<\/a> and the Supreme Electoral Court, which has already violated Brazilian laws by refusing to let Lula run for president or speak to the press, announced that it too would investigate the issue<\/a>. The Court postponed its first press conference and it is now expected that, with the support of Brazil\u2019s most powerful man<\/a>, General Sergio Etchegoyen, it will disobey Brazilian law once again and refuse to bar Bolsonaro\u2019s candidacy.<\/p>\n

But how could a medium like WhatsApp be used so effectively to propel a politician who, before Lula\u2019s candidacy was barred, had support levels hovering in the mid teens? Here are a few examples of the illegal campaign of lies and slander his organization used to bombard the Brazilian people, with the apparent support of Steve Bannon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A photo-shopped image of Vice Presidential candidate Manuela D\u2019\u00c1vila in a T-shirt that reads, \u201cJesus is a Transvestite\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

D\u2019\u00c1vila was actually wearing a T-shirt that said, \u201cfight like a girl\u201d.<\/p><\/div>\n

A slickly produced video alleging that, as Mayor of S\u00e3o Paulo, Fernando Haddad distributed \u201cerotic baby bottles\u201d to toddlers in the public preschool system, which reached 3 million people before being pulled off of YouTube.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Still from video which used a sex-shop gag item to make slanderous claims about Fernando Haddad<\/p><\/div>\n

As over 1 million people took to the streets in hundreds of Brazilian cities and 20 countries around the world in #Elen\u00e3o #Nothim protests against the misogynist candidate, the Bolsonaro campaign bombarded millions of evangelical Christians with photos from earlier slutwalk (Marcha das Vadias) protests, spreading the misinformation that they were taken during #EleN\u00e3o. This move caused a 5% rise of support for Bolsonaro in the polls, and polls show the spike was mainly caused by evangelical christian women.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u201cFeminists call themselves sluts and go out naked in public. And you think Bolsonaro is the one denigrating the image of women?\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

Throughout the campaign great effort has been made to apply the fascist tradition of myth building to bolster Bolsonaro\u2019s image. The neofascist military dictatorship period is portrayed as a utopia, despite the fact that corruption was higher then than it is now, and only 60% of Brazilian children had access to the public school system. Bolsonaro is portrayed as a mythic hero \u2013 an outsider who is going to drain the swamp of the corrupt communists of the PT. This image shows a PT monster with Fernando Haddad\u2019s face which also has the head of Michel Temer on it, and only a wounded Bolsonaro between it and the Brazilian people. Ironically, it was Bolsonaro who was one of Temer\u2019s most vocal supporters during the coup of 2016, and he has voted with Temer\u2019s coalition on every piece of legislation since then, including all of the deep austerity reforms.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Building the myth that a 7 -time congressman is a political outsider<\/p><\/div>\n

These four images are examples of the types of messages that have literally brainwashed a large segment of the Brazilian people into believing that Fernando Haddad is a communist, that the PT party will create a government commission to declare children\u2019s gender when they reach the age of 5, and that the Military Dictatorship period was the most wonderful time in Brazilian history. Their use violates Brazilian laws against illegal campaign financing, dissemination of hate speech and slander. In a reaction to the first round election results and a recent New York Times editorial, Facebook company has already enacted a palliative measure of banning all WhatsApp groups over 20, which will cripple further efforts to expand this well-funded psyops operation. Much of the damage, however, has already been done, including the election of 51 members of Bolsonaro\u2019s party to Congress, most of who are crypto-fascist, evangelical military officers, preachers and third rate celebrities, including former porno actor Alexandre Frota, who bragged about raping a black woman<\/a> and leaving her unconscious on live national TV two years ago. If the Supreme Electoral Court refuses to act on this or stalls until after the elections, as many people believe will be the case, it will be one more ugly episode in the breakdown of the Brazilian rule of law since the 2016 coup.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Brian Mier<\/a> – Writer, geographer and development professional who has lived in Brazil for 22 years. <\/em>Former directorate member of the F\u00f3rum Nacional de Reforma Urbana (National Urban Reform Forum). Has lived in S\u00e3o Luis, Recife, Salvador, Rio de Janeiro and S\u00e3o Paulo. Author of<\/em> Os Megaeventos Esportivos na Cidade do Rio de Janeiro e o Direito \u00e1 Cidade (CEPR\/Ford: Rio. 2016). <\/em>Editor of<\/em> Voices of the Brazilian Left (Sumare:Liverpool:2018). Irregular correspondent for the Chicago radio show<\/em> This is Hell.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 brasilwire.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bolsonaro\u2019s illegal slush-fund financed social media campaign appears too sophisticated for his tiny political party to be doing on its own. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":121245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brics","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}