Carnival or Coup? How Spectacle Masks Political Rot in Brazil and Beyond

I. Curtain Up: The Politics of Distraction

In Brazil, the line between politics and performance has always been porous. From the televised impeachment trial of President Dilma Rousseff to Jair Bolsonaro’s jet-ski parades during a pandemic, national governance often resembles a telenovela written by Franz Kafka and directed by Netflix. It’s not just that Brazilian politics is theatrical—it’s that theatre itself has become governance.

This isn’t new, exactly. As early as 1950, Getúlio Vargas understood the power of mass media when he launched radio addresses that bypassed Parliament. But over the past decade, especially since Operation Lava Jato, the use of spectacle has morphed from strategic to systemic. Today, scandal has become policy, virality has replaced vision, and political legitimacy is mediated not through institutions, but through attention.

The political philosopher Guy Debord once warned that in a society of the spectacle, truth is replaced by representation. What he could not have foreseen is the algorithmic precision with which this replacement now occurs—and the ease with which power structures can stage coups not through tanks, but through trending hashtags.

II. Lava Jato: A Procedural Drama Turned National Obsession

Launched in 2014, Operação Lava Jato began as a routine money-laundering probe in Curitiba. Within months, it snowballed into the largest anti-corruption investigation in Latin American history. Presidents, CEOs, and party bosses were hauled before cameras, exposed by leaks, and tried not only in court but in the court of public opinion.

At the center was Judge Sérgio Moro, whose image—stoic, incorruptible—was cultivated with the precision of a Netflix protagonist. Leaked audio between then-President Rousseff and Lula da Silva (strategically released by Moro to Globo TV) transformed judicial procedure into high drama. News cycles resembled serialized storytelling: the villain of the week, the fallen hero, the rising reformer.

But beneath the operatic tone, legal irregularities piled up. Selective leaks, coercive plea bargains, and collusion between judges and prosecutors were later revealed in The Intercept’s 2019 exposés. Moro’s objectivity, once gospel, now looked like strategy.

“Lava Jato turned the justice system into performance art,” said political scientist Camila Rocha. “And the audience became complicit.”

The spectacle not only undermined the rule of law; it set the stage for a political reconfiguration. With the Workers’ Party (PT) discredited in the media, Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016—officially over pedaladas fiscais, or budget manipulations commonly used by past administrations—was framed less as constitutional accountability than as a moral cleansing ritual.

III. The Rise of the Anti-Hero: Bolsonaro as Algorithm

Into this vacuum of legitimacy stepped Jair Messias Bolsonaro: fringe congressman, former military man, and meme king. His 2018 campaign had no detailed economic platform, no serious environmental plan, and no coalition strategy. It didn’t need one. Bolsonaro understood what the media-political class did not: that in the post-truth era, attention is currency—and outrage is its highest denomination.

His social media presence fused evangelical nationalism with WhatsApp hysteria. Viral videos accused opponents of satanism and pedophilia. The media cried foul; voters shrugged. Bolsonaro's rise was not in spite of the absurdities—it was because of them.

As president, he governed like a digital influencer. Instead of press briefings, there were rants on Facebook Live. Instead of health policy during COVID, there were motorcycle rallies, unmasked appearances, and chloroquine promotions. Reality became a stage.

“With Bolsonaro,” remarked cultural theorist Heloisa Buarque de Hollanda, “we entered a new aesthetic of power: populist surrealism.”

This wasn’t just style. It was a strategy of displacement. Each scandal (racist outburst, military nostalgia, nepotism) triggered the next, creating a rhythm of distraction. While the public focused on Bolsonaro’s tweets, his ministers deregulated the Amazon, gutted Indigenous protections, and militarized education policy.

IV. Carnival as Critique: Resistance in Rhythms

But Brazil is also the land of parody and subversion. If politics became performance, culture responded with a counter-performance. The samba school Mangueira, in its 2019 Carnival parade, staged a Jesus who was Black, queer, and favela-born—an explicit jab at Bolsonaro’s religious conservatism. Funk MCs turned favela grievances into viral anthems. Comedy collectives like Porta dos Fundos and activist media like Mídia Ninja blurred the line between satire and journalism.

