The January 8, 2023 acts of vandalism against Three Powers buildings completes 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.
At the Federal Supreme Court (STF), the argument that the acts were planned with the clear objective of carrying out a coup d’état in Brazil and that all those present at the demonstrations could be considered coup plotters, served as a pretext for some of the most disproportionate in the history of Brazilian justice.
There are examples like that of the retired teacher Ângela Nunes, 54, who only cooked in front of the army headquarters in Brasilia for the protesters and did not participate in the vandalism, but despite this she was detained for two months and subjected to difficulties in dealing with a serious illness. Also emblematic is the case of Jupira Rodrigues, 57 years old, sentenced to 14 years without concrete evidence of having committed any type of vandalism; she received the standardized ruling from the Supreme Court which was applied to classify all types of participation in the 1/8 demonstrations under criminal categories such as “armed criminal association”, “violent abolition of the democratic rule of law” and “coup state”. ‘state”.
At the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), vandalism was used in the trial that made former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) ineligible for eight years. During the trial, Walber Agra, lawyer for the PDT – the party that sued the TSE to prevent the former president’s candidacy – created a connection between Bolsonaro’s speeches on the electoral system and the acts of 8 January in 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 there was an unprecedented mobilization of sectors of the population, who openly and publicly rejected the electoral result”.
In politicized speeches delivered on several occasions, Supreme Court ministers took refuge on January 8 to criticize the rise of the right in Brazil without appearing undemocratic. Luís Roberto Barroso, for example, justified his famous phrase “we have defeated Bolsonarism” by saying that he was referring to “the coup d’état and the violent extremism that manifested itself on January 8 and which corresponds to a minority.”
January 8 also served as an opportunity for the judiciary and its members to make gestures and campaigns to position themselves as guardians of democracy. In January, for example, the STF launched the “Unshaken Democracy” campaign, which began selling the Supreme Court as a body that defends Brazilian democracy from extremists.
In Congress, government deputies sought to exploit the acts of January 8 to enable a Fake News version of the PL, facilitating the censorship of opponents on social media. On several occasions, left-wing parliamentarians have used 8/1 as a pretext to support the need to speed up the debate and increase the responsibility of social networks in censoring content. So far the PL has not been voted on.
The executive turned 8/1 into an ace in the hole to justify the persecution of opponents
The Executive, especially through President Lula and the then Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino, made January 8 an ace in the hole to justify all types of tools that could be used to persecute opponents.
In January, less than three weeks after the attacks, the Lula government announced the “Democracy Package,” a series of bills aimed at toughening sanctions against anyone who attacks the democratic rule of law or high-ranking authorities. The plan also intends to financially suffocate those the PT calls supporters of “anti-democratic movements” and even suggests the creation of a National Guard to prevent further attacks on democracy. Congress has not yet voted on the proposals.
President Lula explored the August 1 attacks in several interviews and events. The last one was in the Christmas message to the Brazilian people.
“The hatred of some against democracy has left deep scars and has divided the country. It has divided families. It has put democracy at risk. They have broken windows, invaded and vandalized public buildings, destroyed works of art and historical objects. Fortunately, the coup attempt had the opposite effect. It united all the institutions, mobilized the political parties above ideologies, provoked a prompt reaction from society”, declared in a message broadcast by the audiovisual 24/12.
On May 1st, Labor Day, when the government was trying to block the vote for the Fake News PL, Lula used January 8th to invite his supporters to become “soldiers against fake news”.
“I wanted to invite everyone to become soldiers against fake news. We cannot allow lies to continue to prevail in this country. Every comrade who has a cell phone must be attentive, must be intelligent. You cannot send false messages, yes “You cannot passing on what you know can harm the person. Lies never got you anywhere. And it was the truth that defeated the former President of the Republic. You remember that they tried to do a coup on the 8th. I want to conclude by saying for you: all the people who attempted to carry out a coup will be arrested, because this country wants true democracy. And democracy demands respect,” she said.
In April, then-Justice Minister Flávio Dino, now elected to make up the STF, attributed the school attacks 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 one thing and another,” referring to January 8th. “The ethos, the paradigm of organization of the world that the political coup plotters and the perpetrators of child abuse and murderers have is the same. It is the same matrix of thought, the matrix of violence”, he added.
2024-01-07 00:46:00
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