There are unmistakable parallels between the events of Jan 6, 2021 and Jan 8, 2023, as well as between the prime movers of the two violent mobs: Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. We explain.
Bolsanaro and Trump are among the rightwing populist leaders who have come to power in several countries by harnessing popular anti-establishment sentiment through intense anti-globalist and anti-minority rhetoric, and who have subsequently gone on to attack and subvert a range of democratic institutions in their countries.
Trump and Bolsonaro have openly expressed support and admiration for each other, and Trump has earlier 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 at the United States Capitol two years ago. In both cases, angry supporters of a president who had been defeated in an election — unfairly, they believed — stormed government buildings with the intention of “taking back” their country. In both cases, they were egged on by their leaders — Trump and Bolsonaro — with baseless claims of election fraud.
In a speech on December 2, 2020, Trump said, “If we don’t root out the fraud, the tremendous and horrible fraud that’s taken place in our 2020 election, we don’t have a country anymore.”
Two years later, Bolsonaro’s son used almost identical language, claiming that his father was the victim of “the greatest electoral fraud ever seen”.
A common playbook
The parallels between the uprisings in Washington DC and Brasilia are not coincidental. Rather, they are a part of a common playbook that rightwing populists have used to exploit anti-institutional anger and ultra-nationalist urges.
Elites in the guise of being “men of the masses”
It takes years of undermining rhetoric and action to persuade almost half the population of a country to begin doubting the sanctity of its democratic elections and institutions.
Both men promised to deregulate businesses and reduce taxes, they sought to dismantle environment protection frameworks in their countries, and pushed unscientific and dangerous public policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Rise of the populist right
The rise of leaders like Trump and Bolsonaro – also Viktor Orban of Hungary, Marine Le Pen of France, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands – has been situated in the context of growing wealth inequalities and changing racial and gender dynamics that have put people’s lives and identities in flux and engendered widespread insecurities. Right wing populism is a direct outcome of this, and grows by channelling people’s fears and frustrations.