The attack on the seat of the Brazilian government recalls the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021

A defeated president falsely claims that an election was rigged.

After months of unsubstantiated fraud allegations, an angry mob of his supporters storms Congress.

They overwhelm the police and vandalize the seat of the national government, threatening the country’s democratic institutions.

The similarities between Sunday’s mob violence in Brazil and the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 are clear:

Jair Bolsonarothe right-wing former president of Brazil had been trying for months to undermine the results of an election he lost, just as he did Donald Trump following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

Trump allies who had helped spread falsehoods about the 2020 election have turned to questioning the results of October’s Brazilian presidential election.

These efforts by Bolsonaro and his allies have now culminated in an attempt, however implausible, to overturn Brazil’s election results and restore the former president to power.

Just like January 6, the crowd which has swept across the Brazilian capital has overwhelmed police along the perimeter of the building that houses Congress and rampaged through the halls of power, smashing windows, stealing valuables and posing for photos in abandoned legislative chambers.

The two attacks don’t quite coincide.

The January 6 crowd went for it prevent official certification of the 2020 election results, a final and ceremonial step that is taken before the new president takes officeJoe Biden 20 th January.

But Luiz Inácio Lula da Silvathe new president of Brazil was sworn in more than a week ago.

The presidential election results were certified by the country’s electoral tribunal, not the legislature.

There was no official process to stop on Sunday and the Brazilian Congress was not in session.

The collective violence of January 6, 2021 “fully influenced the change of government”, and the attack in Brazil did not “so much symbolic weightsaid Carl Tobias, a constitutional law professor at the University of Richmond.

And Bolsonaro, who maintained close ties to Trump throughout his years in office, was nowhere near the capital, having taken up residence in Orlando (Florida), approximately 240 kilometers from the Trump estate at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach (Florida).

However, the riots in Brasilia drew widespread condemnation, including from US lawmakers, with many Democrats comparing them to thethe assault on the Capitol from the United States.

“The democracies of the world must act quickly to make it clear that there will be no support for right-wing insurgents storming the Brazilian Congress,” Rep. Jamie Raskin wrote on Twitter.

“These fascists modeling themselves on Trump’s January 6 rioters must end up in the same place: prison“.

Vice George Santosa New York Republican under criminal investigation by Brazilian authorities, appeared to be one of the first elected officials from his party to condemn Sunday’s mob violence in a Twitter post, but he made no connection to Jan. 6.

Many of the lawmakers who condemned the violence had lived through the Capitol bombing just over two years ago.

Raskin was the primary impeachment officer in Trump’s second impeachment proceedings for his role in inciting mobs.

In a final echo of the Jan. 6 attack on Sunday, hours after unrest began in Brazil, Bolsonaro posted a message on social media calling for peacejust like Trump did.

The authorities had already announced that they have the situation under control.

c.2023 The New York Times Society