Some American politicians and talking heads are drawing a straight line between the mob attack on the unoccupied Brazilian Congress, Supreme Court and presidential palace on Jan. 8, 2023, and the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Video of the smashing and trashing of federal government offices in Brasilia is apparently a horror show too good to waste on Brazilians alone. Since those who descended on the capital were backers of
Jair Bolsonaro,
Brazil’s Trump-style former president, there are easy points to be scored against the Donald. The working narrative is that the Brazilian democracy is under threat from a populist right inspired by the 45th U.S. president.
This may be convenient for hammers that want to nail Mr. Trump. But it misses the imminent danger to liberty now lurking in Brazil: a Supreme Court that is gagging its critics, freezing their assets and even jailing some, all without due process.
The Jan. 8 events deserve unequivocal condemnation. Bringing those responsible for the destruction of government property to justice is a fundamental responsibility of the state. Failure to disabuse vandals of the idea that their sense of disenfranchisement is justification for violence will lead to more of it.
But spare me the pearl-clutching in Washington. The claim that the Brasilia riot is the fruit of Jan. 6, 2021, smacks of selective moralizing. When hard-left extremists vandalized Colombia for months in 2021, I don’t recall the D.C. chattering classes blaming it on the summer 2020 rampages linked to Black Lives Matter in the U.S.
Mobs sent to the streets, either from the right in Brazil or from the left as is happening now in Peru, threaten representative government. But liberty can also be strangled from within the government.
Venezuela was a democracy in the early 2000s when strongman
Hugo Chávez
grabbed control of the judiciary, eliminating minority rights and legal protections.
Jimmy Carter
applauded chavismo. Tyrants in Bolivia and Nicaragua copied the Chávez political playbook. Today the separation of powers necessary for democracy to survive is uncertain in many countries across the region, including Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico.
I have long held that the memory of Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-85) and…
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