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coup d'etat
Brazilian Left Welcomes Trial of Bolsonaro for Alleged Coup Attempt
"If Brazil had tried the crimes of the military dictatorship, it certainly wouldn't be trying another coup attempt now," said one leftist lawmaker. "We can't fix the past, but we can write a new story!"
Mar 27, 2025
Brazilian leftists including President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hailed Wednesday's unanimous ruling by a panel of the Federal Supreme Court compelling former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and seven associates to stand trial for alleged crimes including an attempted coup d'état following his loss to Lula in the 2022 presidential election.
The panel voted 5-0 to accept a complaint filed by the office of Brazilian Attorney General Jorge Messias to indict Bolsonaro, former Brazilian Intelligence Agency Director Alexandre Ramagem, former Navy Commander Almir Garnier, former Justice Minister Anderson Torres, former Institutional Security Bureau Minister Augusto Heleno, former presidential aide Mauro Cid, former Defense Minister Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, and former Defense Minister and presidential Chief of Staff Walter Braga Netto.
Bolsonaro will stand trial for allegedly attempting a coup, involvement in an armed criminal organization, attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, violent damage of state property, and other charges. A coup conviction carries a sentence of up to 12 years' imprisonment under Brazilian law. However, if convicted on all counts, Bolsonaro and his co-defendants could face decades behind bars.
"It's clear that the former president tried to stage a coup."
The eight defendants are accused of being the "crucial core" of a plan to overturn the results of the 2022 election, which Lula narrowly won in a runoff. Like U.S. President Donald Trump in 2020, Bolsonaro and many of his supporters falsely claimed the contest was "stolen" by the opposition. And like in the U.S., those claims fueled mob attacks on government buildings. Around 1,500 Bolsonaro supporters were arrested in the days following the storming of Congress and the presidential offices.
In February, Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet indicted Bolsonaro and 33 others for their alleged roles in a plot to overturn the election that included poisoning Lula and also assassinating Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and Supreme Court Justice Alexadre de Moraes, one of the five judges on the panel that issued Wednesday's ruling.
"It's clear that the former president tried to stage a coup," Lula, who is on a four-day state visit to Japan, said in response to the high court's decision. "It is clear from all the evidence that he tried to contribute to my assassination, assassination of the vice president, assassination of the former president of the Brazilian Electoral Court, and everybody knows what happened."
Lula said that Bolsonaro "knows what he did... and he knows that it was not right," adding that "he should prove his innocence... and he will go free."
"Now, he has no way of proving that he is innocent, since he has no way of proving that he did not attempt the coup," Lula added. "I just hope the justice system will do justice."
The former president is already banned from running for any office until 2030 due to his abuse of power related to baseless claims of electoral fraud.
Bolsonaro and his supporters have been pushing for amnesty, an effort Lula recently said "means he's basically saying, 'Guys, I'm guilty.'"
Erika Hilton, a member of the Chamber of Deputies—the lower house of Brazil's Congress—representing Rio de Janeiro in the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), said Thursday on social media, "NO AMNESTY FOR COUP PLOTTERS!"
"We cannot allow these people to be acquitted," Hilton stressed. "This is because the Bolsonarists in Congress want to pardon them, just as the coup plotters of 1964 were pardoned. And Brazil cannot make that mistake again."
Hilton was referring to the U.S.-backed coup that overthrew the democratically elected leftist government of President João Goulart and installed 21 years of military rule characterized by forced disappearances, torture—sometimes taught by U.S. operatives—and extrajudicial murder of at least hundreds of people.
Former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who is a member of Lula's Workers' Party (PT), was tortured by the regime. Bolsonaro, an army officer during the dictatorship, has prasied the military regime while taunting its victims and lauding one of its leading torturers as a "national hero."
Other leftist lawmakers and observers invoked the dictatorship in urging the government to deliver justice to Bolsonaro and his alleged accomplices.
"If Brazil had tried the crimes of the military dictatorship, it certainly wouldn't be trying another coup attempt now," argued Helder Salomão, a PT deputy from Espírito Santo. "It's also true that people like Bolsonaro wouldn't go this far. We can't fix the past, but we can write a new story!"
Ricardo Pereira, a professor and journalist, said on social media that "a despicable figure" like Bolsonaro would not have risen to power had Brazil tried dictatorship-era criminals, adding that "we are belatedly cleaning up history, but at least we are doing this."
Addressing reports that Bolsonaro may attempt to flee to Argentina—which is ruled by right-wing President Javier Milei—or the United States, where he applied for a visa amid his mounting legal troubles in 2023, Ivan Valente, a PSOL deputy representing São Paulo, said: "Thinking about escaping? It won't work, fugitive, you'll get jailed!"
A date for Bolsonaro's trial has not yet been set. The chair of the Supreme Court panel is expected to issue a legal framework within days.
"Then, [Moraes] prepares a report and requests a trial date," Eloísa Machado, a law professor at the Fundacão Getulio Vargas University in São Paulo, toldThe Associated Press on Wednesday. "After this stage, prosecutors and defense attorneys will present their final arguments before the court rules on whether to acquit or convict."
