Far-right former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been cornered by multiple criminal investigations, and he’s already been rendered ineligible for office by the country’s electoral courts.
Still, no one right of center has proven capable of taking up the mantle of the Brazilian conservative movement. On Sunday, Mr. Bolsonaro attracted scores of thousands of supporters to the streets of São Paulo, in what was a bona fide show of his political strength.
And crucially, dozens and dozens of politicians also turned out to pay their respects to the former president.
But in the grand scheme of things, what good will this recent rally do for Mr. Bolsonaro? And might it actually cause him some harm?
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In this episode:
- Isabela Cruz is The Brazilian Report’s Rio de Janeiro correspondent. She has a law degree and covers politics and the justice system.
- Cedê Silva is The Brazilian Report’s Brasília correspondent and covers politics.
Background reading:
- Last year, electoral courts ruled Jair Bolsonaro out of the political game until 2030, but the conviction was a long time in the making. The discovery of a draft of a putschist decree that would be used to overturn the 2022 presidential election contributed to that verdict.
- Earlier in February, the police accused Mr. Bolsonaro of orchestrating a plot to stage a coup and remain in power regardless of the outcome of the 2022 election. Marshals raided addresses linked to him and many of his allies, including members of his former cabinet and politicians.
- The Supreme Court unsealed a recording of a 2022 federal cabinet meeting — during which Jair Bolsonaro instructed his ministers to challenge Brazil’s electoral system and spread misinformation on his behalf.
- Mr. Bolsonaro called Sunday’s rally to make a show of strength. Isabela Cruz warned before the event that it brought many risks for the former president — with little for him to gain from it. And he might have gotten himself into more legal trouble, as it turns out.
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Transcript of this episode (with Cockatoo)
Euan Marshall: Far-right former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been cornered by multiple criminal investigations and he’s already been rendered ineligible for office by the country’s electoral courts. Still, no one right of center has proven capable of taking up the mantle of the Brazilian conservative movement.
And on Sunday, Bolsonaro attracted scores of thousands of supporters to the streets of São Paulo in what was a bona fide show of his political strength. And crucially, dozens and dozens of politicians also turned out to pay their respects to the former president. But in the grand scheme of things, what good will this recent rally do for Bolsonaro?
And might it actually cause him some harm?
My name is Euan Marshall, deputy editor of the Brazilian Report. This is Explaining Brazil
Today to discuss Bolsonaro we’re joined by Cedê Silva, our Brazilian correspondent, and making her debut on Explaining Brazil, it’s Isabela Cruz, our Rio de Janeiro correspondent, who also covers the judiciary. Thanks for being here, guys.
Glad to be here with both of you.
Cedê Silva: Thanks for having me.
Isabela Cruz: Thank you, Euan.
Euan Marshall: And I’d like to start our conversation by asking you, Cedê, why Jair Bolsonaro organized this protest now? Because, I mean, as we know, he left office in December 2022. He went into exile in Florida for months, and he remained quite low profile I think for most of 2023. So why did he call his supporters to take to the streets now?
Cedê Silva: The answer is Bolsonaro is not very smart and his imagination is very limited. There are very few moves in Bolsonaro’s playbook and organizing street demonstrations is one of the few moves that he has in his playbook. He organized this protest a few days after being silent in an interview with the federal police, which is the closest investigation so far to reach Jair Bolsonaro personally, and that will demonstrate his responsibility in plotting a coup attempt in late 2022, early 2023. going to the streets was a way to raise his voice after keeping silent with the federal police.
Euan Marshall: And Isabela, you know, while this may be definitely the most dangerous investigation that Bolsonaro is faced with in terms of, you know, the possibility of him actually being arrested for it, it’s not the only probe that’s against him, right? I mean, can you tell us a little bit about his overall legal situation?
Isabela Cruz: Well, it’s not something easy to sum up. He faces multiple investigations from falsifying vaccination records to appropriating million-dollar jewelry from federal assets. And this one you mentioned, which is showing that he not only encouraged his voters not to accept the results of the elections, but also mobilized people around him in the government and the top brass of the armed forces to prepare in legal and military terms to seize power. And he barely defends himself. On Sunday he classified everything as political persecution against him. He also has legal issues prior to the presidency.
Euan Marshall: And Cedê, Bolsonaro clearly, from this rally, he clearly wanted one of those big pictures with a sea of people, everyone wearing green and yellow in his support. Did he get what he wanted? And also, why did he want that in the first place?
Cedê Silva: Bolsonaro and the far-right want to demonstrate that they’re still united, that they still have a leader, and that they’re still with Bolsonaro despite all the, or despite all of the important things that we need to realize about the Brazilian far right, the Bolsonarista far right, is the same with the MAGA movement, with Donald Trump in the United States. They’re both movements that exist with leaders that actively plot coups against democracy and that they actively do not want to play by the rules of anyone else besides themselves, which is also why they are anti-vexers, which is also why they are bigots, which is also why they are anti-trans, and so on.
