Footballer Neymar has endorsed Brazilian fascist President Jair Bolsonaro in his bid for re-election.
The Brazilian sports star, 30, posted a TikTok video of himself dancing and miming along to the right-wing politician’s campaign jingle.
He then went on to urge his 8.4 million followers to vote for the incumbent president.
Bolsonaro is currently trailing his rival, former left-wing president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in opinion polls ahead of the first round vote on Sunday.
Earlier in the week the president visited a charitable institute in Sao Paulo owned by the Paris Saint-Germain forward.
On that occasion, Neymar appeared in a separate video greeting Bolsonaro but stopped short of outright endorsing him, though he did thank him for his “illustrious visit”.
Bolsonaro was quick to capitalise on the endorsement of the world’s most expensive player, reposting the clip to his Twitter account in a bid to win over undecided voters in the famously football mad country.
Neymar is not the only footballer to endorse Bolsanaro, with Tottenham Hotspur’s Lucas Moura also throwing his support behind him earlier this month telling YouTube channel Cara a Tapa: “I don’t see a perfect presidential candidate but I can’t deny that Bolosonaro is the closest to what I believe.”
Bolsonaro’s rival Lula has also courted celebrity support to boost his bid for the presidency receiving support from a number of Brazilian artists as well as international stars such as Mark Ruffalo, Roger Waters and Danny Glover.
The president is currently trailing his challenger, who lead Brazil for two terms between 2003 and 2019, by 12 points.
Why is Bolsonaro a fascist?
During the first U.S. presidential debate, Democratic candidate Joe Biden called attention to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and proposed a plan to stop it. CNN reports that Biden wants to gather $20 billion from the international community to compensate the Brazilian government for the economic value that the Amazon contains. President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro declined the offer.
The Amazon crisis has plagued Bolsonaro’s presidency. The Amazon is the world’s largest rainforest, occupying over 2 million square miles with the vast majority being located in Brazil. According to NBC, the Amazon contributes $8.2 billion annually to the Brazilian economy and is the most biodiverse area in the world. However, the rainforest is under threat. Wildfires have deforested over 7,400 acres in a crisis that grows worse by the day. The cause of these wildfires? According to Bolsonaro, the indigenous peoples of the Amazon. “The fires practically occur in the same places, on the east side of the forest, where peasants and Indians burn their fields in already deforested areas,” Bolsonaro said in a pre-recorded speech to the United Nations, NBC reports.
This statement is part of a litany of attacks against indigenous peoples that Bolsonaro has launched since assuming office. Human Rights Watch observed a 65 percent increase in deforestation on indigenous lands. This observation is indicative of the suffering indigenous peoples continue to face at the hands of Brazilian mining and logging industries. Previous administrations have ignored criminal activity in the rainforest. Bolsonaro, however, plans to eliminate corporate crime in the Amazon altogether—by legalizing it.
The devastation of the Amazon is not the only way in which Bolsonaro has failed his country. His response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been disastrous. Rather than combat the crisis, the Brazilian health ministry removed coronavirus statistics from their website entirely, The New York Times reports. He has also repeatedly blamed left-wing activists for corruption in the country and is escalating threats of violence against them. Al Jazeera reports that in a speech, Bolsonaro said “these red criminals will be banished from our homeland” and called for a “cleansing never seen in the history of Brazil.” Bolsonaro has also proposed legislation to embolden the Brazilian police – if passed, the law would violate international law on the use of force, according to Human Rights Watch.
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