‘Foam that’s washed away’: support dissolves as Bolsonaro starts 27-year jail term

Original article by Tom Phillips in Brasília

A few hours before Jair Bolsonaro was ordered to start his 27-year coup sentence in a parking space-sized room, Arley Xavier stood outside the former president’s new home putting a brave face on his leader’s bind.

“It’s not over. There’s still so much Jair Messias Bolsonaro needs to do here in Brazil … No, it’s not over,” insisted the 21-year-old activist, urging conservatives to rise up against Bolsonaro’s imprisonment by flocking to the capital, Brasília, to protest.

During his 2019-2023 presidency, the far-right populist drew huge, impassioned crowds to the streets of cities such as Brasília, Rio and São Paulo.

But there was no sign of a rightwing rebellion this week as Bolsonaro languished in his room on a federal police base. Xavier, who had travelled to the capital for the occasion, was one of only about two dozen protesters outside as the disgraced politician faced up to a future of isolation inside. The mood in Bolsonaro’s leaderless camp was captured by the unusually rainy weather in Brazil’s often scorching midwest.

Few believe the imprisonment of Bolsonaro and five co-conspirators – a sixth fled through the Amazon to the US – is curtains for Brazil’s far right. Followers hope Bolsonaro will receive an amnesty or pardon, particularly if a conservative wins next year’s presidential election.

But the unexpectedly lethargic response to Bolsonaro’s incarceration has caused some to wonder if his grip over the Brazilian right has been shattered. According to one report, on top of his custodial sentence, the 70-year-old politician could be banned from seeking office until he is 105. Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo Bolsonaro, a congressman, has been living in the US since February and faces arrest if he returns home because of a supreme court investigation into allegations he attempted to interfere in his father’s coup trial.

“I’d say the Bolsonaro family’s leadership of the right is coming to an end and you could say Bolsonarismo is coming to an end,” said one political scientist, Christian Lynch.

Lynch recalled how Brazil’s current president, the leftwing veteran Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was hoisted on to the shoulders of adoring supporters when he surrendered to police in 2018 over corruption charges that were later quashed. “It was like an enactment of the Passion of the Christ,” said Lynch who attributed that “spectacular scene” to Lula’s ability to build a highly organised and durable movement since his Workers’ party (PT) was founded in 1980.

There were no such scenes this week as Bolsonaro vanished into custody.

“Bolsonarismo is like foam that is washed away … The right will remain. But Bolsonarismo will pass,” said Lynch, who thought mainstream conservative leaders were glad to be rid of a politician they considered erratic, incompetent and extreme.

Not everyone is certain Bolsonaro’s downfall is sealed, however.

“I do sense this is a very dangerous moment for the Bolsonaro family. We are not seeing much support on the streets,” said Brian Winter, the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly.

Winter suspected Bolsonaro and his politician sons had “made a critical mistake” in recent months by relentlessly denouncing his treatment and lobbying Donald Trump to punish Brazil with sanctions and tariffs for the supposed “witch-hunt”.

“Their messaging has been so focused on their own victimhood … that one wonders whether they have failed to talk enough about the challenges facing everyday Brazilians. Perhaps as a result they have lost their contact with the people,” he said.

But many people wrote Lula’s political obituary after his arrest, only for him to be re-elected in 2022 after being imprisoned for 580 days. “It really did seem he was done and that he might die in prison – and, of course, history went in a different direction,” Winter said.

Bernardo Mello Franco, the author of a new book about Bolsonaro called Architecture of Destruction, recalled how President Getúlio Vargas had also seemed finished when he was deposed in 1945 after 15 years in power. “He spent five years living in ostracism, forgotten on a ranch [in Brazil’s deep south]. Then all of a sudden he was elected president again [in 1950],” he said.

“I’m not comparing Bolsonaro to Getúlio or Lula because I think he’s a politically smaller figure, in every imaginable sense,” Mello Franco added. But it was premature to declare him “dead and buried”, not least because parole laws mean Bolsonaro is likely to be released after six or seven years. “He’d be younger than Lula [80] is now when he left jail,” the writer said.

Octavio Guedes, a commentator for the network GloboNews, doubted Bolsonaro would manage a similar resurrection. He saw the “zero public reaction” to his jailing as confirmation the “post-Bolsonaro” era had begun.

But Guedes believed Bolsonaro’s movement would persist, led by another leader, possibly from outside the former president’s family. “Mussolini once said that he didn’t create fascism – he extracted it from the Italians’ unconscious. And I think it’s the same thing with Bolsonarismo. Bolsonaro dies, but these radical ideas and ideology are here to stay.”

Outside the police compound where Bolsonaro is held, a few disciples insisted their community was down but not out.

“In the coming days this movement will grow,” said one, Ronny de Souza, 43. “There are many courageous … real Christian men in this country … who don’t compromise on principles and values and have woken up and opened their eyes.”

Two days after Bolsonaro’s imprisonment, the only trace of such an outcry was a lone protester who tried to chain himself to a pillar outside congress. Like his leader, he was arrested.