So this far-right politics and this way of doing politics needs to show that they’re united with a leader, not actually despite of all the crimes he’s investigated for, but because of them, and because of them, they’re still united in denying the electoral system in Brazil and in spreading conspiracy theories about vaccines, about the electoral system, about the judicial branch, about Lula himself and communism and so on.
Also, there is a gap in electoral legislation in Brazil. You’ve mentioned, Euan, that Bolsonaro was rendered ineligible by the Superior Electoral Court and he cannot run in 2026. That is correct, but it still needs a judicial decision to actually bar a candidate. It’s the same thing that happened with Lula in 2018.
Lula was actually in jail and he still ran for president until mid 2018 when finally there was a judicial decision removing Lula from the ballot. And that’s when Fernando Haddad stepped in. And this is also the reason why Bolsonaro and Lula in 2018, Bolsonaro and Haddad in 2018, they never joined a debate on TV because in the early electoral process, when the debates on TV were already happening, the candidate of the Workers’ Party was still Lula, who was in jail at the time. Bolsonaro can do exactly the same thing that Lula did in 2018. So in 2026, there is a plan for Bolsonaro to still run for president and to have a running mate assume in his place when Bolsonaro is finally actually barred from the candidacy very late in the 2026 electoral process.
Euan Marshall: Fascinating. And bringing it back to the rally on Sunday itself, I mean there were a few different estimations on exactly how many people showed up in São Paulo on Avenida Paulista. There was a study from the University of Sao Paulo that suggested there was around 150,000. The local police said there was about 750,000. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle there. But regardless of the number of people that showed up, just staying with you for a second, Cedê, tell us a little bit about maybe who showed up. Who were the people who had attended this rally on Sunday?
Cedê Silva: It was the usual Bolsonarista crowd, mostly male, mostly white, and mostly over 35. Also, we had a few far-right politicians showing up, including Congressman Nicolas Ferreira, who is one of the new stars of the far-right in Brazil, also because of his anti-trans comments and remarks in the House of Representatives. And we have Governor Tarcísio de Freitas, who is the governor of São Paulo. He is famously against new body cans for the police, which means that he is in favor of the police having more liberty and more leeway of becoming more violent. And Tarcísio de Freitas actually made a speech during this Bolsonaro rally. So it was a show of those that are in the right, that are still more faithful or more loyal to Bolsonaro, which includes a few governors from different states, including the governor of Sao Paulo.
Euan Marshall: And Cedê, some experts say that the engagement for this rally was drummed up even further by President Lula’s recent comments on Israel, comparing the violence in Gaza to something out of Nazi Germany. And that was the theme of last week’s podcast, if you want to go back and check out that later.
And we did see a lot of Israel flags being waved on Sunday, right? I mean, how has the Israel-Palestine issue taken on such an important role in Brazil’s domestic politics?
Cedê Silva: It’s hard to say how much Lula’s comments actually inspired more Bolsonaro fans to go to Paulista Avenue last Sunday, but it is true that Israel at least takes Brazil very seriously and more so since 2019 when Bolsonaro was first in power. Back in 2019, when both Bolsonaro was in power in Brazil and lobbied in order for Bolsonaro to follow through in Donald Trump’s footsteps and move Brazil’s embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Israel took that a lot seriously, not only because of the weight of Brazil, but also because if Brazil did so, it could encourage other Latin American governments to do the same and also move their embassies to Jerusalem, too.
That did not happen because of the pressure of the agricultural lobby in Brazil because Arabic countries are big importers of meat and agricultural products from Brazil and so moving our embassy to Jerusalem would be very harmful for business for a lot of people in the agricultural lobby, many of which are allies to Bolsonaro as well. The other thing is that Israel-Palestine issue has an important role not only in Brazil’s domestic politics, but in all countries that have similar far-rights, just like in the United States, you have a long alliance of far-right evangelicals, the same evangelicals that are, for example, pro-life.
The same evangelicals recognize or understand that Israel has a special role in the world and that they are entitled to what they understand to be the Holy Land, which is also why a lot of evangelicals, not only in the United States, but in Brazil too, support the occupation of the West Bank and they basically support whatever the Israeli government wants to do. Iwan, this is also seen in the recent impeachment proceeding that you’ve alluded to in your comments. President Lula, when he was in Ethiopia, he answered a question and he compared Israel’s military actions in Gaza to the Holocaust.
