I returned to South Africa about a month ago after spending most of the past few years in Brazil, due to the unexpected and unwelcome arrival of the coronavirus. If there is one major democracy — Turkmenistan, Nicaragua and Belarus don’t count — that stands out in terms of its utter mishandling of the coronavirus crisis, it is Brazil; its extreme-right president Jair Bolsonaro’s combination of denialism, mendacity and authoritarian bluster makes Donald Trump look almost competent in comparison.

Bolsonaro has since the beginning of the crisis claimed that the global pandemic is a hoax and used his platform to undermine the country’s attempts to tackle the crisis.

As one respected commentator, Celso Rocha de Barros, put it, Bolsonaro will go down as the person who sent the country to die. In the eyes of the opposition and even members of his own cabinet — Bolsonaro himself has become a public health risk. An editorial in the conservative Estado de São Paulo newspaper urged its readers, like Renton in Trainspotting, to reject the advice of the president and “choose life” after concluding in a previous editorial that “Bolsonaro’s reckless behaviour has earned him a position never previously enjoyed by a Brazilian president — that of international villain”.

The world is flat

In recent years, the number of Brazilians who believe the world is flat or are flat-earther curious has grown exponentially — as many as 7% of the population, 11 million Brazilians — believe the world is flat. 

This demographic of tin foil hat types includes some of the most influential “influencers” in the country, like Bolsonaro’s intellectual guru, an ex-astrologer and anal sex-obsessed crank — the Virginia-based Olavo de Carvalho, author of such tomes as The Minimum You Need to Know to not be an Idiot. The growing influence of nutjob crankery has reached the highest levels of the government. As a result, “flateartherism” has become something of a catch-all term used to sum up the combination of pathological insanity, violent stubborn provocation in the face of the facts and quackery that has come to characterise Bolsonaro’s government.

Flateartherism more or less sums up the Brazilian president’s response to the crisis. Initially, Bolsonaro claimed the coronavirus was a hoax, then simply it became only a “little flu”. Even after 25 members of his delegation to honour his idol Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago tested positive, he urged his most rabid supporters to take to the streets to call for the shutdown of the Supreme Court and Congress, which have just managed to check the most insane moves of the president. Bolsonaro went as far as to leave self-isolation to fistbump his supporters. Eventually, he grudgingly admitted the virus was a problem and proceeded to actively sabotage the country’s efforts to manage the crisis.

How to lose friends and alienate people

Due to Bolsonaro’s abdication of responsibility, the fight against the coronavirus has been led by the country’s powerful state governors who have introduced their own quarantine measures to limit its spread, supported by Health Minister Luiz Enrique Mandetta.

With an eye on the presidential election of 2022, former allies such as Rio de Janeiro Governor Wilson Witzel and São Paulo’s wannabee Michael Bloomberg, João Doria, have become some of the most vocal critics of the president.

Bolsonaro, in turn, has attacked his own health minister and state governors for their “criminal sabotage” of the economy.

“For weeks, Bolsonaro has been sabotaging the states’ and his own Health Ministry’s efforts to contain the spread of Covid-19 and putting the lives and health of Brazilians at grave risk,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “

Bolsonaro controls a gigantic fake news machine managed by his large and slow-witted adult politician sons and paid for by the country’s most insane tycoons. Economic Libertarian death squad fanboys now portray themselves as the defenders of the poor. This machine has been working overtime to undermine quarantine measures and the health minister, rightwing politicians such as Mandetta and Doria are now communists, and in fact the coronavirus itself has become a communist conspiracy. 

Convoys of morons clad in the green and yellow of the national football team jersey are traversing the country urging people to break the “communist quarantine” and calling for violence against politicians critical of the president. Covid-19-denying supporters of the president, for instance, tried to recreate in real life the Ghanaian Funeral Dancer Meme carrying a coffin made for the “Nazi” Doria while performing a jog on Avenida Paulista, São Paulo’s most crowded street last weekend.

Supporters of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro call for the departure of Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta in Brasilia on 15 April 2020. Tension between Bolsonaro and Mandetta has risen over the handling of the coronavirus pandemic. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Joedson Alves)

As one columnist put it, “Brazil is the only country in the world to have pro-pandemic protests.” These guys put our own 5G tinfoil hat “Mandela was a clone” brigade to shame in terms of sheer inspired lunacy.

Bolsonaro has been enabled by a legion of evangelical preachers calling for their flocks to ignore the virus. Evangelicals remain firm supporters of the president. 

