Brazilian right media mocked bike lanes as socialist engineering

Evidence

A columnist at Veja went as far as to question why the ciclovías were painted red—was that propaganda meant to spread the color of socialism and the Workers’ Party? Even more outlandish was the claim made later in the magazine—the kind of thing that would go viral online—that Haddad was the “Taliban of the bicycle; ISIS on two wheels.” — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 327

Fights over politics, playing out in media both social and traditional, often revolved around his flagship programs to expand bike lanes in the city and spend money treating drug addicts living on the streets downtown. Fights over control of the streets got particularly nasty, with motorists insisting that São Paulo was not Amsterdam or Berlin and that trying to push cycling culture was left-wing social engineering. A columnist at Veja went as far as to question why the ciclovías were painted red—was that propaganda meant to spread the color of socialism and the Workers’ Party? Even more outlandish was the claim made later in the magazine—the kind of thing that would go viral online—that Haddad was the “Taliban of the bicycle; ISIS on two wheels.” — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 327

Categorization

• CANDY: The ‘Taliban of the bicycle; ISIS on two wheels’ line is a delightfully absurd soundbite for idle conversation.
• ADDENDUM: A clear moral panic over a mundane object (bike lanes) being read as ideologically subversive — echoes the complaints-about-immodesty article’s pattern of trivial things carrying heavy identity signaling.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 327