Three days ago, cable news stations marked the second anniversary of the Capitol storming by showing over and over again the videos taken on January 6, 2021. Anyone who watched their rebroadcast on CNN this Thursday, January 5 will have seen hours of footage of protesters breaking through thin police lines, giddily taking storm the Capitol, and triumphantly sow chaos in the symbolic heart of American democracy.
Which makes the videos broadcast by these same channels from Sunday afternoon eerily familiar. Once again, demonstrators easily crossed a thin police cordon. Once again, thousands of people stormed major government buildings, their faces marked with a look of triumphant bewilderment. And once again, shocking scenes of mob violence and vandalism took place, like a grotesque carnival stretching out for hours in full view of the world.
But there is one major difference: the new videos were not a replay of events that happened in America two years ago; they were a new version of the original horror film, since they showed events taking place at the very moment more than 6,000 kilometers away, in Brasilia, the Brazilian capital.
The similarity between the two scenes is not fortuitous. Since his election as President of Brazil in the fall of 2018, Jair Bolsonaro has deliberately taken Donald Trump as a model. Like the latter, he claimed to be the true spokesman of the people, presenting anyone who did not agree with him as a traitor or a criminal. Like the latter, he tried to concentrate power in his hands, casting doubt on the legitimacy of independent institutions, from justice to the press. And like the latter, he has spent the last few years persuading his supporters that they shouldn’t trust an election that doesn’t declare him the winner, as the electoral system is rigged.
The coup, a serious possibility
This has caused extreme concern among many political scientists in the run-up to the Brazilian presidential election last October. Should Bolsonaro win a second term, they warned, he would be in an even better position to damage the country’s checks and balances. Brazilian democracy would be very seriously in danger. But even if Bolsonaro were defeated by his opponent, former President Lula da Silva, they warned, the danger would be far from over. Because Bolsonaro could well, then, encourage his supporters to resort to violence to disrupt the transfer of power, or even call the army to his rescue. A coup would become, in any case according to certain observers, a very serious possibility.
The good news is that the Brazilians have removed Bolsonaro from power. The latter, in a parallel with Trump that he desperately tried to prevent, narrowly failed to get re-elected. In the weeks following his defeat, senior military officials made it clear that they would not support a coup. And even longtime political allies elected to important office in the ballot that lost Bolsonaro, such as Tarcisio de Freitas, the new governor of São Paulo, appeared to abandon him. In fact, he relented, publicly instructing his team to ensure an orderly transition of power to Lula.
In the two-month gap between Lula’s victory and his official inauguration, there have been many worrying signs. Bolsonaro has never explicitly acknowledged the legality of his defeat at the polls. His supporters have organized scores of protests, some of which have turned violent, such as when protesters burned a large number of cars in downtown Brasília. But the end result slowly seemed to become inevitable.
On January 1, 2023, Lula was duly sworn in as President of Brazil. Bolsonaro, fearing legal investigations into possible offenses committed during his tenure, slipped away to Florida in ignominy, renting a house near Disney World. As Lula took over from him at the presidential palace, videos shared on social media showed him strolling the grounds of a Publix supermarket and enjoying dinner at a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
“We saw what happened at the Capitol”
Enough to make Sunday’s attack on the pillars of Brazilian democracy – the Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace – even more unreal. When members of the Maga (“Make America Great Again”) movement attacked the Capitol, they had no concrete plan as to how to stage a coup. But they had an immediate goal: to disrupt the certification of the presidential election, which was taking place at the same time inside the building.
The “bolsonarists”, as they are called, who stormed the seat of Brazilian democratic power on Sunday did not have a similar concrete objective. Neither Congress nor the Supreme Court was in session. Lula was hundreds of miles away and had already been sworn in as president. It’s as if the rioters wanted to play American insurgents. Like Brian Winter, the editor ofAmericas Quarterlysaid with humor: “Brazil, I’m really sorry that we keep sending you our worst ideas.”
It is obvious that the similarities between Brasilia and Washington are not just figments of the American imagination. In fact, even Brazilian elected officials explicitly make this same parallel. As Tabata Amaral, a young parliamentarian elected to Congress for the center-left Brazilian Socialist Party, said on Sunday: “We saw what happened on Capitol Hill, in America. But we don’t. done enough to make sure it doesn’t happen again here.”
And yet, the full measure of the danger posed by authoritarian populists like Trump and Bolsonaro can only be appreciated by admitting that this is not just one aspiring dictator emulating another. Nor should we flatter Steve Bannon by crediting him with the ability to stir up major events in a foreign country by repeating endless bits of language in a desperate search for relevance. What is happening in both Brazil and the United States is rather the very logic of populist movements that have gained strength in dozens of democracies around the world over the past decade.
Populists are able to maintain a presence in the political game
Populists invariably present themselves as the true spokespersons of the people. This gives them all a good reason to deny the results of an election they don’t win. Because, if you are the true voice of the people, it should be impossible for you to lose at the polls. When this seemingly unthinkable assumption occurs, you can either admit that your claim to a special connection with your country’s voters has always been a nonsensical fiction, or seek refuge in the idea that your country’s electoral institutions are actually undermined. by fraud.
The past few years have given us some truly reassuring news about the ability of democracies to resist the rise of such populists. After all, both Brazilian and American voters ousted authoritarian populists after just one term in office. When you see how often populists – like Victor Orban in Hungary or Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey – have historically managed to hang on to it once they have reached the top office, these successes are far from trivial.
But if the history of populism – not just in Brazil and the United States, but also in countries as different as Italy, Thailand and Argentina – shows us anything, it is that populists are capable to maintain a significant presence in the political game even after their defeat at the polls. Even in their worst moments, they usually retain the fervent support of a significant super fan base. Whenever their successors fail to keep their promises, face an economic crisis, or become entangled in a major scandal, they can bounce back to power.
The Brazilian insurrection, even if it is the fact of only a few thousand people, is as such a worrying omen of what could still happen at the polls. The country remains deeply divided. If Lula’s government blunders, which is quite possible, Bolsonaro could still make a triumphant return from exile in Florida. And even if he lost his grip on his supporters, another demagogue would surely seize hold of the distrust of electoral institutions that he stoked with such efficiency.
When a patient suffers from seizures, he is in immediate danger. But if these are caused by an infection like meningitis, treating the most visible symptoms is not enough. Because in the long term, it is the underlying disease that poses the real threat. I have come to the same conclusion for violent insurgencies, like the one in Washington two years ago and the one in Brazil on Sunday. We must not underestimate the immediate threat they pose. But we must also not forget that they are a shocking manifestation of a much deeper malaise.