Brazil Election Tough Choice: Who Is Worse, Lula Or Flávio Bolsonaro?

The political circus is set up in Brazil, as the democratic sect will perform its grand ritual in October: the presidential elections. With a second round already defined, those who choose to vote will be sucked into a spiral of narratives and will end up falling into one of two wings, on the right, represented by Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is in prison, or on the left, represented by Lula. Although failing to vote is prohibited in Brazil, voting is still an option, not an obligation. Despite of a legal requirement to vote, people can choose not to attend and justify their absence, and even those who neither vote nor justify are subject to an extremely light punishment: a merely symbolic fine of US$0.70. I have chosen this option for the last 20 years, not voting nor justifying, completely ignoring the liturgy of democracy.

This placed me among the more than 32 million Brazilians who abstained in the last elections, 20.9% of the electorate. Adding to that the 5.4 million blank and null votes, 4.4%, we have 25% of the electorate who chose neither Lula nor [Jair] Bolsonaro in 2022. But 75% chose, and this year will choose again, between Lula and Bolsonaro’s replacement, his son Flávio. Leaving aside the fanatics who deify their favorite politicians, the majority who vote use the “lesser of two evils” criterion to choose their candidate, so let’s try to define which of these two is the worst.

Despite being the greatest exponent of anarcho-capitalism and advocating for the abolition of the state, this was an exercise Murray Rothbard used to perform in every election. In the case of the current presidential election, this seems to be a futile task, since the president wields little power, as the country is controlled by a rabble of extremely corrupt and authoritarian Supreme Court justices. A presidential candidate should, at the very least, propose doing what Nayib Bukele did in El Salvador. When Bukele’s allies won a majority in Congress, the parliament dismissed all five magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice and appointed others. However, the solution would be to get rid of the institution itself, since a Supreme Court results in a Supreme State. The monopolistic Supreme Court system is completely incompatible with the elementary principle of impartiality in justice. It’s as if the referee for a match between the Boston Red Sox and the New York were chosen by one of the team owners. The system is inherently inadequate, and Lula exposed this better than anyone by nominating his party lawyer Dias Toffoli, his own lawyer Cristiano Zanin, and his political comrade, the communist and former lockdown governor, Flávio Dino, to the position of Supreme Court Justice. This is completely unacceptable; nevertheless, the opposition accepts this absurdity as a fait accompli, and the most it does is yearn to win an election so it can nominate its own Supreme Court justices. It’s pathetic. And since no candidate proposes to change any of this, within the limited scope of a president, who would be worse, Lula or Flávio?

Health Tyranny

Flávio Bolsonaro presents himself as a continuation of his father Jair’s government. In his government program, he refers to the Bolsonaro government (2018-2022) as “our government”: “We have already shown that it’s possible to do things differently: even in the face of the biggest pandemic in a hundred years, we made the debt go down.” He only forgets to mention that the economic calamity of the so-called “pandemic” was not a natural disaster, but an artificial catastrophe, caused by “their” own government. Jair Bolsonaro was one of the few presidents who spoke the truth during the mass delusional psychosis that afflicted the world in 2020, because COVID-19 really was just a “flu light,” alternative treatments were safe and effective – unlike the dangerous and ineffective “vaccines” he didn’t take and the masks he refused to wear on several occasions – and staying at home was useless in containing the virus. But all he did was talk, because Jair Bolsonaro not only signed a law allowing authorities to impose mandatory vaccination, mandatory mask use, and mandatory PCR testing, but also enabled lockdowns by distributing the The COVID-19 stipend, which guaranteed a minimum income for millions of people prevented from working, thus preventing them from revolting against the tyranny of their governors and mayors, further destroyed the economy with the inflation it generated. And although Jair Bolsonaro took some courageous stances during the scamdemic, Flávio Bolsonaro did not follow his father’s example, being far worse than him, boasting of being more “moderate” and having been vaccinated.

The fact is that Jair was part of the at-risk group, since Covid could be dangerous for people over 70 years old and with comorbidities, and Jair was 66 years old and had numerous health problems resulting from the stabbing he suffered during his 2017 presidential campaign, while Flávio was not at risk from Covid and got vaccinated, in that ridiculous scene below, wearing a mask, and injecting into his body the AstraZeneca “immunizing” vaccine, withdrawn from the market in 2024 due to the high risk of causing blood clots and even sudden death.