Responding to Wednesday's ruling, Bolsonaro told the Supreme Court justices, "If I go to jail, I will give you a lot of work."
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An Actual Neofascist Coup Is Now Underway in the United States
Trump’s attempt to incite a coup in 2021 and his subsequent victory in the 2024 presidential election speak volumes of the democratic decline in the United States. We must admit exactly where we are at this point in time.
Feb 19, 2025
Over the past few years, there has been an alarming surge of coups d’état across the world, particularly in Africa. The most common definition of a coup is an illegal attempt to seize control of the government. The seizure of power by coup leaders is often justified by pointing to poor governance and/or deteriorating security situations.
Coups are typically irregular transfers of power that occur in countries with weak democratic institutions and may be carried out by military or civilian elites. Consolidated democracies have long prided themselves of being immune to the conditions that generate coups d'etat, but the Trump phenomenon in U.S. politics seems to suggest that there are no absolutes, and that liberal democracy can be brought down.
The storming of the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, was a coup attempt incited by outgoing president Donald Trump, and can be best described as an “attempted auto-coup.” Yet, shockingly enough, not only wasn’t Trump held accountable in the end for being criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election but was allowed to run again for the presidency in 2024. And what is even more shocking is that he prevailed in his third presidential bid by winning both the electoral college and the popular vote.
Trump and his Nazi buddy Elon Musk are trying to destroy civil society by dismantling the State.
Both Trump’s attempt to incite a coup in 2021 and his subsequent victory in the 2024 presidential election speak volumes of the democratic decline in the United States. Citizens’ support not just for a democracy-eroding leader but for one who repeatedly promised during his campaign to be a dictator, even if only for one day, is ample evidence to make the case that the end of democracy in the U.S. (or whatever is left of it as the country was never designed to be democratic) is upon us.
Indeed, an actual neo-fascist coup is now underway. Trump and his Nazi buddy Elon Musk are trying to destroy civil society by dismantling the State. Trump had promised on numerous occasions during his campaign to “demolish the deep state,” and even offered specific details for how he planned to do so. And this is exactly what is happening right now.
During his first month back in office, Trump signed a plethora of executive orders which ranged from a militarized crackdown on immigration and pardoning those who had taken part in the January 6, 2021, coup attempt to shutting down scores of federal agencies and starting mass layoffs across governments. By declaring himself above the law, Trump’s intent is to use executive power not for the purpose of dismantling the “deep state” in order to make federal government more efficient and therefore more responsive to citizen needs, but rather in order to take over government and have it run by loyalists, by people who would faithfully obey the commands of the “Great Leader.”
The aims behind this neofascist coup are threefold: Oligarchic state capture; white Christian nationalism as the hegemonic project; and the rise of a new U.S. empire.
Oligarchic state capture is a key goal of the Trump-Musk strategy behind the demolition of the so-called “deep state.” Dismantling the government bureaucracy is seen by the aspiring dictator and the world’s richest person as an essential course of action if “powerful individuals or corporations” are to have absolute freedom in creating rules and policies that serve their own benefit, at the expense of society. Trump and Musk are both fervent believers in the “natural right” of the rich and powerful to shape society as they please and make government function as they see fit.
Oligarchic state capture is a key goal of the Trump-Musk strategy behind the demolition of the so-called “deep state.”
The assault on regulations and on workers’ rights and vital workers’ institutions by the “two brothers” as prerequisites for economic prosperity forces us to go back to the 1880s when laissez-faire capitalism and social Darwinism ruled the day in order to find comparable situations. Trump has always been anti-labor, but Trump 2.0, influenced as heavily as it is by the anti-labor agenda of Project 2025, that wants to roll back all labor reforms under the Biden administration, outlaw public sector unions and indeedrewrite a hundred years of labor law, could be the most damaging administration the U.S. labor movement has ever faced. Trump’s agenda for the economy revolves around laissez-faire product market regulation and laissez-faire labor market regulations. Thus, the fact that the white working-class, which has been increasingly voting Republican instead of Democrat since 2000, helped Trump to return to power is indeed one of the most disconcerting trends in U.S. society.
Trump’s vision for America’s future is also rooted in white Christian nationalism and, as such, its realization virtually mandates anti-equality and so-called “gender ideology” attacks, along with a host of other “enlightened” undertakings such as book bans and seeking to revoke birthright citizenship. Trump’s white Christian nationalism agenda is born out of the preconceived notion that the rightful owners of this country are losing their political and cultural power. It is thus an exclusionist and nostalgic ideology which transcends social class and thus may explain why a significant segment of white working-class Americans support Trump.
Dark times are ahead—dark times, indeed.
