Lula was interviewed by the German public broadcaster ARD on April 21, 2026. Yet the issues that most clearly expose Brazil’s degradation were simply ignored. There was no serious question about corruption scandals involving figures close to him, including his son and his brother; no real scrutiny of the weakening of democratic institutions; no focus on human rights in Brazil; no attention to urban violence; and no honest treatment of the devastation of the Amazon. These were exactly the kinds of subjects that obsessed ARD and much of the German media when Bolsonaro was in power. Under Lula, however, they have largely vanished from the agenda. This exposes a shameful double standard. With Lula in office, ARD no longer shows serious concern for the real destruction taking place in Brazil.
The real interest now is different: attacking the United States, even if Lula must be used for that purpose. Germany is irritated because the Americans no longer behave like obedient partners within the G7 framework. Since Lula has chosen confrontation with Trump, German actors now exploit that posture to suggest, indirectly, that even Brazil stands against him. This is blatant opportunism. Germany avoids confronting the United States directly when doing so is inconvenient and instead makes use of useful foreign voices to send the message for it.
Lula, for his part, seems entirely comfortable in this role. He enjoys being applauded, flattered, and elevated by major centers of power. Now that the United States and Israel support his political enemy, Bolsonaro, he has intensified his activism on German soil and willingly offered himself to this convenient arrangement. This is not statesmanship. It is vanity, calculation, and a willingness to serve interests that are not necessarily Brazil’s.
Germany also knows how badly Brazilian democracy suffered under Lula’s previous governments, and that the current situation is even worse. Yet Germany is once again prepared, without embarrassment, to repeat the same logic that marked its conduct during the Brazilian military dictatorship: economic interest above moral principle. At that time, what mattered was profit in Brazil under the protection of the regime. Today, the same logic remains in place, only dressed in more sophisticated language and accompanied by moral posturing.
In the past, Germany even commissioned image research on itself because it wanted to align its public image among Brazilians with its business interests in Brazil during the dictatorship. Today, such research would likely produce poor results. The history of German-Brazilian relations is still not well known to most Brazilians, especially outside the South of the country. Yet that history confirms what even high authorities in our own time sometimes admit: there is no friendship between countries, only economic interest. In my view, Brazil has done everything possible to be a friend to Germany and to the German people. Is that why Germany tried to approach the relationship the other way around?
In light of that history of friendship between the two countries, it is worth remembering that, when aligned with the United States, Germany took part in espionage against Brazil for more than twenty years – through the 1970s, the 1980s, and part of the 1990s – in what became known as Operation Rubikon, one of the largest spying operations in its history. This took place at a time when German companies in Brazil were doing extremely profitable business. At the same time, while profiting from Brazil in multiple ways and helping deepen the suffering of the population, Volkswagen cooperated with the police apparatus that persecuted and tortured Brazilian workers. Volkswagen even employed a former Nazi to spy on its own employees in Brazil and pass information to the forces of repression. During that same era, Germany also concluded its largest postwar industrial agreement on terms unfavorable to Brazil. Siemens was linked both to the espionage project and to the industrial-nuclear project.
Again, in light of the history of German-Brazilian relations, it is astonishing that Lula chose to visit Volkswagen of all companies. Germany has in Brazil its largest industrial park outside German territory, yet Lula chose to give visibility precisely to the company that carries this dark legacy. This was neither innocent nor trivial. It was symbolic. And as a symbol, it says a great deal about the kind of political and economic alliance now being cultivated: an alliance founded not on the dignity of the Brazilian people, but on the convenience of elites, on diplomatic cynicism, and on the old logic of exploitation disguised as partnership.
No German chancellor would behave this way. Nor would most Germans overlook that past so easily. The history of relations between Germany and Brazil tells a very different story about friendship and national interest between the two countries: Germany defends its own land, its own interests, and its strategic position – even on Brazilian soil – with determination and without sentimentality, sustained by a deeply rooted sense of collective identity and national continuity, what older German language would describe as Volkstum.
That is the real scandal. Brazil continues to offer itself to foreign powers without seriousness, memory, or self-respect, while Germany continues to preach morality abroad and practice economic realism whenever it feels strong enough to exploit the weakness of the other partner. Brazil supplies the naivety; Germany supplies the hypocrisy.
Yet, in the end, each side merely acts according to its own intelligence and its own capacity. The more disturbing truth is that Brazilian democracy has become a mechanism favorable to our own destruction. Strictly speaking, the problem is not Germany alone. The greater problem is Brazil itself, which has developed in such a way that it repeatedly acts against the will and the interests of most Brazilians. While Germany possesses a civic and political culture that helps its country advance, Brazilians seem to be shaped by a very different disposition.
