The specter of a confrontation between Rui Barbosa and Hermes da Fonseca haunts the Republic.

In this long-delayed and postponed historic trial of a former President of the Republic of Brazil and his accomplices for planning and conspiring a coup d'état within the national institutions, Bolsonaro's defense has already begun by violating history and all republican memory. His defense attorney, Paulo Cunha Bueno, invoked the Dreyfus Affair at the end of his client's defense argument, comparing the two trials. The creative lawyer warned the Supreme Court of the risk of committing an absurd judicial error by convicting his client, comparing the defendant to the French captain Alfred Dreyfus, convicted of high treason against France in a trial riddled with judicial errors, lack of conclusive evidence, and manipulation of the "evidence" used in that historic Dreyfus case.

One cannot deny the courage of the defense in doing this... Of course, it is the role, and obligation, of the defense to fight with rhetorical arguments in favor of the accused, and the use of imagery from collective memory is a legitimate resource. The regrettable thing is that, because collective memory is not properly nurtured and cared for, such a rhetorical aberration becomes possible: the conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus is an international symbol of an injustice committed in defense of the status quo of the ancien régime in France. For the conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew from the Alsace region, a region that was taken from France by the Germans in the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), was an injustice committed to cover up a military officer of aristocratic origin who spied for the Germans during the war: Commander Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, who was the true traitor of France by passing information to the Germans.

This fraud by the French military justice system gave rise to the famous Dreyfus Affair, a legal scandal that took on international dimensions. This conviction (which occurred in 1894) gained worldwide public debate, with the publication, four years later, by the renowned writer Émile Zola of the manifesto J'Accuse...! (I accuse) in 1898, denouncing the legal fraud.

Émile Zola denounced the case in the press, exposing the flaws of the Dreyfus litigation, explaining the case from a legal, investigative, and military perspective, and calling on public opinion to reach a rational judgment. Under the trauma of defeat in the war, revenge and witch hunts flourished. In this environment, the investigation led by the military officer du Paty de Clam—flawed from the outset—made the Alsatian Jew Alfred Dreyfus a scapegoat, while preserving the status quo of the high-ranking officers, the vast majority of whom were of aristocratic origin.

This scandal represented an undignified survival of the Old Regime in France, more than a hundred years after the Revolution: until the French Revolution, nobles had the privilege of access to firearms, and the entire structure of the high military officers was exclusive to the nobility. And the nobility could only be judged by the nobility: the trial, condemnation, and execution of Louis XVI by guillotine on January 21, 1793, in the Place de la Révolution (now Place de la Concorde), in Paris, was a historical landmark of the Revolution. There, the people saw that noble blood was not blue...

For behold, the Dreyfus affair symbolized the resistance to the legal privileges of the nobility, still entrenched in the military structure, during that Third Republic of France. Therefore, it is the exact opposite of what the due condemnation of the former captain, and unfortunately former president, Jair Messias Bolsonaro will mean in the history of the Brazilian Republic.

A Republic with privileged castes: the Law is for the poor.

Bolsonaro and his coup-plotting cronies have committed a series of crimes and are demanding that the Justice system absolve them beforehand: the obsessive invocation of amnesty, from all sides of Bolsonarism, is proof that they place themselves above the law, in their own ancien régime. In their minds, the law is for others...

Thus, Bolsonaro's alleged innocence, as presented by his defense, encounters a disruptive noise amidst the clamor for AMNESTY. The rallying cry from the eclipse of the military regime returns like an Orwellian specter today, but it indicates evidence of guilt: those who are innocent want to prove their innocence, not appeal to the judicial exception of amnesty before the trial even takes place. To request amnesty in a process marked by a clearly broad defense and careful judicial process—the exact opposite of what occurred in the Dreyfus Affair—is very curious. The obsessive campaign for amnesty by the coup plotters is strong evidence of guilt.

A defense that invokes the Dreyfus Affair to defend Bolsonaro should be more scrutinized by the republican side of this wounded Brazilian society. Where is the lack of evidence about the coup plot? Where are the procedural flaws? What is so flawed in the investigation and in Bolsonaro's trial to dare to make such a bizarre and unworthy comparison? But lest it be said that nothing analogous was found in Bolsonaro's case with that of Dreyfus, let us remind you of a point made by lawyer Paulo Cunha Bueno: the fact that both held the rank of captain...

More than a hundred years after 1889: A Republic, albeit a late one...

In an Orwellian way, like everything in the inverted world of Bolsonarism, the invocation of the Dreyfus Affair by Bolsonaro's defense indicates that they seek the privilege of the Old Regime for themselves: that the Law not be obeyed! The Law is for the poor!!! Bolsonaro, and his associates, like infantilized, perverse adults, believe they can commit crimes without having to answer for them: like the French nobility of the Ancien Régime, they would have legal privileges, not being held accountable under the general law. Bolsonaro, and the coup-plotting generals, took the internalized exceptionalism of the military caste to a dystopian paroxysm, seeking in this trial to escape the Law. But today, Brazilian republicanism implores that such abuses, taken to their peaks by Bolsonarism, generate the historical correction of these dystopias in this historic trial.

The Brazilian elites, articulated generationally within the State, are today split between the military elites and the legal elites: the absurd coups of Bolsonarism generated a chronic crisis, which is now moving towards a justicialist solution (reminiscent of what happened in Argentina at the end of the military regime there).

And today, in this conflict between the military and legal elites, many specters from Brazilian history echo, rising in memory of Policarpo Quaresma, João Cândido, and so many other figures, both literary and real, who fought for a Republic that insists on escaping into the Future.

The case of João Cândido, the Black Admiral, deserves to be remembered: leader of the Revolt of the Lash in November 1910, which occurred due to the prohibition of the use of the lash as physical punishment for sailors who mutinied on warships in Guanabara Bay. They managed to obtain from the newly elected government of 1910, under Marshal/President Hermes da Fonseca, the end of physical punishment for lower-ranking sailors (generally black) in the Navy. These mutineers agreed to lay down their arms after achieving the end of the cruel physical punishments and also an amnesty for the mutineers! Hermes da Fonseca agreed to grant amnesty, he gave his word, but later the government promulgated a decree allowing the expulsion of sailors who posed a risk, thus expelling the rebels from the Navy. João Cândido was expelled, but before that he spent more than two years imprisoned on Ilha das Cobras (Snake Island).

Thus, the military president Hermes da Fonseca taught that amnesty is not for low-ranking rebels... And João Cândido spent his life always close to poverty, working as a stevedore and in other jobs, only receiving financial assistance when the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Leonel Brizola, granted him a pension of 2 minimum wages, when Cândido was already elderly.

The Revolt of the Lash occurred in 1910, the year of Rui Barbosa's historic civilian presidential campaign against the incumbent candidate, Hermes da Fonseca, who won an election riddled with allegations of electoral fraud. This campaign can be considered the first to mobilize the masses, to have a media campaign in the press, in cartoons, and in popular songs... It was no coincidence that the Revolt of the Lash occurred in November of that fateful election year: Brazilian society experienced a republican awakening, comparable to what happened in France during the Dreyfus Affair: the masses engaged in technical and political matters, and public opinion awakened in a republican dawn at these two historical crossroads.

Today, at the trial of Bolsonaro's coup plotters, Brazil once again finds itself at a historic crossroads. May the specter that has haunted the Republic since the 1910 presidential race between Hermes da Fonseca (nephew of Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca) and Rui Barbosa be exorcised in this trial, with a Barbosa-style civilist revenge of the Republic.