The riot mess is cleared, but will Brazil pass the democracy stress test?

Izabela A. voted for the far-right incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, in the October presidential election. But she was not part of the mob of his supporters who stormed Brazil’s seat of power on Sunday. Nevertheless, she’s afraid of being monitored on social media and she’s very careful about what she says these days.

A day after rioters stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential palace, police arrested more than 1,500 people. Some were caught in the act of trashing the buildings, most were detained at a protest camp of Bolsonaro supporters outside the military headquarters in the capital, Brasilia. Hundreds of them – mostly the sick, elderly and mothers with young children – have since been released, according to the federal police.

Meanwhile a mass campaign has been launched to identify the rioters and their masterminds. The justice ministry, federal police and state prosecutors all set up email accounts where members of the public can send leads and tips. High-profile Brazilian digital investigators and influencers have answered the call to help identify the insurrectionists.

On Tuesday, just two days after Brazil witnessed the worst attack on state institutions since its return to democracy in the 1980s, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in major cities, chanting, “No amnesty! No amnesty!” The cry for accountability was a reference to an amnesty law that for decades protected military members accused of human rights abuses during Brazil’s 1964-85 dictatorship.

It’s a climate that worries Izabela, who did not want her full name revealed due to fears of a backlash from the left and concerns that her political views could be misrepresented. “I’m not involved in what happened on Sunday. But right now, everything is so polarised, even social media is being monitored. If the government thinks any post is related to the movement, they will block your social media account and you can even get arrested. I fear that my life will be monitored,” said the 30-year-old product manager in a phone interview from Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais state in southeastern Brazil.

Sunday’s storming of Brazil’s top executive, legislative and judicial institutions was the first big test for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva  following his razor-thin win in the 2022 election.

In the lead-up to the presidential vote, Bolsonaro repeatedly stoked fears of election fraud, hinted that if he was removed from power, violence would make Brazil ungovernable for his leftist rival, and frequently tried to trigger a military intervention.

For many Brazilians, Sunday’s carnage was a materialisation of their worst fears for their nation. With an under two percent election win, a deeply polarised populace and an energised far-right, Lula, a two-term former president, looked set for his most difficult political test yet. The question now is whether Latin America’s largest economy and geopolitical behemoth can pass the democracy stress test.

A ‘beautiful’ coming together picture

A day after the insurrection attempt, Lula on Monday met with Supreme Court judges, state governors, ministers, the head of the House of Representatives and the acting head of the Senate at the presidential palace, where they unanimously defended the rule of law and democratic order.

The meeting was followed by a visit to the heavily damaged Supreme Court building with the leaders of the three branches of government trailed by news camera teams and broadcast live on national TV.

“It was a beautiful picture of Lula leading a group of leaders of all the branches, all the levels of government across the ideological spectrum. It gave him something very important politically. His presidency can now be cast in a historical role, it’s about sustaining democracy and bringing everyone together. Lula was very good at taking advantage of this,” said Fabio de Sa e Silva, professor of Brazilian studies at the University of Oklahoma.

A charismatic politician and captivating public speaker, Lula enjoys near-iconic status among Brazil’s left, but from sections of the right, the revulsion can be just as strong.

“I don’t believe in Lula, I don’t believe in his government. His manipulation of government is very bad, he’s corrupt and I don’t like the way he spends public money,” rattled Izabela, positioning herself in the fiscally conservative spectrum of the Brazilian right.

While she firmly backs Bolsonaro, Izabela’s support for the rightwing former president comes with a list of caveats, which she carefully details just days after the rioters thrashing government building vociferously denounced the results of the October vote.

Izabela does not place herself in that category. “I don’t have enough trust in the election system, I think it needs improvement, we need modern technology to better count the votes. But it’s okay, I’m not going to question the election or whether it was a fraud,” she said.

The attacks in Brasilia present an opportunity to break down Bolsonaro’s support base, says de Sa e Silva. “It’s a chance to isolate the radicals among the Bolsonarists. Some realise this has gone too far and are likely to say, ‘I don’t like Lula, but this crosses the line’. You don’t have to be a Lula supporter to understand that what happened on Sunday was wrong,” he noted.

