No offense, but neither event was a "false flag." You can't dupe thousands of people to storm the pillars of government. Unfortunately for Brazil, their political environment going forward seems destined to closely resemble the political environment in the U.S. It also has complications for U.S. politics.
From Politico:
FLORIDA MAN — The White House announced today it would host Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula), in Washington in February, one day after supporters of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed and ransacked government buildings in Brasilia, the nation’s capital.
Bolsonaro, who left Brazil two days before his term ended in a symbolic snub of new Brazilian President Lula and the democratic transfer of power, is reportedly under investigation in at least four criminal probes in his home country. Bolsonaro has been staying in Florida, where a Brazilian news organization reported that he had been admitted to an Orlando-area hospital because of abdominal pains, though that report could not immediately be confirmed.
Bolsonaro’s close relationship with former U.S. President Donald Trump, his attempts to cast doubt on Brazil’s election results and the similarities between the attack on the Brazilian seat of government and the Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol have heightened the politics surrounding Sunday’s violence.
President Joe Biden faced calls from within his own party today to extradite Bolsonaro, who Lula blamed for “encouraging” the rioters while arguing the “fascist fanatics” and those who funded them should be punished.
To make sense of why Bolsonaro is still in Florida, what his ties are to U.S. politics and the parallels between Jan. 6 in Washington and Jan. 8 in Brasília, Nightly spoke with Bruna Santos, a senior advisor at the Brazil Institute at the Wilson Center. This conversation has been edited.
Bolsonaro reportedly has been staying in Orlando, Florida, since the final days of his presidency. What is the significance of his visit?
There are a couple of ways to look at Bolsonaro’s time in the American state of Florida. On the one hand, this has been a common meeting ground for Bolsonaro in his former visits with American far-right leaders, like Donald Trump who he met with back in March of 2020. In some ways, it’s only natural, considering Bolsonaro faces legal questions over his abuse of power, and was looking for an escape.
But it’s also important to recognize that the Brazilian public can be very in tune with the broader state of Florida politics. For instance, there are a number of Brazilians who migrated there since the 1990s, many of whom are now middle to upper class, and had to escape very real threats of violence. Both far-right Americans and a portion of Brazilians are really still drawn to his perspectives. He has developed something of a network there of supporters. His rages against woke culture, progressivism and totalitarianism can find very receptive ears.
How close are the ties between Bolsonaro and Trump-world? In what ways have the two learned from each other?
Investigations conducted in Brazil show the relationship between Bolsonaro and Donald Trump runs deep. Bolsonaro and his family have spent significant amounts of time in the United States in an effort to build alliances with far-right Americans. For instance, Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of Jair, met with Steven Bannon in 2018 as Eduardo was making a name for himself in Brazil’s far-right Social Liberal Party. Since that point, the two have met almost 80 times, according to certain reports, which has very real electoral impacts.
Certain social media hashtags and general misinformation that spiked during the lead up to the Brazilian election and the attack on the Capitol yesterday, can also be traced back to the U.S. Trump advisors including Bannon, who has helped popularize election misinformation, have played a role in the events that took place. Networks of the international far-right currently build off of each other.
What role did misinformation play in the insurrection? What were some of the warning signs prior to Jan. 8?
Bolsonaro and his allies have planted seeds for an insurrection since before the start of his presidential campaign. He has long made false claims about shadowy forces in Brazil manipulating election results. In 2018, for instance, he said hackers unsuccessfully tried to steal the election from him. Now, those same sorts of claims have added weight to them, given his power and connections with Brazil’s Congress as well as conservative pundits even with him on his exit from office. In the weeks leading up to the election, we saw these same types of claims about election security really pick up steam on social media, especially on Telegram and WhatsApp. It’s a similar pattern we can see in the U.S., where far-right figures with massive online audiences are really adept at sowing this kind of chaos.
How closely does what happened in Brazil resemble the Jan. 6th attack on the Capitol in the United States?
In a very similar way that the January 6th riots broke out, we in Brazil woke up to a country under attack. The invasion of Brazil’s Congress was clearly an expression of outrage from Bolsonaro supporters, who were baselessly alleging electoral fraud. In terms of the response, we see a very similar comparison to what happened in Brazil and the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.
But when we break it down, there are certainly differences. Keep in mind that there was no one working in Brasilia and all the time limits for the election passed. The vote certification, the inauguration and the formal declaration of results had already taken place at the time of the riot. What’s positive about that is it limited some of the potential of violence and death like we saw in the U.S., but it also says something broader about political institutions. The timing of the riot shows the intentions of Bolsonaro’s supporters as creating chaos, maybe for the purposes of instituting a military coup, rather than changing the results of the election. In that way, the attacks against the political institutions of Brazil could be considered even more profound than that of the U.S. |