Lastly, Trump envisions a new U.S. empire which includes gaining control of the Panama Canal, the purchase of Greenland, the possibility of turning Canada into the 51st U.S. state, owning Gaza, and even extending America’s manifest destiny into the stars.The acquisition of new wealth, greater security and strategic advantage in power politics are the drivers behind this new U.S. imperialism envisioned by Donald Trump. His imposition of tariffs on imports, which is baffling to economists, is intended to force countries to play according to the rules of the free market, so it is a profound mistake to think that Trump has somehow turned his back on neoliberalism. His deadly anti-regulatory blitz combined with tax-cutting for the rich and corporations and the use of economic rules into politics should be alone sufficient enough to dispel the notion that Trump is somehow waging a war on neoliberalism simply because he is using tariffs as part of his “America First” policy.
This, of course, is not to indicate that the neoliberal world order that the United States created after the end of the Cold War is not in crisis. Economic inequalities, political fragmentation, and social discontent threaten to bring down western liberal democracies and be replaced instead by authoritarian yet staunchly pro-capitalist regimes. The contradictions of neoliberal capitalism have become so extreme that only neofascism may be able to prevent the system’s ultimate collapse. This is precisely why Trump’s billionaire top lieutenant has so enthusiastically embraced far-right parties not only in Europe but across the globe. Neofascism is also needed to defend Christian values from the “radical left” and halt the alleged threat of the Islamization of the western world.
Dark times are ahead—dark times, indeed. And the only question is how to fight back before everything good and decent is lost once again in the return to fascism.
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Bolsonaro and 36 Others Indicted in Brazil Over Right-Wing Coup Attempt
"Well, look at this thing called 'accountability,'" said one MSNBC host.
Nov 21, 2024
The Brazilian Federal Police on Thursday indicted former President Jair Bolsonaro and 36 others for allegedly plotting the "violent overthrow of the democratic state" after the country's current leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, defeated the right-wing leader in 2022.
"The final report has been sent to the Supreme Court with the request that 37 individuals be indicted for the crimes of the violent overthrow of the democratic state, coup d' etat, and criminal organization," police said in a statement about the conclusion of the two-year investigation.
As The New York Timesexplained: "Although the police in Brazil can make recommendations about criminal prosecutions, they do not have the power to formally charge Mr. Bolsonaro. The country's top federal prosecutor, Paulo Gonet, must now... decide whether to pursue charges against Mr. Bolsonaro and compel him to stand trial before the nation's Supreme Court."
The recommendations for charges came after the arrest of four members of the military and a federal police officer earlier this week over an alleged plot to kill Lula and Vice President Geraldo Alckmin before they were sworn in, as well as Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Police said that "a detailed operational plan called 'Green and Yellow Dagger' was identified, which would be executed on December 15, 2022, aimed at the murder of the elected candidates for president and vice president."
According toCNN, "Police reportedly allege that Bolsonaro had 'full knowledge' of a plan to prevent Lula and his government from taking office after his election victory."
Summarizing a conversation with a columnist, Bolsonaro said on social media Thursday that "we have to see what is in this indictment by the Federal Police. I will wait for the lawyer." He also said that Moraes "does everything that the law does not say" and "I cannot expect anything from a team that uses creativity to denounce me."
Bolsonaro has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, including with two other pending cases: In March he was indicted for allegedly falsifying his Covid-19 vaccination data and in July he was indicted for crimes including embezzlement related to alleged misappropriation of diamond jewelry and other state property. Those indictments came after Brazil's highest election authority last year barred him from running for any public office for eight years over his lies about the 2022 contest.
In addition to Bolsonaro, the other three dozen people indicted on Thursday include "some of the most important members of his far-right administration," The Guardianreported. As the newspaper detailed:
They included Bolsonaro's former spy chief, the far-right Congressman Alexandre Ramagem; the former defense ministers, Gen. Walter Braga Netto and Gen. Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira; the former minister of justice and public security, Anderson Torres; the former minister of institutional security, Gen. Augusto Heleno; the former navy commander Adm. Almir Garnier Santos; the president of Bolsonaro's political party, Valdemar Costa Neto; and Filipe Martins, one of Bolsonaro's top foreign policy advisers.
Also named is the right-wing blogger grandson of Gen. João Baptista Figueiredo, one of the military rulers who governed Brazil during its 1964-85 dictatorship.
The list contains one non-Brazilian name: that of Fernando Cerimedo, an Argentinian digital marketing guru who was in charge of communications for Argentina's president, Javier Milei, during that country's 2023 presidential campaign. Buenos Aires-based Cerimedo is close to Bolsonaro and his politician sons.
Given that Bolsonaro previously traveled to the United States when faced with legal trouble shortly after his loss two years ago, in this case, "precautionary measures have been issued, including a ban on international travel, which led to the confiscation of Bolsonaro's passport months ago," EL Paísnoted Thursday.
Bolsonaro was among the right-wing leaders around the world who celebrated U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's victory earlier this month. The Brazilian—who is sometimes called the "Trump of the Tropics" and like the American incited an insurrection after his last electoral loss—said that the impact of Trump's win "will resonate across the globe... empowering the rise of the right and conservative movements in countless other nations."
Trump's return to office is expected to at least stall if not end his various legal issues, including for trying to overturn his 2020 loss.
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