It is clear to us that Flávio is worse than Jair, but we are here to determine whether he is worse than Lula. Regarding COVID, Lula appeared to be worse than Flávio. Lula took 5 shots – two Coronavac, one Janssen, and one Pfizer —and not only supported all the dictatorial measures imposed by governments during the COVID tyranny but even went so far as to “thank nature for creating the coronavirus (which was actually created artificially in a Chinese laboratory using US-funded gain-of-function research) to show the blind (libertarians?)—who believe the state should be dismantled—that only the state can solve crises like these”.

However, Flávio announced that his Minister of Health will be the Zionist Jew who, during the scamdemic, defended masks and the tyranny of the health passport. So I would say that Flávio is as awful as Lula in this regard. One might think that this issue is irrelevant, since COVID is over, and, indeed, with the mainstream pandemic narrative finally being obliterated by Dr. Fauci’s hearings in the Congress, it seems difficult for the world to fall for this trick again in the near future. However, it’s good to remember that human stupidity is infinite, and this is a ghost that will always be lurking: a new health tyranny could be established again at any given moment.

Drug Trafficking

Both candidates promise to be tough on drug trafficking: Flávio proposes attacking the finances of criminal organizations, building five prisons modeled after those in El Salvador under Bukele, and further militarizing the borders; Lula pledges to strengthen his ”Brazil Against Organized Crime” program. Indeed, his government has been fighting criminal organizations – in his government plan, Lula points out that since 2023, it has caused R$ 35.8 billion in losses to these organizations. Despite this, the power and wealth of organized crime continue to grow, and nothing Flávio proposes will change that; quite the contrary – the hardening of the fight against drug trafficking cannot eliminate drugs, it can only increase their price and the profits of drug dealers. Lula’s intense drug policy is already terrible, and Flávio’s promises to be even worse, that is, it will give even more power and money to criminal organizations. Any proposal other than the complete repeal of the ban on the manufacture and sale of all drugs is sheer fantasy that does nothing but worsen the crime problem.

Both candidates have plans to reclaim territories lost to organized crime, but, as I argued in another article, it may be better to leave territories with the factions than with the Brazilian state mafia; the drug traffickers may be less bad than the state of Lula and Flávio.

Real Crimes

Flávio’s proposals for combating actual criminals (those with victims) are far better to those Lula has proposed and implemented during his administrations. Impunity in Brazil is staggering; arrested criminals are often released from police stations before victims have even finished giving their statements, and those who are actually convicted receive lenient sentences of which they do not even serve a third. Most return to a life of crime, having realized that crime pays. This stems from the abhorrent progressive mindset shared by Lula’s political supporters—viewing the criminal as a “victim of society”—which, after twenty years of PT governance, has permeated every level of the Brazilian justice system and legal framework. Flávio proposes that serious offenders serve their full sentences, that the age of criminal responsibility be lowered from 18 years old to 16 (or 14 for serious crimes), and that the “Criminals’ Allowance” be transformed into a “Victims’ Allowance” (“Funds currently directed to the families of inmates will be redirected to the families of victims”). While these proposals are not ideal—since all criminals should serve their sentences, not just those who committed serious crimes; the concept of an age of criminal responsibility shouldn’t even exist; and it is the criminals, not the general population, who should compensate the victim—they are far less objectionable than Lula’s proposals and track record.

But Flávio’s best promise is the repeal of the disarmament statute, making it easier for the population to buy and carry weapons. While this isn’t the ideal scenario—total gun liberalization (Flávio even proposes executing anyone carrying a rifle, when everyone should be allowed to carry their own)—allowing citizens to regain the possibility, even if limited, of defending themselves against criminals’ firearms with their own firearms would be an immeasurably effective measure in combating crime.

