Explaining Brazil #293: When tragedy becomes a culture war

The South of Brazil is being ravaged by torrential rainfall and floods. The death tally is around 150 — with over 600,000 people displaced from their homes.

Rainfall has continued over the past few days, and it remains impossible to say that the worst is behind the region.

Authorities, meanwhile, are battling another beast: disinformation. Falsehoods around how the government is aiding municipalities, managing donations, and regulating rescue efforts are crippling the official response to the tragedy.

Moreover, several false emergency reports have been filed, mobilizing scarce resources for nothing. This week, we will talk about how an undisputed tragedy has turned into a culture war.

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Background reading on the floods in South Brazil:

• The flooding in Rio Grande do Sul is a harrowing example of how climate events have repeated themselves in recent years.
• Flooding in southern Brazil has disrupted logistics, with hundreds of cities in Rio Grande do Sul cut off from infrastructure networks
• For those who live abroad and want to help by donating to the rescue efforts, well-known NGOs and the local state government are making channels available for donations in foreign currency.
• With their stadiums under water and flights suspended, clubs in Rio Grande do Sul got the national football authorities to suspend games in May, though fear grows over the future calendar problems this may cause
• Follow all of our coverage of the Rio Grande do Sul floods here.

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Transcript of this episode (with Cockatoo)

The south of Brazil is being ravaged by torrential rainfall and floods. The death tally is around 150 and counting, with over 600,000 people displaced from their homes. Rainfall has continued over the past few days and it remains impossible to say that the worst is behind the region. Authorities meanwhile are battling another beast, disinformation.

Falsehoods around how the government is aiding municipalities, managing donations and regulating rescue efforts are crippling the official response to the tragedy. Moreover, several false emergency reports have been filed, mobilizing the already scarce resources for nothing. This week, we will talk about how an undisputed tragedy has turned into a culture war. My name is Gustavo Ribeiro, I am the editor-in-chief of the Brazilian

report This is Explaining Brazil. If you like Explaining Brazil, you should subscribe to our website which is the journalistic engine behind this podcast. You can also go the extra mile and make a donation to our newsroom buying a cup of coffee for one of our journalists and God knows reporters live off coffee. Our biggest enthusiast has definitely been a reader called Carson Allen who has made multiple donations of dozens of cups of coffee at a time and his tab includes over

100 cups of coffee. To Carson, thanks a lot and to everyone else, be more like Carson. And you can also subscribe to our Buy Me A Coffee fan page, pledging a monthly contribution to our newsroom in exchange for exclusive content that you will not find anywhere else. Our Buy Me A Coffee subscribers are, besides of course Carson Allen, Wild Rice, Jaceada de Oliveira, Gabriel Luca, Andrey Novoseltsev, Pen Ludwig, Leslie Steele, Mark Hillary, Luis Rens, Aaron Menais, Aaron Berger, Kars Vresvek, Alexander Townsend, Miller Renascido, Peter Suffring, Anderson da Silva, and someone who chose to remain anonymous. And if you too want to support independent journalism and hear your name on our podcast, head over to buymeacoffee.com slash BrazilianReport. This week we welcome back an old friend of the show, Mário Sérgio Lima, a senior Brazil analyst at Medli Global Advisors.

Mário, thanks for being here with us. Thanks, thanks, Gustavo. It’s always a pleasure. So, Mário, we’re discussing one of the biggest climate tragedies ever to occur in Brazil, with scores of deaths, widespread human suffering in the country’s southernmost state,

and yet, the topic of this week’s episode is disinformation. So, what on earth is going on there? Well, there’s, amid this tragedy, of course, in these kinds of events, I wouldn’t say like you would have misinformation at some point, but it would be like, you know, people say something at some place and then you have to call this as it is, because I mean, the sources of information are several. So people on the ground, people who know people that are on the ground, people who just have, people who have

lost a lot, people who know people who have lost a lot. So it’s difficult to actually know what’s going on for sure. And also you have to consider that when you’re seeing. What you’re seeing is not really what’s happening elsewhere. It’s a huge state, by all means. So that was bound to happen. The problem is there’s clearly an effort to misinform, to disinform the population.

