Supporters of Brazil’s right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the nation’s seat of power on Sunday in a chaotic scene reminiscent of the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol that unfolded two years and two days before.
For anyone who watched as the mob of former president Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the seat of the US legislature in a last-ditch attempt to keep him in office against the wishes of American voters, the scene in Brasilia was all too familiar. Pro-Bolsonaro insurrectionists, egged on by social media-driven lies alleging that widespread voter fraud was responsible for the ex-army general’s defeat at the hands of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, ransacked the buildings used by Brazil’s legislature, Mr da Silva and his staff, and the Brazilian Supreme Court for a period of hours before being driven out by soldiers and law enforcement who arrested more than 400 of them.