Feminism

However, this punitive resurgence is not always a good thing, as the state’s definitions of crime—as the state is society’s largest criminal organization—are based on dubious principles. In his proposal to lower the age of criminal responsibility to 14 years old for serious offenses, Flávio includes drug trafficking on the list. Imagine a teenager who simply wants to earn some money working in the illegal—yet entirely legitimate—drug trade, only to be arrested and sentenced to 30 years in prison for this victimless crime! Flávio also proposes chemical castration for rapists; yet again, the state’s progressive justice system might define a “rapist” as a man simply accused of rape, where the only evidence is the woman’s word. A key element of Flávio’s government platform is Brazil for Womem, a series of measures that privilege women, treating them differently from men. Flávio, as a senator, has already shown himself to be even more feminist than his father Jair – who boasted of having sanctioned 71 feminist laws during his government, although a fact-check found “only” 41 – and voted in favor of the aberrant misogyny law. Lula, like all leftists, is a feminist, but Flávio manages to be even worse than Lula on the issue of feminism, which is one of the main causes of the destruction of the family that he claims to defend.

Socialism

Socialism is the system advocated by both the left and the right in Brazil. The Soviet healthcare system, socialist security services, and socialized education are unanimously supported across both political spectrums. Of course, for these three functions to be universally provided by the state, taxes must be high, the bureaucracy gigantic, and the state a mammoth size, but the left and the right do not limit themselves to these. Culture, tourism, charity, transportation, sports, agriculture, housing, daycare centers, the iconic streets and roads, and much more socialism—all of this is championed equally by Brazilian leftists and rightists. In the government platform of the “right-winger” Flávio, we can see evidence of his deep-seated socialist convictions:

“Every Brazilian family wants the same thing: for their child to have a better life than their own. It is the silent pact made by every father and mother who wakes up early, works hard, and cuts back on their own needs so their child can study and go further.

Preparing a family for life involves the child learning to read at the right age and the young person leaving school with skills the job market actually needs. It involves the mother who can only work if she has a place to leave her young child, and the worker who can only advance in their career if they have someone to look after their elderly parent. It involves healthcare, because sick children cannot learn and sick adults cannot work. And it involves sports, which keep young people off the streets and teach lessons the classroom alone cannot. All of this is part of what is needed for a family to get ahead through their own effort.

The Brazilian State has failed in almost all these areas: there was a lack of quality education, a lack of daycare for working mothers, a lack of preventive healthcare, and a lack of support for families caring for the elderly. There was high spending but poor delivery, because there was a lack of commitment to results and an excess of ideology.”

Who needs a family with such an omnipresent and omnipotent socialist state? Flávio even promises socialist internet, with the “installation of more than 21,000 digital inclusion points through the Wi-Fi Brazil Program.” Contrary to what his program claims, the high spending and poor deliveries weren’t due to a lack of commitment or an excess of ideology, but to an intrinsic flaw in the socialist ideology that, like Lula, Flávio also defends. The state will always spend more and deliver less than the market, and if Flávio intends to improve the quality of state services, he will have to spend even more than Lula has spent. And this will be financed with more taxes and more inflation. It’s difficult to see where Flávio would be less socialist than Lula. His platform states that he will not roll back labor rights, promises financing via the Brazilian Development Bank, pledges to maintain existing social programs, and boasts of having tripled the payout for Family Allowance. Flávio has never uttered a word against the central bank’s fiat currency system and would keep this fraudulent scheme fully operational. Leaked audio recordings of his conversations with Daniel Vorcaro reveal that he, like Lula, is in the pocket of the banking elites who truly control Brazil. One could point to Flávio’s more free-market proposals—focused on cutting red tape— which represent a relief for entrepreneurship; however, his promises of tax cuts are a complete sham, given the high cost of the quality state services he intends to provide. Yet, the mere fact that Flávio addresses bureaucracy and promises to resume and complete the privatization of the postal service makes him less of a socialist than Lula. A point for Flávio.

Censorship

Freedom of expression does not exist in Brazil. We live under a dictatorship that criminalizes opinion, putting people in jail for telling jokes or simply expressing ideas that, for example, might be considered homophobic, racist, and anti-democratic. While Lula promises to further worsen the censorship regime with stricter rules for Big Tech aimed at curbing the “spread of fake news, disinformation, hate speech, and attacks on democracy,” Flávio speaks of a “massive slash to censorship,” moving in the opposite direction to Lula. Thus, Flávio would appear to be far less objectionable than Lula on this issue. But not so fast. Flávio’s international alignments with Israel and the US raise a major question mark regarding how his administration would handle freedom of expression. Unlike Brazil, the United States has always enjoyed robust freedom of speech, established by the First Amendment to its Constitution. However, American subservience to the State of Israel is undermining one of the few remaining freedoms in that increasingly Sovietized country; there, too, people are being arrested for expressing ideas critical of a foreign state and people, or even for telling jokes. With Flávio in the presidency, despite his promises, censorship in Brazil could also intensify. Flávio has already demonstrated a lack of commitment to freedom of expression by approving the Bill of Law that criminalizes misogynistic opinions—as noted earlier in our discussion of his feminism—and he says nothing about ending censorship regarding racist, homophobic, or even Nazi ideas; therefore, I consider the two to be on par in this regard: both Flávio and Lula are proponents of censorship.

