Good morning. Almost exactly two years after the January 6 Capitol attack in the United States, Brazil has seen a far-right coup attempt of its own.
On Sunday, as many as 3,000 extremists stormed the architectural treasures of the presidential palace, the supreme court and the Congress in Brasília. They smashed windows, threw rocks, destroyed works of art and a replica of the constitution, stole documents, beat and bloodied at least one police officer, and lit fires. “This is a historic moment,” one protester said on a livestream. “This is the invasion, no, the occupation, of the National Congress.”
By the time they were subdued by security forces using tear gas and rubber bullets, around 1,500 people had been arrested. On Monday, as pro-democracy rallies took place in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, riot police were clearing out camps where Jair Bolsonaro supporters had been staying in the capital.
As all of this unfolded, Bolsonaro - who was defeated by his leftist rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (widely known as Lula), last year - was thousands of miles away in Florida. He has been holed up in a mixed-martial-arts fighter’s mansion (featuring a Minions-themed bedroom); on Monday, his wife said he had been taken to hospital with “abdominal pain”. But whatever his physical distance, and despite some heavily qualified criticism of the rioting, he is as indelibly linked to the events of the last two days as any of his supporters who were present. Today’s newsletter, with the Guardian’s Tom Phillips in Brasília, explains why. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
NHS | Strikes by paramedics and nurses will go ahead from this week despite Rishi Sunak’s major U-turn on new pay negotiations. While the government is understood to be considering a one-off payment to health workers, unions were frustrated at ministers for not making a concrete offer in a meeting yesterday.
Environment | A United Nations report has found that the hole in the ozone layer, which was once the most feared environmental threat, is on course to be completely healed across most of the world by 2040. The areas over the north and south pole will be repaired by 2045 over the Arctic and 2066 over the Antarctic.
Conservatives | The MP Andrew Bridgen has been suspended from the House of Commons for five days after being found to have breached lobbying rules. Bridgen failed to overturn a finding that he had approached ministers and officials on behalf of a forestry company that had given him a donation.
Health | More than 100,000 people with type 1 diabetes in England are to be offered an artificial pancreas, which experts believe could become the “holy grail” for managing the disease. A world-first trial on the NHS found it was more effective at managing diabetes than current devices.
Space | A historic space mission that took off from Cornwall has ended in huge disappointment after a rocket carrying the first satellites launched from British soil failed to reach orbit.
In depth: Brazil reaps what Bolsonaro sowed
In the campaign leading up to Bolsonaro’s defeat in national elections last year, there were serious fears that he would seek to orchestrate a coup. In the end, he went grudgingly but relatively quietly. But that should not be read as a rejection of the anti-democratic politics that animates his movement.
In Brasília, the fruits of Bolsonaro’s years-long campaign to undermine Brazilian democracy are now evident. “It’s extremely tense,” Tom said, from the military base where the march began, a helicopter audible in the background as he spoke. “Lots of roads have been sealed off, there are police everywhere. A woman who took part in the march told me they had one objective: get rid of Lula. And they absolutely believe they have Bolsonaro’s support.”
Later, Tom sent a voice note as he toured the buildings that had come under attack. “I just don’t have the words to describe the damage they’ve done - it’s unbelievable,” he said. “All of the windows have been smashed out the front, they’ve ripped up portraits, destroyed display cabinets in the museum of the senate … it’s crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
Here’s Tom’s report after surveying the wreckage. And here’s a look at some of the reasons many hold Bolsonaro responsible.
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Praise for Brazil’s dictatorship
Bolsonaro has set the anti-democratic tone that fomented Sunday’s riots for years, in ways direct and indirect. And he has long defended the brutal dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985.
When running to be president, he described it as a “very good” period. In 2019, he insisted there had never been a military coup even as he ordered the armed forces to commemorate its anniversary. Later in the year, he called an army officer who headed a notorious intelligence unit and personally oversaw torture a “national hero”. And as early as 1999, he was already casting himself as the military rulers’ anti-democratic successor: “There’s not even the littlest doubt,” he said in a television interview. “I’d stage a coup the same day [I became president,] the same day.”
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Rejection of Brazilian democracy
Throughout his ill-fated campaign for re-election last year, Bolsonaro repeatedly raised fears that he would orchestrate a military coup to retain power – laying the groundwork for any such project by describing it as a “necessary countercoup” to the power of the same congress and supreme court that came under attack on Sunday.
Bolsonaro made repeated and unfounded claims that the electronic voting system in uncontroversial use since 1996 could not be trusted. He even told supporters they should buy guns, saying: “An armed population will never be enslaved,” later saying: “If need be, we will go to war.”
In the end, no such coup materialised after his defeat, perhaps because Bolsonaro knew he lacked the institutional support to pull it off. But most independent analysts in Brazil view those remarks as central to the genesis of thhis week’s events.
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Ties to the military police
One of the most shocking aspects of the march of thousands of Bolsonaro supporters on government buildings on Sunday was the hands-off attitude of the military police, who were either absent altogether or escorted the mob on its 8km route without any attempt at an intervention. (For more on that, see this BBC piece.) Lula said: “The police didn’t do anything at all. They just let the protesters in.”
In August 2021, 25 Brazilian state governors signed minutes of a meeting expressing concern over the high levels of support for Bolsonaro within the military police – and if the 500,000-strong force is shown to have sanctioned the attempted coup, many will see widespread support for the former president in their ranks as a critical factor. Many marched in support of his re-election bid, and during the final round of the election, there were reports of police blocking motorways and pulling over an estimated 550 buses filled with Lula supporters, prompting allegations of voter suppression.