Bolsonaro’s malevolent incompetence extends beyond the anti-quarantine campaign; over the past week or so he has been trumpeting a snake oil-like Trump and our own Tim Noakes in the form of the anti-malarial drug chloroquine as a miracle cure for Covid-19. According to a recent New York Times report, “a small study in Brazil was halted early for safety reasons after coronavirus patients taking a higher dose of chloroquine developed irregular heart rates that increased their risk of a potentially fatal heart arrhythmia”.

Beyond simply indulging in conspiracy, Bolsonaro has devoted his political energy and last remaining bits of political capital to sacking his own health minister, while he was prevented from doing so last week by the military, he seems set to sack Mandetta before the week is up.

Mandetta is no radical — he is an oligarch hailing from the soy fiefdom of Mato Grosso do Sul, but he is an actual medical doctor and somewhat competent. As a result, he has been receiving approval from the media, public and opposition for his handling of the crisis. So, in the midst of a rapidly escalating crisis, Bolsonaro is trying to fire a guy for doing his job and replacing him with a fellow flat earther, former Citizenship Minister Osmar Terra.

While he retains a core base of support of about 30%, much of Brazil has turned against Bolsonaro, as demonstrated in the nightly pots and pan clattering protests that have been taking place over the past few weeks, replete with chants of “Bolsonaro out”. He has lost the confidence of the majority of his own cabinet including, crucially, Justice Minister Sergio Moro and Economic Minister Paulo Guedes and his allies in the military are slowly turning against the president too. 

The tragic results

Covid-19 has proved an unforgiving plague and Brazil has already clocked more than 22,000 cases and 1,200 deaths. The public health systems of the two largest cities, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro along with the largest city in the Amazon, Manaus, are overwhelmed and only god knows how far internal transmissions have spread.

The mortality rate stands at a high 5.4% and it is only just beginning. One study reported on by Reuters suggests Brazil likely has 12 times more cases of the coronavirus than officially reported by the government. On Sunday, as Brazil recorded 99 new Covid-19 deaths, taking the toll to 1,223, Bolsonaro falsely claimed “this matter of the virus appears to be going away”.

It is for this reason that the mayor of Manaus called Bolsonaro “the main ally of the virus”.

“They don’t know whether to listen to the health minister or to the president,” Mandetta said. He urged Bolsonaro’s administration to present “a single, united line” on how to tackle the pandemic. The already fragile quarantines in the megacities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are beginning to fall apart as people attempt to go back to work and resume their normal lives. As one doctor told The Guardian, “Everything he (Bolsonaro) says and does has an intense impact… Lots of people say: ‘The president’s 65 and he’s not afraid – so why should we be?’ ” said Ricardo Sophie Diaz, an infectious diseases specialist from São Paulo’s Federal University. 

A man walks on Leblon beach, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 31 March 2020. On Monday, the Brazilian Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta said at a press conference with four other members of President Jair Bolsonaro’s cabinet held at the Planalto Presidential Palace, that the Government will initiate a new ‘expanded’ coordination model for actions against coronavirus. (Photo: EPA-EFE/Antonio Lacerda)

What is the moral of the story from this unholy mess, apart from not trusting flat earthers and authoritarian demagogues during an unprecedented global crisis?

Authoritarian rightwing demagogues like Bolsonaro and his idol Trump are hedging their political futures by attempting to separate the economic fallout from the pandemic from necessary health measures to contain its spread by portraying themselves as the defenders of the little guy and taking zero responsibility for their mishandling of the crisis.

As the economic situation worsens in large part due to Bolsonaro and his economically inept and cruel response, by not endorsing stimulus measures that will actually help Brazil’s poor majority, he is hoping they will blame state governors, experts and all those who are actually trying to prevent the coronavirus from killing as many people as it can.

In South Africa, part of the opposition is trying to make the same play and while our lockdown could have been handled better and with decidedly less state repression, it is sane and measured.

As the coronavirus begins to wreak havoc on the economy, we shouldn’t confuse opportunists with defenders of the poor who are left to fend for themselves. As a favela (Brazil’s version of a township) activist told The Guardian:

“We are mounting a war structure because we believe we are being abandoned to our own fate. We believe the cases are coming.” 

Those who are forced by necessity to find money to survive and risk breaking the quarantine are the sacrifices in this psychotic game.

Nobody has all the answers and we should be sceptical of anyone who claims they do, but there is also no guarantee that a populist gambit pandemic won’t prove successful in the long run. As Brazil teaches us, things can always get worse and there might be political gains in trying to ensure the worst-case scenario. DM

Benjamin Fogel is a PhD Candidate in Latin American History at New York University and is a contributing editor for Jacobin Magazine and Africa is a Country.