Brazil’s Copy-Cat Riot
Terry H. Schwadron
Jan. 10, 2023
The copy-cat aspects of what we see from thousands of Jair Bolsonaro supporters overrunning Brazil’s federal government buildings to our Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection attempt are impossible to ignore.
The videos look the same, the rationale of baseless election protest is the same, the violent disregard for law is the same, even the boasted links between Bolsonaro and Donald Trump are built on the same iconoclastic and selfish principles. As with our own version, it failed to change the election results.
It’s an outrageous export of the absolute worst of U.S. values.
As with our own version, it failed to change the election results. There were hundreds of arrests, there will be prosecutions and what passes as investigation of the coordination and scheming that led to this day under Brazilian rules, which, with any luck, allow actions earlier than the two-year-plus project that we still are undergoing.
Joe Biden joined with leaders across South America and the world in condemning the anti-democracy riots, generally backing the claim that Bolsonaro, who proclaimed himself “the Trump of the tropics,” brought it all to fruition. One Democratic congressman even called for expulsion of Bolsonaro from Florida, where had fled after losing the election.
What I heard, however, was the near silence from our Republican leadership about all of it, akin to the continuing inanity from them about how our own Jan. 6 was “tourists,” or am rally grown out of control or somehow the fault of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi rather than the planned, coordinated and directed affair that own investigative process has published and handed to our Justice Department for review.
Trump himself issued no statement, nor others in leadership roles, and others merely said rioting is generally bad. There was no linkage to our own anti-democratic rioting.
The Outlandish
In the end, what is most outlandish is not that we have a copy-cat, but that we have a new Republican majority in the House that is actively intending to attack the basis of our own Jan. 6 probes and that intends to undercut our own FBI and Justice Department as partisan in prosecuting the insurrection.
We are just coming off a week of internecine Republican battles for control of the party that resulted in newly elected Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) actively make deals with right-wing Congressmen who include several who are under review by the Justice Department for their participation in the schemes and 147 others who voted to ignore our practices to keep peaceful transfer of power.
Our Congress is focused on the formalities of taking down the Biden administration by attacking our very institutions in a non-riotous manner. The concept of Truth is not at issue, only the need to win at all costs — at the ballot box, through legal means or in the streets. Here was Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), whose phone was seized by Jan. 6 investigators now being invited to sit on the Judiciary Committee to offer oversight to the people looking at him. How is this right?
Somehow, we have told Brazilians that it is okay to do so. And so, empowered, they are copying the techniques, Expect more of it in other democracies.
For all the bellyaching by Republicans over what they see as a weakened America from Democratic attempts to deal with international events as diverse as war in Europe to climate issues, we now have direct evidence that what we are exporting is anti-democratic insurrection.
What could possibly be weaker?
The Trump Connection
“The scenes in Brasilia looked eerily similar to events at the US Capitol on 6 January two years ago — and there are deeper connections as well,” the BBC was reporting, harkening to podcasts by Trump associate Steve Bannon, that stoked feelings that elections in Brazil were fare for overthrow.
Bannon, who is appealing a guilty plea on contempt of Congress for failing to answer a subpoena for his role in Jan. 6 scheming, followed the same strategy used to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Bolsonaro’s son met with Trump in Mar-a-Lago in November and conferred with
Bannon and Trump adviser Jason Miller, according to The Washington Post
Where is the Trump denunciation of Brazil — or even of our own version? Where are our Republican leaders who are praising Trump and talking of those prosecuted by Justice as political prisoners?
I hope Brazil doesn’t need to wait two or three years to assert what the world was able to see in live video.
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