And this comes, unfortunately, from politically linked groups because there’s an idea that everything should be disputed as narratives and rather than limiting this to what should be, I would say, a positive political dispute in which you have a lot of lawmakers who are opposition to the current government, either on state level, municipal level, and federal level.

I mean, it’s more than expected that they would be pressing the government to act, to do the best that it can, and also to oversee the spending and the effort. So that I think it’s good politics, but that’s not what we’re seeing. We’re actually seeing people just basically creating facts and just basically spilling

narrative, which is not helping the people that are in need. Actually, it’s making the case worse just for political gains. And that’s part of what’s, I mean, tragedies like this bring up the best and the worst on people. I would say that this is bringing out the worst. Now, these disinformation networks are not necessarily trying to deny that the floods in Rio Grande do Sul are linked to human-made climate change.

Maybe also because, according to a recent poll, 99% of Brazilians actually do believe that these floods are a byproduct of climate change. Rather, we’re kind of seeing this information about the political side of this crisis, right? Yeah. I mean, I do expect that at some point, what you mentioned, the discussion on whether or those climate extreme events are directly linked to human activities.

I mean, I think that and of course when the discussion comes, there are a lot of people who are negationists, but I do think that those people will eventually come to the discussion after, I mean, the water just have been absorbed and people are starting to rebuild, I think that’s when those people will get to the point. But what we’re seeing is like basic lies, like, oh, the government, some people in the government are not allowing the aid to come to the people in need.

are borrowing drugs. They are rejecting offers of help from other nations and other states. And this creates, I mean, when you’re putting out this kind of disinformation, especially in a moment when people are very sensitive, and of course they are, I mean, more than a hundred people, we’re almost heading to 200 people lost their lives on that tragedy. The economic losses that will come from this are also huge. So of course people are

completely sentimental and all, and that’s when those, I would say like those fake news ghouls, come and try to disseminate this information to actually rile up those people who are already in a vulnerable state, not only physically but emotionally and also materially vulnerable. And they’re riling those people up in a way that they’re just trying to get political gains, which, I mean, it’s not the time and it’s not the manner in which those things should be done.

Now, lots of well-known people have pushed misinformative content. Elected officials, Dunga, the captain of Brazil’s 1994 World Cup winning football team, he said that bureaucracy was keeping him from donating food to victims, which was debunked. But you claimed in an op-ed for the Brazilian Report that arguably the biggest figure in this far-right fake news wave is a man called Pablo Marçal. Can you tell us a little bit about him, because he does sound like a character? Yes. Thinking about foreign listeners, I would compare Pablo Marçal to Tony Robbins in a sense that, you know, he’s a kind of a self-help guru.

It was never clear why would people start listening to him in the first place, but I mean, there’s marketplace for this sort of self-help life coach type of people. And I mean it is what it is but this guy is huge. This guy has millions and millions of followers on his social media. If you have every one of this, his profile pages, you would see like, I don’t know, something north of 10 million people in all of the social media websites. I mean the guy is very big. He actually tried to run for president

in the former election. He couldn’t manage to do so because his then party decided to support Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s pledge. But Pablo is a very far-right individual. And then he became like he ran for federal deputy, federal lawmaker. He was elected, but then the federal, he basically ran into some files with the electoral court

and then he was barred from taking office. But basically the guy is a super spreader. somewhat of a very loose grapple on reality. He mentions, he always says, like if you’ll take his words into, on face value, you would think that if,

with a couple of months of boxing training, he could knock out the heavyweight champion of the world. That’s the kind of a bullshit artist that he is. Then he became infamous, I wouldn’t say famous, but infamous outside of this bubble of influence that he has. He became infamous because I believe it was in 2021 or 2022, I don’t remember the year exactly. He brought some of his followers to the peak of a mountain in one of those struggles. You will overcome, you have to do things to overcome what’s holding you back, you know,

like this kind of life coach type of event. And then those people, the climate conditions were terrible. People say, hey, you shouldn’t go there, you shouldn’t go there. He went anyway. Those people were trapped in the top of the mountain, had to be rescued by security forces. Also, there was an individual that took part of that. He wasn’t fully physically fit for this kind of task.

