Brazil elects right-wing president. What does it mean?
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Summary
Jair Bolsonaro is Brazil s next president, and he's running on a far-right platform. Is he a fascist? Or is he a leftist? And why is the media so scared of him? Ezra Levant explains it all.
Transcript
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Tonight, Brazil votes overwhelmingly for a right-wing president.
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It's October 30, and you're watching The Ezra Levant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it
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until I heard that Facebook was blocking his campaign sites.
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And that was a sign to me that he was an important force
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that challenged the establishment, the status quo,
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after conservatives used the social media platform
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to help win the Brexit vote and to help elect Donald Trump.
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It was shortly after Trump's victory that Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google,
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all the big tech companies headquartered in San Francisco,
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they just got together and decided to interfere with elections going forward.
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So, for example, they deleted 30,000 Facebook pages in France
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because Mark Zuckerberg would never lie to you.
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So when I heard they were coming for this Jair Bolsonaro character,
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I knew this Bolsonaro had the left-wing establishment scared.
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because, frankly, not a lot of people in Canada
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A leftist extremist just walked right up to him
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and he lost 40% of his blood before he was stabilized.
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So turn away now if you don't want to see that.
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Don't think they wouldn't do that to Donald Trump if they could.
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and banned by the communications company WhatsApp
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And by the way, his family is in politics with him,
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And his other son Carlos is an alderman in Rio,
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but that really doesn't tell us anything useful.
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They call everyone they don't like far-right these days.
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I really don't even know what that means anymore,
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Other than the media in question doesn't like him.
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So-called mixed-race citizens are about half the population,
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plus there are black and Asian and Aboriginal people there.
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And I think that's what the media usually means
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Their economy has been pretty much stuck for a decade.
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and obviously an enormous number of minorities.
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choosing Jair Bolsonaro, a divisive populist, as president.
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They may have won the votes of the far-right voters,
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so they're actually getting some of the center-left votes.
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But 55% is more unified than Canada's elections
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So it would be a once-in-a-century-type unity in Canada.
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His signature gesture is that he's shooting a gun.
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I'm not sure if that's just imagery and a metaphor.
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It's not like a red scare in the United States.
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Dictatorships and revolutions are not rare in South America.
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And his response to everything is so bold and so tough.
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Let me give you a little bit of background here.
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One of Bolsonaro's predecessors is this man named Lula,
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And he was succeeded by his chief of staff, Dilma Rousseff,
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I mean, they claim they're fighting for the little people.
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But when in office, just like all Latin American strongmen,
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just like Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela,
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So I think they've broken the hearts of maybe the left in Brazil
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And they see this Bolsonaro and they say he's legit.
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You see why Bolsonaro's tough medicine was appealing?
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And you see why his worries about communism are not really that far removed from reality.
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Now, I know a lot about Donald Trump, and I think you probably do too.
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Like you, I've watched him in the public square for decades as a person,
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as a TV personality, as perhaps the most accessible politician in memory.
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He has surely done more long-form, unscripted stream-of-consciousness speeches
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I know about Trump, and I know his excesses are usually just rhetorical.
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He's actually very closely bound by the Constitution and how he acts.
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And whenever some leftist journalist says he's acting like a rogue,
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well, the Supreme Court upholds Trump's orders again and again,
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I know he has made some extreme statements about social issues,
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I don't know if that's just rhetorical like Trump.
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I don't know if that's just the Brazilian style.
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But for now, I know that he has specifically said he wants to reorient Brazil towards freedom and prosperity.
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And that's the opposite of what most Latin American strongmen say.
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Bolsonaro says he'll be an ally of the United States.
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We just received a call from the President of the United States, Donald Trump,
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We express the desire to bring these two great nations closer together
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and to advance on the path of freedom and prosperity.
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I'd say better a friendly phone call with America than a friendly phone call with Cuba or Russia
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And that happens with other Latin American countries, doesn't it?
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I mean, Venezuela and Iran are shockingly close.
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Other great democracies besides America reached out to Bolsonaro too.
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I'm sure Emmanuel Macron has his differences with Bolsonaro.
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Bolsonaro is the legitimately elected leader of the country.
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And really, how impertinent would it be for a foreign government
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to disagree with a country's self-determination on the eve, on the night of its election?
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And Putin has been successful diplomatically for a decade under Obama
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But now Trump is sort of pushing Putin back and rolling China back in ways that didn't happen under Obama.
