Lula Takes His ‘General’ to Turkey and Puts His WhatsApp ‘Army’ on Standby

BRASILIA — Lula announced on Saturday, Nov. 7, in a video posted to Instagram, that Rep. André Janones (Rede-MG) will travel with him to the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, and used the same message to put the “Exército do Lula” (“Lula Army”), the WhatsApp channel Janones built during the runoff campaign, on alert. “I will spend the whole week away, but I want to tell my soldiers, and my general, that the troops have to stay ready,” Lula said, according to Estadão. The two plan to broadcast a live stream from Turkey on Thursday, Nov. 12.

The campaign is over, the votes are counted, and the president is still calling his followers soldiers. Nobody in Brasília has explained which enemy an army needs to stay ready for after the election is won.

The channel did not shut down with the campaign. Estadão reported on Nov. 7 that Janones, Lula and their allies are working to keep the digital militancy active for the next four years, on the reasoning that the Lula regime will need popular pressure to bring Congress and the Supreme Court in line with its agenda. The channel now has a little over 10 million members, and in the first week after the vote Janones already used it to push posts against the review of Brazil’s ban on betting sites, a case before Justice Luiz Fux at the Supreme Court.

Why it matters

A sitting president is turning a 10-million-member campaign machine into a standing pressure tool aimed at the two branches that are supposed to check him. Political scientist Alexander Hilsenbeck Filho, of Faculdade Cásper Líbero, told Estadão that this amounts to organized “external pressure” on decision-making: the government does not need to control Congress, he said, as long as it can raise “the political cost for lawmakers who resist.” Rep.-elect Guilherme Cortez (PSOL-SP) was blunter: “we will need the support of social mobilization to be able to govern.” For American readers, the mechanics are familiar from other Latin American governments that governed through mobilized bases rather than through institutions, and Brazil’s direction matters to Washington on trade, migration and security.

Censorship for some, protection for others

The channel survived only because the electoral court split over it. Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign asked the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) to suspend it and to strip Janones of his mandate. On Oct. 11, TSE president Kassio Nunes Marques ordered the channel taken down; the same day, the court’s chief inspector, Justice Ricardo Villas Bôas Cueva, overturned the order. “The decision fell, the censorship fell, the Lula Army channel stays,” Janones celebrated. A later suspension for lack of registration lasted 48 hours, the campaign registered the channel, and the case still awaits a ruling by the full court. The same institutions have spent years ordering the removal of conservative profiles, channels and entire platforms in Brazil, and the word “censorship” has never protected the right the way it protected Janones.

Lula also framed the mission in terms that leave little room for dissent: “only the truth repeated many times will destroy a lie told millions of times. There is no funding, no boosting that can destroy the truth.” The channel he praised exists precisely to repeat and boost.

The record

Confirmed: Lula’s Instagram video of Nov. 7, the Turkey trip with Janones, the planned live stream, the channel’s membership of more than 10 million and the Oct. 11 TSE decisions, all reported by Estadão, Gazeta do Povo and Brazilian outlets. Reported by Estadão: that the goal is to pressure Congress and the Supreme Court. Janones did not respond to Estadão’s request for comment.

This comes after the TSE case against the Lula-Alckmin ticket was described as a “certainty of impunity,” and while Supreme Court justices move to pick the Senate leader who could judge them. It happens under a ruling party whose 2022 victory remains disputed by millions of Brazilians who allege electronic ballot fraud, and whose new term is already being questioned abroad, as Flávio Bolsonaro told The Washington Post. A regime that keeps an army of 10 million on standby after winning is not preparing to persuade Congress and the courts. It is preparing to corner them.

The Watch Post Daily will continue to follow this story. Sources: Estadão, Gazeta do Povo, Correio Braziliense, Poder360, O Povo, Metrópoles.

Featured image: 05.11.2026 – Presidente Lula e Janones participam da Live da Vitória by Lula Oficial, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.