Bolsonaro has assiduously courted that tendency – and while he might have required support within Brazil’s major institutions to enact a coup proper, this prescient piece by Amanda Taub of the New York Times from September argues:
Riots, popular uprisings and other forms of mass unrest are different from traditional coups. The police are usually the first line of response to such mass action. And that gives them tremendous power to affect outcomes, for one simple reason: They can decide whether or not to show up.
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Support for extremists – both tacit and explicit
Throughout his presidency, Bolsonaro attended far-right and anti-democratic protests. In 2020, he went to a pro-dictatorship rally at the height of the pandemic (pictured above), and later in the same year, he joined a rally against the supreme court riding a horse borrowed from the military police. He led a vast Independence Day rally on 7 September last year which Tom describes now as “a dry run”.
Even as his chief of staff acknowledged the reality of the election loss, Bolsonaro told supporters: “The armed forces are united, they owe loyalty to our people. The ones who decide what the armed forces are going to do are you.” Protests continued throughout December – and while, as Tom writes here, they were sometimes viewed as absurd, the line that really stands out from that piece now is this from John D French of Duke University: “It’s cadre formation. They are building a movement.”
Given all that, it is perhaps unsurprising that Bolsonaro’s relative silence since leaving office has not been viewed by his supporters as an admission of defeat, but, Tom said, “a sign that he is really egging them on”.
His comments after Sunday’s riots are classic Bolsonaro (and reminiscent of Donald Trump’s response to January 6): “He is being careful in an attempt not to be blamed for this,” Tom said, but coupled a narrow rejection of “depredations and invasions of public buildings” with a false parallel to protests by the left in 2013 and 2017 and no direct condemnation of the mob – as well as a denial of responsibility.
Now there are calls for his US visa to be revoked lest he use Florida as a base for destabilising the Lula government. In this piece, Richard Lapper argues that while the protesters’ actions have have probably strengthened Lula for now, more sophisticated members of the far right are playing a long game, and will be happy to abandon Bolsonaro if it now suits them.
If so, that may be because they conclude that Bolsonaro’s record of incitement and rhetorical escalation is too clear-cut to stand behind. “It was very obviously coming, for months, if not years,” Tom said. “His fingerprints are all over this.”
What else we’ve been reading
Deep fake technology tends to be associated with nefarious activity: fraud, revenge porn, disinformation. Stuart Heritage visited the ITV studios to talk to the makers of a new CGI-assisted comedy (pictured above) that is using it to super imposethe faces of celebrities on to performers in sketches. Nimo
If you’re asking yourself whether you’re a “Harryite” or a “Williamist”, you are missing the point, writes Polly Toynbee: that monarchy engenders “a feudalism of the imagination that gives a stamp of approval to … our social and political malaise.” Archie
Ashifa Kassam’s deep dive into the world of shipwrecks is a fascinating read that explores what the 3m vessels scattered across the world’s ocean floors tell us about the state of the planet. Nimo
Cracks in Conservative MPs’ support for Rishi Sunak’s handling of multiple strikes are beginning to show, writes Katy Balls - but “anyone awaiting a U-turn … from the government could be disappointed”, because advisers fear that a U-turn would demolish the PM’s personal authority. Archie
Despite condemning the Trump administration for its draconian, hostile and often racist immigration policies, Joe Biden’s government continues to employ similar policies behind the scenes. Moustafa Bayoumi argues that trying to mollify conservative anti-immigration sentiments is futile. Nimo
Sport
FA Cup | Premier League leaders Arsenal scored three goals in three minutes in their FA Cup Clash against Oxford Utd. The 3-0 win sends Arsenal forward to a fourth round match against Manchester City.
Tennis | Emma Raducanu remains hopeful she will be ready to compete at the Australian Open, which begins next Monday, as she attempts to recover from the ankle injury suffered last week. Raducanu said she is “taking it a day at a time and not trying to expect too much at this point”.
Football | Gareth Bale, who has announced his retirement, played to win, Jonathan Liew writes – but “in the 30-yard screamers and lightning bursts of speed, you can spot something else there too: a young man playing for the sake of playing, for the thrill of solving a new problem, playing to feel”.
The front pages
The Guardian headlines: “NHS strikes to go ahead as unions blame minister for failures of talks”. The i meanwhile says “Hopes rise of breakthrough with plan to backdate pay”. The Mirror reports on claims from a union chief that the health secretary said NHS staff should “Work harder” if they want a pay rise. The Times says “Overloaded NHS turns to cabins in car parks”.
The Mail leads with “Now Harry admits: There’s no way back”, while the Sun goes with “Villain Camilla” as it unpicks the latest revelations from Prince Harry’s autobiography.
The Telegraph reports “UK willing to send tanks to Ukraine as British aid workers go missing”. Finally the Financial Times says “Breakthrough in talks with Brussels over Northern Ireland trade impasse’”.
Today in Focus
What has Brexit done for Britain?
It’s three years since the UK officially left the EU. Have promises made during the referendum been kept? Lisa O’Carroll, the Guardian’s Brexit correspondent, and Heather Stewart, a Guardian special correspondent, tell Nosheen Iqbal what they have learned from travelling the country to build up a picture of Brexit’s impact.
Cartoon of the day | Edith Pritchett
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
More than 10,500 donors have so far given to the Guardian and Observer’s annual charity appeal, bringing the total to over £1.25m. The money is being raised for grassroots charities working at the frontlines of the cost of living crisis. The charity partners, Citizens Advice and Locality, have been offering services such as food banks and warm rooms, debt and housing advice, and mental health support. It is the eighth year in a row this campaign has raised more than £1m for causes including refugee support, climate justice, and Windrush and immigration injustice.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
