Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò in Boston Review:
n January 5, 2025, then president Joe Biden addressed reporters and reaffirmed his commitment to a peaceful transfer of power amid the wait for election results, nearly four years to the day after the infamous attempted coup of January 6. “I think what [Trump] did was a genuine threat to democracy,” Biden said, “and I’m hopeful that we’re beyond it.” We were not. Days later, in his inaugural address, Trump made false claims of election fraud, just as he had done in 2020.
The United States is several years into a disastrous surge in right-wing authoritarianism. Just days ago, ICE murdered a father in front of his three-year-old daughter in Maine and left his posthumously handcuffed body in the street for five hours. The latest mass deportation surge only adds another layer to the structural reality of constant, unaccountable police violence: according to Campaign Zero, there were only six calendar days in the entirety of 2025 in which law enforcement did not kill someone.
One looks abroad with equal parts curiosity and envy at other countries that have managed to fend off their own right-wing insurgencies, including South Korea, where the former president narrowly escaped a death sentence for his role in instigating an attempted coup thwarted only by a brave mass protest, and Hungary, where Viktor Orbán’s recent electoral defeat cemented a setback for the international right-wing coalition that had rallied to his defense. These are worth learning from for a host of reasons, perhaps chief among which is that a network of actors are working in concert across these different national boundaries to support right-wing governments by fomenting xenophobic panic and violence. But among the examples from abroad that thinkers here should pay attention to, one stands out in particular: Brazil.
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