Trumpism — like pocketbookism — is best described as a revolutionary rather than a conservative movement. If the conservative is someone concerned about sudden changes that could affect institutions, this definition excludes trumpism and pocketbook straight away. Just watch the documentary “Four Hours at the Capitol”, directed by Jamie Roberts, that this aspect becomes clear and very concrete.
After all, insurgents treat the Capitol, the seat of the US Legislature, as their own personal Bastille. Again, not conservatives, but neo-Jacobins in action: on January 6 of this year, in Washington, an angry mob stormed the US Congress to try to tear down political structures that took centuries to build and solidify.
It was a mob persuaded by the speech of then-President Donald Trump and an entire far-right ecosystem that the country’s own democratic system was under suspicion.
The main virtue of the documentary’s narrative, focusing on the invaders, is that the best way to understand what happened is to give voice to these people. However, by offering a lot of space to groups like the Proud Boys and Cowboys for Trump, without an immediate counterpoint, the documentary leaves a risk: it is not difficult to imagine a trumpist or a pocketnarist watching the film as a kind of “The Birth of a Nation” revisited, making the reading that what happened must be glorified.
Later on, the work becomes more balanced, with the testimony of police officers who were on the front lines and the widow of agent Brian D. Sicknick, who died that day, in action.
Trumpism and Pocketism are what some call a Gnostic religion. It is a staged Christianity: there is, for example, a martyr — portrayed in Brazil in the episode of the stab wound and, in the US, in the supposed electoral fraud. Both abuse the accusation of apostasy—that is, those who abandon the Pocketnist or Trumpist faith are always accused of treason. Tayler Hanson of Gateway Pundit, a fake news site and far-right conspiracy theories, explains: “Trumpers consider Trump Jesus Christ.” He makes explicit the behavior of religious worship.
In Brazil, pocketnaristas now and again cite the invasion of the Capitol with admiration. No wonder, since the Brazilian right mimics the American. Today, the American right has two wings: one parliamentary and the other violent and sympathetic to the destruction of institutions — a valid observation for the Brazilian right.
More common points? Constant challenges to other Powers, Legislative or Judiciary. It was recently that the dissident pocketnarista Sara Winter declared to the Federal Police that she had received incentives from the high command of the federal bureaucracy to attack the Federal Supreme Court (STF).
In addition, the pocketbook has capillarity in the military police and an alternative media system. A growing political radicalization demonstrates that pocketnarism precedes, is greater and is independent of Bolsonaro. Just as trumpism is in relation to the late Trump government.
Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the STF, will be president of the Superior Electoral Court during the 2022 elections in Brazil. It would be advisable for him to watch “Four Hours at the Capitol”. It won’t hurt.
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