Experts point to intentions behind the attempted coup on 8/1

The Joint Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPMI) that investigated the anti-democratic attacks of January 8 approved the final report by senator Eliziane Gama (PSD-MA) in October 2023. The document called for the indictment of 61 people for crimes such as criminal association, political violence, abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law and coup d'état. Among them, former president Jair Bolsonaro and former ministers such as Walter Braga Neto, from Defense, Augusto Heleno, from the Institutional Security Office (GSI), and Anderson Torres, from Justice.

For senator Eliziane Gama, former president Jair Messias Bolsonaro “was the intellectual and moral author” of the attacks perpetrated against institutions that culminated in the day of the extreme right's attempt. As the parliamentarian presents in the conclusions of the CPMI report, the former president “used his followers” ​​to try to “escape his own crimes”.

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Bolsonaro's intention would be to stimulate “an insurrection that would bring the constituted powers to their knees; a rebellion that would weaken the government that had just begun and spread chaos; an anarchic process that spread fear and inspired, in the more moderate sectors of society, the desire for compromise. This would be the path of amnesty and popular rehabilitation: to produce disorder, to sell conciliation, at the price of pardons and constitutional graces.”

Gama assesses, in the text approved by the commission, that from the terrorists' point of view “the invasion and depredation of public buildings would only be the trigger. Anarchy would spread. Brazil would become infected. The Republic would fall.”

Assessments from academics and researchers from different backgrounds heard by the Brazil Agency point out nuances to the reasons described by the CPMI for the collusion and attack on democracy.

For Tales Ab´Sáber, psychologist, writer, filmmaker and professor of philosophy of psychoanalysis in the Philosophy course at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), January 8 “was an extreme right-wing insurgency that had a magical and imaginary connection with the Armed Forces, which would come to save Brazil”.

According to him, the Army maintains an “ambiguous behavior” in relation to anti-democratic appeals and is seen by part of society as “a force that can intervene in Brazilian chaos.”

The authoritarian appeals have historical basis and are registered in the demonstrations on social media in 2015 and 2016, before the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, when “this extreme right was radicalizing on the internet and was already proposing the fall of Brasília and intervention by the Army”.

The coup demonstrations on social media are part of the material collected for the production of the documentary “Intervention – Love doesn't mean much”, directed by Ab'Saber, Rubens Rewald and Gustavo Aranda. The film available on the internet was shown in the parallel exhibition of the 50th edition of the Brasília Brazilian Cinema Festival (2017).

Sight shot

Anthropologist Piero Leirner, professor at the Federal University of São Carlos and a scholar of military issues, war and the State, considers that in addition to the authoritarianism of part of society recorded on film and the former president's intentions highlighted in the CPMI, there were more interests in game.

According to Leiner, the military provided water, electricity, bathroom and security at the Bolsonarists' camp in front of the Army Headquarters in Brasília and “were fully aware of what was happening there.” The professor remembers: “they didn’t allow the camp to be demobilized.”

In the expert's opinion, the military carried out “a coup” and, using as a “script” what had happened in the uprising against the Capitol in Washington (United States) on January 6, 2021, “produced a kind of illusion scammer.”

The chimera of the insurrection was used by the military to “enter the new government, in a position of advantage” and maintain under its control areas of interest, such as the Institutional Security Secretariat, circulation at borders, ports and airports – including establishes the mission of Guaranteeing Law and Order (GLO), since November 2023for the airports and ports of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

Thiago Trindade, associate professor and current deputy director of the Institute of Political Science at the University of Brasília, agrees with Piero Leirner's diagnosis regarding leniency with the illegal camp in front of the Brasília General Headquarters and the positioning of the military to defend strategic interests .

The political scientist, however, considers that there is a fundamental distinction between January 6th in Washington (USA) and January 8th in Brasília. “The big difference is precisely the participation of the military in Brazil.”

For Trindade, the “event” in our federal capital acted as “a kind of warning. A kind of warning saying the following, 'look, the rules of the game have now changed'. It is no longer the dispute that was placed there in the PT and PSDB logic. The fight became with the extreme right.”

Democracy

Colleague of Thiago Trindade at the Institute of Political Science at UnB, professor Lucio Rennó describes that “January 8th is the highest point in a continued process of democracy crisis in Brazil. Changing the population’s expectations about the functioning of the democratic regime.”

Rennó believes that polarization is an element of the crisis process with democracy, with which authoritarian worldviews are constructed that make dialogue and coexistence between antagonists difficult. “There is a climate that there are right people in politics and wrong people, and people [supostamente] wrongs need to be fought.”

This would be the case of the “hard core of Bolsonarism that is in favor of a coup, the overthrow of the democratic regime”. According to the professor, “this group is the one that took to the streets violently on January 8th.”

For the academic who has observed the behavior of public opinion in Brazil since 2018, former president Jair Bolsonaro knew how to take advantage of feelings of frustration with democracy and propose “an agenda that is also conservative in customs, liberal economically – very much in line with movements from other parties of the world.”

The liberal agenda – neoliberal or ultraliberal according to social scientists and economists – taken up by the extreme right in Brazil and other countries, mobilizes sectors of public opinion and business activity in favor of economic adjustment measures.

In some cases of economic reforms – those that cause recession, unemployment, reduced income and reduced labor rights – there may be political polarization between defenders of the measures and their opponents. Intense, political antagonism leads to the loss of civil and individual guarantees.

The political polarization in Brazil, which culminated on January 8, did not result in the interruption of the democratic regime or political situation that favored the adoption of a recessive economic policy with opposition control. But the economic sectors that reject labor inspection, environmental protection and the rights of minorities (such as indigenous people) – in addition to those that worked for specific tax exemptions – benefited during the Bolsonaro government.

The memory comes from economist André Roncaglia, professor at Unifesp, who avoids “making generalizations”, because economic groups in Brazil “are quite heterogeneous.” He states, however, that “it is indisputable that a tightening of the regime, a process of autocratization of the Bolsonaro government would benefit some groups.”

“When the State acts in a democratic manner, that is, with its supervisory bodies active, identifying activities that are contrary to the Constitution and contrary to legislation, it is clear that these sectors have less chance of prospering”, says the economist.

There is no historical guarantee that democratic regimes are more successful in economic growth and social development. Roncaglia considers that in the case of the West, “the countries that obviously perform [econômico] better, and that can sustain a more sustainable pace of development are, on average, associated with democratic arrangements in which the people, the people, are able to express their will.”

The business financiers, some whose names are listed in the CPMI report of January 8, must be punished as well as the mentors, instigators and executors of the attack, as the document concludes. The approved text by Senator Eliziane Gama also brings recommendations for changes to the law to “correct the State failures that allowed January 8th to occur or that made this investigation difficult”.

Finally, the rapporteur highlights the need for all Brazilians to reflect on the actions of the extreme right, the Bolsonarist attempt and the need to put an end to the coup against democracy. “It is rather an invitation for Brazilian society, in each of its most diverse segments, to deepen the study of the causes that made January 8th possible, and to propose solutions so that this cycle can be ended”.