Andy

„700 Tage ununterbrochener Proteste. Am 28. Oktober um 18:00 Uhr kommen wir am Bebelplatz in Berlin zusammen, um unsere Solidarität mit dem Kampf des georgischen Volkes für Freiheit und eine europäische Zukunft zu zeigen.” 🇬🇪🇪🇺 #GeorgiaProtests

“BUT WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR KEIR STARMER’S LEADESHIP?”

27 October 1927 | Czech Jew, Jiří Herrmann, was born in Prague. He was deported to #Auschwitz from #Theresienstadt ghetto on 29 September 1944. He did not survive.

‘Not-me Nigel’ Always someone else’s fault. Nigel Farage fumes at ‘staff incompetence’ for half-empty Reform event www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/nig...

Expelled Reform UK councillors at Kent County Council demand answers one year on www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/ex...

c.org/g5nXPsBGHZ

While the election result in #Brazil is obviously good news, we should remember that countless American wannabe-fascists poured $billions into achieving the opposite result and now have nothing to show for it, so it's not just good news, but also objectively hilarious.

Flávio Bolsonaro: "It is impossible to recognize the (Brazil) election results in the context of how these things happened. We are going to use our legal team, we are going to request the annulment of these elections."

Well this is eleventy-million kinds of Fucked Up. @latimes.com (who once contracted with me as a freelance reviewer and whom I struggled to get paid by) asserts that *merely reading its website* constitutes a permanent waiver of your right to sue it under *any circumstances*.

The latest Truth Social post from the president of the United States.

Together we will keep working closely for free and open trade. A rules-based global order. And strong ambitions for our climate.

Congratulations to my friend Lula on his electoral victory. Democracy and multilateralism have won in Brazil. Europe’s partnership with Brazil is thriving. We will remain by your side for the years to come.

reaching the “mass-broadcasting records of us violating election law” stage of desperation

26 October 1929 | Dutch Jewish boy, Leo Stein, was born in Amsterdam. He was deported to #Auschwitz from #Westerbork in August 1943. He did not survive. --- Listen about the development of the mass murder infrastructure at Auschwitz: https://youtu.be/tRwZ49q-9e0

Bolsonaro lost

None of us should forget this. Meta should be subjected to corporate death penalty and permanently broken up into small pieces.

Take away the goddamn Musk And Zuckerberg help, and Bolsonaro got CRUSHED.

Sore loser

Well that didn't take long to start discrediting the results. 🙄🤦🏻‍♀️

First Orban, now Vučić. Both fundamentally undone by rank corruption of their regimes. Which is so often the reality of the authoritarian right in power. Really worth paying heed to in Western Europe right now

Was looking for someone to say Zuck learned a lesson about the Streisand Effect. This is pretty close.

Except it might have actually helped Lula. Just like how I think MAGA is going to lose bigger in November because of their attempts to cheat. Watch what happens in the southern states.

Reading Careless People, I learned how Meta didn’t like the fact that Brazil held them accountable for their behaviour. I wish my country, Canada showed the same level of responsibility to its citizens

Numbers: Lula gained 10.2 million votes between the 1st and 2nd round, while Bolsonaro gained 3.7 million. Overall valid votes cast rose by 4.6 million. There were 9.3 million third party votes up for grabs in the 2nd round.

...equally it does seem clear that from the numbers that turnout alone can't plausibly explain Lula's entire margin of victory, so please take my thread above with a certain amount of salt. Turnout did increase between round 1 and 2, but that's not all that was going on.

I'm not entirely convinced by this; everything I've seen suggests that the Lula campaign put a huge amount of effort to mobilising and energising his supporters to come out to vote, and the voter suppression which happened suggests the other side saw this as a real threat, but...

Further addendum: @nilo.bsky.social who seems to know what he's talking about if you look at his profile, disagrees with my take and has outlined why the result may be down not to turnout but to right-wing swing voters who dislike Lula but distrust Bolsonaro more. bsky.app/profile/nilo...

Addendum: Multiple people have pointed out, correctly, that Lula ran with a non-fascist right-wing politician as his VP, and therefore compromised politically in a lot of ways to try to win. Where I was coming from was that Lula was uncompromising with *fascism*, but the full context is important.

bsky.app/profile/alli...

He's the first presidential candidate ever to come from behind in the first round to win the second round, so there's a lot, lot more to his victory than I'm qualified to speak to. But it seems pretty clear that if he'd simply run on preserving the status quo then he'd have lost, and heavily.

There are definitely people who can explain the Brazilian election with a lot more authority and knowledge than me, but that was it in a nutshell. He didn't show mercy to the fascists when in power, he didn't compromise them, and he promised the hope of something better.

And the lesson is that, despite his flaws, he had a committed focus on improving the lives of ordinary working people in tangible ways, he was uncompromising in opposition to fascists, and when he lost the first round he used it to motivate his supporters to throw everything at the second round.

And again, it's worth noting that this happened despite Lula being an incredibly flawed candidate. His son and some of his key political allies are embroiled in genuine corruption scandals. He's 80 years old. Crime is incredibly high. But he's won despite those flaws. There's a lesson in that.

The Bolsonarists didn't change their minds, they didn't suddenly stop believing that their man could do no wrong and that Lula was an existential threat to Brazil. They were simply outvoted by those who refused to risk a return to fascism, and decided not to sit this election out.

Bolsonaro had corrupt media on his side, Meta interference on his side, US propaganda operations, and his party's officials actively sabotaging public transport in Lula strongholds to prevent turnout. Yet he was still beaten by the power of voter turnout.