The sociologist Manuel Castells has just published the following appeal on the Brazilian presidential election

Intellectual friends committed to democracy:

Brazil is in danger. And with Brazil the world. Because after Trump's election, the seizure of power by a neo-fascist government in Italy and the rise of neo-Nazism in Europe, Brazil can elect as president a fascist, defender of the military dictatorship, misogynist, sexist, racist and xenophobic, who obtained 46% in the first round of the presidential elections. It doesn't matter who his opponent is. Fernando Haddad, the only possible alternative, is a respectable and moderate academic, a candidate for the Workers’ Party (PT), a party today discredited for having participated in the widespread corruption of the Brazilian political system. But the question is not the PT, but a presidency by Bolsonaro , a man capable of telling a congresswoman, in public, that she "does not deserve to be violated by him". Or that the problem with the dictatorship was not torture but not killing instead of torturing.

In such a situation, no intellectual, no democrat, no person feeling responsible for the world in which we live, can remain indifferent. I do not represent anyone but myself. Nor do I support any party. I simply believe that it is a case of defending humanity, because if Brazil, the decisive country in Latin America, falls into the hands of this despicable and dangerous character, and of the factual powers that support him, the Koch brothers among them, we will have fallen even lower in the disintegration of the moral and social order of the planet we are witnessing.

That is why I am writing to all of you, those I know and those I would like to know. Not so that you can subscribe to this letter as if it were a manifesto dictated by  politicians. But to ask each of you to make known publicly and in personal terms your request for an active participation in the second round of the presidential elections, on October 28, and our support for a vote against Bolsonaro, arguing it according to what you think, and spreading your letter through your personal channels, social networks, media, political contacts, any format that spreads our protest against the election of fascism in Brazil.

Many of us have contacts in Brazil, or we have contacts that have contacts. Let's contact them. A message through WhatsApp is enough, or a personal phone call. We don't need a hashtag. We are people, thousands, potentially speaking to millions, in the world and in Brazil. And because throughout our lives we have acquired with our struggle and integrity a certain moral authority, let's use it right now before it's too late. I'm going to do it, I'm doing it. And I simply urge  everyone to do what they can.