The risk of media complicity with Bolsonaro's ideology.

On the same page where Juca Kfouri warned about the risk of media complicity with Bolsonaro's ideology, the opinion editor of Folha de S. Paulo (FSP), Gustavo Patu, defended the opposite. According to him, the newspaper is right to give space to Bolsonaro's discourse because "without hearing all sides, journalism would be a bubble."

That is precisely where the tragic error lies. As Mariluce Moura pointed out in her Facebook post commenting on Kfouri's article: it's not about "listening to all sides" indiscriminately. What is at stake is not a legitimate difference of opinion on economic, tax, or environmental policy. 

Bolsonarism is not a party operating within democratic rules — it is a permanent project of eroding institutions, attacking the Judiciary, harboring hatred towards minorities, subordinating national sovereignty to external interests, continuously conspiring against the Democratic Rule of Law, and constantly affronting Democracy.

Transforming it into a legitimate “side” means normalizing violence and the threat of a coup. It is a false balance that, far from strengthening democracy, undermines its foundations. It is the same mistake that the European press of the 1930s made when treating Hitler and Mussolini as legitimate voices in a civilized debate, until it was too late.

Echoes of the darkest years of the dictatorship

Mariluce's outburst carries a unique historical weight. It is not only the collective memory of the dictatorship that is manifesting itself. It is also the personal memory of someone who suffered the horrors of that period firsthand. In 1972, two months pregnant, Mariluce was kidnapped in front of the Lacerda Elevator in Salvador and arrested by the repressive forces along with her husband, the activist Gildo Lacerda. 

She remained imprisoned for six months and emerged with her life marked by the shadows of that time. Gildo was not so lucky. He was brutally murdered under torture. Yet another of the hundreds of victims of the criminal machinery of the 1964-1985 military dictatorship.

It is from this experience that she looks at the present. When evoking current threats, she doesn't speak in abstractions. Her words are permeated by the memory of a State that persecuted, mutilated, and killed to sustain an authoritarian project, always in alliance with foreign interests. Hence the force of her warning. She knows what she's talking about.

An update to the old interference.

Mariluce also recalls the close link between US imperialism and the Brazilian dictatorship, historical evidence that is now resurfacing in new forms. The submission of sectors of the Brazilian far-right to the dictates of Donald Trump and his allies repeats the old pattern: local elites acting as transmission belts for external interests, while undermining democracy and national sovereignty.

The ghost of the darkest years of the dictatorship, therefore, is not a distant past. It is being reborn in contemporary practices of hybrid warfare, fake news, and international cooperation between far-right groups.

The media's make-believe

The denunciation by Mariluce and Juca Kfouri goes beyond Folha. It affects the entire hegemonic media that insists on calling the granting of space to voices that work, day after day, for the destruction of democracy "plurality." It is not freedom of expression when censorship, violence, and coups d'état are defended. It is not journalism when a microphone is given to denialism, hatred, systematic lies, and blackmail.

This is complicity, even if disguised as professional virtue. By legitimizing the coup plotters as "valid interlocutors," the press becomes part of the machinery that weakens democracy and paves the way for barbarity.

A call for democratic resistance.

Mariluce's text carries a warning. We need clarity, intelligence, and unity to defend democracy. But she herself acknowledges the skepticism regarding the effectiveness of this call. After all, how many times has history shown that warnings were ignored until it was too late?

Whether in 1930s Europe or in 1964 Brazil, there have always been those who said, "It's just another side." There have always been those who confused plurality with complicity. And there have always been those who paid dearly for the illusion of neutrality.

The moment demands breaking this cycle. It demands that journalists, intellectuals, and citizens understand that democracy cannot be defended passively. Bolsonarism must be called what it is: a structural fascist threat, not a democratic interlocutor.

"Opening our eyes is the first step," says Mariluce, agreeing with Juca Kfouri in the article he published on Saturday the 23rd in FSP. The second step is to reject the pretense that normalizes fascism under the guise of freedom of expression. The third is to act collectively, without naiveté, to preserve what we still have: the chance to prevent history from repeating itself, as it attempted on January 8th—the day that never ended, announcing that other attempts would come, as have already occurred and will continue to repeat themselves.

Shortly before the final period of the article "Open your eyes, Sheet", Juca Kfouri responds with a NO He emphatically and definitively answered the question "Is Folha right to give voice to Bolsonarism?". And he recalled a teaching by Millor Fernandes: 

"Those who bow down to oppressors show their backsides to the oppressed."  

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The three victims of the military dictatorship mentioned in the article above:

Mariluce Moura, 74 years old, is a journalist, researcher, and retired professor with a doctorate from UFBA (reinstated by the Amnesty Commission in 2015, 40 years after being dismissed due to political persecution by the dictatorship). She is the author of "The Revolt of the Viscera and Other Texts," and is leading the documentary project "Operation Cocoa," currently underway, about the assassination of Gildo Macedo Lacerda, her husband, and six other militants of Popular Action (APML), between October 1973 and February 1974.

Tessa Moura Lacerda, The little girl who survived torture while protected in Mariluce's womb is now 51 years old and a PhD professor of philosophy at the University of São Paulo (USP). She specializes in Modern Philosophy, with in-depth studies on Leibniz. She is the author of "Pela memória de um paí[s]: Gildo Macedo Lacerda, presente" (Aretê, 2023) and "A filosofia expressiva de Leibniz" (Edusp, 2025). She is the mother of Nara, Alice, and Fabiano, Mariluce's granddaughters and grandson. 

Gildo Macedo Lacerda, Arrested in Salvador on October 22, 1973, he was transported to Recife three days later, tortured, and murdered at the IV Army headquarters. He died at the age of 24, on October 28, 1973, the date on which he would have celebrated his first wedding anniversary with Mariluce. Gildo's body was never returned to his family.