Now it is Brazil's turn to prove that democracy can survive a Trumpist dictator wannabe

 

The world just never ceases to confound and infuriate. I want to start on a different project, but I just have to say something about yesterday’s events in Brasília, the capital city of Brazil, where we saw scenes like this…

 

 

…and destruction…

 

…which of course reminds us of a certain event that occurred in this country not long ago. We don’t need to belabor the fact that Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters were taking a few pages from the playbook of Donald Trump and his supporters. In September before the election, Bolsonaro was seeding the fields with “doubt” about proficiency of electronic voting machines. 

Then after the runoff election which he narrowly lost, Bolsonaro insinuated “fraud” and called for the nullification of votes from districts that voted heavily for Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, which would have given him the majority of votes, but was rejected by the Supreme Court as baseless. Not to be deterred, Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo, a lawmaker in the national assembly, met with Trump, Steve Bannon and others to formulate a “strategy” to overturn a democratic result and restore his dictator father to power.

Bolsonaro, his government ministers, security forces, local law enforcement and the regional governor did virtually nothing as supporters claiming the election “stolen” began mobilizing in force, including camping outside military bases to force the military to take action to restore Bolsonaro to power. The military had previously released a report stating that they did not detect evidence of fraud, but it was believed that it favored Bolsonaro and it also did nothing to disperse those camped out in front of their bases.

With Lula to be sworn-in on January 1, Bolsonaro flew to Orlando, Florida. Why? Perhaps from there he could watch events from a distance with the protection of fellow Trumpist Gov. Ron DeSantis—and allow his supporters to ransack the presidential office building without him in it. Like Trump gleefully watching events on television, he wasn’t horrified by what he saw, with the Supreme Court and legislative assembly buildings also ransacked. Bolsonaro claimed that he didn’t personally order the attacks, but only in a tepid manner did he criticize them: it was all just a demonstration of the “anger” of the people about a “stolen” election.

We are told that 4,000 would-be rioters arrived on 100 buses. We don’t yet know who was behind the sending of this convoy intent on creating destruction and mayhem, but it is likely it somehow leads to Bolsonaro and his agents, which explains why he is safely out of the country. As on January 6, despite the fact that security forces were warned that something like this was going to happen, police presence was minimal. Federal District Gov. Ibaneis Rocha, Bolsonaro’s former Justice Minister, who was personally responsible to see that nothing untoward occurred, chose the capital city’s head of public security Anderson Torres as his “fall guy”—which didn’t work, since within hours he himself was suspended from office for willful dereliction of duty.

Over 1,000 rioters have been detained for “questioning,” and by all appearances they look more like people (like the January 6 rioters) with nothing better to do with their sorry existences but go on mindless destruction (numerous works of art, we are told, were vandalized). We are told that a letter signed-off by politicians from across the political spectrum denounced the attempted insurrection and promised punishment. Even Bolsonaro’s far-right party realized that letting loose a violent mob it couldn’t control was a threat to its own existence, which is something that few Republicans recognize in Trumpism, with  a new breed like DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott waiting in the wings.

What we see here is the danger of Trumpism to democracy all over the world. It starts with a far-right “populist” who feeds into a segment of the population’s fears, paranoia and desire to place blame for whatever they personally feels “ails” them on scapegoats. These people don’t believe in “democracy” as such; they don’t accept that other people have different notions about the world or how they view their own “rights.” Trumpists support anyone who acts with dictatorial powers that disregards the give-and-take and compromise of democratic policy-making.

Some of these people have a “secret” desire to act-out their anger against anyone or any institution that directly opposes their viewpoint, and when they are given sanction by none other than the president of the United States, they feel some kind of “justification” for violent actions with the promise of “immunity.” In the U.S., there was no such immunity—Trump was no longer around to grant a blanket “pardon”—and the perpetrators have been systematically brought to justice.

That lesson was clearly not learned by the rioters in Brazil, and in that country the constitutional system of government must prove that it is capable of defending itself and punishing those who would turn the country into a dictatorship, or return it to being ruled by a military junta, if “civilians” prove they are incapable of governing themselves. The world didn’t learn that lesson on January 6, at least not in Brazil. What Brazil does now is needed to confirm that democracy can stand against dictator wannabes.