IN a probably self-conscious echo of the storming of the US Congress by Trump supporters two years ago, on Sunday a far-right mob overran government buildings in Brasilia, including the congress, the supreme court and the presidential palace.
They were fired up by repeated claims by former president Jair Bolsonaro, defeated in last year’s election by Lula, that Brazil’s voting system is open to fraud. These allegations lack any evidential basis whatsoever.
Bolsonaro, an extreme rightwinger bordering on fascist, denies that he inspired Sunday’s riot. However, he refused to take part in the ceremonial handover of power to Lula last week.
Instead, the ex-president fled to Florida, apparently to place himself beyond the reach of Brazilian justice. His supporters, defeated at the ballot box, have been imploring the Brazilian military to launch a coup against Lula, who they describe, incorrectly, as a “communist.”
Sunday’s action may have been more performative than a serious attempt at a coup. Nevertheless, it was well-organised and violent.
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the episode was the ease with which the central buildings of the Brazilian state were overrun.
This speaks to passivity at best and complicity at worse in key parts of the state apparatus, including the federal police. Fascism never secures power without support from the police, the army and other governing institutions.
So far the balance of state power in Brazil, which endured a military dictatorship until the 1980s, has come down on the side of democracy. There were scant signs of international support for a Bolsonaro putsch.
But that cannot permit complacency regarding the future. Coming after the Trumpist attack on the US Capitol on January 6 2021, there is a danger that such attacks on the symbols and institutions of democracy may become normalised.
Broadly, the populist right will never accept an unfavourable electoral verdict, will spin lies about the voting process, aided and abetted by social media with its festering swamp of conspiracies, and will then be mobilised by sundry demagogues to impose its will by force.
Sooner or later one of these events will turn deadly serious and, depending on the contingent situation, succeed in its objectives to some degree or other.
The danger may be greatest in Latin America, where military rule is an all too recent experience and events from Bolivia to Peru expose a right-wing ruling elite simply unwilling to accept democracy if it imperils their wealth and social privilege.
However, the lessons are universal. Democracy will be vulnerable as long as the state apparatus remains an alienated special instrument standing above the people and ultimately at the service of the capitalist class.
Nationalist populism, drawing on deep wells of resentment fuelled by capitalist globalisation as well as manufactured identity conflicts, serves the same class interests, whatever delusions may be entertained by many of its followers.
Together these factors pose a challenge to the left. Only its own narrative of popular empowerment can see off the authoritarian populists, and only acting on that programme when in office can diminish the danger from the state.
Lula’s election last year to a third term as president as the candidate of the Workers Party shows the potential. Now he will need to follow through on statements that those involved in Sunday’s outrage will be properly punished.
The exile skulking in Florida needs to be held to account too, as well as those Bolsonaro appointees who failed to protect against the insurgents. Democracy needs to defend itself forcefully.
