Do you think either side in Brazil's 1/8/23 insurrection was informed by the US insurrection of 1/6/21 and its aftermath? Was Bolsonaro inspired by Trump, and did his opponents learn from the mistakes of Garland?
Do you think either side in Brazil's 1/8/23 insurrection was informed by the US insurrection of 1/6/21 and its aftermath? Was Bolsonaro inspired by Trump, and did his opponents learn from the mistakes of Garland?
Oh, yes, there's a LOT of cross-pollination between Trump World and Bolsonaro World. Bolsonaro and Trump are in sporadic contact and think highly of each other, but there's obviously a language barrier. Bolsonaro's third son, Eduardo, a member of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Brazilian Congress, is the main contact.
Eduardo has lived in the US, speaks fluent English, and is close to Steve Bannon. He is reported to be the South American representative in Bannon's Brussels-based Right Wing organization, The Movement. He also maintains contact with similar groups in Portugal, Spain, and throughout Ibero-America. Political exchanges between Brazil and Portugal are commonplace, but it's quite unusual for a Brazilian politician, especially a relatively low-level one, to include politicians in Spain and Brazil's Spanish-speaking neighbors in his active network: this is another way in which Eduardo Bolsonaro is different. He keeps a lower profile and less controversial than his father or his older brother Fl├бvio, a federal senator, but is probably more influential, smarter, and obviously, very connected.
In Brazil both the courts and the Public Prosecutors are independent of the Executive, so they rather than Bolsonaro's political opponents led the response to the events of January 8, 2023. The President and Congress have mostly stayed out of the way, at least in public. At the time of the riot there was an ongoing investigation into organized disinformation -- the recent X ban was also related to this -- so the courts and the prosecutors were already mobilized. It would be unusual for Brazilian courts or prosecutors to comment on the actions of foreign counterparts, and except for occasional statements of solidarity with the US investigations, I don't think that they have. I think that the dispatch with which they've acted, though, speaks for itself.
Do you think either side in Brazil's 1/8/23 insurrection was informed by the US insurrection of 1/6/21 and its aftermath? Was Bolsonaro inspired by Trump, and did his opponents learn from the mistakes of Garland?
Oh, yes, there's a LOT of cross-pollination between Trump World and Bolsonaro World. Bolsonaro and Trump are in sporadic contact and think highly of each other, but there's obviously a language barrier. Bolsonaro's third son, Eduardo, a member of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Brazilian Congress, is the main contact.
Eduardo has lived in the US, speaks fluent English, and is close to Steve Bannon. He is reported to be the South American representative in Bannon's Brussels-based Right Wing organization, The Movement. He also maintains contact with similar groups in Portugal, Spain, and throughout Ibero-America. Political exchanges between Brazil and Portugal are commonplace, but it's quite unusual for a Brazilian politician, especially a relatively low-level one, to include politicians in Spain and Brazil's Spanish-speaking neighbors in his active network: this is another way in which Eduardo Bolsonaro is different. He keeps a lower profile and less controversial than his father or his older brother Fl├бvio, a federal senator, but is probably more influential, smarter, and obviously, very connected.
In Brazil both the courts and the Public Prosecutors are independent of the Executive, so they rather than Bolsonaro's political opponents led the response to the events of January 8, 2023. The President and Congress have mostly stayed out of the way, at least in public. At the time of the riot there was an ongoing investigation into organized disinformation -- the recent X ban was also related to this -- so the courts and the prosecutors were already mobilized. It would be unusual for Brazilian courts or prosecutors to comment on the actions of foreign counterparts, and except for occasional statements of solidarity with the US investigations, I don't think that they have. I think that the dispatch with which they've acted, though, speaks for itself.