This phenomenon—carnavalização—is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it absorbs reality into performance, potentially neutralizing outrage through laughter. On the other, it weaponizes theatre as resistance.

“Brazilian satire is not escapism,” said Juliana dos Santos, a São Paulo-based performance artist. “It’s a form of testimony. Our stages are courtrooms.”

Indeed, cultural resistance often achieves what formal politics cannot: naming injustice, translating rage, staging grief. Yet even this space is vulnerable to co-optation. The Bolsonaro government slashed cultural funding, vilified artists, and tried to define national identity through military parades and patriotic jingles.

V. Global Stages: Spectacle Across Borders

Brazil is not alone in this drift toward theatrical authoritarianism. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi—media mogul turned prime minister—dominated headlines by merging tabloid drama with executive power. In the United States, Donald Trump’s presidency was structured like a reality show, complete with catchphrases, cliffhangers, and eventual indictments.

In India, Narendra Modi has fused Bollywood aesthetics with Hindu nationalism, staging mass rallies with drone displays and mythic iconography. In Argentina, Javier Milei holds up chainsaws during speeches. In El Salvador, Nayib Bukele governs via memes.

The common thread? The collapse of civic attention into entertainment. Scandal becomes seasonal. Institutions become backdrops. The electorate is reduced to an audience, and governance to genre fiction.

“The 21st-century autocrat is not a general,” writes Indian scholar Pankaj Mishra. “He is a performer.”

VI. Algorithms of Amnesia: How Memory Was Engineered to Fail

The erosion of political memory in Brazil—and globally—is not accidental. It is algorithmic.

The platforms that mediate our understanding of the world are not built to foster context, continuity, or care. They are designed to reward engagement in its most immediate form: outrage, novelty, repetition. The feed is infinite but shallow. And the past, if not trending, ceases to exist.

What this produces is not merely distraction—it is a deliberate, systemic forgetting. Every scandal is eclipsed by the next one, each revelation flattened into a meme, each act of violence diluted by humor or disbelief. Political corruption becomes “content.” Protest becomes “aesthetic.” Suffering becomes a scrollable spectacle.

The consequences are brutal:
Sérgio Moro’s fall from legal savior to ethically compromised operator should have sparked collective re-evaluation of the entire Lava Jato narrative. Instead, it was absorbed into the churn.

Bolsonaro’s grotesque COVID denialism—mass death framed by memes and motorcycle rallies—is no longer a national trauma. It’s a past season. A Netflix recap.

Even the 8 January 2023 storming of government buildings by Bolsonaro loyalists, Brazil’s own echo of the U.S. Capitol riot, was quickly reframed not as a constitutional crisis but as a momentary glitch in the timeline.

And now, even a formal conviction by the country’s highest court struggles to pierce the noise.

In June 2025, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) convicted Jair Bolsonaro on counts of criminal association and falsifying COVID-19 vaccine records—landmark charges related to abuse of public health data. 

But that wasn’t the only charge: in early June the STF also started the trial against Bolsonaro for plotting a coup—the first time a former Brazilian president stood trial over an alleged attempt to overturn a democratic election. Prosecutors say Bolsonaro and his inner circle drafted a decree for emergency powers, plotted military-backed interventions, and orchestrated communications to pressure the armed forces—efforts tied to the January 8, 2023 insurrection. 

During his June 10 testimony, Bolsonaro denied any coup intent—calling the January riot a few “crazy” followers, not a coordinated plot—but he did admit to discussing “alternative ways” within constitutional limits, including military deployment and suspending civil liberties. He also famously scoffed at the alleged “coup decree,” deriding the idea of “kidnap and poison” as something “even a child could have done better.” 

Adding to the spectacle, Bolsonaro was overheard publicly referring to some of his own supporters as “idiots” during the trial, after distancing himself from the rioters—seeking to shift blame away from leadership and into the hands of individual actors. 

Yet, this unfolding legal drama—historic as it is—captures attention only briefly. In the algorithmic grind of social media, talk of coup plots, judicial accountability, and public betrayal becomes another set of soundbites. In the end, it's just more fodder for the cycle.

