Brazil’s far-right movement and its leader, former President Jair Bolsonaro, have had a challenging few days.
First, a supporter of Mr. Bolsonaro blew himself up near the nation’s Supreme Court, an institution many on the right see as an enemy, in a terrorist attack that the police attributed to political extremism.
Days later, the authorities accused members of an elite military unit — including a former top aide to Mr. Bolsonaro — of planning to kill Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, weeks before he was to become president. The assassination plan, the police said, was printed out in the presidential offices while Mr. Bolsonaro was in the building, according to a police report reviewed by The New York Times.
Now, the police are seeking criminal charges against Mr. Bolsonaro himself, along with three dozen of his allies, over a broad plot to stage a coup to keep him in power after he lost the 2022 presidential election to Mr. Lula.
The dramatic events, which unfolded over the span of eight days, have cast a shadow over a movement that Mr. Bolsonaro mobilized as he rose to power, consolidated as president and continued to nurture following his narrow defeat at the polls.
“It’s terrible news for the far-right,” said Fábio Kerche, a professor of political science at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro. “It deals a blow — including to Bolsonaro.”
Yet Mr. Bolsonaro has weathered many storms, during his presidency and following his reluctant exit from power.
Now, facing potential criminal charges that could lead to prison, Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters have been quick to downplay the severity of the situation, chalking it up to “leftist” political persecution by the judiciary.
In sharp contrast to Mr. Bolsonaro’s woes, Mr. Lula has spent the last week basking in the global spotlight.
During a gathering of world leaders in Rio, Mr. Lula posed for photos with President Biden, led an ambitious international pact to fight hunger and poverty, and positioned himself as a leading voice on global efforts to fight climate change, ahead of hosting the world’s most important climate summit in Brazil next year.
“With all this, Lula is on the rise,” said João Roberto Martins Filho, a political scientist at the Federal University of São Carlos.
But even as Mr. Lula enjoyed a moment of glory, it is unclear whether he will succeed in advancing his international agenda once President Biden hands over the reins of power to President-elect Donald J. Trump.
Mr. Lula has said he hopes to forge “civilized” relations with Mr. Trump, but he has also openly expressed worries about some of the president-elect’s plans. Mr. Lula, in an interview with CNN this month, urged Mr. Trump to “think as an inhabitant of the planet Earth” when shaping climate policy.
Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies, on the other hand, have loudly cheered Mr. Trump’s victory.
On election night, one of Mr. Bolsonaro’s sons watched the votes being counted at Mar-a-Lago and, following Mr. Trump’s victory, the former Brazilian president drew parallels between himself and the American president-elect on social media, casting both men as part of a global populist movement.
And even though Mr. Bolsonaro is forbidden to travel outside Brazil because of the investigations targeting him, he has asked Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the case, for permission to attend Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January.
“He’ll say no to the most powerful guy in the world?” Mr. Bolsonaro said, referring to the next U.S. president, in an interview with Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.
Mr. Bolsonaro, perhaps trying to follow Mr. Trump’s road map, seems to want to stage his own political comeback, signaling that he intends to run in Brazil’s next presidential election in 2026.
There is a hitch though: An electoral court has barred him from holding office until the end of the decade.
After Mr. Trump’s victory, “it seemed that Bolsonaro might return to the electoral game,’’ said Guilherme Casarões, a professor at Fundação Getúlio Vargas, who has studied Brazil’s far-right movement.
“This enthusiasm was lost throughout this week” of legal blows for Mr. Bolsonaro, Mr. Casarões said.
Still, a significant slice of Brazilian voters may be rooting for Mr. Bolsonaro’s political resurrection anyway.
In a poll this month, nearly a fifth of those surveyed said they would vote for Mr. Bolsonaro in the next presidential election even though, for now, he cannot run. Mr. Lula, who is eligible to run, was the preferred candidate of 27 percent of those polled.
This week was a culmination of mounting legal troubles for Mr. Bolsonaro after the federal police urged prosecutors to charge Mr. Bolsonaro and three dozen others, including members of his inner circle, with crimes of “violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, coup d’état and criminal organization.”
Brazil’s top federal prosecutor must now decide whether to pursue the case. If he does, Mr. Bolsonaro could eventually end up in handcuffs.
Even if Mr. Bolsonaro stands trial, it may not be enough to tarnish him in the eyes of his most fervent supporters, according to Mr. Kerche. “Bolsonaro could do whatever he wanted, and they would continue to support him.”
That is another similarity with Mr. Trump, whose support seemed to only grow with the legal cases against him.
Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Bolsonaro has cast himself as a political martyr, leaning into a false narrative of a stolen election.
More than a year before Brazil’s election in 2022, Mr. Bolsonaro began sowing baseless doubts about the security of the nation’s voting machines, warning that he could only be defeated if they were rigged in his opponent’s favor.
When he did lose, Mr. Bolsonaro never officially conceded defeat. His supporters set up camps outside military headquarters, calling on the military to overturn the election.
Then, in a violent episode reminiscent of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, they invaded and vandalized Brazil’s congressional, Supreme Court and presidential offices just days after Mr. Lula was sworn in, hoping to provoke a military intervention.
Lawmakers in Congress have been mulling legislation that would pardon the rioters and, according to legal experts, possibly benefit Mr. Bolsonaro himself, enabling him to hold elected office again.
But, as Mr. Bolsonaro’s legal troubles have piled up, there are signs that his political alliances may be fraying. After days of silence, one of Mr. Bolsonaro’s most prominent allies, Tarcísio de Freitas, the governor of São Paulo, spoke out to defend the former president but stopped short of echoing his sharp criticisms of the investigation and the judiciary.
This signals that the country’s political right may be moving to shield themselves and their movement from the crisis facing Mr. Bolsonaro, Mr. Martins Filho said.
“No one is saying they are splitting with Bolsonaro,” he said. “But there are a lot of people willing to leave him standing alone.”
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