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I bet Putin is worried that Latin America could tilt more towards the United States and away from the communists.
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Here's Matteo Salvini, who I'm following in Italy.
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Even in Brazil, the citizens have sent home the left.
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Bolsonaro, the friendship between our peoples and our governments will be even stronger.
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I think there's such a wave of new leaders like this in Hungary, in Austria, in Poland.
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Leaders who no longer bend the knee to the European Union or the United Nations or the leftist globalists, for that matter.
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Let me show you the most interesting tweet from Bolsonaro in my point of view.
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I've just received incredible words from the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as from Ambassador Yossi Shelley.
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Our friendship ties will undoubtedly result in mutual agreements that will surely benefit both our nations and citizens.
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When was the last time you seen a Latin American boss roll out the Israeli flag in a tweet?
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How shockingly new and refreshing is that from what one could call a third world country?
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A place that has done business with Iran and other haters before.
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I'm actually amazed, and I think that is a good proxy for what Bolsonaro thinks about a lot of items, including the UN, which hates Israel and the global left and the OPEC oil powers.
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I think he's at least against them or doesn't care about them.
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Maybe that's one reason why the New York Times thinks Bolsonaro is divisive, because they would never say such pro-Israel things ever.
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And then there's Justin Trudeau and his disaster of a foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland.
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They put out a perfunctory release, not even mentioning Bolsonaro by name, let alone congratulating him.
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And Trudeau is already snubbing him and 210 million Brazilians.
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Not even a moment of grace and self-control, not even a moment to say congratulations.
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We disagree on things, but congratulations on being a Democrat.
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Is it because Bolsonaro has no time for globalists and the UN and leftists and anti-Israel activists and global warming extremism?
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But just this past week, it's funny, Trudeau met and posed for photo with Erdogan, the president of Turkey,
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who's authoritarian, who currently imprisons more journalists than any other country in the world,
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who is persecuting Kurds and Christians, who props up ISIS.
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Trudeau has no problem hobnobbing in communist China, the world's biggest dictatorship.
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That's Trudeau putting us on the bad foot with Brazil, but hobnobbing with the bad guys,
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like he's put us on the wrong foot with every country from India to the United States,
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especially in the NAFTA negotiations to Israel and Australia, and even with Saudi Arabia.
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Now he's snubbing Brazil because they voted in a way he didn't like.
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It is with deep sorrow today that I learned of the death of Cuba's longest-serving president.
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While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro's supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous
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dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for El Comandante.
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This is what Trudeau says about a brutal dictator, and he will not even say Bolsonaro's name.
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He won't even congratulate him for winning democratically, but will say Castro was a longest-serving president.
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For him, for Castro's, Trudeau's generous, but for Bolsonaro, he couldn't be chillier.
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But to be really honest with you, I don't think Jair Bolsonaro cares.
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It looks to me, just on Twitter at least, like his dance card is full of A-list countries, like Brazil sort of is.
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I don't yet know what Bolsonaro will be like in power.
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If you take your steer from the New York Times and the CBC, you probably won't learn much,
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other than he's divisive and far-right, and Justin Trudeau doesn't like him.
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But then again, they would probably say the same things about you, wouldn't they?
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Well, crime is a fact of life, always has been, always will be, going back to Cain and Abel.
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But sometimes a murder or a rape can crystallize a political moment and become much larger than just another statistics in Canada.
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I refer, of course, to Carla Homolko and Paul Bernardo.
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But I think there might have been such a crime committed in Italy that is far larger than just the horror and the tragedy of one family,
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It reminds me of the terrorist attack in Nice, France, where a Muslim extremist got behind the wheel of a truck
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and barreled along a paradeway for miles, killing or injuring 500 Frenchmen on their national day.
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Of course, that's a terrorist attack, but what happened near Rome was not styled as a terrorist attack,
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but the four men charged with raping and murdering a young woman.
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A young woman, well, they are all migrants who recently crossed into Italy from Africa.
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And joining us now to talk about this crystallizing moment, this horrific crime,
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and its political ramifications, is our new friend Alessandra Bocci,
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who is an investigative journalist based in Milan, Italy, who has covered the migrant phenomenon.
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Alessandra, great to see you again. Thanks for joining us.
