<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThey are fine with going with these democratic processes, provided that they are the winners,\u201d Paulo Barrozo, an associate law professor at Boston College, said of leaders in the mold of Bolsonaro and former US President Donald Trump. \u201cThe moment that there is any indication that they\u2019re not going to win, then they are no longer committed to electoral democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe playbook is the same, the motivation is the same,\u201d Barrozo continued. \u201cAnd it remains to be seen how much traction [Bolsonaro] is going to get in the larger Brazil society.\u201d<\/p>\n
The September 7 marches were a culmination of Bolsonaro\u2019s attempts to discredit democracy<\/p>\n
Bolsonaro\u2019s campaign to discredit Brazilian democracy began way, way before September 7. He decried possible voter fraud even after his first victory in 2018, and his efforts have intensified once in the presidency and as his electoral prospects have worsened. <\/p>\n
For months, Bolsonaro has been trying to sow doubt in the electoral system and frame the institutions defending those norms as corrupt actors out to get him. It may sound familiar.<\/p>\n
He has repeatedly attacked Brazil\u2019s electronic voting system \u2014 a kind of mirror image of Trump\u2019s attacks on vote-by-mail and the like during the 2020 election. He is insisting that Brazilian voters must use paper ballots in the 2022 election, otherwise the results can\u2019t be trusted. (Brazil\u2019s electronic voting system was created to reduce fraud and corruption and to manage the logistics of a complex voting system, and has been in use since the country\u2019s 2002 election.) \u201cI\u2019ll hand over the presidential sash to whoever wins the election cleanly,\u201d the far-right Bolsonaro said in July. \u201cNot with fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bolsonaro pushed Congress to change the rules, and on the day Congress debated the voting proposal, he presided over a military parade in Brasilia. Still, Congress declined to pass a law requiring paper ballots; Bolsonaro attacked some of those lawmakers as having been \u201cblackmailed.\u201d <\/p>\n
Bolsonaro has also directed his ire toward the judiciary, both the supreme court and what\u2019s known as the Superior Electoral Court, which oversees and administers the country\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n
Some current and former supreme court justices have directly criticized Bolsonaro\u2019s anti-democratic rhetoric and defended the integrity of Brazil\u2019s elections. Ultimately the Supreme Court opened an investigation into Bolsonaro\u2019s efforts to spread voting misinformation and threatening Brazil\u2019s democracy.<\/p>\n
The supreme court has also opened a bunch of other investigations into Bolsonaro, along with those in his inner circle, including an ally arrested for allegedly spreading fake news. Bolsonaro is under investigation for posting a sealed document from an electoral investigation on social media, in an attempt to prove voter fraud. He\u2019s under investigation for his mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic, including a possible vaccine kickback scheme. He and his sons are also implicated in other corruption schemes, with potential criminal consequences. <\/p>\n
All of these pressures are looking harder and harder for Bolsonaro to shake, and it\u2019s happening against the shadow of Covid-19 and high unemployment and inflation. \u201cThe political scenario is worsening for him, so he\u2019s trying to figure out some way to hold on to power to protect himself,\u201d Sean T. Mitchell, an associate professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, told me last month.<\/p>\n
The September 7 marches fit with Bolsonaro\u2019s attempts to hold power. The question now is whether the demonstrations were enough to embolden him to launch even more aggressive attacks on the country\u2019s institutions.<\/p>\n
Brazil\u2019s September 7 rallies were not January 6. But they are still ominous for Brazilian democracy.<\/p>\n
In Brasilia and in S\u00e3o Paulo, Bolsonaro\u2019s supporters draped themselves in the Brazilian flag, or wore its green and yellow colors. <\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t record turnout, but it also wasn\u2019t a total flop. Bolsonaro\u2019s loyalist base showed up, and they are motivated. (There were also some anti-Bolsonaro counterprotests in cities Tuesday, though opposition leaders largely urged their supporters to gather on September 12 instead to avoid potential clashes.) The marches also showed that they are buying into Bolsonaro\u2019s attacks on Brazil\u2019s democracy. They carried pro-Bolsonaro signs, a number in English. Some blasted the Supreme Court. Some called for a military takeover.<\/p>\n
