A tale of populists and two riots in the capital city

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On January 8, supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro stormed and ransacked important government buildings in Brasilia, including the country’s Congress, the Presidential Palace and the Supreme Court. In scenes reminiscent of the January 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington DC, the Bolsonarists demanded that the results of the October 2022 presidential election be annulled.

The uprising lasted for more than three hours. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has vowed to punish the guilty and blamed Bolsonaro, who currently lives in Florida and has yet to officially admit defeat, for inflaming his supporters with false rhetoric on election fraud.

Bolsanaro and Trump are among the rightwing populist leaders who came to power in several countries by harnessing popular anti-establishment sentiment through strong anti-globalist and anti-minority rhetoric, and then attacking and destroying a range of democratic institutions in their countries.

Trump and Bolsonaro have openly expressed support and admiration for each other, and Trump has previously urged Brazilians to vote for the Trump of the Tropics, as Bolsonaro is often called.

Election defeats and subsequent insurrections

The events in Brazil on January 8 were a near-replay of what happened in the United States Capitol two years ago. In both cases, angry supporters of a president who lost an election – unfairly, they believed – attacked government buildings with the aim of “taking back” their country. In both cases, they were lured by their leaders – Trump and Bolsonaro – with baseless claims of electoral fraud.

In a speech on December 2, 2020, Trump said, If we don’t get rid of the fraud, the massive and horrific fraud that took place in our 2020 election, we won’t have a country.

Two years later, Bolsonaro’s son used almost identical language, saying his father was the victim of the biggest electoral fraud ever seen.

Both claims were denied by authorities and media in both countries. But the leaders’ claims and their repeated parroting of their diehard followers are proof enough for many. Social media was used to spread disinformation and organize demonstrations and protests against stolen elections”.

A standard playbook

The similarities between the uprisings in Washington DC and Brasilia are not coincidental. Instead, they are part of a common playbook used by rightwing populists to exploit anti-institutional anger and ultra-nationalist urges.

Thomas Traumann, a political expert based in Rio, told The Guardian: Trump is his (Bolsonaro’s) idol and his model. And what did Trump do? He fought, he did not accept defeat, he called people to the streets and encouraged violent protests and left power without retreating and continued to communicate with his followers so that they did not recognize the authority of the new government and thus keeps his base growing. This, for me, is Bolsonaros roadmap.

Brian Winter, a Brazil specialist, told The Guardian that Bolsonaros tactic of questioning the elections after he lost was 100 percent inspired by Trump.

They (Bolsonistas) noted that January 6 and Trump’s continuous denial of the election did not cost him his future as a matter of fact it could have been saved. Because this image of invincibility is so important to both of these movements and the only way that Donald Trump can lose and survive is by insisting that he is undefeated, Winter said.

Elites masquerading as masses

It takes years of destructive rhetoric and action to persuade almost half of a country’s population to begin to question the sanctity of its democratic elections and institutions.

Attacks on Washington elites and vows to drain the swamp became central to Trump’s rhetoric in 2015-16 as he launched his election campaign. Bolsonaro came to power after Brazil was rocked by corruption scandals and a crippling recession, and he has promised to clean things up.

The two men promised to deregulate businesses and cut taxes, sought to dismantle their countries’ environmental protection frameworks, and pushed for unscientific and dangerous public policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. 19.

They exploited racial tensions and nativist insecurities to push their agendas. Importantly, both Trump and Bolsonaro have expressed vocal opposition to political correctness, and have engaged in overtly racist, misogynistic, and homophobic messaging to appeal to their base.

Rise of the populist right

The rise of leaders like Trump and Bolsonaro as well as Viktor Orban of Hungary, Marine Le Pen of France, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands are placed in the context of growing wealth inequality and changing racial and gender dynamics that brought about a change in people’s lives and identities. and caused widespread uncertainty. Right wing populism is a direct result of this, and grows by channeling people’s fears and frustrations.

Philosopher and political scientist Noam Chomsky said in an interview that right wing populism is a manifestation of the general collapse of central political institutions in the neoliberal era.

He said, What is happening is reminiscent of the observations of Gramscis about an earlier time, when the old dies and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, many different morbid symptoms appear.

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