The 'Trump' of Latin America

A view shows the damage caused following Brazil's anti-democratic riots, at the Supreme Court building in Brasilia, Brazil, January 9, 2023. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes

"They will not succeed in destroying Brazilian democracy. We need to say that fully, with all firmness and conviction."

"We will not accept the path of criminality to carry out political fights in Brazil. A criminal is treated like a criminal."

Justice Minister Flavio Dino, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

"Bolsonarism mimics the same strategies as Trumpism."

"Our January 8 -- an unprecedented manifestation in Brazilian politics -- is clearly copied from January 6 in the Capitol."

"Today's sad episodes represent yet another attempt to destabilize democracy and demonstrate that the authoritarian, populist radicalism of Brazil's extreme right remains active under the command of former president Bolsonaro, the 'Trump of Latin America'."

Paulo Calmon, political-science professor, University of Brasilia

 This past Sunday Brazilians whose political framework refuses to accept the victory vote in the recent general election that brought leftist Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva back to power in Brazil rampaged through the capital in a fury of rejection of the change of government, calling for the return of defeated president Jair Bolsonaro. The populist ex-president still has a passionate following in his country and they deplore the return of Lula de Silva.

 

Protesters on Sunday flowed in numbers into Congress, into the Supreme Court and into the presidential palace grounds, calling for the return of the former president and calling on the Brazilian military to restore Bolsonaro by coup. A pro-Bolsonaro encampment located outside a military building was broken up by police the following day, detaining about 1,200 people.

 

According to Brazil's minister of institutional relations, the buildings that had been stormed on Sunday would be inspected for evidence, including fingerprints and video images to ensure that those who were involved could be tracked down and held to account. There were further fears that the rioters intended to inspire similar such events across the country.

 

Dressed in the green and yellow of the Brazilian flag, rioters took to breaking windows, turning over furniture, tossing computers and printers to the ground outside buildings. A huge canvas of a nationalist painting at the presidential palace was slashed and destroyed, along with other works of art. At the Supreme Court, the U-shaped table that seats justices when they convene, was overturned, a door was ripped off one office, and an iconic statue standing outside the court was vandalized.

 

Governmental buildings and their interiors were left in shambles. On Sunday, 300 people were arrested, caught in the act of destroying public property. According to public prosecutors, local security forces had been negligent; the regional government had been temporarily suspended by a Supreme Court justice, and another justice placed blame on authorities for failing to quickly crack down on emerging neo-fascism in Brazil.

 

Hardcore supporters of ex-president Bolsonaro were convinced the electronic voting system was prone to fraud following the October 30 electoral defeat of the sitting government. Bolsonaro himself is no longer in Brazil. He left for Florida where he was admitted to an Orlando hospital with "abdominal pain", resulting from having been attacked and stabbed in 2018 while he was campaigning for the presidency, causing gut blockages and multiple hospitalizations over the years.

 

This is Brazil; the hard-core right susceptible to violent clashes with authorities in a polarized political arena where deeply left opponents cause their own type of violence in personal attacks meant to be lethal assassinations of those they deplore. Following his lost re-election, Jair Bolsonaro simply left the scene, neither accepting defeat nor congratulating his political opponent.

"I don't agree with what happened in Brasília - it was a nightmare. I don't agree with those who believe that with democracy you can use your power to destroy democracy."

"I want to show to the world and our country that even though there are thousands of people who believe the elections weren't valid, here in Brazil, we have a gigantic number of people who believe we can trust our government, we can trust in our democracy."

Gabriel, pro-Democracy rally, Sao Paulo, Brazil

A pro-democracy march in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil, around 1,200 miles (1931km) from the capital Brasilia, where the riots happened   Reuters

Defending Against The Enemy Within

Met Police Dept Narc officer Michael Fanone  ABC News

"It looked like a medieval battle scene. Some of the most brutal combat I've ever encountered."

"There’s no longer any police lines. There's just chaos. Rioters running rampant across the Capitol grounds, fatigued, you know, injured officers everywhere."

"[Officers who were in the tunnel defending the Capitol were] fighting like lions."

"Some guys pulled me out into the crowd and some were yelling something ... they were beating me."  "At one point, I got tased, people were yelling out, 'We got one. We got one'."

"Individuals in the crowd tried to get my gun. At one point, people started chanting, 'Kill him with his own gun'. I remember at one point, you know, some of the people in the crowd while I was getting tasered, they were stripping my gear off of my vest, my badge off my radio. They started grabbing ammunition magazines from my belt."

"I remember yelling out, not to anybody in specific, 'I have kids' and it seemed to work."

Michael Fanone, 20-year narcotics officer, Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department

 

Met Police Dept Officer Daniel Hodges ABC News

"Some of them were absolutely crazed -- I would  call them zealous true believers. They would let nothing stop them from getting inside. And it didn't matter, what they had to do to get inside."

"I thought, 'this could be the end,' or 'I could not get out of this completely intact'."

