‘Creating a fake war’: Brazil protest anomalies fuel questions about J6 design
Brazil’s government has arrested over 1,230 political prisoners in connection to a January 8th protest by demonstrators who stormed the Planalto, Alvorada and Jaburu Palaces — the seats of the country’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential office --- in protest of fraudulent elections.
Millions of Brazilians have spent months protesting the presidential election, declared in October for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a Leftist former president who was imprisoned for corruption. Many insist the election was fraudulent and continue to demand that Right-leaning President Jair Bolsonaro retain his seat.
For over two months, civil unrest has plagued Brazil’s cities and streets after voting machine audits found significant voting regularities which may have helped Lula cross the finish line with 50.7% of the vote, the narrowest margin in Brazil’s history. Some areas also reported zero votes going to Bolsonaro.
Mainstream media have spent the last week trying to compare last Sunday’s protest to events on January 6th, demonizing the Right-leaning and even blaming the protest on President Donald Trump.
While events surrounding Brazil’s contested election have mirrored those in the US, the media unwittingly have uncovered anomalies which suggest both protests were of the same design.
The comparison comes as no surprise to Lula’s allies, who were already invoking January 6th before last week's protest to justify cracking down on their political opponents.
“Who thought there would be an invasion of the Capitol? . . . 964 people have already been arrested in all 50 states and accused of crimes committed since January 6," said STF Justice Dias Toffoli at an event last month. "465 have made agreements pleading guilty with the prosecution. The trial of the leaders who did not make a deal with the prosecutor's office has begun and two convictions for seditious conspiracy have occurred.”
Following the remarks, Supreme Court Justice and Superior Electoral Court (TSE) President Alexandre de Moraes vowed more arrests and fines for those protesting the election.
"I was happy with Minister Toffoli's speech, because comparing the numbers there are still a lot of people to arrest and a lot of fines to apply,” Moraes said.
But protests continued despite Moraes’ crackdown, threatening the stability and legitimacy of Lula’s administration.
Less than a month later, a close replica of the January 6th protest — down nearly to the day — occurred at Brazil’s government buildings, sparking similar backlash, similar worldwide media coverage, similar condemnations by world leaders and raising similar questions.
Help from the inside
One of the main challenges to the January 6th “insurrection” narrative is that the Capitol doors were opened to the protesters from the inside, as shown in video footage. The 20,000-pound Columbus Doors can only be opened from inside via a code and are impossible to breach without the aid of “a bazooka, an artillery shell, or C4 military-grade explosives.”
Speaking on CNN Brasil’s WW podcast with William Waack last week, former Brazilian Chamber of Deputies Minister Rau Jungermann bluntly said it was impossible to invade the Planalto, Alvorada and Jaburu Palaces. In the basement of all three there is a permanent guard with 40 trained and heavily armed troopers. They have permanent communication with army headquarters and the authority to call for military reinforcements.
The army's headquarters is 5.0 km (3.1 miles) from the Praça dos Três Poderes, the Three Powers Plaza where the protest took place. A few rounds of warning shots, rubber bullets, and tear gas had easily dispersed the few invaders of the Planalto Palace. Jungmann suggested a thorough investigation, said that the acts were those of prepared terrorists and insinuated that without the collaboration of palace security, none of them would have crossed the main gate.
Lula himself said the protesters had inside help because the doors had no signs of forced entry.
“I am convinced that the door of the Planalto (presidential) palace was opened for people to enter because there are no broken doors," the declared president said in Brasilia.
“This means that someone facilitated their entry," he added, vowing a full investigation.
The New York Times also posed similar questions in an article last week vilifying the demonstrators:
Why an encampment demanding a military coup was allowed to expand for over 70 days was part of a larger set of questions that officials were grappling with on Monday, among them:
Why were protests allowed to get so close to Brazil’s halls of power? And why had security forces been so outnumbered, allowing throngs of protesters to easily surge into official government buildings?
Provocateurs
The US government continues to keep mum about agent provocateur Ray Epps, the man who on January 5th was already pushing rally-goers to enter the Capitol, and on January 6th was seen urging protesters storm the building. Epps was on the FBI’s most wanted list for his role at the Capitol but as of this report has not been arrested. In fact, Epps was quietly purged from the FBI’s Most Wanted database months later. The FBI and Justice Department have not commented on Epps, and Attorney General Merrick Garland refused to answer questions about Epps at a congressional hearing. Mainstream media have called questions about Ray Epps “conspiracy theories”.
Following the Brazil protest, the New York Times reported that many of the protesters confirmed that the breaches of the federal buildings and the vandalism involved were the work of infiltrators.
“Have you ever heard of the Trojan Horse?” one protester, Nathanael S. Viera, 51, told the Times. “The infiltrators went in and set everything up, and the damn press showed the Brazilian nation that we patriots are the hooligans.”
“Donald Trump was taken out with a rigged election, no question about it, and at the time he was taken out, I said, ‘President Bolsonaro is going to be taken down,’” said Wanderlei Silva, 59. “The Democrats staged that and invaded the Capitol,” he added. “The same way they staged it here.”
In one telling video, a man in a ski mask tries to walk inconspicuously among the protesters and can be seen nodding to a woman before other demonstrators take notice, tear off his mask and attack him, allegedly for trying to infiltrate the protest. Several police officers run onto the scene.
Another video shows a crowd of protesters confront a man with a backpack and appear to grab off his person what look like three incendiary devices.
“Look at the infiltrated communists wearing the Brazilian shirt, posing as patriots and look at the bombs they carried. The people even arrested him,” wrote the user who posted the video.
In another video, demonstrators are seen hurrying to put out fires in police vehicles started by an unseen arsonist.
Other footage shows one man in the sea of blue and yellow wearing the American and Israeli flags on his shirt as he smashes a window with a barricade.
“Brazil is being sequestered and a global organized crime unit is working hard to make it appear that the problem lies with the population, including creating a fake war and paying the media to manipulate public opinion, especially on an international scale,” commented MW3.biz CEO Will Lisil.
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