Reasons to be cheerful? Count them.
Jair Bolsonaro, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump.
In just two years, all three Big Dogs were seen off by large democracies in the shape of Brazil, the UK and the US. Two were ejected by their own people at the first opportunity, while Johnson was finally forced out by his own government in the face of a popular uprising.
Incurable optimists or those who just need to give their heads a rest might be tempted to conclude that a mad political experiment that started in 2016 is waning at last.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory over Bolsonaro on Sunday was remarkable in its resistance to rampant misinformation and harassment, political violence and blatant attempts at voter suppression by Bolsonaro’s security forces. At one point Lula’s campaign had to issue a five-point statement confirming that he had not in fact cut a deal with the devil nor had ever spoken to Satan.
This probably won’t surprise anyone familiar with QAnon conspiracy theorists in the US and their core belief that a group of Satan-worshipping paedophiles is trying to control the world’s politics and media. Their messianic figure, Donald Trump, now openly embraces the movement whose followers have been charged with kidnappings and assassination plots among other violent acts. Its support in the US could be as high as 17 per cent, a useful number for a deplorable weighing the odds of a presidential run.
What is remarkable back in Brazil is how little time it took to upend public discourse in the world’s fifth-largest democracy.
Right-wing extremism
Only a few years before Bolsonaro’s election in 2018, Brazilians were marching for civic-minded projects such as free public transport, says the Brazilian writer, Vanessa Barbara. Every social advance achieved had been in the teeth of dominant conservative forces but even then the debates were conducted in relatively reasoned tones between the centre left and centre right.
Under Bolsonaro, a dam of repressed right-wing extremism burst open.
Moderates were forced to shift their energy and campaigning time to asserting that virology actually exists, that climate change isn’t a global conspiracy, that his claim that the Amazon rainforest “cannot catch fire” is untrue. Meanwhile people were afraid to protest lest it gave his government an excuse for a coup; they feared that any car occupant could be armed and that wearing red could be perceived as a political statement. Neighbours stopped discussing the news.
Precious mental and physical energy and ordinary joys were drained away by a corrupt power-freak, desperate to retain power mainly to stay out of jail (like Trump and Israel’s Netanyahu). Bolsonaro has every reason to fear that what he calls his “undemocratic actions” might land him in prison.
He follows the Trump playbook to the letter. A coup is never out of the question. This week, truckers are blockading highways demanding that the military intervene to deny the will of voters. Will he or won’t he concede?
As the crucial US midterm elections loom next week, a toxic poison leaches away at the organs of US politics. At Halloween, Donald Trump jnr – aged 45 not 15 – mocked the attempted murder of Nancy Pelosi’s 82-year-old spouse by reposting a “costume” featuring male underpants and a hammer with the words “The internet remains undefeated”. This witless depravity earned him an instant 76,000 likes.
Inflection point
The rush to distract from the attacker’s online political support for Trump’s election denial and QAnon-style tropes was alarming in its savagery and reach. They included baseless claims that Paul Pelosi knew the intruder, David DePape; that DePape was in his underwear; that a third person answered the door to police. A Republican congressman tweeted and then deleted a post describing DePape as a “male nudist hippie prostitute”. Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, delighted his Tesla shareholders no doubt by posting a vile link from a fake news site about the circumstances of the attack. He later deleted the tweet without apology or explanation, which suggests that his devotion to truth and “absolutist free speech” may not be all that absolutist.
But this feels different. The repeated public abuse of an elderly man in ICU with a fractured skull feels like an inflection point for humanity.
The past six years have shown how swiftly and deeply proud nations can sink once a strongman rises, populism takes hold and the guardrails are removed.
Last weekend’s victory for Lula was no slam dunk; he squeaked in by less than 2 per cent. But the damage was done. Bolsonaro’s placemen are securely in the majority and Lula’s job will be near-impossible, even for a man of his legendary negotiating skills.
Unless pro-democracy Americans turn out in record numbers for next week’s midterms, Joe Biden faces the same nightmare – not only in day-to-day government but in a dystopian near future where Trump’s election-deniers are elected en masse to pivotal positions in the electoral system, free to wreak havoc next time round.
Still, there are details of some cheer. There is the fact that when Brazil was on its knees, a truly incongruous alliance of anybody-but-Bolsonaro bedfellows united around Lula. That in Britain, the European Research Group has imploded. That in the US, states like Georgia are shattering turnout records for early voting.
Just 21 countries in the world are full democracies, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. We should protect them to our last breath.