The insurrection in Brazil

We need to fix this problem.

The insurrection in Brazil seems already to have fallen out of the American headlines.

It shouldn’t. It really shouldn’t.

What happened on January 8 in Brasília closely resembled what happened on January 6 two years before in the US Capitol. This is not a coincidence. The same circle of American radicals—Steve Bannon, in particular, along with a number of other figures closely associated with the insurrection in the Capitol, such as Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy—were intimately involved in the planning and incitement of the insurrection in Brasília. If you were in any doubt that Trump and Bannon intended to foment the scenes we saw at the Capitol on January 6, you now have your answer. They intended it. And Bannon was so undeterred by our response that he tried it again.

Too many Americans, I suspect, looked at the scenes in Brasília, noted their similarity to the scenes at the Capitol, and moved on without asking why. It’s not merely a matter of cultural contagion by means of images on television. It’s much more than that.