Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stated firmly August 5 on two Brazilian podcasts that Brazil is prepared to defend this October’s national elections from foreign intervention.
He was referring to the U.S. State Department’s blatant attempted blackmail on August 4, revoking the visa of Brazil’s ambassador to the United States, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, in retaliation for Brazil’s failure to swiftly approve Daniel Perez, the Trump administration’s nominee as ambassador to Brazil. Lula called the visa revocation “irresponsible,” “ill-considered,” and an attempt to pressure Brazil. Trump “has been in office for a year and a half, so why didn’t he send the nomination earlier? They are trying to send it now and think we are obliged to respond to their timetable? That’s neither proper nor acceptable.” Brazil expects “to be treated with respect,” he said.
As for Brazil’s election: “The Brazilian people are the ones who decide in this country… Brazilians are the ones contesting these elections…. No one should think they can interfere in our affairs from abroad,” Lula reiterated.
On August 6, London’s Economist magazine floated another flank by which to achieve the Anglo-American war party’s immediate strategic objective in Brazil: ensuring Lula da Silva is defeated by a candidate prepared to pull Brazil out of the BRICS and back into the fold of the Anglosphere. The Economist concluded its profile of the election by promoting the candidacy of one Renan Santos, “a former entrepreneur and political outsider … who models himself on [Argentine President] Milei, as well as Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s autocrat.”
London is concerned that Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro now serving a 27-year jail sentence for his 2022 coup attempt after losing the elections, may not be able to defeat Lula come October. He has more foreign backing—Trump, Milei and Netanyahu are all for him—than he does inside the country, it noted. Enter Santos. The Economist hyped that “though he remains relatively little-known, upcoming television debates may change that. The presence of a firebrand outsider should worry Flávio’s camp. And maybe even Lula’s.”
In EIR’s 2016 dossier, “British Empire Behind Coup in Brazil,” Santos was identified as a key player in the operation to overthrow then-President Dilma Rousseff, a close ally of Lula’s. Santos’s Free Brazil Movement (MBL) led mass protests by rich and middle-class youth across Brazil, demanding her impeachment—in order to bring in Margaret Thatcher-style usury, privatization and austerity. Santos’s MBL, today rebranded as the Mission Party for his current candidacy, was created out of the bowels of the British Empire’s fascist “Austrian School of economics” associated with the infamous Von Mises and Von Hayek. Those networks bragged at the time that “many members” of the MBL were trained by their Atlas Foundation, and were “applying what they learned on the ground.”
Santos still has more foreign support (from London!) than internally—but his strongest base is said to be among voters aged 16 to 24, won through his well-financed social media operations.
