The similarities with the January 6 insurrection in Washington are striking. A far-right mob of protesters storms Congress after refusing to accept defeat in a presidential election. The extremists ransack landmark buildings before being evicted by security forces. A far-right icon is blamed for inciting the riot.
The differences between Sunday’s events in Brasília and those in the US capital almost exactly two years earlier were also striking. Unlike Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro had already left the presidency (albeit without explicitly conceding defeat) and was last seen abroad in Florida. There was also no serious attempt following last October’s Brazilian election to overturn the victory of the veteran leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which was accepted by Bolsonaro’s key political allies without question. Unlike Trump, Bolsonaro gave no public support to the insurrection, though the Brazilian only distanced himself from it after it had failed.
That is not to underplay the dangers that still lie ahead. Sunday’s troubles in Brasília were in some respects more serious than those in Washington. The mob stormed the congress, the presidential palace and the supreme court — a trio of Modernist architectural masterpieces grouped around a square in the heart of the 1950s capital.