International Relations

This may be the issue where the two candidates differ the most, yet the distinction has little to do with international trade itself, given that both are mercantilists opposed to free trade and proponents of so-called “free trade agreements” that are actually heavily regulated and taxed. Countries do not trade with other countries; rather, it is Person X in Country A trading with Person Y in Country B. The government’s role should be to get out of the way by eliminating import and export restrictions and taxes. Instead, the two mercantilist scoundrels running for Brazil’s presidency want to fleece importers and exporters and strike backroom deals to favor crony capitalists or those who lobby the hardest (with cash). I am not even sure if Flávio is any better than Lula regarding the “tax on cheap imports” (the so-called ” Blusinhas Tax“). While Jair Bolsonaro eliminated the federal tax on imports under US$50, Lula reinstated it—only to remove it again recently. However, São Paulo estate’s Bolsonarist governor, Tarcísio de Freitas, began levying the state tax (ICMS) on these purchases around the same time the federal tax was introduced, yet he kept the levy in place even after Lula granted the exemption.

What distinguishes the two are their ideological orientations. The world is divided into neutral countries, countries subservient to the American global empire, and sovereign nations that refuse to align their foreign, economic, or security policies with Washington’s directives. Brazil—like India and South Africa—has been part of the Global South, a group of developing nations that avoid taking a definitive side, maintaining pragmatic relations with the US as well as with China and Russia while pursuing their own economic and strategic interests. Brazil is a key member of BRICS, which serves as the primary political and financial engine of the Global South, giving a voice to those not aligned with the empire. While Lula seeks to strengthen the bloc, continue challenging US hegemony, and create financial alternatives to the dollar (alternatives that have, of course, always existed—such as gold, silver, and now cryptocurrencies), Flávio advocates for a drastic shift: diminishing the role of BRICS in Brazilian foreign policy and turning Brazil into a complete vassal of imperialism.

Making clear their intention to submit to the United States, Flávio, along with his brother Eduardo and journalist Paulo Figueiredo, went to meet Donald Trump at the White House. First and foremost, this meeting is bizarre because, shortly before, Trump had betrayed and humiliated the three of them by capitulating to Lula and removing the tyrant Justice of the Supreme Federal Court Alexandre de Moraes—along with his wife and his family’s institute—from the list of individuals sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act in December 2025, even as the trio had been loudly proclaiming that the Magnitsky sanctions would be toughened and expanded to include more criminals from the Brazilian state. Consequently, Jair Bolsonaro—the favorite to defeat Lula—remained illegally imprisoned and ineligible to run for office. Yet, the meeting becomes even more grotesque given everything Trump currently represents.

Trump may have championed important causes in the past, confronting corporate media, mass immigration hordes, and Woke insanity, and we libertarians will always be grateful for the crumb he gave us by granting a presidential pardon to Ross Ulbricht. But today Trump is nothing more than a socialist, a conman, and extremely corrupt who was elected promising to end wars and not only maintained the war in Ukraine and continued to support and fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza, but also attacked Iraq, Yemen, Nigeria, Syria, Somalia, kidnapped the president of Venezuela, and started a catastrophic war against Iran. Perhaps the most honest thing Trump has done was to change the name of his Department of Defense to Department of War, since the empire’s wars have no relation to the defense of American territory, only to the expansion of global power. Even better would be to rename it the “Department of Wars for Israel”. People who consider themselves right-wing and still haven’t grasped the antichrist that Trump is urgently need to start listening to the most influential journalist/political commentator on the American conservative right, Tucker Carlson:

I recommend all of Carlson’s videos about Trump’s betrayal of right-wing values, especially the videos posted throughout the article “How ‘Israelism’ Has Replaced Christianity as the American Civic Religion.” Trump is a war criminal who, among other crimes, murdered over a hundred girls aged 7 to 12 by bombing an elementary school on the first day of his war against Iran—an atrocity that was most likely not accidental, but a deliberate Jewish Purim sacrifice.