\n
It was a show of President Bolsonaro\u2019s die-hard supporters, which was the goal. Bolsonaro is losing popular support, and the calls for his impeachment have intensified. But so far, the public outrage hasn\u2019t fully translated into political consequences; Bolsonaro still has allies in Congress, whom he\u2019s managed to keep by making deals, not out of any ideological loyalty (Bolsonaro actually doesn\u2019t have a political party right now). But Bolsonaro doesn\u2019t want those ties fracturing.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s trying to give a demonstration that will somehow overwhelm his 20 percent approval numbers, show that he has support where it\u2019s really needed \u2014 he can bring people out to the streets,\u201d said Amy Erica Smith, an associate professor of political science at Iowa State University. \u201cHe\u2019s trying to rally support to himself by showing that he already has support.\u201d<\/p>\n
The September 7 marches were also a test for how far Bolsonaro and his backers might take their threats against democracy, and how law enforcement might respond. <\/p>\n
Bolsonaro escalated his rhetoric against the supreme court and other institutions \u2014 walking up to the coup line, perhaps, but not quite crossing it. There was his threat that if the judiciary continued to act as it had been, it \u201cwill suffer what none of us want.\u201d He also declared that he would no longer follow rulings made by one of the supreme court justices, Alexandre de Moraes, who initiated some of the investigations against him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to tell those who want to make me unelectable in Brazil: Only God removes me from there,\u201d Bolsonaro said in S\u00e3o Paulo, according to the Associated Press.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are three options for me: be jailed, killed or victorious. I\u2019m letting the scoundrels know: I\u2019ll never be imprisoned!\u201d <\/p>\n
Bolsonaro\u2019s supporters spoke in all-or-nothing language. \u201cEven if we need to pick up arms and die for Brazil then we\u2019ll do that,\u201d Luis Bonne, a 50-year-old civil servant and rally attendee, told the Guardian.<\/p>\n
And though the fears that September 7 might become a preemptive \u201cstop the steal\u201d didn\u2019t materialize, experts said the danger hasn\u2019t passed. Instead, it seems clear from Bolsonaro\u2019s language that there is no scenario where he will let the election play out and not challenge the results, or willingly leave. <\/p>\n
Where the military stands on this adds to the precariousness of the situation. Bolsonaro does have support among lower ranks and military police, and elected leaders feared that many would turn out for the September 7 marches. <\/p>\n
But whether high-ranking generals would go along with a Bolsonaro power grab or break with him is not at all clear. Experts said it\u2019s unlikely he has enough of their support to launch a full-scale coup, but unlikely is not exactly a comfort when it comes to a military takeover. \u201cNobody can say this with 100 percent certainty among many observers who are watching this,\u201d Smith told me last month. \u201cAnd the fact that people can\u2019t say this with 100 percent certainty is a source of power for [Bolsonaro].\u201d<\/p>\n
Brazil\u2019s institutions have, so far, reacted to Bolsonaro, in some cases quite strongly. \u201cThere are very good signs of that working,\u201d Barrozo said. \u201cBut again, it\u2019s too close to a fatal accident that it could derail things.\u201d <\/p>\n
September 7 showed that Bolsonaro is testing Brazil\u2019s democratic institutions. The question is how far those institutions can push back on him \u2014 and how much of his onslaught they can withstand. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
September 7 was Brazil\u2019s Independence Day, and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro used the occasion to continue his assault on the country\u2019s democratic institutions. Bolsonaro had called on his hardcore supporters to rally, as he battles Congress and the judiciary over their refusal to go along with his attempts to rewrite electoral rules ahead of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}