VII. Platform Power and Cognitive Erosion

The architecture of platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and WhatsApp—which dominate Brazil’s information flow—accelerates this forgetting. Their timelines are optimized for immediate emotional response, not longitudinal understanding. The result is a politics without duration, a democracy without deliberation.

Disinformation campaigns thrive in this terrain. A forged video about school curriculums spreads faster than a constitutional debate. A manipulated photo of Lula at a supposed satanic ritual gets more engagement than news about agricultural reform.

“It’s not just that the truth is being drowned out,” warns technologist Renata Ávila, “it’s that people are forgetting what it means to look for it.”

What emerges is a new form of epistemic vulnerability. Citizens no longer lack access to information—they are drowning in it, unable to locate what matters. Historical consciousness becomes emotionally reactive rather than reflective.

VIII. Resisting the Feed

And yet, there are countercurrents. Alternative media platforms like Brasil de Fato, community archiving efforts in the favelas, and performative acts of remembrance—such as Marielle Franco murals or samba tributes to forgotten revolutions—attempt to re-stitch memory.

Even the use of analog tools—zines, posters, street performances—signals a rejection of digital amnesia. These formats slow things down. They insist on duration. They ask the reader not just to consume, but to remember.

Perhaps that is the most radical political act today: to insist on memory in a system designed to erase it.

Because forgetting is not passive. It is a weapon. And in Brazil, where spectacle has replaced substance, memory may be the last line of defense.

IX. The Final Act?

As Lula da Silva began his third presidency on January 1, 2023, the inauguration was pure spectacle: crowds in red, samba bands, and a symbolic sash ceremony led not by Bolsonaro, but by citizens including a child and Indigenous leader Raoni Metuktire. Even Lula’s dog, Resistência, became an Instagram icon by climbing the Planalto ramp—projecting a populist, emotionally resonant image. His first act in office was a sweeping “revogaço,” reversing Bolsonaro-era decrees on guns, environmental policy, and transparency.

But celebration turned to crisis within a week. On January 8, Bolsonaro supporters stormed Brazil’s democratic institutions in a coup attempt broadcast worldwide. Over 1,400 arrests followed, and youth activists emerged as voices of resistance.

Since then, Lula has carefully balanced symbolism and governance. In 2025, he celebrated Brazil’s agricultural recovery and reclaimed its top-six GDP status at an event in Paris. He expanded job quotas for marginalized groups and brought the BRICS summit to Rio—framing Brazil as a global leader in both economy and diplomacy.

Yet criticism lingers. Lula’s ban on official 1964 coup commemorations sparked historical debate, and environmental credibility has been questioned after authorizing Amazon oil drilling ahead of COP30, despite progressive rhetoric.

Now nearly 80, Lula’s public vigor masks concerns about health and succession. Internally, the Workers’ Party faces uncertainty about leadership beyond him.

His third term reveals a duality:

• Background theatre (BRICS, GDP milestones, international charm offensives) repositions Brazil on the global stage.
• Dramatic rupture (January 8 riots, cultural symbols like Resistência, policy reversals) resets democratic narratives.

In this choreography of politics, spectacle both unites and obscures. It reaffirms values in a fractured nation—but risks reducing structural reform to performance.

Lula’s presidency, in many ways, resembles a long-running play. Scenes of unity and optimism alternate with violence and critique. Each moment is staged—crafted for maximum emotional resonance—but behind the spotlight lies the hard work of policymaking, negotiation, and memory-building.

The question now is whether the curtain will descend on spectacle—or be raised higher. Will a coming 2026 campaign become a carnival of charisma or a sober debate on Brazil’s future? As political theater and policy continue to intertwine, the stakes are clear: democracy depends on remembering history, not merely dramatizing it.

Epilogue: Carnival or Coup?

It’s tempting to choose one—either the joy of Carnival or the treachery of a coup. But in today’s Brazil, they no longer stand apart. The joy has been weaponized. The treachery has been choreographed.

Spectacle has become the operating system of politics. But in the hands of those who still believe in collective dignity, it might also become the virus that crashes the system.

Until then, we remain on stage. Applauding. Booing. Scrolling. Waiting for the next act.