In Brazil, patriotism is either leftist or it doesn't exist.

The future of Brazilian democracy has begun to shine again, despite the clouds on the horizon. The main reasons are as follows. The President of the Republic of Brazil, Lula da Silva, is today the most respected and admired leader in the world. His long political career and the unjust suffering he endured due to a conspiracy speak for themselves. lawfareThe coordinated effort between national and foreign political and legal forces led to his imprisonment for 532 days. Frustrated by their failure to eliminate his political presence, these forces attempted, on January 8, 2023, to prevent him from assuming the office to which he was democratically elected.

Lula da Silva's political stature is even greater today for another reason. It is typical of democracies that elected leaders must coexist with parliamentary opposition. Sometimes, with two oppositions: one parliamentary and the other extra-parliamentary. However, President Lula da Silva is perhaps the only democratically elected leader today who has to contend with three oppositions: parliamentary opposition; opposition within his own government—since it is a government of inter-party composition and therefore includes ministers who actively participated in various attempts to end his political career—; and a third opposition, expatriate, self-exiled in the incubator of the global far-right movement that Washington has become.

This third opposition, scandalously led by a Brazilian congressman, Eduardo Bolsonaro, effectively constitutes a second Brazilian embassy in Washington today. This embassy is so obsessively committed to subverting Brazilian democracy and resurrecting defunct coup plotters that it does not hesitate to cause serious damage to the Brazilian economy and the well-being of the Brazilian people—including those who, in the past, voted for its cronies in the previous government. According to the World Health Organization, these cronies were responsible, in the first year of the pandemic alone (from March 2020 to March 2021), for 120 deaths that could have been avoided if Brazil had adopted preventive measures such as social distancing and restrictions on gatherings.

This third opposition is an unprecedented case in the modern history of democracies. It represents an extreme—and extremely contradictory—manifestation of both strength and weakness. Strength, because these opponents pride themselves on being behind the tariff aggression promoted by Donald Trump, the master of international coup-mongering, of whom the ambassadors (more accurately, demoters) of the far right are mere low-ranking butlers. They also pride themselves on having orchestrated the most grotesque and vile attack on a foreign judicial system in living memory, directed at the Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes—one of the most notable magistrates of our time. Moraes, alongside Baltasar Garzón (Spain), Raul Zaffaroni (Argentina and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights), Albie Sachs (post-apartheid South Africa), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (USA), and NV Ramana (India), today forms part of what should be an independent judiciary, committed to safeguarding and deepening democracy.

But, in manifesting all this strength, this expatriate opposition—and, with it, all the right and far-right that sees itself reflected in it—contradictorily revealed all its disarming weakness. It needed to take refuge in the shadow of a straw giant—by nature and by self-interest, also a suicidal arsonist—to deliver against Brazil and Brazilians the hardest blow imaginable. It dared to sacrifice its own country to survive in its petty smallness. It was a resounding self-inflicted wound that will keep it crippled for many years.

It is for these reasons that patriotism in Brazil today is, more than ever, democratic and leftist. The fascists and coup plotters who wrap themselves in the green and yellow flag stain it with blood and ignominy. It is fundamental that leftist democrats are fully aware of this, of the damage that this fifth column is causing to the country—and that they make this danger widely known. It is crucial that they mobilize to proudly embrace patriotism: a constructive sentiment of defending Brazilian sovereignty and democracy. A sentiment that has nothing to do with nationalist propagandists who, as has been seen, always end up revealing their true nature: they are traitors to their countries.