Live reporting
The Guardian Live on events in Brasilia:
Democratic congressman Joaquin Castro has joined Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s call for former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s extradition from the US.
Seriously. Boot him out.
Brazil’s GloboNews is reporting that the country’s Congress, supreme court and presidential palace have all been retaken by security forces.
…
GloboNews has also shared footage of the aftermath of the attack on the palace taken by the minister of communications, Paulo Pimenta, in which he says of his office: “Look what the vandals did here! The chaos. Unbelievable. They are criminals.”
In three blocks before that one the Guardian calls the attack “the protests,” which seems very mistaken. A coup is not a protest. An attempted coup is not a protest.
Yikes! January 6 all over again, two years almost to the day.
I begin to wonder though about defining away protests when we disagree with them. Don’t get me wrong, Bolsonaro is a fascist thug, but his supporters are as passionate as the Iranians protesting the theocrats…or for that matter, the January 6 crazies. Or for that matter earnest, oh so certain Pakistani crowds calling for death to blasphemers. I guess what I am saying is that in my dotage I am suspicious or skeptical of all loud, vocal,violent political movements???? few revolutions improve things,and many mass movements are taken over by opportunists. I am struggling with this because of course the Imabs should fall. But a shouting crowd is not always right.
but what I am saying is it perfectly accurate to define this nastyness as a protest. Even if we hate what it represents.
Brian: I think the key distinction is the actual violence. Note that the women of Iran are shaming, not shooting. And if violence does break out, it’s generally instigated by the security forces, first. In this way, it resembles most of the BLM protests, too.
OTOH, if the very point of the assemblage is to commit violence, then it’s either a riot or an insurrection. The latter term, honestly, is content-neutral; how I feel about a given insurrection varies with how I feel about the purpose behind it (as you say, let the imans fall). But it’s still a different beast than a protest, and it’s important to draw those kinds of distinctions.
I can agree with the term insurrection for sure!
It is important to see this in context, as well. In the United States, the January 6th putsch was the first time that Americans have tried to use violence to interrupt the peaceful transition of power in accordance with our democratic traditions. Yes, it was mostly random jackasses, but a significant minority were determined political operatives actually trying to stop the certification of the election, and they succeeded in briefly interrupting it.
In Brazil, the important context to consider is that the first peaceful transition of power from one political party to another happened the first time Lula got elected. It was never a sure thing the right wing would allow it to happen. The riot there was a call to return to the bad old days of military dictatorship.
Second time, I think, the first being the successful attack on Fort Sumter.
Ophelia, the attack on Fort Sumter was use of violence of American against American, and intended to interrupt our democratic traditions, being part of a larger insurrection, but it didn’t target the peaceful transition of power – 1861 was not an election year.
I lived in Brazil for several years, and I was living there when Lula was elected. It was not at all certain that he would be allowed to take office in 2003. The fact he did (the first time power had ever been transferred peacefully from one party to another in Brazil) was a huge step in the creation of modern Brazil. Many people in the armed services (and I worked with some of them) wanted him not to be allowed to take office, and would have supported a military coup. Brazil is a much younger democracy than the United States; in this sense, the US passed the milestone Brazil did in 2003 with the transfer from Adams (Federalist) to Jefferson (Democratic-Republican) in 1801 (Washington was unaffiliated).
Although the putsch on the US Capital on January 6 was shocking, the possibility that it could have succeeded is laughably minute. On the other hand, in Brazil, all it would have taken was a couple of generals deciding to throw their troops in the ring and Brazilian democracy would have ended (again, like it did in the coup of 1964) yesterday. I have no doubt Bolsonaro expected this, and was disappointed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/12/world/americas/brazil-election-bolsonaro-military.html
Now we know.
Thanks Papito!
2021 wasn’t an election year either.
Surely the attack on Fort Sumter did target the peaceful transfer of power in a broad sense? South Carolina seceded because Lincoln was elected. The situations aren’t identical of course, but they’re not radically different either.
But it’s a small point, and your insider knowledge of Brazil is worth far more.
@8, do you know why, or have an opinion why, the armed forces didn’t back Bolsonaro this time?
#11, I can give you a series of reasons.
1: I think that if FH had pulled the crap Bolsonaro just did, back in 2002, the military might have thrown in on the coup then. But he didn’t – FH supported the transition of power then. And he supports it (and Lula) now.
https://www.plenglish.com/news/2022/10/05/former-president-cardoso-supports-lula-for-runoff/
Back in 2002, some on the far right were loudly worried that Lula was going to screw things up. But he didn’t. He didn’t screw around with pensions, didn’t default on debt, and managed to right the economic turbulence caused by the panic in capital markets, and help the poorest in society, and reduce deforestation, all at the same time (yes, thanks in large part to a commodities boom).
So the charge that Lula is a wild-eyed revolutionary just won’t stick to him, even less this time. He’s a moderate. He’s from the left, but he governed before – and will govern again – as a centrist.
2. In 1964, the US government had its hands in the coup against Goulart. Biden vs Lula? I don’t think so.
3. The Brazilian military has changed in the decades since 1964. They do not want to be involved in politics in the same way anymore. Most of them might vote for Bolsonaro, many campaigned for Bolsonaro, or worked for Bolsonaro, and I can tell you I’ve met plenty who wouldn’t give Lula the Heimlich if he were choking on a chicken bone, but by and large they want the military coup business to stay in the past.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics-military-analysis/threat-of-brazil-military-coup-unfounded-retired-generals-say-idUSKBN23T1JW
4. It’s one thing to lead a coup from the front lines in Brasilia. To lead it from Miami is another thing entirely. Brazilian leaders, like those from many other countries, have a bad reputation for stealing money from the country. Bolsonaro is no exception; he has been playing fast and loose with great bags of cash for years now. Stolen Russian money ends up in London; stolen Latin American money ends up in Miami. Bolsonaro has essentially fled the country to be with his stolen money. Now that he’s not the President, the multiple investigations into his family’s corruption won’t be impeded any longer. Jair will likely never return to Brazil unless he is extradited by force.
Thank you!
Papito @#8:
Latin America was colonised from the Iberian Peninsula, and the society which was transplanted was totally feudal, and a dominant motive was a quest for gold, with the usual stories that it was just there for the taking. The transplanted societies had yet to go through an anti-feudal phase of democratic revolution, such as was begun in Britain in 1640, as led by Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans. That democratic revolution in turn led on to the Pilgrim Fathers in the Mayflower and their push against feudalism which ultimately gave rise to North American democracy.
Feudal societies transform fairly naturally into military dictatorships (vide the Spanish Civil War 1936-39).
Donald Trump was out of step with the American democratic tradition, but Bolsonaro was very much in-step with the antidemocratic and neofeudal Latin American one.