Gaslighting
How not to rewrite the January 8 coup attempt
History is written by the victors, the saying goes. Nowadays, victory tends to be a murky prospect—at least in functional democratic societies. The internet and 24/7 press coverage have complicated matters. Now, history is written by anyone who knows how to use these widespread tools. Gatekeeping turned into a swear word. Anyone can disturb the concept of victor anytime with the help of unwilling institutions themselves, which often refuse to believe—as a matter of principle—that they have been played like fine-tuned fiddles. So, there are no victors except for the bankers. After all, as everybody knows, the bank always wins.
When reality depends on whose political faith you swear by, history becomes a sport. People can deny the existence of facts on screens and printed paper with the certainty that there will be no retort. If there is one, they only need to stick to their guns with the most serene of faces. Do not blink. Madness becomes your challenger. Denial wins.
The word gaslighting, the act of convincing someone that what they believe is real is not, came from the British film Gaslight (A.R. Rawlinson, 1940) and its homonymous Hollywood remake (George Cukor, 1944). In Victorian London, a man marries an unaware woman because of her deceased aunt’s jewels, which were left somewhere in the house where they are living. Every time he goes treasure-hunting in the attic in the middle of the night, the lights in the house dim. To quash his wife’s suspicion, he gets creative: he convinces her no such thing is happening; it must be her nerves. In the American version, Charles Boyer plays the man, Gregory Anton, with such obvious intent that the audience would know he is up to no good even if they didn’t know he is up to no good. It doesn’t matter. He just needs to convince his target audience: Paula Alquist, the increasingly confused wife played by Ingrid Bergman, and those around her.
Gaslighting moved into mainstream politics along with fringe politicians. You know what they are doing, but it doesn’t seem to matter much because they are not playing it for you.
On the week leading to the first anniversary of the January 8 coup attempt in Brasilia, CNN Brasil aired an exclusive interview with the person who, to say the very least, inspired the insurrection, former president Jair Bolsonaro, recorded at his upper-scale beach house in Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro. When the interviewer asked him to comment on those events, he first stressed that he was in the United States in case no one had followed the drama surrounding American authorities’ renewal of his visa. Then he smirked and replied:
“I regretted it on social media because this has never been the behavior of people from our side, people from the Right. In spite of the CPMI [the Senate Committee Investigation on the Jan 8 events], which didn’t investigate anything, we are sure that was a trap set by the Left.”
“For a coup to be attempted, there should be a leader,” he continued. “All the investigations found no name. It’s just assumptions. Who will try a coup with the elderly, old people holding a Bible in one hand and the [Brazilian] flag in the other one, with ordinary people, cotton candy vendors, Uber drivers, minors, kids?”
He was reproducing the same conspiracy theory that his followers were testing on social media in the immediate aftermath of the storming of the National Congress, the Supreme Court, and the presidential palace in Brasilia. Now there are hours of footage and photos and statements to prove him wrong.
The interviewer never pushed back. He never reminded Bolsonaro that most of those arrested after the insurrection were men between 36 and 55 years old. Or that the rioters had grenades, homemade bombs, and other weapons, and several of them were wearing gas masks and helmets. Or that they knew precisely where guns and ammunition were kept in the presidential palace. Or that Leo Indio, Bolsonaro’s nephew, was among the protesters that Sunday. Or that Fernando Honorato, the former president of the Federal District Military Police Union, helped trash the government buildings. Or that several plotters, including former members of the Bolsonaro administration, had been in the presidential palace more than once between 2019 and 2021. Or that some of these suspects were also involved in the attempt to invade the Federal Police Headquarters in Brasilia on December 12 to stop Lula from being certified as president days later. Or that one of these suspects failed to detonate a bomb in an oil truck next to the Brasilia International Airport on Christmas Eve. Or that, according to a Federal Police report, Bolsonaro’s aide, Lt. Colonel Mauro Cid, had “gathered documents with the objective of obtaining ‘legal and juridical’ support for the execution of a coup d’état.” Or that the police raided the home of Anderson Torres, Bolsonaro’s minister of justice, and found a draft decree proposing a state of emergency. Or that Torres, secretary of public security of the Federal District since January 1, was not in Brasilia on January 8 but in Orlando, where Bolsonaro had been since December 31. Or that, according