Is there a sovereign international? Is Donald Trump the real leader of the attack on the institutional buildings that rocked Brasilia on January 8, two years and two days after the horrific events on Capitol Hill in Washington? Suspicions are circulating and there are interested parties who want to accredit them. Characters like Steve Bannon, the black soul of Trump, the ideologue and hidden director of the 2016 campaign who has always tried to offer his services abroad. Sometimes it worked. Conspiracies must be carefully examined. The first evidence to the contrary is provided by the tragic reports from a neighboring country: Peru. Very little is said about it, perhaps because the demographic and economic dimensions are small compared to Brazil (32 million inhabitants vs. 217 million); or maybe because it doesn’t lend itself to conspiracy theories. But the fact is that Peru has been under an attack on democracy for some time, in this case by a president – Pedro Castillo – who refused to accept his impeachment and attempted a coup to reverse it. Supporters of the ousted (and arrested) President continue their protests in a country engulfed in violence that has already claimed 40 lives. It does not apply to the international conspiracy theory because Castillo is not from the right, from the extreme left.
Moreover, all South American geopolitics are evolving as an authoritarian and socialist regime like that of Joe Biden’s Venezuela is quietly processed through customs to introduce new oil into world markets in an anti-Russian capacity. Something else weakens the thesis of an international conspiracy behind the events in Brazil. Trump has an obvious affinity for Bolsonaro and vice versa. The friendship between the two is clear, declared. Bolsonaro regards the former American president as his role model and inspiration. Because Trump had neither the will nor the ability to present himself as the leader of an international movement. Sympathies and peculiarities are one thing, building real alliances is another: the latter is foreign to Trump’s personality.
After all, this is an inherent limit of sovereignty. As the word suggests… an ideology that puts the interests of the nation so extremely first does not lend itself well to building international coalitions. Finally, it should not be forgotten that Trump is on the wane in his own country: this was evident in the mid-term general election, in which his candidates took many beatings last November; and even the story of the extremely difficult election of the Chamber’s new Speaker.
However, the latter offers an interesting parallel with Brazil. The turbulent election of Republican Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House of Representatives, the third institutional office in the United States, has shown that Trump has lost influence… with Trumpians. In fact, the former Mar-a-Lago president once urged his supporters to vote for McCarthy, but was not complied with. Something similar seems to be happening in Brazil, where Bolsonaro, at least initially, did not call on his people to revolt and criticized them when they stormed government buildings. The sorcerers’ apprentices have awakened powers they can no longer control. Behind the Bolsonarists’ criminal protest lies another local peculiarity, unprecedented in the United States. Many in Brazil – including moderate ones – are convinced that Lula is a corrupt politician. His sentence was suspended for procedural reasons, not because his innocence had been proven. That was certainly not Biden’s situation on January 6, 2021. So there is a right-wing people in Brazil and even a section of centrist public opinion that thinks Lula is an illegitimate president, not because he was elected through fraud, but because he was released out of prison by a biased judiciary.
Jan 11, 2023 7:45pm – edit Jan 11, 2023 | 8:34 p.m
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