
The Bolsonaro Dynasty’s Hail Mary
After an attempted jailbreak, Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro has endorsed his son Flávio for president in 2026. Few electoral campaigns have been launched under less auspicious circumstances.
Tyler Antonio Lynch is a political scientist educated at the University of Cambridge. He writes at Crooked Places on Substack.

After an attempted jailbreak, Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro has endorsed his son Flávio for president in 2026. Few electoral campaigns have been launched under less auspicious circumstances.

Brazil has charged ex-president Jair Bolsonaro with conspiring to murder President Lula da Silva and stage a military coup. It’s a serious blow to the far right, but unless the material conditions of the majority improve, Bolsonarismo will remain a threat.

In a staggering display of cruelty, South African police laid siege to an illegal gold mine near Johannesburg, leaving at least 78 workers dead by mid-January. Informal miners are the shadow of an exploitative mining industry — one inextricable from apartheid.

Over the last two weeks, six migrants died trying to cross the English Channel. An aid worker at the French port of Calais writes on the political choices that condemn them to early graves — and the need for safe routes for people on the move.

In Brazil, Lula has wagered that concessions to agribusiness elites are necessary to advance his redistributive project. Yet these very elites may undermine his whole program.

Del Monte’s impunity in Kenya goes beyond its security’s alleged murder of pineapple thieves. The US corporation’s leverage over the state has allowed it to swallow Kenyan land and labor whole in its quest for profit.

In Brazil, Lula has wagered that concessions to agribusiness elites are necessary to advance his redistributive project. Yet it is these very agribusiness elites that may emerge as the forces most likely to undo his efforts.