"The guy in front of me, that guy, he was  practically foaming at the mouth. He was screaming and just grabbed my arm, grabbed my filter on my masks, started beating my head against the door frame and ripping it off as best he could."

"Once he got my mask off, he also was able to rip away my night baton from me and started beating me in the head with it."

"Once they ripped my mask off, I was sucking in pepper spray, OC spray and tear gas the entire time. Obviously, that many people yelling in the tunnel is extremely loud. It was just a sensory overload. But all I know is that no one was getting by me."

“They were waving the 'thin-blue-line flag' while they were assaulting us."

"It’s not an exaggeration to say that we defended a democracy, that everyone's duly-elected representatives were in that building and the mob outside was not." 

Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges

Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they push barricades to storm the Capitol  
Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images

 

Washington, federal District of Columbia is preparing to inaugurate a new president, the 46th President of the United States of America. The inauguration will take place during a time of great internal division, the polarization of America between left and right, Democrat and Republican. Bipartisan reconciliation at this time in the history of the United States appears exceedingly remote. Americans failed to see any measure of agreement, only dissonance and hostility between those they elected to the House of Representatives and in the Senate in the past four years, and what they saw instructed them on how to react.

 

The United States Congress is so fundamentally at odds it seems to have disintegrated into a heckling, jeering high-school chorus of juvenile delinquents at times. The Democrats turned sharp left, their junior members calling for a version of America that would reflect their social values and they would accept nothing less. The Republicans remained wedded to their version of America the Great, the showpiece of world order and Democracy in Action. And their choice for president of that great country astonished the world. And the world watched as the United States retreated from its position of eminent leadership.

 

When Donald Trump was elected president, Democrats refused to accept that this was their new democratically elected president, that a majority of Americans saw promise in this man and opted to bring him to office. Rallies were organized post inauguration, conspiracy theories were given prominent and official status, and for the length of his stay in office until he was thwarted for a second term, he was considered by Democrats to be an illegal resident of the White House. Now, with the ascension of Joe Biden it is the Republicans' turn to refuse acknowledgment of his legitimacy -- with a vengeance, rude and violent.

There are now more troops stationed in Washington and around the 50 states than the collective of U.S. servicemen in Europe, Iraq or Afghanistan. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the federal body that serves as the internal monitor of criminal investigation in the United States, along with the Department of Homeland Security has warned lawmakers of the presence of radicalized followers of President Trump in dangerous insurrection mode, planning ongoing violent attacks against the nation in their zeal to promote overturning of the election results that rejected Mr.Trump and won the presidency for Mr.Biden.

 

Protesters climbed the bleachers that were erected for Biden's inauguration   Getty Images

Countrywide, armed attacks by radicalized militants for whom the prospect of President Trump leaving the White House for a Biden/Democratic occupancy motivates them to threaten the stability and security of the nation by an armed insurrection of hostile far-right and nationalist elements, among the 76 million loyal Americans who voted for a man who promised that their working-class rights would be upheld against the elites and the capitalists entrenched in Washington who look after their own well-being, disinterested in the needs of the greater population. They believed him then, and believe him still.

With the president's second impeachment, and his loyal followers' display of hostile, derogatory and violent reactions -- with the current of viral disaffection still on display as Internet communications continue to recruit and build on the violent disruption that took place on 6 January, the country is on virtual lockdown, not because of the coronavirus sweeping maliciously through the country, but martial law resulting from the malevolent violence of mob action in support of a disgraced president.

"Lacking designations for initiating a nationwide case for pursuing connected violence, federal law enforcement largely pursues cases reactively after an attack."

"Individual cases are pursued across dozens or even hundreds of jurisdictions even though subjects congregate, communicate, and collaborate with each other in online environments. Domestic terrorism's lack of designation also results in no effective measure for understanding the size, shape, and scale of each violent extremist threat."

Clint Watts, cybersecurity and counterterrorism expert

 

The FBI appears to believe that the riot in Washington was an "inside job" aided and abetted by a few members of Congress or their aides, along with some police. Last year a report emerged stating that supremacists and neo-Nazis had infiltrated security, military and police forces nationwide. Two known radical members of Congress appear to be under investigation. Unless these claims too, are part of a wider web of conspiracy theories. As though the entire nation has become the victim of fallacious demagoguery, suffering from a mass psychosis. 

That President Donald Trump in his dwindling days in power, incited thousands of his faithful followers to embark on a trajectory of violent dissent, disrupting the transition between administrations, casting aspersions on the kind of democracy they see playing out no longer favouring their version of events is beyond question. His speech furthermore -- hours before the mob's descent on the Capitol -- primed the mob to action, urged them to flood the Capitol, to leave no doubt that he and he alone is fit to govern the United States of America.

 

Michael Fanone, a DC detective, was dragged into the crowd and beaten   Reuters

 

Down To The Wire -- And May The Best (?) Man Win

"We know the disease. We social distance. We do all of the things that you have to do."

