The Oligarchs Lose a Big One

How many people in the United States realize how big Brazil is? South America’s most populous nation has more than 200 million people, making its presidential election yesterday a momentous event. But beyond Brazil’s sheer size, yesterday’s election was also momentous because it was a harbinger for the rest of the world.

For it was a contest between the progressive left of Ignacio Lula da Silva, the incumbent president, and the revanchist right of Flavio Bolsonaro — the son of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president, who is in prison for his attempt to overturn Brazil’s last presidential election. The global right thought it had the election in the bag, and even the prediction markets indicated that Bolsonaro would win. Thus it came as a shock when Lula came out on top.

Having been gaslighted by the right, some of the global media appeared to have difficulty wrapping their minds around the outcome. Here was the headline in the Financial Times as I write this:

“Knife-edge vote”? Lula won by 3 percentage points, twice Donald Trump’s margin in 2024.

And he did so despite efforts by the right, in Brazil and elsewhere, to rig the election against him.

Voting was extended by two hours because widespread disruptions to public transportation had made it difficult for working-class voters to get to the polls. Lula’s campaign alleged that these disruptions were engineered by pro-Bolsonaro mayors, a claim that was clearly supported by the evidence in some cities, and was generally plausible given recent political history — specifically, Bolsonaro senior’s attempt to overturn the last presidential election.

And Brazil’s own right wasn’t alone in seemingly trying to rig the election for Bolsonaro. U.S.-based social media companies, Meta in particular, appeared to put their thumbs on the scale. After the first round of voting, Reuters reported that

Meta employees acknowledged in internal communications that the Instagram accounts of Brazilian ​President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva were hindered by ‌restrictions during the country’s election, newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported on Friday, citing messages it reviewed.The messages also acknowledged the platform recommended the profile ​of challenger Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, as well as his ​WhatsApp channel, according to the report.

And in an article titled “Meta Unseats Musk as Tech Villain for Lula in Brazil’s Election,” Bloomberg reported that

Lula — who has attracted more than 10 million supporters to a WhatsApp channel dubbed “Lula’s Army” in recent days — has alleged interruptions to his account, restrictions on Instagram posts and unequal audience engagement. His campaign also said Meta AI, the company’s generative artificial intelligence tool, is refusing requests to create images related to Lula while generating campaign material favorable to his opponent.

Meta said that these incidents reflected “unrelated technical problems,” a claim that would be more credible if all of these supposed technical problems hadn’t tilted the playing field in the same direction.

Is it a mere coincidence that in the United States, Meta suspended the No Kings Day Instagram account right in the middle of the day’s protests? It later claimed that this action had nothing to do with politics, that it was an error because its automated security systems detected a possible rise in bot traffic.

Again, it’s funny how Meta’s technical problems always seem to tilt the political field in the same direction.

Can we prove that Meta deliberately tried to put the Bolsonaros back in power? No, at least not yet. But we aren’t in a court of law: We’re simply trying to figure out what happened. And the people in this photo are not entitled to a presumption of innocence and good intentions:

Although Meta’s denials lack plausibility, we can’t prove that Mark Zuckerberg deliberately tried to deliver Brazil into the hands of a right-wing authoritarian. However, there is no question that Elon Musk intentionally and strongly intervened on the side of Vladimir Putin in his efforts to conquer Ukraine. Musk keeps changing his story about what happened — first denying any involvement, saying that the order came from the White House, and now claiming that Ukraine violated its terms of service. But this charade is completely implausible because Musk has long made it clear that his sympathies in this war lie with Russia.

So let’s celebrate the Brazilian people, who have refused to be bullied by Bolsonaro, by the American oligarchs, and by Trump — who imposed high tariffs on Brazil in 2025 because it put a traitor and insurrectionist (Bolsonaro Sr) on trial. Let’s hope that in a little over one week’s time Americans will be equally clear-sighted and vote for democracy.