So he eventually had a heart stroke and died. So, I mean, at some point, you know, this kind of people can have dire consequences. But in this specific case, he has been super spreading a lot of those fake information and he has been doubling down. Even if people say that he’s lying, he’s doubling down and he has a lot of people that listen to him. So, without any sort of commitment to truth and responsibility, I mean, there’s no accountability

in Augusta. That’s, I think, it’s the main issue here. When media, you could say, people call the legacy media or the institutional media and all, when those people make mistakes, I mean, they have a lot of ways

to try to avoid making mistakes, a lot of checks and balances internally, always striving to get the best information, but even then, with the fast information that you need to real-time information, they make mistakes, they have to own up to those mistakes.

And that’s what makes this kind of commitment and accountability, which is key. Those people, they have none of that. They can say whatever they want, whenever they want. And I mean, the consequences, it’s almost like they don’t need you to respond for the consequences.

And I think that creates a very asymmetric field that really, it’s asymmetric to the favor of the misinformation rather than the right information. And not to make excuses for this information, but do you think the federal government could be doing more to show how it is helping Rio Grande do Sul? Because I mean, sometimes it kind of feels like they’re leaving space for false narratives to flourish.

That’s a very difficult question to answer. I do think that they’re partially yes, and partially I think the government should be trying to tackle this directly. They are putting up some websites and try to fight this information and try to respond as fast as they can, which I mean, it’s almost like, you know, like banging, banging a whiplash to the sea. It’s not going to be making a lot of… But anyway, it’s something. I think

that there are… They probably, I think, they probably need to be more close to the ground. I mean, I’m not just saying like the military men that are helping. I’m actually saying like Lula and his minister, they really need to be as close to the ground and to the people as they can to try to convey the message. I know it’s hard, but it’s something that they need to do. But anyway, I think it’s very difficult to fight this influence because this is this kind of infrastructure of this information was put in place by the far right and they really had a lot of time to build and to keep this thing flowing. So I mean when Bolsonaro was president he had like the Gabinet do Watch, like the hateful

cabinet, which were a group of people that were doing this kind of effort, but it’s naive to believe that those were the only ones. I think even if there’s a centralized type of nervous system to this kind of, to try to sell those narratives and this information, it’s still very difficult to combat because it’s very widespread. A lot of people are doing, and a lot of people are just like forwarding the the misinformation without checking, which it’s kind of who is actually responsible,

who should you, and even like the idea of let’s investigate and create some probes against

those people.

I mean, yeah, yeah, I mean, legal repercussions should happen when you’re doing, taking a bad faith argument. But it’s also like a slippery slope, you know, because if you really try to suppress this kind of information, which like I said, can be really widespread into several actors, even like people who just are just supporters and not really politicians or anybody that has some power, you really run the risk of being too authoritarian in trying to suppress any sort of information.

Because let’s be honest, there are reasons to believe that some information that comes that are not what the government wants to see published may be true. So you can’t just like forcefully force down a narrative also. It’s a difficult situation, but it’s clear that I believe that the government is not doing whatever it can, although I do believe that once the water comes down

and then like those relief packages get into the pockets of people affected, I think this will create some sort of goodwill towards the government and everything. But in this first moment, it’s very difficult to actually gain a lot of favor when it’s happening. Of course, this disinformative campaign is not just directed at Lula and the federal government, and it’s important to note that Brazil will have municipal elections later this year. So there may be mayors in Rio Grande do Sul running for re-election that will

use this crisis to promote themselves or conversely, challengers trying to use the situation to bash incumbents, right? Yeah, I mean, you know, we’ve seen some of them, like one of the mayors, it was so blatant that the guy was lying. He had a doctored video of his call with a minister that he was basically like, seemed like he was taking, putting the heat on the minister, but the minister also was filming and he released the full video. So you see like the mail was blatantly lying.

