This Thursday (11), the Brazilian Supreme Court did what the Senate of the United States and the courts tragically failed to do: to bring to court a former president who attacked democracy.
In a historic decision, to condemn the former president for conspiring against democracy and trying a blow after his electoral defeat in 2022. He went. Except for a successful appeal, which is unlikely, Bolsonaro will become the first coup leader in Brazil’s history to serve a prison sentence.
These events show a strong contrast with them, where the president, who also tried to annul an election, was not sent to prison, but back to the White House. Trump, perhaps recognizing the power of this contrast, of “Witch Hunt” and described his conviction as “a terrible, very terrible thing.”
But the president not only criticized Brazil’s effort to defend his democracy, he also punished him. Citing the lawsuit against Bolsonaro even before its conclusion, the Trump government about most Brazilian exports and sanctions to various government officials and. The minister, who conducted the process, was particularly severe under.
It was an unprecedented measure. The US government imposed sanctions on a minister of the Supreme Court of a democratic country, something that had been reserved for notorious human rights violators, such as Abdulaziz Al-Hawsawi, involved in the 2018 Washington Post employee, and Chen Quanguo, an architect of Chinese government persecution to the Uiguur minority. Following Bolsonaro’s verdict on Thursday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio reinforced Trump’s policy (and his analogy) and “would respond properly to this witch hunt.”
In short, Trump sought to use rates and sanctions to intimidate Brazilians in order to subvert his justice system – and his democracy with him. In practice, the government is punishing Brazilians for doing something that Americans should have done, but they could not: hold a former president responsible for trying to nullify an election.
Contemporary democracies face growing challenges of politicians and anti -liberal movements that gain power through elections and then subvert the constitutional order. Elected leaders such as Venezuela, Turkey in Hungary, El Salvador, and Tunisia politicized government agencies and used them to weaken opponents and consolidate in power.
A lesson from the 1920s and 1930s – the last time Western democracies have faced such internal threats – is that anti -liberal forces do not always throw clean in elections. They are more willing than liberals to use demagogy and resort to misinformation and violence to achieve and maintain power. As European liberals have learned during this period, passivity in the face of such threats can be costly. Democracies do not defend themselves alone. They need to be defended. Even the best constitutional mechanisms are mere pieces of paper unless leaders exercise them.
In the last decade, the US and Brazil have faced anti -liberal threats. The parallels are remarkable. Both countries elected presidents with which, after losing reelection, they attacked democratic institutions.
Trump violated the fundamental rule when he refused to accept defeat in the 2020 elections and tried to reverse the results in a campaign that culminated in the insurrection of.
Bolsonaro, a far-right politician elected in 2018, was greatly inspired by Trump’s strategy. Behind the research as the 2022 elections approached, he began to question the integrity of the electoral process. , attacked – and tried to eliminate. He claimed that the only way to be defeated would be through fraud, implying that an opposition victory would be illegitimate.
After, to Bolsonaro, as predictable, he refused to admit defeat, and in thousands of his supporters invaded Congress, the STF and the Planalto Palace. Although the insurrection was parallel to January 6 events, Bolsonaro’s attack on democracy went beyond Trump’s. Taking advantage of the history of military involvement in Brazilian politics, Bolsonaro, a former army captain, cultivated an alliance with military sectors. Without a strong partisan or legislative base, he supported himself in the military for support.
Several evidences are that Bolsonaro and some of his military allies conspired to nullify the election and prevent Lula’s inauguration. The conspiracy seems to have included, the vice president, and Minister Alexandre de Moraes. Fortunately, the command of the army, under pressure from the, refused to support the attempted coup.
In both US and Brazil, elected presidents attacked democratic institutions, seeking to stay in power after losing reelection. Both invested failed – the less initially.
It is at this point that the two trajectories differ. The Americans made it surprisingly little to protect their democracy from the leader who had attacked her. The acclaimed constitutional mechanisms of the country were unable to hold Trump responsible for their attempt to. Although the House of Representatives voted for in January 2021, the Senate, which could have convicted him and prevented him from running for the presidency, voted to acquit him.
