“Supporters of Brazil's far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro invaded and defaced the country's Congress, presidential palace and Supreme Court on Sunday… There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries from their rampage, but the invaders left a trail of destruction, throwing furniture through the smashed windows of the presidential palace, flooding parts of Congress with a sprinkler system and ransacking ceremonial rooms in the Supreme Court.” Reuters
“Authorities arrested 1,200 people on Monday - in addition to 300 detained a day earlier… Mr Bolsonaro condemned the attack and denied responsibility for encouraging the rioters in a post on Twitter.” BBC
Here’s our prior coverage of Brazil’s election. The Flip Side
Both sides condemn the violence and anticipate that Brazil’s far-right movement will remain influential:
“Many have commented about how the images of the green-and-yellow-clad Bolsonaro supporters smashing windows and running through the hallways and chambers of government buildings resembled [the] January 6 Capitol Hill riot in Washington. They’re more alike than the would-be insurrectionists might realize. You can’t overthrow a government just by getting a crowd together and briefly overwhelming the cops on duty at government buildings. A mob like that can do damage, but it can’t build anything, and it can’t make any serious claim to legitimacy or constitutional authority…
“It’s not like the Brazilian police, prosecutors, judges, the military, and Lula were all going to shrug and say, ‘Oh, well, I guess Bolsonaro gets to be president again.’ Populist movements have an easy time whipping people up into an angry frenzy, but not such an easy time turning all that energy into something constructive and lasting.”
Jim Geraghty, National Review
“On the day the mob swarmed, the political process had run its course. Lula was sworn into office on January 1, the transition over and his government in place… This assault may have been less about elections past and more about the future of the right-wing movement in Brazil. Congress was in recess at the time, leaving the building mostly empty. Lula was away from the presidential palace. But the images of Bolsonaro supporters, clad in yellow and green, scaling walls, breaking windows, and swarming the seats of power, nonetheless showed a government under siege…
“‘They created all the images they wanted, they knew they would be arrested — they wanted to create martyrs,’ said [Professor] Rosana Pinheiro-Machado… [The arrests are] being framed as an injustice by the powerful to tamp down the people… The challenge of the far-right movement in Brazil will likely persist and continue to create chaos during Lula’s term and beyond.”
Jen Kirby, Vox
Other opinions below.
“The good news is that military leaders have shown no inclination to intervene [in the rioters’ favor], and Lula’s inauguration on Jan. 1 was uneventful. The most important figures on the Brazilian right have accepted the election result and denounced the riot…
“Lula has vowed to investigate the riot and those who supported it. But an equal test for his government will be whether it respects the right of peaceful dissent and the opposition even as it prosecutes law-breakers…
“The riots will discredit the radical right, but some in Lula’s Workers’ Party will want to use the event to indict the entire opposition. The Supreme Court, which tried to control political speech during the election, also bears watching for politicized rulings. Defending against violence is one test of democratic institutions but another is not abusing the law to stifle or punish legitimate debate.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“However atrocious their actions, Bolsonaro’s tens of millions of supporters have at least some right to feel aggrieved. Their most credible argument is that rather than sitting in the presidential palace, Lula should really be languishing in a jail cell… Courts found Lula had accepted over $1 million USD in bribes while also engaging in influence peddling and obstruction of justice. They sentenced him to twelve years in prison…
“Given Lula’s prominence as a socialist icon, the international campaign to release him was both prolonged and intense. With support from the likes of Senator Bernie Sanders and UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, a narrative was created that Lula was the subject of political persecution…
“Having served just fifteen months behind bars, his legal team managed to have his conviction quashed by a political ally on the murky grounds that the southern city of Curitiba had ‘lacked the authority’ to prosecute him. Ultimately, Lula was set free thanks to his own political influence rather than any compelling evidence that he was innocent.”
Ben Kew, Spectator World
“It was almost a shot-by-shot remake of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol in Washington. Once again, a mob, summoned to a nation’s capital via social media and inflamed by false claims of election fraud, could be seen smashing windows, invading government offices, assaulting journalists and, in at least one case, attacking a police officer. Though the human toll in death and injury was less than that of Jan. 6, the Brazilian rioters’ imitation — just over two years later, almost to the day — of the pro-Trump assault in D.C. provided ugly proof that the example set by the United States carries global impact.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
Others argue, “Brazil was a military-run dictatorship until 1985 after the crushing of an earlier attempt at democracy, and civilian self-government since then has often been rocked by corruption, fears of military takeovers and prosecutions of former presidents. The erosion of democracy and the use of violence as a political tool were a feature of much of the Western Hemisphere long before Trump latched onto them. So, while it may look like Brazilian extremists are copying their brethren in the US, the world’s most important democracy could actually be importing the characteristics of malfunctioning and chaotic political societies abroad.”
Stephen Collinson, CNN
“How Lula da Silva handles this assault on democracy will emerge as the hallmark of his third term in office. He was elected to undo many of the hard-right policies of the Bolsonaro government, reinsert Brazil into the international global economic order, and, as the steward of the Amazon rainforest… reposition the country on the vanguard of the planet’s existential threat posed by climate change…
“He still must address all those issues but now focus on other far more pressing challenges: reestablish the rule of law; reaffirm the country’s military, law enforcement and civil institutions’ dedication to democratic institutions; and revitalize Brazilians’ belief in democracy.”
Arick Wierson, CNN