Lula makes a blunder as Bolsonaro goes all-in on Sunday rally

Brazilians like to say that the business year only really starts after Carnival. While this may not be true for most companies, in the political arena, legislative discussion of bills only gets underway once the annual pre-Lent festivities are wrapped up. 

In normal times, January and early February tend to be months when the government has a stronger hold on the agenda and can push forward bills and proposals in the public debate, paving the way for passage or at least for the direction in which legislative discussions will move. 

But these are not normal times.

With the country in a very stable, if worrying, state of polarization, the first week after Carnival will be nothing short of tense. It began with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva putting his foot in his mouth at a press conference, with an ill-advised comparison of the current massacres in Gaza to the Holocaust, and will end with a rally where former leader and far-right agitator Jair Bolsonaro will try to use his popularity to intimidate the judiciary.

There is no way to sugarcoat it: Lula made a mistake. 

As embattled far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads a response to Hamas terrorist attacks that is too close to what a textbook war criminal would dream up, there is no way to compare it with the horrors of the Holocaust with intellectual honesty. 

It is fair for Lula to criticize the actions of the State...