The mess Bolsonaro left behind: Supporters storm Brazilian capital, ransack centres of power

When Jair Bolsonaro left the Brazilian capital before handing over the power to his elected successor emulating Trump’s failure to attend the Biden inauguration, he was also carrying the standard of election denial and a refusal to accept an electoral loss. 

His failure to acknowledge his successor set up the stage for supporters to remain angry, whipped up, and ready to imitate the January 6, 2021, insurrection that attacked the US Capitol.

In Brasilia, on January 8, 2023, with Bolsonaro safely in Orlando in the United States, supporters did just what Trump supporters did in Washington two years and two days earlier; they stormed the Presidential Palace, the Palace of Justice, and the national legislature. 

They broke through barricades, assaulted police, attacked journalists, climbed onto rooves, smashed glass windows to gain entry to the palaces, ransacked offices, caused millions in damages, and attacked the democratic institutions of Brazil.

In the words of former US President Trump, who called on his supporters to what turned to be the attack on the US capitol by saying "Be there, will be wild!" what happened in Brasilia Sunday was "wild." 

The vast fields of Brasilia’s Monumental Axis, which a week earlier were filled with celebrations of Lula’s inaugural and of democracy, were filled with flag-caped, yellow Brazilian-team jersey-clad demonstrators in the tens of thousands, setting out to recreate January 6 in Brasilia. 

The capital’s Monumental Axis ends at Three Powers Plaza, a large open space between three monumental buildings that represent the three powers of the Brazilian republic: the Planalto Palace, the seat of the Brazilian federal executive; the Supreme Federal Court Palace, the seat of the country's highest court; and the National Congress Palace, the seat of the federal legislature. 

All three centers of power were stormed by mobs of protesters, in an orgy of anarchy and mayhem that destroyed offices, computers, artwork, glass windows, carpets, and even the chairs of justices and legislators; the moats around the buildings that just a week ago provided a reflective glow to celebrations of democracy, were left full of debris and furniture.  

In front of the National Congress Palace, police vehicles lay  askew half-submerged in the decorative moats, guardrails lay flat, people climbed on the ramps and onto the guarded roof of the palace, crowding around the domes of the two chambers of congress, shouting, waving flags and relishing the breakdown of order much like Trump supporters in their siege of the capitol.

At the Planalto Presidential Palace, the ramp on which Lula made his triumphant talk toward his presidency on January 1, was overrun by demonstrators battling with mounted police. The place meant to symbolize order and power in Brazil was in complete anarchy.

The replay of the American insurrection was eerie in its Brazilian incarnation. Some police guided the demonstrators as Capitol police did in the US and demonstrators put their feet up on the desks of lawmakers.

Bolsonaro spent years sowing doubt about Brazil’s electoral system, making allegations of vote stealing and fraud and using them as reasons to claim he may not accept the results of last year’s elections. With the elections nearing and polls showing an eventual defeat, Bolsonaro spent the last weeks of his campaign comparing an upcoming Lula presidency to the dictatorships in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.

As the elections played out, Lula defeated Bolsonaro twice. First by a 5.23 margin but failing to reach 50% of the vote. The result did, in the end, show the country profoundly divided. The runoff also went to Lula by a margin of 50.90 to 49.10. Lula received 60,345,999 votes to Bolsonaro’s 58,206,354, a nearly 2 million vote advantage.

But Bolsonaro never acknowledged his defeat, leaving others to confirm that a transition process would get underway. Bolsonaro himself went into seclusion at the Alvorada Presidential Palace, spending the longest time in his presidency without leaving the palace. His silence led to much speculation on part of his supporters who believed that he, like Trump, was a master strategist waiting for the right moment to strike back and fight the election results.

The uncertainty led many to organize massive sit-ins in front of military installations with the aim of giving the president cover to call in the military for an intervention on the elections, often resorted to prayers and begging militarymen to intervene "to save the country."

In the crowds there was a palpable fear of communism. "Our flag will never be red," was a frequent refrain in the monthslong sieges in front of military garrisons. 

In the end, Bolsonaro flew to Orlando, Florida, the day before his mandate ended, leaving some supporters discouraged while others believed it was one more stroke of genius to make a last-second move before Lula took power. Indeed, right-wing forums were expecting some action by Bolsonaro or the armed forces  until the last seconds before Lula was sworn in. Some, then, took down their protest camps in front of military installations and went home disappointed. Others remained. 

Trump strategists and supporters Steve Bannon, Gettr CEO Jason Miller, and FOX commentator Carlson Tucker became as active in post-election Brazil as they had been after Trump’s defeat in 2020.

On January 8, the American site The Gateway Pundit, a notorious far-right website instrumental in the communications before the January 6, 2021 attack, was actively spreading false news about the situation in Brasilia, and its posts were being magnified across right-wing WhatsApp and Telegram groups in Brazil.

Though president Lula was not in Brasilia at the time of the attack, TGP was claiming that Lula had fled to Sao Paulo. 

“Lula Flees Capital City and Flies to Sao Paulo, Massive Crowd Increasing in Size, Police Attacked,” ran the TGP headline being bounced across groups that included those in the mobs attacking the country’s institutions. "The people are taking back their country." That TGP is a known American fake news site did not filter to the Brazilians who believed their actions were resulting in a defeat of Lula.

The attacks continued. 

