Politics and Government

Champions of democracy in Sudan should be wary of promises from junta leaders to give up political power.

Just two days after Americans had marked the two-year anniversary of the horror that visited the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, an eerily familiar scene played out four thousand miles south, in Brasilia, Brazil. Angered by recent election results and perceptions of foul play, supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the Brazilian presidential palace, Congress, and Supreme Court. “It was an attack on democracy, on the constitution. It was an attempted coup d’état, which failed to materialize,” Brazil’s communications minister Paulo Pimenta declared. Unlike January 6, in Brazil, the attack occurred after the new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, had already been inaugurated—therefore there did not necessarily seem to be a coherent purpose behind the riot, beyond the destruction of Brazilian democratic institutions. Despite piecemeal efforts of social media companies, conspiracy theories questioning the results and alleging wrongdoing had spread rapidly on social media after the election, mobilizing and angering Bolsonaro supporters from across the socioeconomic spectrum. Bolsonaro supporters gathered in a series of makeshift camps throughout the country, including protestors at military bases demanding the army step in to address electoral fraud. Those camps have now been dismantled by security forces after the riot. Bolsonaro has denounced Sunday’s attack, but helped sow the seeds by spreading conspiracy theories about the election before it was even held two months ago. “Without a doubt, former president Bolsonaro has responsibility,” Portuguese foreign minister João Gomes Cravinho said. “His voice is heard by these anti-democratic demonstrators.” This was not the first instance of violence in response to the election results: a man had previously been arrested for trying to break into the new president’s inauguration party armed with a knife and explosives—possibly part of a global trend of rising political assassination attempts—while another individual was arrested for plotting to set off a bomb, hoping to create “chaos” and “prevent the establishment of communism in Brazil.” Although Pimenta noted that the attack was more serious than its American counterpart, January 6 seemingly provided a model for the protestors. Similarly inspired by a range of conspiracy theories mourning perceived electoral fraud and touted by their preferred candidate, the attackers overran police lines and ransacked the government buildings, causing widespread property damage and injuring over seventy people, including police officers and reporters. As the research group the Soufan Center had warned in late September, “Ironically, the United States, historically known for exporting democracy, is now associated with developing the playbook for dictators and strongmen to use to sow doubt about democratic elections, while simultaneously offering a blueprint for authoritarian leaders to seize power by force.” There was also direct support: Stephen Bannon, a former White House official, advised the Bolsonaro campaign after the defeat, helped spread electoral conspiracy theories, and on Monday called the rioters “freedom fighters.” It may be no coincidence that Brazil was the U.S. ally to suffer the most serious January 6 copycat—analysts have long discussed the similarities and close relationship between Donald Trump and Bolsonaro and their respective political playbooks. This was, unfortunately, not the first time American far-right violent extremism and activism had provided a model for counterparts abroad. QAnon, for instance, has become a global phenomenon. Though its American variant revolves around Trump, alleging that the former president was divinely chosen to rid Washington, DC, of Satan-worshipping pedophiles controlling banks, the media, Hollywood, and the Democratic Party, it has been adopted in other contexts and tailored to local grievances—including, crucially for the Brazilian case study, in Portuguese. In Germany, meanwhile, police in December arrested a far-right cell that intended to overthrow the government. They had been inspired by QAnon and related conspiracy theories. But it is not just anti-democratic movements taking their inspiration from the United States. Neo-Nazi terrorists abroad frequently cite American inspiration. The gunman who opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, killing fifty-one worshippers, claimed to use firearms in his attack “for the affect it would have on social discourse, the extra media coverage they would provide, and the affect it could have on the politics of United states and thereby the political situation of the world.” An October 2022 shooting at a gay bar in Slovakia, meanwhile, cited a mass shooting targeting Buffalo’s Black community in May as inspiration. Although extremists do not always formally collaborate across borders, social media provides the common marketplace where they communicate and share ideas and methods, with many abroad taking U.S.-origin conspiracies and applying them to their own homelands. As the United States gears up to lead its allies into a new era of global strategic competition, domestic discord and violence undermine the liberal democratic project, making the democratic model both less attractive to would-be partners as well as more vulnerable to foreign interference. Washington has failed to sufficiently protect democratic norms and values, both at home and among allies. Indeed, as terrorism expert Matthew Levitt wrote after January 6, “we have become exporters of right-wing extremism, damaging one of our best weapons in securing our international standing—our example.” As the far-right threat to Western liberal democracy has internationalized, the U.S. response must also be global. Partners around the region and the world have loudly condemned Sunday’s events, as many did after January 6. Previously, governments have put forth initiatives such as the Christchurch Call and Delhi Declaration in an effort to counter the spread of extremist material online. And the United Nations has begun to focus on the issue, recently publishing its first report on “terrorist attacks on the basis of xenophobia, racism and other forms of intolerance, or in the name of religion and belief” and specifically noting the danger of its globalization. More must now be done to combat far-right violent extremism’s free rein on social media, boost prevention initiatives, undermine transnational conspiracy theories, and interdict international terrorist financing. Both Brazil and the United States must put more financial and human resources toward fighting violent extremism, while joining international efforts in this space. And the United States needs to play a leading role in those global measures—restoring its place as leader of the free and democratic world, not as leading exporter of far-right violent extremism.