to a never-discredited scoop by Revista Piauí, Bolsonaro himself had asked his top military staff to send troops and shut down the Supreme Court in 2020—due to the possibility that his phone might be confiscated in the course of an investigation requested by three political parties. (One of his generals was cozy to the idea.) Or that he had spent the entire election cycle claiming that the electronic ballots were not to be trusted, a thesis that helped flame his supporters. Or that the Supreme Court called his bluff and requested him to show the evidence, but he went online to say he had none. Or that he summoned ambassadors from several nations to hear him voice such a claim again—the reason why the Electoral Court banned him from office for eight years in June 2023. Or that he participated in a 2021 Independence Day rally in Sao Paulo during which he called Alexandre de Moraes, the justice in charge of several far-right investigations, a “canalha” (bastard) to a cheering crowd of supporters. Or that the head of the Federal Highway Police ordered irregular road blockades across the country on Election Day, delaying turnout in areas with mostly Lula voters. Or that Bolsonaro shared a video with fake news about electoral fraud on Facebook on January 10, two days after the insurrection. Or that Bolsonaro’s allies proposed the CPMI to embarrass the new administration, which seized the opportunity to prove in the final report that everything was connected to the actions of Bolsonaro and his staff.
So what was left were the words of Jair, a perfect snippet of inaccurate news and efficient propaganda ready for consumption by millions on YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook closed groups, Kwai, X, TikTok, Gettr… From there, they start seeping into the wider population. They don’t need to believe what Bolsonaro is saying; they only need to feel unsure about what to believe. As Agencia Publica’s Natalia Vianna observed, 94% of Brazilians disapproved of the coup attempt in February 2023. According to the same pollster, the disapproval rate was down to 89% a year later.
On January 6, Folha de Sao Paulo published an interview with Lula’s Minister of Defense as part of its coverage of the Jan 8 anniversary. Lula had chosen seasoned politician José Múcio because of his highly regarded conciliatory skills. The relationship between Lula, a center-left president, and the Armed Forces, whose generals had primarily supported Bolsonaro, was up to a rocky start. Múcio’s strategy was to become more than friends with the generals. He understood his mission not as serving a country but as working as the Armed Forces’ attorney, as the interview suggests. When asked why the president became suspicious of the Chief of the Army, Múcio said:
“I think it was because of January 8. The president lost all [confidence in him], and so did his allies. Then, I ended up with the Army by myself. The Left was angry with them and thought they were attempting a coup, and the Right was angry with them because they didn’t try a coup.”
He never elaborated on the behavior of the Army during the events on January 8. Later, he summarized their role in generic terms: “They abode to the law.” He is absolutely sure that “the Armed Forces behaved exemplarily.” If they actually wanted to take down the government, the situation was “very convenient because civilians had arrived there first.”
Múcio was also recently interviewed for a documentary, 8/1: Democracy Resists (Julia Duailibi & Rafael Norton, 2024), in which he gives a different version of the Army’s model behavior.
Duailibi: In this meeting [with Army generals after the invasion of the federal buildings], didn’t any general argue that street protests are expected or that there were protests in other administrations…?
Múcio: No, no. And I didn’t dare ask. I was afraid of the answers.
After the election, Bolsonaro supporters gathered in camps before Army bases in cities nationwide. They asked for the military to do something and change the results they couldn’t accept: Lula’s victory must have resulted from fraud. There were many relatives of active-duty and retired officers among these protesters. The wife of Gen. Eduardo Villas Bôas, a former head of the Brazilian Army and Bolsonaro’s mentor, could be seen offering support around the Brasilia camp in front of the Army headquarters. When Ricardo Cappelli, the federal interventor, rushed with the police to the camp in the evening to arrest those who had participated in the riot, Army officials were far from supportive. A military commander warned that any attempt to clear the camp that night would lead to a “bloodbath.” As images from TV helicopters showed, the Army placed a barrier with soldiers and tanks turned toward the police cars in the road. When Cappelli met with Gen. Julio Cesar de Arruda, the chief of the Brazilian Army, he recounts that he heard a not even veiled threat:
“He asked, ‘Are you going to get in here with armed men without my authorization, sir?’ Then he turns to Col. Fabio Augusto Vieira [a former commander of the Federal District military police who was backing Capelli] and says: ‘I have a bit more armed men than you, right, colonel?’”
