TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsBrazil's brave stand against Trump
Lula has defended his country’s sovereignty not only in the domain of trade, but also in regulating US-controlled tech platforms.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
(Left to right) Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Uruguay's President Yamandu Orsi, Chile's President Gabriel Boric, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Colombia's President Gustavo Petro talk after giving a joint statement on July 21 during the “Democracy Always“ high-level summit at the Palacio de la Moneda in Santiago. (AFP/Rodrigo Arangua)
For decades, the United States was the champion of democracy, the rule of law and human rights.
Of course, there were glaring discrepancies between rhetoric and reality: during the Cold War, the US overturned democratically elected governments in the name of defeating communism. At home, the US was in a battle to uphold African Americans’ civil rights a century after slavery’s end.
But while the US has often failed to practice what it preached, now it does neither. President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have seen to that.
In his first term, Trump’s contempt for the rule of law culminated in his attempt to overturn democracy’s most important principle: the peaceful transition of power. He claimed – and still insists – that he won the 2020 election, even though Joe Biden received some seven million more votes, and even though dozens of courts ruled that there had been no significant electoral irregularities.
Anyone familiar with Trump may not have been surprised; the big surprise was that some 70 percent of Republicans believe that the election was rigged. Many Americans have gone down the rabbit hole of outlandish conspiracy theories and disinformation. For many Trump supporters, democracy and the rule of law are less important than preserving the American way of life, which in practice means ensuring domination by white males at the expense of everyone else.
For better and for worse, America has long provided a model for others to follow. And unfortunately, there are demagogues around the world that are more than willing to adapt Trump’s formula of trampling on democratic institutions and repudiating the values that underpin them.
A prominent example is Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, who went so far as to try to emulate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol to prevent Biden’s election. That attempted coup on Jan. 8, 2023, in Brasília was larger than the attack on the US Capitol, but Brazil’s institutions held firm – and now they are demanding that Bolsonaro be held accountable.
