Opinion by Eugene Robinson | America’s Trumpist export to Brazil: Election denialism
But in both cases, unprecedented savagery was inspired by a cynical and unscrupulous leader who amassed his following by inflaming his supporters’ most atavistic fears and resentments, who sought not to unite his nation but to divide it — and who was willing to respect democratic norms only when election results went his way.That these awful events happened in the Western Hemisphere’s two biggest democracies is ominous.
of the Brazilian Congress and the head of the Supreme Court. The officials issued a joint statement calling the violence “acts of terrorism” and accused the rioters of attempting a coup d’etat.the Planalto Palace failed in their attempts to break into the president’s inner sanctum. One obvious question for Brazilian justice will be whether Bolsonaro bears criminal responsibility. Like Trump, he began claiming even before the election — with no justification — that the vote would be rigged against him. Like Trump, he refused to accept the result. But unlike Trump, Bolsonaro was mostly silent between his loss in October and Lula’s inauguration on Jan. 1.
But just as Trump refused for hours to call off the Capitol mob on Jan. 6, 2021, Bolsonaro refused for three months to tell his supporters they should respect democratic norms and the peaceful transfer of power. And he repeatedlyfor the brutal military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985, encouraging followers to remember that era as a time of “order and progress” — the motto emblazoned on the Brazilian flag.
The common spark might have been nothing more complicated than the solipsistic ambitions and fragile egos of two men, Trump and Bolsonaro. But the result, first in the United States and now in Brazil, is a sharp increase in political polarization and a weakening of the values and traditions that knit democratic societies together.The buildings the rioters defaced and dishonored, set around the Plaza of the Three Powers, were designed by Brazil’s greatest architect,.
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