In the 19th century, the white man's burden was to civilize the inferior African barbarian peoples... or at least that's what the racist European imperialists said to plunder Africa using sophisticated weapons in asymmetrical wars against unarmed peoples. In the first half of the following century, the white man's burden was to survive symmetrical world wars between European States armed to the teeth with equivalent weaponry.
Shortly after World War II, the soft man's burden became different. He had to avoid a catastrophic nuclear war that would destroy all developed States. This lasted until the hegemony of Big Techs made both factual truth and military rationality more flexible.
At the current stage, the white man's burden is ambivalent. It is as much about wanting a nuclear war against Russia and China that cannot be won without a catastrophic defeat for the USA and its European allies, as it is about wanting to avoid a nuclear war in a context in which coexistence with countries that do not accept and do not have reasons to accept a supposed Anglo-European-American hegemony is becoming economically painful.
In the 19th century, the power of colonial potential was born at the mouth of the cannon. At the beginning of the 20th century, the power of European empires was crushed in the mouths of large-caliber machine guns. Soviet power rotted on its own. Chinese power was built with Western help. And the power of Big Tech is destroying political power in every country where the State refuses to regulate the shady businesses of data barons.
Russia was not destroyed by economic sanctions and is defeating Ukraine. Taiwan's USA-fostered independence will hasten China's invasion of the rebellious island. Weakened by the war in Europe, world trade will be destroyed by a war in Asia even if it does not evolve into a nuclear conflict.
Brazil was saved from Bolsonarist authoritarian neoliberalism. However, if we depend exclusively on grain exports to China, our country will sink into a monstrous economic and political crisis as soon as the Sino-American war begins. The burden of the brown man is not being able to free himself from some kind of international dependence, whether the big boss is the white man with blue eyes or he is the yellow man with slanted eyes.
The strategy of reindustrializing Brazil would play an important role in this international context. However, it is being blocked by defenders of neoliberalism, whose short-term profits depend on the State's submission to the predatory attacks of speculators. In Brazil, the brown man's burden is forced political submission by the press controlled by an underdeveloped sub-elite of white (or near-white) men.
Lula does not move against the press. He is afraid, because he knows what the Brazilian media barons are capable of. His paralysis, however, puts at risk both the future of the country and a democratic system that will not withstand the economic pressure of the war in Asia that will inevitably interrupt exports of Brazilian grains to China.
The white man's burden has always been a lame excuse to justify his economic capacity to act and his military power to impose himself in the face of poorly armed people. The burden of the Brazilian brown man is his inaction, his indecision and his desire to reconcile antagonistic interests that can no longer coexist. Either Brazil garrots Big Techs and gets rid of this neoliberal press or it will cease to exist in a few decades.