Foi chamado de o Andrew Breitbart brasileiro. É com muito orgulho que aceito essa comparação um tanto exagerada e benevolente, de uma revista séria como a Foreign Policy, fundada por ninguém menos que Samuel Huntington, cujo livro O choque de civilizações teve uma grande influência em meu pensamento. A reportagem está muito boa – mérito de Catherine Osborn – e mostra como o movimento liberal/conservador tem avançado em nosso país, hoje dominado por socialistas. Abaixo, alguns trechos:
RIO DE JANEIRO — At a rally against the Brazilian government on Rio’s Copacabana beach on March 13, Rodrigo Constantino, a 39-year-old right-wing blogger and libertarian think tank director, stood atop a truck draped with a banner emblazoned with the words “Free Brazil Movement,” an anti-Dilma Rousseff group founded after her re-election as president in 2014.
“Good morning patriots. … Enough of communism and enough of collectivism!” he bellowed to the crowd of thousands. “Enough of tolerating indifferent people, these ‘neutrals.’ Neutrality today means support of the Worker’s Party!” The crowd roared in approval.
For months, Constantino has been writing and promoting rallies like this to build support for what, as recently as a year ago, seemed unthinkable but increasingly seems probable: Rousseff’s impeachment. Constantino has gone from a far-right media figure – the author of nine books on topics including Ayn Rand and the global liberal elite, and head of a tiny ultra-right think tank — to a figurehead of a national movement.
[…]
After studying economics at Rio’s Catholic University and Ibmec, Constantino worked as a financial analyst and investor. In those years, papers published by the conservative Washington-based Heritage Foundation and libertarian Cato Institute became the source of his conservative political awakening. He has recounted how they instilled in him a fervent belief in small government, deregulation, and the privatization of state-held companies.
[…]
On his Veja blog’s first anniversary, Constantino wrote that he had received over 2 million views per month and would continue covering diverse topics. But he made it a special mission to attack the PT, “because the priority is to take down the mafia that is installed in power.” In April 2014, when federal prosecutors published the first allegations of bribery at Petrobras, both Constantino’s outrage and his readership soared.
[…]
Almost a year ago, Constantino fulfilled a dream of moving to Miami to get away from a Rio that is “too violent and with many, many poor people.” (He flew back for the impeachment protest.) He said his daughter attends a good public school. But what he is still trying to wrap his head around about the United States is that “People are still talking about socialism in 2016! It’s absurd. It’s absurd.”
