President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) met, on the morning of this Wednesday (29), with American journalist Tucker Carlson, the leading cable TV audience presenter in the US and a notorious spokesman for conservative ideas, when not conspiracy theories.
Appointed by the website Mediate as the most influential American journalist of 2021, the anchor is, for example, one of the great propagators of the racist theory of the “great replacement”. According to the conspiracy, the entry of immigrants into the US would be part of a Democratic plan to make the white electorate a minority in the country and, thus, decrease the chances of the Republican Party winning elections.
The photo next to Bolsonaro, published by Carlson on his social networks, caught the attention of some users. Not necessarily for the meeting (anticipated and celebrated by Bolsonaristas), but for the symbolic layers in the click.
According to The New York Times series “American Nationalist”, Carlson built “perhaps the most racist show in the history of cable TV” in the US and also “the most successful”.
During the protests following the murder of George Floyd, which catalyzed anti-racist demonstrations around the world, Carlson called the Black Lives Matter movement a “criminal mob”. He has also become an ardent supporter of the US Capitol invasion, launched in 2021 by supporters of Donald Trump. For him, the presence of white supremacists in the movement, now the target of a parliamentary committee, “is barely worth a footnote.”
Carlson is in Brazil to investigate “China’s growing influence” in the country, according to the website O Antagonista. The attacks on the Asian country, one of Brazil’s most important trading partners, were frequent throughout the Bolsonarista administration, led by both ministers, such as Abraham Weintraub and former Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo, and by the president himself.
Bolsonaro also published images of the meeting with Carlson on his networks.
According to the president, he used the meeting to show “to the world the truth about Brazil, about our government” and, in reference to the biblical verse he uses as a slogan, he said he was “sure that once again the truth will set us free” .
If Brazil were a movie, illustrator Cristiano Siqueira pointed out, Bolsonaro’s photo with Carlson would be a scene full of “easter eggs”, as the small references to a universe that can only be understood at all by good connoisseurs. For example, when Pixar includes a “Toy Story” doll in a non-franchise movie.
Internet users started pointing out these references and related details of the photos to the latest news in Brazil, such as the murder of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips in Vale do Javari, the accusations of harassment against Pedro Guimarães, president of Caixa Econômica Federal, police violence and the Nelson Piquet’s racist statements against Lewis Hamilton.
If, on the one hand, the “semiotics” of “pure juice from Brazil” aroused the reaction of some, Bolsonaristas share the photo as an achievement of the Brazilian president. Filipe Martins, Bolsonaro’s special adviser for international affairs, called the interview with the American journalist “historic”.
Echoing the president’s speech, his supporters see the meeting as a moment for “the truth” about Brazil to be revealed “to the world”.
