Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters showed that anti-democratic revolutions can be contagious too.
The American Revolution also inspired scores of democratic and anti-colonial revolutionaries. Simon Bolívar, remembered as the Liberator in half a dozen South American countries, visited Washington, New York, Boston, and Charleston in 1807 and later recalled that “during my short visit to the United States, for the first time in my life, I saw rational liberty at first hand.” Visits to the U.S. inspired independence leaders from across Africa and Asia, and they still do. Would-be democrats from Myanmar and Venezuela to Zimbabwe and Cambodia reside in the United States, and study the institutions of the United States, even today. As I wrote on January 6, 2020, by far the most important weapon that the United States of America has ever wielded—in defense of democracy, in defense of political liberty, in defense of universal rights, in defense of the rule of law—was the power of example. In the end, it wasn’t our words, our songs, our diplomacy, or even our money or our military power that mattered. It was rather the things we had achieved: the two and a half centuries of peaceful transitions of power, the slow but massive expansion of the franchise, and the long, seemingly solid traditions of civilized debate.
That tradition was broken, not just by the Trump administration but by the claque of men around Donald Trump who began dreaming of a different kind of American influence. Not democratic, but autocratic. Not in favor of constitutions and the rule of law, but in support of insurrection and chaos. Not through declarations of independence but through social-media trolling campaigns. Many of the actual achievements of this claque have been negligible, or, more likely, exaggerated for the purposes of fund-raising. Steve Bannon once implied he had influence in Spain, for example, but actual members of the Spanish far-right laughed at that idea when I asked them about it in 2019. Bannon’s attempt to set up some kind of alternative, far-right university in Italy ended in failure. At their conferences, on their social-media platforms, and on their countless YouTube channels, the leaders of what one might call the Autocracy International often seek to present themselves as the enemies of communism—even as most of the actual people who really do fight communism, whether in China or Cuba, keep their distance.
In Brazil, the Autocracy International has finally had a “success.” Although public institutions in the country’s capital have been attacked before, most recently in 2013, today’s events in Brasília contained some new elements. Notably, some of the protesters who today sacked the Brazilian Congress, presidential palace, and supreme court; beat up policemen; and broke security barriers were holding up signs in English, as if to speak to their fans and fellow flame-throwers in the US. The phrases “#BrazilianSpring” and “#BrazilWasStolen” have been spreading on Brazilian social media……