Former president Jair Bolsonaro, who governed Brazil calamitously from 2019 to 2023, remains barred from seeking elected office until 2030 for his role in undermining the democratic institutions of Latin America’s largest nation. This legal remedy, while non-prescribable in the United States, is one that Brazilian jurists can apply in response to rogue figures like Bolsonaro. Six years ago, Brazil’s current president, the grizzled leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was himself disqualified from running for president by the same token.

The difference between the two leaders, of course, is that Bolsonaro’s political agenda is rooted in a general hostility to the pluralistic conviviality that democracy needs in order to function. Not only did Bolsonaro spend months baselessly sowing doubt about his country’s ability to hold a free and fair election in 2022, but he was also petulant and conniving in defeat. He faces the possibility of more serious legal trouble as ongoing investigations of the January 8, 2023, insurrection in Brasília proceed. Last week, Brazilians were reminded of the political chaos recklessly unleashed by Bolsonaro and his allies when a radicalized supporter set off explosives outside the Supreme Federal Court, killing himself in the process.

While damage from the suicide bombing was limited, the incident is a fiery reminder of the nation’s polarization as Brazil hosted the G20 summit for the first time. The G20 brings together the world’s largest economies to discuss issues of trade, climate, security, and other pressing global challenges. Brazil hosted the meeting as the G20’s head, a role that rotates annually. Lula’s priorities for the G20 reflect his long-standing social democratic politics, focusing on the fight against hunger and inequality. Yet a far-right pall hangs over the discussion: despite Lula’s relative popularity, Brazil is set for a major resurgence on the world stage with the imminent return of Donald Trump to the White House.

Indeed, there is an elegiac quality to this G20 summit, which concludes a year of Lula’s leadership that began with lofty aspirations. Lula had hoped, for example, to secure agreement on a 2 percent minimum tax on the wealthiest individuals in the world to mitigate the appeal of tax havens that foster corruption and drive income inequality. The head of the International Monetary Fund hailed the initiative as “timely and welcome.” US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen, however, argued in July that “tax policy is very difficult to coordinate globally, and we don’t see a need or really think it’s desirable to try to negotiate a global agreement on that.”

Lula’s efforts to strengthen the voice of Global South actors like Brazil in established institutions of global governance like the UN Security Council have likewise produced few tangible results. President Joe Biden reportedly committed to the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty that Lula proposed through the G20, signaling on his way out the door that his working relationship with Lula remains strong. Biden attended the summit in Rio de Janeiro and visited the Amazonian capital city of Manaus, becoming the first US president to set foot in the world’s largest rainforest while in office.

Whatever policy outcomes emerge from the summit — reflecting the consensus of figures like Lula, Biden, British prime minister Keir Starmer, French president Emmanuel Macron, and German chancellor Olaf Scholz — are likely to be disfigured in the coming by Trump, who will be eager to make his mark on global affairs once again. As such, these leaders should embrace a unique opportunity to make the case for a transformative progressive politics capable of pushing back against a transnational far-right threat that promises to make virtually every major global problem worse. In short, they should embrace Lula’s style of leadership.

Lula embodies the argument that progressive, democratic politics can serve as an electoral antidote to the rising authoritarianism personified by Bolsonaro and Trump. Two years ago, Lula defeated Bolsonaro despite his allies’ underhanded attempts to keep him in power. He thus became the first challenger to unseat an incumbent since the Brazilian Constitution was changed in 1997 to allow sitting presidents to seek a second term. Meanwhile, Biden remains the only person who can say he beat Trump at the ballot box — a similarity that the two discussed on Lula’s visit to Washington after being inaugurated in early 2023.

Crucially, however, Lula has remained relatively popular as Biden’s support plummeted and the popular base of Trumpism expanded. While some 40 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s performance on the job, 41 percent consider Lula’s administration either great or good with another 18 percent deeming it average. The same polls indicate that while roughly 55 percent disapprove of the outgoing US president, 40 percent feel the same way about Lula. According to Gilberto Kassab, the savvy head of the center-right Social Democratic Party (PSD), which elected more mayors than any other party in October’s municipal elections, Lula remains the odds-on favorite in the 2026 presidential race.

Lula’s success derives from factors both practical and ineffable. One key has been his ability to pass major pieces of legislation — including a major overhaul of Brazil’s byzantine tax regime and a fiscal plan designed to curb growing budget deficits — through an overwhelmingly conservative Congress, a testament to his famous political skill but also the surprising tact of Finance Minister Fernando Haddad, the staid college professor who governed the city of São Paulo from 2013 to 2017 and ran unsuccessfully on behalf of Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT) against Bolsonaro in 2018.

Lula’s political fortunes are also indelibly tied to his working-class origins and ethos. His electoral staying power is a reminder that popular progressive leaders are not easily forged overnight. It takes determination and time to build movements that empower ordinary working people to enter the political arena.

This year’s G20 summit is an opportunity for world leaders to reflect on the consequences of a geopolitical landscape increasingly dominated by arch-reactionary forces, be they those seeking to profit from environmental degradation or make political hay from xenophobia, obscurantism, and genocide. Lula has earned the political standing to push his counterparts to take bolder progressive action with a sense of urgency.

Brazil is an example of how quickly far-right politics, using social media and transnational organization, can erode a relatively healthy civic culture in the twenty-first century. That process is still underway, raising questions about what happens once Lula leaves the scene. For now, though, Brazil is getting a lot right. It is an example G20 leaders should consider when seeking to understand how major democracies — including its leaders and established political parties but also, crucially, its grassroots movements — can organize to defend the institutions that have made so much social progress possible in recent decades while pressing for more responsive and effective government.

To mitigate the advance of reactionary right-wing authoritarianism, the heads of the world’s major economies should pay close attention to political trends in working-class majorities worldwide, not least in Brazil. There is nothing preordained about this group’s political slide to the Right. After all, it was the working class of Brazil that produced Lula.