>>212432243Politics, truth, and ignorance.
>politicsAnything to shit on Lula and the Worker's Party (I'm not a lulista nor a left-winger and have never been, by the way).
It's similar to how Americans will say one of their own presidents was born in Kenya, or that another one is a puppet to Russia, and so on. People invent all sorts of lies on both sides of the political spectrum. The BR left to this day accuses Bolsonaro of "genocide" (unironically and not rhetorically) for his supposed mismanagement during COVID.
In short, if something can be misconstrued so as to be used against your opponent, then you misconstrue it, and the gullible masses will believe you as long as you have enough reach.
>truthThe Northeast really is less developed and worse in almost every metric, but not to that extent. It's certainly not worse than India, as far as I'm able to tell (I've never been to India).
>ignoranceBrazil is a very large country, larger than mainland US, and Brazilians don't travel nearly as much as Americans do, so most of the country is genuinely unknown to them. Most Brazilians from the South have a similar idea of, say, the Amazon region, as the average American has. I lived in Manaus for a few years, and whenever I tell people about it, I stil get asked if there were many índios in the streets, trees everywhere, monkeys etc. Actually, it's just a normal and rather boring big city, only poorer and with more favelas than the Southeastern capitals, and also quite ugly in some parts.
Thanks to YouTube becoming popular among normies, this ignorance has been decreasing in the past few years, but it still exists.