Narratives about 8/1 still fuel authoritarianism and persecution

The acts of vandalism on January 8, 2023 against the buildings of the Three Powers complete one year this Monday (8/1). Throughout this period, one of the main effects of the event was to provide narratives to justify the persecution of opponents and authoritarian measures in the Judiciary, the Executive and Congress.

In the Federal Supreme Court (STF), the thesis that the acts were planned with the clear objective of carrying out a coup d’état in Brazil, and that everyone present at the demonstrations could be considered coup plotters, served as a pretext for some of the most disproportionate convictions in the history of Brazilian justice.

There are examples such as that of retired teacher Ângela Nunes, 54 years old, who only cooked in front of the Army Headquarters in Brasília for protesters and did not participate in the vandalism, but even so, she was detained for two months and subjected to difficulties in dealing with a serious illness. The case of Jupira Rodrigues, aged 57, is also emblematic, sentenced to 14 years without concrete evidence that she has committed any type of vandalism; she received the standardized sentence from the Supreme Court that has been applied to classify all types of participation in the 8/1 demonstrations under criminal categories such as “armed criminal association”, “violent abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law” and “coup d’état”.

At the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), acts of vandalism were used in the process that made former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) ineligible for eight years. During the trial, Walber Agra, lawyer for the PDT – the party that filed the lawsuit with the TSE to prevent the former president from being a candidate –, created a relationship between Bolsonaro’s speeches about the electoral system and the acts of January 8 to support which speeches by the former president would have triggered the attacks.

The thesis was accepted by the Public Electoral Ministry, which stated that “after the elections, an unprecedented mobilization of portions of the population was noticed, openly and publicly rejecting the result of the election.”

In politicized speeches given on different occasions, Supreme Court ministers took refuge on January 8th to criticize the rise of the right in Brazil without appearing anti-democratic. Luís Roberto Barroso, for example, justified his famous phrase “we defeated Bolsonarism” by saying that he referred to “the coup and violent extremism that manifested itself on January 8th and that corresponds to a minority”.

January 8 also served as a way for the Judiciary and its members to make gestures and campaigns to position themselves as guardians of democracy. In January, for example, the STF started the “Unshaken Democracy” campaign, which began to sell the Supreme Court as a body defending Brazilian democracy against extremists.

In Congress, government deputies tried to exploit the acts of January 8th to enable a Fake News version of the PL, facilitating the censorship of opponents on social media. On several occasions, left-wing parliamentarians used 8/1 as a pretext to support the need to speed up discussions and increase the responsibility of social networks in censoring content. So far, the PL has not been voted on.

Executive turned 8/1 into an ace up his sleeve to justify persecuting opponents

The Executive, mainly through President Lula and the then Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino, turned January 8th into an ace up its sleeve to justify all types of instruments that could be used to persecute opponents.

In January, less than three weeks after the attacks, the Lula government announced the “Democracy Package”, a set of bills to toughen penalties against anyone who attacks the Democratic Rule of Law or high-ranking authorities. The plan also intends to financially stifle people that the PT calls supporters of “anti-democratic movements”, and even suggests creating a National Guard to prevent further attacks against democracy. Congress has not yet voted on the proposals.

President Lula explored the 8/1 attacks in several interviews and events. The last one was in his Christmas message to the Brazilian people.

“The hatred of some against democracy left deep scars and divided the country. It disunited families. It put democracy at risk. They broke windows, invaded and vandalized public buildings, destroyed works of art and historical objects. Fortunately, the coup attempt had an effect opposite. It united all institutions, mobilized political parties above ideologies, provoked a prompt reaction from society”, he stated, in a message that was aired on audiovisual media on 12/24.

On May 1st, Labor Day, when the government was trying to hold the vote for the Fake News PL, Lula exploited January 8th to call on his supporters to become “soldiers against fake news”.

“I wanted to invite everyone to become a soldier against fake news. We cannot allow lies to continue to prevail in this country. Every comrade who has a cell phone needs to be attentive, needs to be smart. You cannot send false messages, you cannot pass forward what you know can harm the person. Lies never got anyone anywhere. And it was the truth that defeated the former president of the Republic. You remember that they tried to stage a coup on the 8th. I want to finish by saying for you: all the people who tried to carry out a coup will be arrested, because this country wants real democracy. And democracy wants respect”, he said.

In April, the then Minister of Justice Flávio Dino, now elected to compose the STF, attributed the attacks on schools that occurred that month to “the influence of the idea of ​​extremist violence at any price, at any cost” and said he saw “a connection between a one thing and another”, in reference to January 8th. “The ethos, the paradigm of organizing the world that political coup plotters and child abusers, child murderers have is the same. It’s the same matrix of thought, the matrix of violence,” he added.