But the thing is, how much would that affect? It’s difficult to say because it depends on which of the information travels faster and reaches more people. I tend to believe that the false information tends to spread faster because it regenerates more, more like the sentiment that it generates.

It’s something that’s easier to forward rather than like a more cool down look and see, hey, let’s compare and see who’s lying. So, but I mean, what I lament, Gustavo, is that all in all, after the water comes down and the people start getting, putting the piece together of their lives, I don’t believe that the necessity of discuss weather or our own infrastructure is really sturdy enough It’s becoming ever more frequent, extreme weather, extreme climate events. I don’t think that this is going to be, when people are casting their vote, I don’t think that this is going to be the main issue that they’re looking for.

Or even, I mean, maybe not the main issue is the idea, it’s like maybe even not an issue when they’re casting their vote. I mean, we’re seeing this and we’re seeing like the rural caucus in the Congress really passing a lot of legislation that has a potential to harm the environment

in the medium to long term. And you really don’t see this kind of discussion really gaining momentum when it’s the most important, when people are actually casting their vote. In Rio Grande do Sul, theoretically, after this disaster, people would be saying, hey, in these elections, we need to vote in candidates that have a proposition to tackle this situation. I’m not saying which, I’m not saying like vote left or vote right or vote center,

because this would be, this should be taken into the hearts of every one of the people running for election. And even if they have different views on how to tackle the situation, at least they have a plan to actually do this, to actually allow for funds to not be diverted from this kind of worry. But to be honest, I’m very pessimistic. I don’t think when it comes to the time of voting, people will be distracted by other factors,

which can be really important, like public security, which we know that is not really a mayor’s job, but it’s elections, you know, everything is put into place when people are voting, even if it’s not what is immediately in the hands of the mayors. Other types of, future tragedies like this. I’m very pessimistic, Gustavo.

I want to go back to the culture war issue that we’re discussing, because one of the recurring slogans we’ve seen is, quote, Civilians are helping civilians. Now, that might be a dig at the armed forces, right? Because the far right has called the military traitors after they did not support Jair Bolsonaro’s coup attempt and did not intervene when Lula was elected. And now let’s remember, Rio Grande do Sul is a massive supporter of Jair Bolsonaro, right?

It’s the civilian aid, you know, like volunteer aid and people donating. And this has been actually people from everywhere in Brazil are donating. Companies everywhere in Brazil are trying to show, even if it’s just for show, they’re trying to do something for Rio Grande do Sul. So, of course, in every type of tragedy like this, you need, especially in this first moment, those will be the people that are actually going to be holding the fort. But the way that they present this as a narrative is like, okay, we’re doing this and the government’s not doing anything and nothing is happening.

And I mean, which is a lie. Let’s be honest. It is a lie because the aid is coming from other states through the armed forces, armed forces, airplanes, from the national postal office, you know, like, of course, there’s already the government, the federal and the local government really operating. And after the tragedy, that’s when most of the help is going to be coming, not from civilians,

but from the government. It would be great if we were just like really putting a word of respect towards the volunteers and towards the sentiment that’s propelling Brazilians nationwide to help Rio Grande do Sul and for the local heroes that are really taking time from their own lives to help other people, to help other lives. So, I mean, kudos to them. We really should value what they’re doing.

But it’s like, you take something that should be positive, which should be like, let’s create unity. Let’s say, oh, we are doing everything. So we are all one in this moment. And they’re taking this as a means to instigate those people against the government, which, I mean, it’s like, even if it seems well-intentioned, it’s sad, really, that they need to resort

to this. And nothing is achieved afterwards when you take this approach. That’s the real answer. Mário Sérgio, thank you a lot.

Thanks, thanks, Gustavo. It’s always a pleasure to speak to the Brazilian report. Mário Sérgio Lima is a senior analyst at Medley Global Advisors, and if you like Explaining Brazil, please give us a 5-star rating wherever you get your podcasts. Or better yet, you can subscribe to the Brazilian report, the journalistic engine behind this podcast.

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Explaining Brazil will be back next week.




Transcribed with Cockatoo

The post Explaining Brazil #293: When tragedy becomes a culture war appeared first on The Brazilian Report.