For foreign observers, the mob that has seized government buildings in Brasilia is a reflection of typical Latin American political instability. It is a false vision: on January 8, 2023, Brazil revived as farce what the United States began as tragedy two years ago, on January 6, 2021. What we are witnessing is a phenomenon affecting several Western democracies regardless of their geographical location or level of development.
Brazil and the United States, America’s two largest countries, are becoming more alike: both have a former president who won’t accept defeat, a president with a minority in Congress, and a society split in two. In his Twitter profile, Jair Bolsonaro continues to present himself as “President of the Republic”, while in his tweets he only treats Lula as “Chief of the Executive”. This attitude, while reducible to simple narcissism, is politically corrosive. After all, as former Uruguayan President Julio Sanguinetti recalls, democracy is an ethic of defeat. In authoritarian regimes, governments do not lose elections.
Today’s Bolsonaro protesters, unlike their Trump idols of yesterday, had advantages and disadvantages. The upside was military ambiguity: while US forces in 2021 opposed any attempt to break with the institution, Brazil’s military stems from years of enriching involvement in the Bolsonaro government. And the state police are even more Bolsonarian in their values and even wilder in their behavior. The mob appealed to all of them and incited them to stage a coup.
On the other hand, the putschists’ downside was opportunity: when they marched in in the south of summer and on a Sunday, they found the buildings unoccupied. The Bolsonaro uprising thus had greater architectural reach, but less political reach: unlike the Trumpist uprising, it could not kidnap anyone. In their defense, no one has ever accused them of being smart.
The economic consequences of these events are negative and are already reflected in the increase in dollar and country risk. But these short-term hits can be quickly reversed if politics gets back on track. The first signs are promising: the heads of the three state powers signed a joint document in which they rejected “acts of terrorism, vandalism, crime and putsch”. Bolsonaro himself, from his temporary exile in Miami, was compelled to condemn events despite equating them with others on the left. The reaction of far-right leaders in other countries was similar: given the attack’s unpopularity, they eventually dismissed it and, in some cases, even admitted that it had harmed them.
The mandate that Lula has just taken on has never seemed easy. Amid less favorable international conditions than in the last decade, his third government faces a fragmented society and partisan attrition resulting from the sacking of Dilma Rousseff and his own legal journey. Now, in addition to bargaining majorities in a Congress he does not control, he must regain control of the street, which until yesterday was occupied by lunatics and extremists. That the democratic right is distancing itself from the coup is the best news to glean from these events. But one thing is for sure, Oxford professor Timothy Power reminds us: There are no popular presidents in polarized societies. The challenge of the times is to govern democracy and express the hatred of half the population at the ballot box and peacefully in the streets, but not in government palaces.
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Andre Malamud is Principal Investigator at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon.
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