The much-publicized meeting of Jair Bolsonaro and Elon Musk could be just another episode of low-level political communication, carried out to flood newspapers with factoids in the midst of an institutional and humanitarian crisis in Brazil, but it is much more than that.
It makes the rupture of relations between the Brazilian government and the American government irreversible. After all, Bolsonaro has elevated the individual who intends to buy the most influential social network in the world to rehabilitate Donald Trump on the eve of the so-called midterm, midterm elections, to a “myth of freedom”.
Confirming the idea that the invitation to Musk is, above all, a new nod to the global extreme right, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro reiterated the accusation of fraud in the American elections in a military interview in the middle of the week. It is worth remembering that the attack on institutions is a red line for the Biden administration, comparable only to support for international terrorism.
Brazil, therefore, finds itself in a historic situation, in which its president is preparing to strike democracy without the support of the superpower. There are no publishable words to describe the feeling of European leaders towards Bolsonaro and his ministers. The message of the North Atlantic is crystal clear: in the era of supersanctions, the violation of the democratic order would mean the banishment of Brasilia from the financial system.
The BRICS countries do not seem interested in opening a new front of instability either. Beijing made it clear last week that the bloc’s priority is to prevent a chasm between North and South from building up.
This does not mean that a democratic collapse is ruled out, on the contrary. In the last decade, the coup d’état has returned to currency in the Global South. About 20% of the regimes of African states have been forcibly changed since 2013. In the same period, the military began to dictate the course of numerous regimes in Southeast Asia and the south of the continent. Meanwhile, in the Americas, a handful of governments have taken authoritarian turns.
Brazil, however, is considered in diplomatic circles to be too big to fall, to use financial jargon. A tropical capitol would be a triple global catastrophe: the fall of one of the biggest democracies in the Global South, the death sentence for the Amazon, and a political victory for Trumpism two years before the US presidential elections.
But an attempted coup does not need to overthrow the regime to fulfill its mission. If Bolsonaro learned one thing from Trump, it is that electoral vandalism is the best way to perpetuate a political movement after defeat.
In addition to Musk and Trump, Bolsonaro has been pushing for the appointment of a government official at the Brazilian embassy in the United Arab Emirates, the capital of Telegram and other technological and financial traps appreciated by autocrats. With the international coup Musk-Trump-Telegram, the president will try to compensate for the isolation and guarantee support for before and after the election.
Preventing the coup involves accepting that it will not be conventional in its planning, instruments and objectives.