And this inspired the far right to file an impeachment request against Lula, which has a lot of signatures. The text of this motion to impeach Lula argues that the high point in the crisis between Brazil and Israel was not the Lula declaration about comparing Israeli actions to the Holocaust, but was actually Brazil’s action in the International Court of Justice asking the judges in the ICJ to declare the occupation of Palestine territories by Israel as illegal.
So you have a very strong connection between the Israeli far right and the Brazilian far right and this is also seen in declarations by Israeli ministry Israel Katz who is the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs who even went on to falsely claim that Lula is a Holocaust denier when that is in fact a logical impossibility because for Lula to compare Israeli action to the Holocaust he must understand that the Holocaust actually happened.
Euan Marshall: And Isabella, I mean Bolsonaro on Sunday he gave a speech to the crowd that was assembled there and he really kind of toned things down significantly didn’t he from his last appearances. I mean in the past he’s threatened to launch coups, he’s called for the gunning down of his political opponents, he’s vowed to disregard Supreme Court rulings, but on Sunday he was definitely being quite careful with the words he was using right? Tell us a bit more about that.
Isabela Cruz: For sure, Euan. He knows it’s not the time for him to take risks. With the progress of investigations he’s had his passport confiscated, has been banned from speaking to many of his allies who are considered co-conspirators in a plot to overthrow democracy, and has been living with the fear of being arrested at any moment. So it was up to his allies to attack the Supreme Court this time.
Euan Marshall: And did he actually end up kind of entangling himself even more in legal trouble? I mean, you wrote a piece about that that we published on Tuesday on The Brazilian Report.
Isabela Cruz: Yeah, even with that milder speech, the federal police and law experts considered he added an important element to the already abundant body of evidence against him, one regarding his intentionality. As we know, police officers recently found a draft of a speech announcing the declaration of a state of emergency in the country in an office used by Mr. Bolsonaro. Similar proposals for extraordinary legal measures had already been found with the former aide of his and with his former Justice Minister.
It happens that on Sunday, he not only missed the opportunity to deny that his government had dealt with draft coup decrees, but also he let it be known that he considered them to be legitimate instruments and not frontal violations of the Constitution. In doing so, he made it clear that his intention to manipulate the democratic regime in his own favor.
Euan Marshall: And now, because each one of you takes kind of different angles in our political coverage, I’d just like to ask you both about, you know, the potential dividends that Bolsonaro may or may not have earned with this rally. Cedê, you first with the kind of the purely political perspective. How has Bolsonaro come out of this?
Cedê Silva: I think the danger lies exactly on looking at this from a purely political perspective if you understand politics as a legitimate movement. The dividend here is that you have the far right doubling down on a putschist movement which has no problems at all in resorting to violence and has resorted to violence in the past and has promised to do so again. We need to remind our listeners that Carla Zambelli, the congresswoman from São Paulo who is author of the motion to impeach Lula, is the same woman that was walking with a gun, appointing as an innocent man in the streets of São Paulo just after the first round of elections in 2022.
This is the same movement that is responsible for the January 8th riots and during this rally on Sunday, Bolsonaro doubled down and he asked Congress for an amnesty to the rioters of January 8th, the same that ransacked and invaded the buildings housing all three branches of government. This is the same movement that held up a military, that held up camps, protest camps near military campsites, including in Brasilia.
And from these campsites, they planned demonstrably, they planned terrorist attacks, such as the December 12th storming of buses in December 12, 2022, which was the date when Lula was formally certified as President-elect. neglect. And from the same campsite, Bolsonaro supporters planned the failed bomb attack in Brasilia airport on Christmas Eve 2022.
So this is the terrorist far-right showing its size and not just the political movement showing the number of voters they have. It’s the political support of a terrorist far-right movement. And I think we should treat this the same way if there was a large demonstration on Avenida Paulista of Hamas or Hezbollah, people would not be discussing the electoral perspective or the political perspective or strength of a Hezbollah operative for 2026, we would be talking about the dangers of a political extremist violent movement.
Euan Marshall: And Isabela, taking this from a more kind of judicial standpoint, what do you think? How do you think Bolsonaro came out of this rally on Sunday?
Isabela Cruz: Well, after remaining silent during an official hearing, as Cedê said, he left himself exposed at the rally. And he did that without gains, because the Supreme Court shows no signs of being intimidated by his supporters. Actually, we must remember there is another part of the population that is extremely critical of the former president, who was unable to be re-elected despite intense use of the public machine.
Euan Marshall: Excellent, guys. So, thanks for joining us today. I’m sure we’ll have you both back on the show very soon.
Thank you very much.
Cedê Silva and Isabela Cruz are the Brazilian Report’s correspondents in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro, respectively. If you like Explaining Brazil, please give us a 5-star rating wherever you get your podcasts. If you’re listening on YouTube, don’t forget to like the video and subscribe to our channel.
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Transcribed with Cockatoo
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