The Trump-Bolsonaro Connection
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Staff writer and Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Anne Applebaum is uniquely qualified to plumb the American influence on Brazil’s “ January 6 moment ,” the insurrection on Sunday by supporters of the country’s far-right former president, Jair Bolsonaro. I called Anne to discuss her article about how antidemocratic revolutions can be contagious , and the diplomatic path forward for the United States.
Autocracy International
Kelli María Korducki: In your essay, you use the term Autocracy International to describe a global cohort of antidemocratic influencers that includes figures from Donald Trump’s universe. Who are these people, and how do they factor into the Brazil riots?
Anne Applebaum: It’s mostly an online phenomenon. They operate in different languages—French; Dutch; Spanish; Italian; English, obviously; German—and they borrow one another’s memes and rhetoric. But they have some in-person meetings hosted by different religious and far-right groups as well. The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)—which is, of course, an American organization—held a meeting in Mexico in November, and a number of members of the Latin American antidemocratic right met there, including Eduardo Bolsonaro, the ex-president’s son, along with some Hungarians and several Americans; Steve Bannon joined by video. Already, at that meeting, Bannon was claiming that the Brazilian election had been stolen—a theme he has been repeating on his podcast for weeks, even before the results were known.
Kelli: You also write that even though Bannon certainly played a role in what happened in Brasília this week, the most powerful American influence was ultimately the example of what happened in D.C. on January 6.
Anne: The Brazil event was, in many ways, a kind of copycat riot. Look at what happened in the run-up to the Brazilian election: Bolsonaro essentially said, as Trump did, If I lose, it’s because the results have been falsified . And after the election, like Trump, he refused to [concede defeat]. He refused to attend the inauguration; in fact, he left the country. He’s now in Florida, at least as far as we know, not too far from Trump, and conceivably even in touch with him. And some of the language that he’s used, and some of the language that his followers have used, is clearly an imitation of what they read in the United States. The most important hashtag that was circulating in Brazil last week was #BrazilianSpring, in English, as if this were an Arab Spring–style uprising against dictatorship—whereas, in fact, it’s an uprising against an elected leader.
Public buildings have been attacked in Brazil before, so it’s not the first time this has happened. But the comprehensive nature of it—that it was the Congress as well as the Presidential Palace as well as the Supreme Court, that it involved using security barriers to break windows—this is, again, an imitation of what happened on January 6. That date, in the U.S., had an additional significance, which was that it was supposed to block the process of the change of presidential power. The Brazil attacks didn’t have that element but instead seem to have been timed to the anniversary of January 6.
Kelli: You close your essay by arguing that the U.S. should be proactive in supporting the Brazilian government’s investigations into the attacks. Why is this important?
Anne: If it turns out that Steve Bannon or Jason Miller or any of the other far-right propagandists who may have been supporting the idea of a coup in Brazil were involved or are indicted by the Brazilian government, then I think we should cooperate, and we should extradite them. If Bolsonaro turns out to be in the United States escaping justice—it’s not clear right now what his position is—then we should consider deporting him as well.
Above all, we should make it clear that these kinds of investigations are legitimate. We think they’re legitimate in Brazil, and we think they’re legitimate in the U.S. The faster they can happen and the faster these kinds of movements can be shut down, the better.
It’s very important that this riot, just like the riot at the Capitol on January 6, be shown to be a failure. This is not how you change power. It doesn’t work; it backfires. It has a terrible impact on those who started it. And, to the degree that there was any American financial or propaganda support for it, we should help in tracking down people who were involved.
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Like her or not, agree with her or not, for Anne Applebaum doors open without her having to knock. She is to the print media what Christiane Amanpour is to the audio/video media ... both have few equals.
Applebaum, like her or not? Of course there are always those who have an anathema to truth and proven facts of record.
surprisingly, inmates in american penal institutions tend to be very patriotic. I hope steve bannon is put into a large group setting while serving his time.
The bottom line here is the fact that Bannon was 'claiming' or rather lying and using the lies as another means to grift. I am perplexed as to how and why this is legal in an alleged republic of democracy.
The autocrat class is afraid. It appears to me that their survival depends on whether Putin's regime endures. And if it doesn't, if the 'new ruling class' in Russia pursues a complete opposite trajectory the autocracies in the world will collapse.
Now that Bolsarano is in Florida perhaps he'll move into Mar A Liaro.