Eraldo Peres / AP
Protesters, supporters of Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro, storm the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil, Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023. Planalto is the official workplace of the president of Brazil.
Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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Extremist supporters of Brazil’s right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro attacked government buildings in the country’s capital, wrecking property and trashing offices of lawmakers, the president and the Supreme Court, in demanding that Bolsonaro be reinstated.
Sitting at home in Las Vegas, UNLV history professor Michael Green couldn’t help drawing comparisons. The Jan. 8 attack in Brasília looked familiar.
“I think what boiled over was months of imitating what (former President) Donald Trump and other Republicans have done and said in the United States,” said Green, who spoke last week during an event hosted by Battle Born Progress dissecting how extremism exhibited by supporters of Trump has become the model for anti-democratic uprisings around the world.
“And given that they couldn’t exactly claim that they were overthrowing the government — they didn’t have the means to do it, and they weren’t stopping the electoral count — it may have been more of a spasm, if you will; something that reflected what has been going on (all over).”
Nearly two years ago in the U.S., thousands of Trump supporters amassed in Washington, D.C., to attend a rally where Trump asked then-Vice President Mike Pence to subvert the will of the American people who had elected Joe Biden as president. After Trump’s speech, thousands of supporters, some equipped with paramilitary gear, marched to the Capitol as Congress was convening to certify the Electoral College vote in Biden’s favor. Rioting Trump supporters overpowered Capitol Police, broke through temporary barriers and ultimately forced their may into the building, sending lawmakers to seek cover.
Five people died as a result of the rioting, and the ensuing criminal investigation remains the largest in U.S. history. To date, more than 950 individuals have been arrested, and Trump is under federal investigation for his apparent role in the insurrection.
Like Trump, Bolsonaro is also a right-leaning populist who resorted to intentional mistruths and debunked conspiracy theories to attempt to undermine Brazil’s faith in its electoral system. Bolsonaro for months stated publicly he would not accept the results of October’s presidential election if he lost.
Where the Jan. 8 Brazilian attack differs, however, was the nature of the riot itself. New President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was in office for more than a week, and Bolsonaro had left Brazil and was in Florida at the time of the attack.
“This was not so well organized as I think Jan. 6 was,” Green said, “which may have something to do with the fact that Bolsonaro was not on the scene and was not telling them to march. And they weren’t preparing in the way of having various means of checking arms and that sort of thing. So there are comparisons here with Jan. 6, and there are similarities in terms of what they did. But there are also some striking differences.”
Similar to the United States, Brazil and other South American nations have been plagued with a tidal wave of mis- or disinformation, said Ignacio Romero, who manages Latin American anti-disinformation efforts for Battle Born Progress.
Whereas misinformation can entail rumors or urban myths that aren’t true, disinformation is the deliberate dissemination of misleading or false information to fit a certain narrative, Romero said. Hacker groups from the likes of Russia, China and Iran are usually the culprit for widespread disinformation campaigns in the U.S., but fringe media outlets, social media influencers and some politicians play a role, too.
And that’s especially the case for countries like Brazil, but also Colombia, Argentina, Chile and others, Romero said. Disinformation was a major factor during the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, and efforts to spread misinformation have been a near daily occurrence in Ukraine since it was invaded by Russia in February 2022.
Anti-democratic movements have taken hold in many areas of the world in recent years, according to Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization that tracks the status of democracy globally. In Europe and Asia, where nations like Italy, Poland, Hungary, Myanmar and others have either experienced far-right coalitions coming to power or outright military coups, the rise of these movements has come at the cost of freedom for millions.
“The influence of ‘fake news’ has become a big threat to democratic societies,” Romero said. “It’s created an echo chamber of this disinformation, and, at this point, it’s a worldwide problem. … It can pose a threat to both the social cohesion and the public safety of our countries.”
Brad Bauman, a progressive political strategist and CEO of Fireside Campaigns, said he experienced firsthand the perils of when disinformation emboldens people to act out. Bauman served as spokesman for the family of Seth Rich, a staffer for the Democratic National Committee who was killed in Washington in 2016. Rich’s death sparked a wave of conspiracy theories in far-right circles, ultimately causing many conspiracists to harass loved ones of Rich and even Bauman himself.
“It has a real effect on people’s lives,” Bauman said. “It literally has effects as small as on the individual, and as large as this massive, international movement.”
Bauman blames the “always-on” nature of social media and cable news, which has created a seemingly unlimited flood of information — truthful or not — to be accessible wherever, whenever.
“That’s not an accident,” he continued. “This confluence of technology, and this confluence of feeling like we live in a world that is maybe moving too quick for our institutions and our governments and everything else — it’s really created this very off dynamic where folks who want to manipulate us have all the tools and money that they need in order to do so.”
Green, the UNLV professor, also sees parallels between Jan. 6 and the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence, he said, was such a revolutionary document at its time that it inspired several nations around the world to follow and fight for their own independence.
The same could be happening now, albeit the consequence of today’s U.S.-led domino effect is the antithesis of what happened nearly two and a half centuries ago.
“The whole notion of the Declaration of Independence and all men are created equal, (it) had a lot of resonance elsewhere. And now it’s more of a loop,” Green said. “At a moment where the U.S. with various leaders in politics here and various leaders elsewhere are going back and forth with one another, with a combination of disinformation and advocating action against the government and its people.”