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As winter neared, many observers were concerned about the resilience of European democracies during Russia’s war against Ukraine. The triple pressures of economic downturn and inflation, energy crisis, and millions of Ukrainian refugees seemed to provide fertile ground for populists and for a faltering of European support for Ukraine. In reality, that scenario has not materialized. Europe is more resilient than expected. European gas storages are filled for the winter, and European Union leaders have agreed to a gas price cap across the European Union (EU). The cap will reduce the gas bills for individual households in all EU member states. At the same time, the European Union has radically reduced its dependence on Russian gas from 40 percent at the beginning of 2022 to 17 percent in August. Russian gas is primarily replaced by liquified natural gas from the United States. The European Union is also catching up on support for Ukraine after lagging behind the United States throughout the summer and early autumn of 2022. It has agreed to an eighteen-billion-euro macro-financial assistance package, which will help to keep Ukraine’s budget afloat in 2023. It also increased the European Peace Facility, an off-budget fund that reimburses member states for arms donations to Ukraine, by an additional two billion euros. Overall, the combined financial, humanitarian, and military aid of all EU member states and institutions amounts to fifty-two billion euros (as of November 20, 2022). The forty-five-billion-dollar support package for Ukraine agreed upon in Congress on December 24, 2022, will once again put the United States far ahead of the EU. However, it is a welcome sign that EU member states made more and larger contributions than usual during summer and autumn. Public support for Ukraine remains strong. According to a Bertelsmann survey, 50 percent of the EU population (on average) support weapon deliveries to Ukraine, and 67 percent want to become more energy independent, even at higher costs for themselves (as of September 2022). A YouGov poll concluded that the public in core European countries continues to back sanctions on Russia. The outliers in that survey are Greece, Hungary, and Italy. The case of Italy seems to justify concerns that populism is on the rise in Europe in the wake of the war in Ukraine. Indeed, a study by the Pew Research Center confirmed that populists on the right have increased their vote shares in recent European elections. A new far-right coalition formed in Rome after elections in September 2022 with the pro-Russian politicians Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini in power. At the same time, elections in Sweden led to a new coalition backed by the far-right Sweden Democrats. Nevertheless, those election victories do not necessarily represent a direct response to the war and a change in approach toward Ukraine. In Sweden, domestic concerns about migration and crime were high on the agenda for a long time. In Italy, the elections reflect the general volatility in Italian politics and disappointment with left-wing parties in the past. The new Italian government remains committed to Ukraine and has agreed to deliver weapons throughout 2023. Sweden’s new government also remains firm on Ukraine support and is primarily focused on its NATO accession. Hungary, the EU’s arguably least democratic member state, has lifted its blockade of Ukraine support after the European Commission announced a de-freeze of some of the financial funds withheld from Hungary out of rule-of-law concerns. It is an uneasy compromise, but the example of the EU’s approach toward Hungary helps illustrate why the European Union is more successful than expected. First, by its nature, the EU is a compromise machine. The process by which the EU reaches a joint position is tedious and imperfect, but—as many EU leaders like to underline—it is the outcome that matters. The EU’s success in achieving compromise also has to do with the distant shadow of the future in EU policymaking—that using a veto option today could harm negotiations in the future. In short: Burning bridges in the EU is not a successful strategy. If the stakes are high, as they are in Ukraine, the EU will find a way to achieve a creative compromise. Second, the EU has learned from its past crises. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the initial lack of solidarity weakened the EU as a whole. Later on, the EU agreed for the first time to a joint borrowing mechanism to cushion the economic damage of the pandemic. The lesson was that solidarity is more successful than going it alone. That knowledge has also guided the EU’s response toward the energy crisis, after initial controversies among member states about energy subsidies. Despite the positive balance sheet so far, Europe is not yet out of the woods. Inflation is expected to remain at 7 percent in 2023, according to the European Commission. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth will stagnate at 0.3 percent in 2023. The EU’s gas storages will have to be refilled toward the end of the winter, and right-wing populists are preparing for the next elections, such as in Slovakia’s in 2023. However, the greatest danger to European democracies will be a Russian success in making Ukraine uninhabitable and destroying its infrastructure. A new wave of Ukrainian refugees caused by Russian missile attacks could overwhelm Europeans at a time of dire economic outlook. So far, Europe’s response has been formidable. More than 4.8 million refugees were registered in Europe and received immediate residency rights and working permissions in the EU. As of June, 3.1 million have exited the EU back to Ukraine. They will likely return if Russia continues its attacks. Moscow is betting that time is on its side. It does not believe in European democracies, and undermining European support for Ukraine is part of its new theory of victory. As Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of the EU, once argued: “Europe would be built through crises, and it would be the sum of their solutions.” Refuting Russia’s new theory of victory will be an important litmus test for the EU’s strength in crisis.

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