A few minutes later, Flavio Dino, Lula’s minister of justice, arrived with Múcio. According to eyewitnesses, Arruda told them, “You are not going to arrest people here.” They finally agreed to let the police in early next morning, more than enough time for the main suspects to flee if they were hiding in the camp. Anyway, the Army had stopped authorities from clearing the camps before that Sunday, according to police officers. After the riot, Arruda refused to sack Mauro Cid, who had been put in charge of a strategic battalion. Lula finally dismissed Arruda.
The road to January 8 was also peppered with military officials. The Armed Forces often entertained Bolsonaro’s conspiracy theories about fraud and unreliable ballots throughout 2022. In June, they announced they would examine the voting system despite lacking the expertise. Ironically, the Electoral Court had already added the Armed Forces to the list of observers who help to analyze and certify the electronic voting system in 2019. There have been yearly critical tests since then. None have found evidence of fraud, not even the 2022 independent military investigation. Still, per official statements that thrilled the protesters after the elections, they did not rule out the possibility of fraud. According to the same statements, those protests were “legitimate” popular manifestations. Bolsonaro’s chiefs of the Armed Forces were planning to leave office ahead of time not to be present in the transition ceremony with Lula and the newly appointed joint chiefs of staff. In November 2022, that is, after the elections, Gen. Walter Braga Netto, the vice president in Bolsonaro’s ticket and his former minister of defense, was in Bolsonaro’s campaign HQ in Brasilia around the same time a protester arrived there. Bolsonaro’s aide accused Braga Netto of liaising between the president and the camp protesters. Active-duty officers protected the camps. Despite intelligence reports with alerts about the attacks, there was a vacuum in the line of command of the security forces immediately before and during the attacks. The battalion supposed to guard the presidential palace was not there. Live videos on the internet showed passive police officers escorting protesters and even chatting to the rioters who broke into the Brazilian Capitol. A breakdown of command was only restored when Dino named Cappelli federal interventor.
Faced with all these facts and evidence of collusion, Múcio would say in true Charles Boyer form, “I understand that there was no direct Armed Forces involvement, but if any element participated, they will have to answer as citizens.” Nobody asked him what he meant with “direct” involvement.
Múcio was correct about one thing: most of the Armed Forces and the police did not embrace the coup. However, several were involved in the events that led to January 8. The Brazilian Armed Forces have tried to seize power since the dawn of the Republic — the end of the Brazilian Monarchy was a military coup. There were other attempts in 1954, 1955, and 1961. They were successful in 1937 and 1964. Old habits die hard. And they need support. Four years entangled with Bolsonaro have done them no favors in the public opinion arena. They also need money and strategic backup. In 1964, influential businesspeople, bankers, and important names from the Brazilian elite, along with the US government, provided that. In 2022, these players worked to avoid a coup.
Even so, it was far from certain that the bulk of the Armed Forces would march behind the plotters in 1964. Everything was set in motion only when General Olympio Mourao Filho, a veteran of the 1937 coup, got tired of waiting and decided on his own to march with his troops from Minas Gerais to Brasilia. Maybe the military insurrectionists were waiting for a signal like that on January 8. Maybe they expected Lula to hand the command of the operations against the rioters to secretly sympathetic military officers. Maybe it was an opportunity to get rid of the Bolsonaro project once and for all after it became clear it wasn’t working. Maybe they only meant the riot as a show of force for the newly installed civilian authorities. Maybe it dawned on them that they are not the most effective Armed Forces since they spend 85% of their budget on personnel, including pensions, and only 5% on development and new equipment. The role of military officers and Bolsonaro’s allies, though, is not in doubt.
It is yet to be seen if the current Federal Police investigation will lead to indictments and convictions higher in the chain of command of January 8. Whatever Bolsonaro and Múcio say, it is always worth remembering that evidence abounds. At the end of Gaslight, it becomes clear that Paula Alquist is not crazy and that Gregory Anton is, in fact, a thief.