"If you get close, wear a mask. 'Oh, it's controversial.' It's not controversial to me. You get close, you wear a mask."

"Social distance, social distance."

U.S. President Donald Trump, Tampa, Florida -- Maskless audience

 

"They talk about the suburban women. And somebody said, ‘I don’t know if the suburban woman likes you.’ I said, ‘Why?’ They said, ‘They may not like the way you talk,’ but I’m about law and order. I’m about having you safe. I’m about having your suburban communities. I don’t want to build low-income housing next to your house."

"Suburban women, they should like me more than anybody here tonight because I ended the regulation that destroyed your neighbourhood. I ended the regulation that brought crime to the suburbs, and you’re going to live the American dream. So can I ask you to do me a favour? Suburban women, will you please like me? I saved your damn neighbourhood, OK?"

U.S. President Donald Trump

From the incredulity that was evinced by Democrats and the jubilation mixed with disbelief by the Republicans from the very moment it was clear that Donald J. Trump, businessman, entrepreneur, celebrity, man of wealth and television reality series-famer won the presidential election four years ago, a campaign to disinvite him from the White House was launched by leftists, the Democratic Party, feminists and any crank who gagged on the notion of this crude, crass man administering the executive affairs of the Republic of the United States of America. The campaign to smear and dislodge him gave no quarter and never ended.

An unprecedented campaign to smear him on any index of unsuitability to be president of the U.S. And they had plenty of help from their target who continually tweeted his opinion on anything at all, a man who resisted the pleas of those surrounding him at the White House in the hopes his bumptious rudeness could be tamed. He succeeded in alienating America's traditional Western allies by his negative comments on critical international alliances, leaving other government heads gasping for air and trying to puzzle out what the man's next move might be.

Highly unusual as it is that an incumbent president would not be re-elected for a second term, it certainly appears as though this is the direction this campaign is heading toward, with the Democratic selection for their version of a president with impeccable qualifications challenging the detestable Trump. To an outsider looking in, it appears as though there actually is no contest. Mr. Trump's challenger is not quite there. Oh, he's there, more or less, in his basement, purportedly coordinating things, while forgetting most other things, and he did appear for several televised debates with the president, but it seems he's not quite 'there'.

He is the conventional dummy, an over-the-hill politician who played second string to a hugely popular former president who, despite his popularity at home and abroad failed to distinguish himself and his country with his controversial and often unintelligible decisions. Now electors in America face a choice that is actually not much of a choice; between two faulty candidates. One of whom has done a fairly credible job of the presidency, the other agitating for his opportunity to overturn everything that his hated rival for the position managed to perform; both the good and the not-so-good.

COVID-19 has claimed over 225,000 U.S. lives, an astonishing situation for a premiere country of economic might and influence making it the sole superpower on the globe even under the condition that has led to its alienation from the tight little circle of Western allies. Mr. Trump has not distinguished himself in the manner in which he has personally led the challenge that COVID presented to the U.S. In his focus on restoring the economy, he has appeared to excel, however, even though the division between the wealthy and the poor in America continues to widen.

The political polarization in the country is staggering, however in its depth and vituperative distancing, an unhealthy failing that didn't start with Mr. Trump but certainly seemed to gain strength and ossify beyond the possibility of both political parties working together for the furtherance of the country's future fortunes. Should Joe Biden win the presidency, and that seems increasingly likely, the U.S. will finally secure a female president with the added bonus of a woman of colour. She will be nudged further to the left by the manipulation of other Democrats who have succumbed to the allure of  extreme 'progressive left' sympathies.

President Donald Trump, Iowa campaign rally (AP/Alex Brandon)

And although Mr. Trump's 'America First' campaign was seen as hostility in action with his trading partners, a President Biden, for as long as he will be around, will institute a focus on 'America First' that will make Mr. Trump's focus a watery pretender, revealing the new Democratic protectionist position in U.S. trade and industry. With a mere three days left to go before Americans swamp the polls in legendary numbers that will go down in posterity as a true voting anomaly, it appears as though Mr. Biden is in the ascendancy. 

And then, and then, Americans will live with the consequences of that decision for four years. It's just possible that the Republication reaction will be a mirror image of the Democratic reaction that served to divide their country far more than the Republican president is blamed for having done. But then, time will tell, it always does. That America will remain dangerously polarized, however, appears a given. That law and order that has slipped of late into crisis will continue its downward trajectory is certainly concerning.

The role of the media in the past four years has been resolutely and resoundingly anti-Trump but for rare occasions reflective of what is called 'right-wing' outliers. It is shameful that the media which should confine itself to delivering news in a neutral manner, has taken it upon itself to champion one candidate against another; true interference in the democratic process. All the more so that it has chosen to bypass investigating the connection between Joe Biden and his son's business arrangements in Ukraine and China in a questionable and certainly immoral and likely corrupt influence-peddling scheme.

Getty Images