Brazilian Christofascists take a leaf from the American Christofascist playbook:
Thousands of radical backers of Brazil’s far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro breached and vandalized the presidential office building, and the on Sunday, and sought to enter other halls of power, in scenes that hauntingly evoked the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former president Donald Trump.
The attack came a week after the inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in a runoff election in October.
Images on Globo TV showed protesters roaming the halls and standing near smashed glass cases in the Planalto Palace, the office of the president. Thousands of others wearing the national soccer shirt — now a symbol of the far right — and waving the Brazilian flag milled about the massive square outside in a part of the Brasilia capital that is similar to Washington’s National Mall.
“God, Fatherland, Family and Liberty,” they cried as scores marched to the Praça dos Três Poderes — the Plaza of the Three Powers — according to videos on social media. In another video purportedly from today’s assault, a group of protesters appear to attack a mounted police officer, while a woman yells out, “stop, stop!” and a man adds “guys, let the police officer go.”
Of course, the similarities with another fascist attack on democracy did not go unnoticed:
The incident captured the uncanny parallels between Bolsonaro and his political lodestar, Trump, and came after months in which pundits have feared a Jan. 6-style copycat action here.
In a manner similar to Trump, Bolsonaro has fueled discontent among his base since his loss to the newly-inaugurated leftist, stepping down while refusing to officially concede.
“Today’s explosion of mob violence is an insurrection foretold,” said Robert Muggah, co-founder of the Rio think tank Igarapé Institute. “Resentments among Bolsonaro’s militant supporters have been simmering for months.”
“The similarities of Brazilian far-right mobs storming Congress, the Supreme Court and Presidential Palace with the Jan. 6 insurrection of the Capitol are not coincidental,” he added. “Like their MAGA counterparts, Bolsonaro supporters have been fed a steady diet of misinformation and disinformation for years, much of it modeled on the narratives pedaled by far-right influencers in the US.”
That this is a worldwide anti- democracy movement is undeniable. Trump's MAGA Republican/ Seditionist Party, Xi's Chinese Communist Party, Putin's United Russia party, Orban's Fidesz party in Hungary, Erdogan's Turkish Justice and Development Party, etc., all subscribe to the same autocratic ideology. Now, Brazil, a country that ejected the mini- Trump Bolsonaro from office in a fair and free election in October 2022, and with arguably weaker democratic institutions than ours, is seeing the same dangerous sickness play out in its capital city. May the justice be swift and severe.
(Photo: Bolsonaro supporters attack government complex in Brasilia/ via DW)