The Justice Department was slow to sue Trump for its role in inciting the January 6 insurrection, waiting for almost two years to appoint a special prosecutor. Trump was indicted in August 2023, but the Supreme Court, acting without a sense of urgency, allowed the case to be postponed. In July 2024, the court ruled that the presidents enjoy wide immunity, making the lawsuit unfeasible. The Republican Party appointed Trump to run for reelection in 2024, despite its openly authoritarian behavior. When he won the election, the.
These institutional failures proved to be costly. The second Trump government has been, instrumentalizing government agencies and using them to punish critics, and intimidate the private sector, the press, law firms, and civil society groups. He has routinely circumvented the law and sometimes challenged the constitution. Less than nine months after the start of the second term, the United States has probably crossed the line for competitive authoritarianism.
Brazil followed a different way. Having lived under a military dictatorship, Brazilian authorities have realized since the beginning of the Bolsonaro government the threat he represented to democracy. Many Congress judges and leaders understood that it was necessary to defend the country’s democratic institutions. Like: “We realized that we could be Churchill or Chamberlain. I didn’t want to be Chamberlain.”
Seeing himself as a bulwark against Bolsonaro’s authoritarianism, the Supreme Ministers reacted firmly. When evidence arose that Bolsonaro’s campaign used, the court began what became known as, in which it sought to repress what the ministers considered dangerous misinformation.
Moraes, who became president of in 2022, led the inquiry. Under, the court suspended the accounts on social networks of activists accused of undemocratic activities, ordered the removal of content considered threatening to democracy, searched the homes of scholarship -suspected scam, and until the Supreme Dictatorship and dissolution was defended (he was released after nine months).
These measures were controversial in Brazil and certainly disagrees in part of the American libertarian tradition, but they were compatible with the way Germany and other European democracies regulate undemocratic discourses.
On election day, the TSE took several measures to ensure the integrity of the claim, including the order to dismantle illegal barriers set up by the pro-Bolsonaro police and the immediate announcement of the results as soon as the investigation was completed, so as not to give Bolsonaro time to challenge them. Decisively, and in contrast to what happened in the United States, important Bolsonaro’s allied politicians, including the leading legislature leaders and right -wing governors, promptly recognized Lula’s victory.
After the events of January 8, 2023 made it clear that Bolsonaro represented a threat to democracy, the Brazilian courts acted firmly to blame it-and prevent their return to power. In June 2023, the one for eight years, preventing his candidacy for the presidency in 2026. In February 2025, Bolsonaro was indicted for a coup conspiracy, beginning the process that resulted in the conviction announced on Thursday.
Although protesting them against their process, most conservative politicians in Brazil widely accepted this process. Many criticized what they consider an excessive action of the judiciary and some supported proposals to dismiss ministers of the Supreme or Bolsonaro and those arrested for the acts of January 8, but the conservative majority Congress notably not led these initiatives.
In fact, most right -wing politicians seem pleased to see Bolsonaro away from. This would allow them to gather around a more conventional candidate (probably a right -wing governor) who, however conservative, would probably respect the rules of the democratic game.
Unlike the United States, therefore, Brazilian institutions have acted energetic and, so far, effective to hold a former president responsible for trying to annul an election. It is precisely this effectiveness that placed the country in the sights of the Trump administration. With no alternatives in Brazil, Bolsonaro resorted to Trump. His son, he pressed the White House for months on behalf of his father. Trump, who looked “very similar to what they tried to do with me,” was eventually convinced.
In trying to intimidate the Brazilian authorities for Bolsonaro to escape from justice, the Trump government is leaving almost four decades of US politics in relation to. After the end of the Cold War, US governments were quite consistent in defending democracy in the region.
Biden government’s efforts to prevent Bolsonaro’s coup attempt were a clear manifestation of this policy. Now, in a movement that evokes some of the United States’s most undemocratic interventions during the Cold War, the country is trying to subvert one of the most important democracies in Latin America.
With all its flaws, Brazilian democracy is today in better state than the American. Aware of the country’s authoritarian past, Brazil’s judicial and political authorities did not treat democracy as guaranteed. Their American equivalents, on the other hand, failed in their mission. Instead of trying to undermine Brazil’s effort to defend their democracy, Americans should learn from it.
