{"id":380271,"date":"2018-10-09T14:39:39","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T13:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/future-of-western-democracy-being-played-out-in-brazil-consortiumnews\/"},"modified":"2018-10-09T14:39:39","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T13:39:39","slug":"future-of-western-democracy-being-played-out-in-brazil-consortiumnews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/future-of-western-democracy-being-played-out-in-brazil-consortiumnews\/","title":{"rendered":"Future of Western Democracy Being Played Out in Brazil \u2013 Consortiumnews"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Stripped to its essence, the Brazilian presidential elections represent a direct clash between democracy and an early 21st<\/sup> Century neofascism, indeed between civilization and barbarism, writes Pepe Escobar. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

By Pepe Escobar
<\/span><\/b><\/span>in Paris
<\/span><\/b><\/span>Special to Consortium News <\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Stripped to its essence, the Brazilian presidential elections represent a direct clash between democracy and an early 21<\/span>st<\/span><\/sup> Century, neofascism, indeed between civilization and barbarism. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Geopolitical and global economic reverberations will be immense. The Brazilian dilemma illuminates all the contradictions surrounding the Right populist offensive across the West, juxtaposed to the inexorable collapse of the Left. The stakes could not be higher. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jair Bolsonaro, an outright supporter of Brazilian military dictatorships of last century, who has been normalized as the \u201cextreme-right candidate,\u201d won the first round of the presidential elections on Sunday with more than 49 million votes. That was 46 percent of the total, just shy of a majority needed for an outright win. This in itself is a jaw-dropping development. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

His opponent, Fernando Haddad of the Workers\u2019 Party (PT), got only 31 million votes, or 29 percent of the total. He will now face Bolsonaro in a runoff on <\/span>October 28<\/span>. A Sisyphean task awaits Haddad: just to reach parity with Bolsonaro, he needs every single vote from those who supported the third and fourth-placed candidates, plus a substantial share of the almost 20 percent of votes considered null and void. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, no less than 69 percent of Brazilians, according to the latest polls, profess their support for democracy. That means 31 percent do not. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

No Tropical Trump <\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Dystopia Central does not even begin to qualify it. Progressive Brazilians are terrified of facing a mutant \u201cBrazil\u201d (the movie) cum Mad Max wasteland ravaged by evangelical fanatics, rapacious neoliberal casino capitalists and a rabid military bent on recreating a Dictatorship 2.0.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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