What Brazil’s January 8 Can Teach Us About January 6
In 2021, the January 6 Capitol attack exposed deep connections between the US state and far-right groups. When something similar happened in Brazil in 2023, it prompted a national attempt to reform the government. The US has failed to do the same.
With Donald Trump’s return to office, the machinery of the state has turned not against those who attacked democratic institutions but against those who defended them. (Graeme Sloan / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
On January 6, I watched from my living room as a crowd of angry Americans stormed the Capitol. I did not know then that one of them was someone I knew.
Footage released by the FBI confirmed that the young man who sat across from me in a class called Democracy and Education had ditched his signature suit and bowtie for a black hooded puffer and Trump hat and led a mob of Donald Trump supporters in a heave-ho effort to raid the US Capitol, cheering as an officer was pepper sprayed and brutally beaten in front of him.
After pleading guilty to a felony, he would be sentenced to two months in prison, of which he served only seven weeks. In one of the first acts of the Trump administration last February, he was pardoned alongside some 1,500 other rioters.
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