Brazil’s capitol attacks on January 8: discoveries unfold
The guy has on a Bolsonaro t-shirt and jeans hanging off his butt with his underwear showing as he rampages through the presidential offices. He yanks a priceless clock dating back to Dom João VI in the 17th century off a cabinet and tosses it on the floor. The clock was a gift from the French Court to the then emperor of Brazil. The security video of this depredation was released yesterday, showing the perpetrator also throwing fire extinguishers at the security camera in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat it.
What are Bolsonarists saying about the attacks on Brazil’s three branches of government on January 8th? They claim the criminals destroying the capital were leftists disguised as Bolsonarists. Sound familiar? Posts circulated on social media said the clock showed a time different from that of the invasion, therefore the video must have been fake. Never mind that the ancient clock stopped keeping accurate time a decade ago. It’s all ripped from the pages of the Trump playbook, where there were claims after the January 6th destruction of the United States Congress that the crimes were committed by Antifa, leftist groups posing as Trump supporters. That was absurd on its face but the perpetrators have now been tried and convicted, so end of story.
Brazilian investigative reporters with Aos Fatos have traced the roots of the January 8th events back to the January 6th destruction of the US capitol. I will now lay out a synopsis of their reporting, and then broaden the focus to similar movements that represent threats to democracy worldwide.
As reported by Aos Fatos, the day after the January 6, 2021 attack Bolsonaro said “if we don’t change to printed ballots we’re going to have a problem worse than the United States.” He continued to drum up anger and fear about Brazil’s electoral process, for which there is no evidence of fraudulent activity, and set expectations for a coup-like event on Brazil’s independence day on September 7th. Truckers blocked the area of the capitol but Bolsonaro tamped down his rhetoric.
In July 2022 Bolsonaro summoned ambassadors to the presidential palace and harangued them with tales of potential rigging of elections due to the country’s electronic voting system. Normally stoic ambassadors could be seen giving the subtlest of sidelong glances to each other. It was a breach of diplomatic norms to call other countries’ representatives to a presentation on such a topic, let alone to suggest they should be concerned about Brazil’s internal election processes.
The presidential election occurred on October 2, 2022 with multiple presidential candidates but an unexpectedly close outcome; the runoff on October 30th was Bolsonaro against Lula, the former leftist president. Lula won by just a couple of points. Game on. According to Bolsonarists the election was fraudulent, and the country was on the road to ruin, about to become “another Venezuela.” Bolsonaro supporters declared that Lula would never be inaugurated as president. Bolsonaro remained uncharacteristically silent but allowed the transition to Lula to occur.
Lula was inaugurated on January 1, 2023. Security was tight and there was nothing to ruin the positive vibrations with the peaceful transfer of power. Except that Bolsonaro had not conceded defeat, which his most ardent supporters heard as a dog whistle to implore the military to take control. Bolsonaro left Brazil for Florida two days before the inauguration, in order to avoid the ceremonial passing of the sash to his successor.
Machismo military calls to action spread like wildfire on encrypted social media such as Telegram, calling for Bolsonarists to converge on Brasília on January 8th to flood the zone and even to initiate a civil war to force the military to take control and reinstall Bolsonaro as president, despite his electoral loss, because the election was “fraudulent.” Bolsonaro supporters who had camped outside military headquarters across Brazil heeded the call to action, funded by shadowy supporters of the former president who chartered buses and funded food and lodging for the anarchists looking to tear down the new government and put Bolsonaro back in power. These people, many of whom must have believed they were saving democracy, not destroying it, marched on the Three Powers plaza and streamed up the ramp to the roof of the congress building, smashed windows and entered the supreme court, and were ushered in to the presidential offices by sympathetic military police who failed in their duty to protect the seat of government.
The most concerning thing about these events is the extent to which they were facilitated, even goaded by radical right media in the United States. Tucker Carlson of Fox, Steve Bannon and Jason Miller who are former advisers to Trump echoed and promoted the idea that Bolsonaro was the victim of a fraudulent election outcome. These American cable TV promoters of the fraudulent election narrative were then amplified and repeated across social media in Brazil as vindication for the false claims of Bolsonaro.-
The far-right nationalist movement is now global. First Trump, then Bolsonaro, then Italy’s neofascist new prime minister Giorgia Meloni. Even moderate socialist Portugal has a budding neo fascist: Andre Ventura, whose Chega party (best translation: Stop!) promotes anti-immigrant and far-right themes. He stood up in Portugal’s parliament on January 13th and said that he understood the outrage that caused Bolsonarists to rise up because, he said, Brazil was being run by a “bandit,” meaning new President Lula. The translation of bandit is much more insulting than the literal word in English. The parliamentarian reprimanded Ventura, but the warning to the world is clear: Beware. Democracy is under threat worldwide.
Photo by Gustavo Leighton on Unsplash