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It's a horrific crime, and I don't even want to recount the details because I don't want to say them,
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but surely we must say them because we have to understand them and we have to know what is going on in Italy.
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Can you tell us, and it's such a horrific thing, but I want our viewers to know,
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can you tell us the crime the police say was committed near Rome, and can you tell us who was accused of it?
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Yes. So this 16-year-old girl called Desiree Mariotini, she was a drug addict.
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She was known to be a drug addict even by her parents.
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And basically she would ask for drugs in exchange for sex sometimes.
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and she ended up in this squatting building of illegal immigrants,
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mostly sub-Saharan African immigrants, but also Arab immigrants.
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She was purposely given the wrong drug mixture,
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the investigators found, so that they could rape her more easily.
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And she was raped and eventually killed through suffocation.
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And the ethnic identity, the national identity of these men
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We see Matteo Salvini, the charismatic cabinet minister,
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part of the new conservative coalition in Italy.
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He was on the scene and just a crush of reporters.
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But this really seems to be much larger than just a crime.
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that it has crystallized the whole question of who are these people,
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what are they doing here, and why are they allowed to be here?
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There was a big case of this other teenage girl called Pamela Mastropietro,
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She was also drugged, killed, and she was mutilated,
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And actually, this triggered, this was before the election,
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and this triggered a reaction from this, like, he was an open fascist, a Nazi.
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So this crazy guy went on a shooting rampage just at random at Africans in general.
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Like, he didn't even know if they were illegal immigrants,
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The facts have changed now because we have this new government,
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we have this new interior minister who's cracking down on crime
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So hopefully people, no one will feel the need to react that way anymore.
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despite the fact that immigration has almost entirely been stopped in the country,
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there's still a problem with integration and with the people who are here,
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who the interior minister, Matteo Salvini, had actually promised to deport.
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But he's facing a lot of issues in doing so because there's so much backlash,
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You know, I recall that earlier horrific case that was very similar.
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A young girl, repeatedly gang-raped, and then to cover up,
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to dispose of the evidence, killed, and in that horrific case, cut up into pieces.
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I didn't recall that that sparked that vigilante action.
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I mean, obviously the crime was horrific, but it sparked that secondary crime of,
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as you say, a fascist, randomly stabbing black people.
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I think there's a phenomenon there that if a problem is so bad
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and the establishment and the authorities and the trustworthy people
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the politicians, the press, the prosecutors, the police, the professors,
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the people restlessly, radically, out of desperation,
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And in that first case, it was a vigilante reaction.
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It sounds like that perhaps helped propel Salvini and the League
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Is Salvini and the new government going to do something
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Yeah, so Matteo Salvini actually visited the place,
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and he promised to make sure it was cleared out
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And the locals there actually cheered him when he arrived,
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because these areas have been completely abandoned,
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where illegal immigrants find a safe place to stay,
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and they just become like a hotbed of crime and drug dealing.
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We're showing on the screen now the counter-protest,
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implying that Salvini is turning this teenager,
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I suppose there is, you know, something to be said for that,
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but it's also a problem that needs to be resolved.
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I think the European Union does not like Salvini.
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But I suppose the criticism of him could be valid
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When you say the European Union is trying to stop him,
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which means that he's responsible for security in the country.
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So the problem when you have an interior minister
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that is contrary to what these supranational governments
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is the phenomenon that's been going on in the UK
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So these are predominantly Pakistani Muslim men
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You mentioned this was a teenage runaway or a prostitute.
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they're usually just working class British girls
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but often it's just these girls are trapped and exploited.
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In the UK, the British response is typical Britain,
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Like they, it's almost like they're trying to restrain themselves.
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You've got a migrant crime wave of rape in the UK
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I'm going to guess that Italians are different.
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We're not really a revolutionary kind of people.
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There were never really revolutions in this country.
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without getting like this insane backlash and being,
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and I think Brazil is in a more desperate state
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Has there been any Italian reaction to Bolsonaro?
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Is he regarded as a fellow traveler to Salvini?
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that Donald Trump gave him a friendly phone call.
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between nationalist populist groups around the world
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and I wonder if there's one between Italy and Brazil.
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Yes, Mattel Salvini actually showed his support
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and I would say he shares the stereotypical traits
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Well, she's not very much liked in this country
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she's not popular in southern Europe in general
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that have really damaged southern European economies
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now they are taking care of their national interest