In begging the military to establish a military dictatorship, the protestors demonized the country’s Minister of the Superior Electoral Tribunal and justice of the Supreme Federal Court Alexandre de Moraes whose rulings forcefully countered anti-democratic actions by Bolsonaro in the runup to the elections.

Notable Brazil historian Jose Theodoro Mascarenhas Menck sees a long play in the current demonstrations. "They are a set up for an eventual impeachment," he told THE WEEK, noting that a delegitimizing of the Court would be a first step to delegitimizing the election results.

Outraged public protests led to the impeachment of Lula’s handpicked successor Dilma Rousseff in 2016.

The 2023 protests calling for a general stoppage on 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 of January were optimistically designed by far-right wingers to be a Reichstag Fire of sorts, creating sufficient chaos to set-up for a power grab that would let the military take over and put Bolsonaro back in power.

In 2021, THE WEEK looked at the threat to democracy that the similar Trump insurrection represented. Just as the US insurrection was coordinated and uncoordinated at the same time. 

Just as in the US insurrection, the attack in Brasilia was coordinated and spontaneous at the same time, augmented by uncoordinated elements who joined in the group dynamic. 

According to an investigation by Agência Pública, a non-profit investigative and independent journalism agency in Brazil, the final stages of the invasion and attack of the buildings at Three Powers Plaza were coordinated using a phrase used by Brazilian military personnel. 

The code, "Festa da Selma" (Selma's Party), was even used alongside the hashtag #BrazilianSpring, a term coined by Steve Bannon, said Agência Pública. It is a co-opted use of the Arab Spring term used by pro-democracy movements in Arab countries in 2011, this time used to spread false doubts about the Brazilian electoral system. 

But not all of the participants followed close organization. Many gathered at 5-star hotels near the presidential palaces, ostensibly unaffiliated in their political desire to deny Lula a lasting presidency.

They are part of a growing trend in global far-right extremism with a goal of upending the current political and social order. That goal is known as accelerationism, and it has the ability to bring together a diverse range of ideologies though it is not itself an ideology.

The basic accelerationist goal is to destroy the system in order to rebuild it to their liking, to accelerate change, if you will.

The events in Brasilia Sunday are of such magnitude in the historical context of the country that they are certain to bring about change, though in this instance, it will be driven by the Lula government and a desire to prevent events like it from happening again. 

Nearly 400 people had been arrested by the end of the day.

Lula condemned the "unlawful acts" and vowed to hold those responsible accountable. Speaking from the city of Araraquara, where he was visiting the flood-affected region, the president declared that "we will find out who these vandals are, and they will be brought down with the full force of the law." 

The new president then issued a decree declaring a federal intervention in Brasilia, giving the government special powers to restore law and order in the capital and pointed the finger of blame straight at Bolsonaro.

After remaining mum about the violence while tweeting about unrelated matters, Bolsonaro tweeted from Florida late in the evening, saying, "I repudiate the accusations, without evidence, attributed to me by the current head of the executive of Brazil."

"Peaceful demonstrations, in the form of the law, are part of democracy. However, depredations and invasions of public buildings as occurred today, as well as those practiced by the left in 2013 and 2017, escape the rule,” tweeted Bolsonaro. 

"Throughout my mandate, I have always been within the four lines of the Constitution, respecting and defending the laws, democracy, transparency and our sacred freedom."

In Brazil, a debate was reportedly taking place among the military with those firm in their belief that their role was exclusively for the defense of the country against foreign aggressors prevailing over those ready to move to "restore order" in a generous interpretation of Article 142 of the country’s constitution which many read that under the initiative of protecting the country it could move to guarantee "law and order."

"We won't accept the road of criminality to do political battles," said the country’s Minister of Justice Flávio Dino. "Criminality is criminality," referring to the breaching buildings, vandalism, and destruction that took place Sunday.

Governments around the world moved quickly to issue statements in support of Brazilian democracy. "I condemn the assault on democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power in Brazil. Brazil's democratic institutions have our full support and the will of the Brazilian people must not be undermined,” said US President Biden in a tweet. 

"Appalled by the acts of violence and illegal occupation of Brasilia's government quarter by violent extremists today. Full support to Lula and his government, to Congress and to the Federal Supreme Court. Brazilian democracy will prevail over violence and extremism," said European Union Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell Fontelles in a tweet.

"I strongly condemn the outrageous attacks on executive, legislative and judicial bodies in Brazil!" said Alexander Schallenberg, foreign minister of Austria, a country with a long relationship with Brazil. "Such assaults on democratic institutions are completely unacceptable. Perpetrators must be held to account."

In the US, Democratic lawmakers were moving to do just that with the former president in their midst. US Congressman Joaquin Castro from Texas has called on the Biden administration and local authorities in Florida to return Bolsonaro to Brazil. "[Bolsonaro] should be extradited to Brazil,"  Castro told CNN’s Jim Acosta. "In fact, it was reported that he was under investigation for corruption and fled Brazil to the United States. He’s a dangerous man, they should send him back to his home country, Brazil"

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an influential US Congresswoman from New York, noted in a tweet, "Nearly 2 years to the day the US Capitol was attacked by fascists, we see fascist movements abroad attempt to do the same in Brazil," vowing to stay in solidarity with the democratically elected Lula. "The US must cease granting refuge to Bolsonaro in Florida," concluded Ocasio-Cortez.