A study by polling firm AtlasIntel published on Tuesday found 75 percent of Brazilians opposed the attacks by Bolsonaro supporters, 18 percent agreed and five percent had no opinion. A review of 2.2 million social media posts during the upheaval showed 90 percent of Brazilians strongly rejected the attacks, with Bolsonaro hitting his lowest-ever digital popularity ratings.

The militarisation of Brazilian society

In the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s attacks, Lula appeared to have gained the upper hand. While the rioters shocked the nation with their acts of destruction, they failed to articulate any agenda beyond wrecking government buildings, ripping paintings and taking selfies during the carnage.

Following a slow response on Sunday by the military police, a chronically brutal force that answers to state governors, the capital’s main thoroughfare was eventually secured and the buildings cleared of rioters.

The protesters’ calls on the powerful army for a military intervention, taking a lead from Bolsonaro’s own courting of the armed forces, also failed to spark a desired military coup.

For two months after the October election, hardline Bolsonaro supporters pitched up at protest camps right next to military bases and barracks in several Brazilian cities. In a FRANCE 24 interview hours after the riots, de Sa e Silva noted that leftist groups would never have been tolerated near military sites and suggested there was “some level of support and complicity” between the army and pro-Bolsonaro protesters.

By Tuesday, the picture had changed. “There are no camps today. Following a Supreme Court order to remove them within 24 hours, the military just cleared the camps,” said de Sa e Silva.

The army may have sat this one out, but most analysts are not about to write out the military threat.

During Bolsonaro’s tenure, nearly one-third of his ministerial appointments were generals, and more than 6,000 military personnel were appointed to the administration.

“The militaires are everywhere in the administration, not just in the top posts,” said Jean Hébrard, co-director of the Center for Research on Colonial and Modern Brazil (CRBC) at the Paris-based School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS).

“The militarisation of society in Brazil today is the strongest since the end of the military dictatorship,” Hébrard added, referring to the country’s 1964-85 military dictatorship era. The question is, these people who are part of the military and the administration, are they ready to be loyal to the government or not. For now, we don’t know. It’s not so easy to purge them so I don’t know what they will do.”

Rise of new lower middle class – and old resentments

There’s also the question of Brazil’s societal fissures, which are not about to be magically erased with Bolsonaro’s departure from the presidential palace. “Divisions in Brazil are not the consequence of Bolsonaro, Bolsonaro is a consequence of the divisions,” stressed Hébrard.

During his 2003-2010 presidency, Lula constantly sought the support of big business while implementing social and educational programmes, including the Bolsa Familia (Family Allowance) that provided financial aid to poor families. 

While the social welfare programmes pulled millions out of poverty, particularly in the hardscrabble northeast, it also sparked resentments.

“In my opinion, the divisions are linked to the birth of a new, lower middle class created by Lula and [his successor] Dilma Rousseff. These are the people working for the middle class as housekeepers, maids, drivers etcetera. It became just possible for them to buy a house or a car, but not more. But the traditional middle class is furious over what they believe is their own declassification. In Brazil, a lot of people think Lula did a terrible job because he put the traditional middle class in a comparable position with the lower middle class and the former is not so sure of its social position,” said Hébrard.

Despite the resentments of the right-voting traditional middle class, many Brazilians still fondly remember Lula’s first two terms as the “happy” old days, when Chinese demand for raw materials balanced budgets and sparked economic growth. More than a decade after the end of his second presidential term, Lula today confronts a very different landscape, with the pandemic and economic crisis sparked by the Ukraine war plunging Brazil into recession.

For her part, Izabela has also descended into a funk following the attack by Bolsonaro supporters on the pillars of Brazil’s democracy. “I think Sunday will have a very negative impact on the right. Now everything the right does will be questioned, we will be equated with the bad people, the ones who want to destroy democracy,” she said.

De Sa e Silva though is more hopeful about Brazil’s prospects of healing and carrying on after Sunday’s attacks. “I can’t think of anyone better prepared to handle this than Lula,” he said. As for the right, de Sa e Silva hopes they will function as a more traditional opposition rather than a democracy wrecking ball. “The people who supported Bolsonaro will not embrace Lula, but they don’t need to embrace Lula. If the centre of gravity in Brazil moves from the far-right closer to the centre, that’s fine, as long as there is basic, shared commitment to democracy.”