But what’s worse about Flávio is that while Lula vehemently denounces the genocide of Palestinians perpetrated by Israel and, because of that, is persona non grata in Israel – a source of pride for all truly decent Brazilians – all the Bolsonaros are ardent supporters of the bloodthirsty terrorist state of Israel:

Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio Bolsonaro, Eduardo Bolsonaro, Carlos Bolsonaro – Jair’s children – and Michele Bolsonaro – Jair’s wife – are all apologists for the State of Israel. In the last video above, Michele Bolsonaro wears a t-shirt that says “Israel, since 1948,” which is the date that marks the founding of the modern State of Israel. Contrary to what some delusional evangelicals like her think, this state has NOTHING to do with biblical Israel, being in reality an apartheid state formed by the theft of land through terrorism and promoting the genocide of the Palestinian people uninterruptedly to this day. The Bolsonaros are also committed to transferring the Brazilian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a measure they tried to carry out during Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency and intend to complete if they return to power.

By transferring the embassy, ​​a factual position of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital is assumed, and this is like recognizing a thief as the legitimate owner of a stolen object. Israel is just the name of a territory occupied by invaders, mostly from Eastern Europe, who stole the land from the legitimate Palestinian owners. Recognizing Israel is like claiming that a farm invaded by the MST (Landless Workers’ Movement) belongs to the invaders of the movement and not to the farmer who, under threat, had to flee his property. But what is worst of all is that supposed Christians like the Bolsonaros intend to hand over the Holy Land – where the God who became man lived, preached, and walked – to the greatest enemies of Christianity, the Jewish people, who killed Jesus and who hate Christ and Christianity. This is perhaps the easiest item on the list; Flávio is much worse than Lula. In fact, Lula is even a hero on the Palestinian issue, and Flávio a satanic villain. And Flávio isn’t even the worst Zionist among the candidates. Renan Santos is even worse, claiming to be the true Zionist, accusing “Bolsonarism of following only a childish and hypothetical philosemitism”.

Conclusion

Being less of a socialist is one way in which Flávio is better than Lula; however, this is far from meaning that Flávio is a classical liberal or a libertarian. Flávio—a socialist, feminist, prohibitionist, “covidiot,” and vassal of imperialism—also flirts with efficiency-fetishism, technocracy, environmentalism, and fascism; we can expect strong interventionism from his administration, albeit only slightly less bureaucratic than the current one. Flávio is also better than Lula when it comes to tackling actual crime, primarily due to his stance in favor of arming the population. While it would certainly be better to live in a slightly safer and freer Brazil, that progress does not justify the price of having an ardent Zionist as president. The right wing complains loudly about Lula’s dishonesty; yet, even though he is a thief (something Flávio is as well), killing is a worse crime than stealing. Lula condemns Israel’s mass killings, whereas Flávio approves of and supports this ongoing genocide.

When I remarked to a right-winger that Lula is the lesser evil compared to Flávio—given the latter’s support for the killing of Palestinian children—he tried to argue that Lula was also a child-killer for supporting the decriminalization of abortion. However serious that issue may be, it does not compare to supporting the genocide in Gaza. First, Lula has governed Brazil for 20 years and abortion remains illegal, whereas thousands of children are being torn apart by Israeli bombs backed by the United States. Second, it is one thing for a mother to have her beloved children slaughtered by bombs; it is quite another for a mother to choose to kill her own unwanted child in the womb—a satanic practice that, incidentally, is permitted, “free,” and widely accessible in Israel.

Therefore, the inescapable conclusion is that, however abominable Lula may be, Flávio manages to be even worse. This in no way implies an endorsement of voting for Lula. I consider it inconceivable for a libertarian to vote for a scoundrel like Lula. I am simply saying that it would be even worse for him to vote for Flávio—especially if, in addition to being a libertarian, he is a Christian. Thank God, as explained in the first paragraph of this article, we are not forced to choose between these two loathsome vermin. On election Sunday, participate only in the one liturgy we are truly obliged to observe: go to the Catholic Mass. There is a spiritual war underway, and Brazil cannot be saved by either of these two lowlifes, but you can save your soul.