 Hello and welcome to NewsClick in People's Dispatch. Today, we're going to be talking about the events in Brazil on Sunday, where we saw supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, the candidate who was defeated in the presidential election, storm federal buildings in the capital, Brasilia. Now, the buildings that were stormed include the Parliament House, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace. There's been outrage across the world, outrage in Brazil over what is being called a coup attempt by these right-wing groups and right-wing sections. To know more about this, we have with us Zoya Alexander of People's Dispatch, who has been covering Brazil very closely, including the elections. Zoya, thank you so much for joining us and could you first maybe take us through very briefly what exactly happened on Sunday and yesterday, that is, when all these incidents took place? Definitely. Well, on Saturday, January 7th, dozens and dozens of buses had arrived to Brasilia with supporters of Jair Bolsonaro coming from across the country, largely from the southeast, which is the stronghold of Jair Bolsonaro. The authorities in Brasilia were aware of this. They knew that they had arrived. And of course, this is coming after months of sustained and permanent mobilization by Bolsonaro supporters outside, for example, military bases, staging road blockades. Of course, right after the elections, these were the strongest, but they actually, and it's important to know that they remain throughout this whole time, continuing to demand military intervention, even when it looked like Jair Bolsonaro was not even going to take a stand or really make any sort of claim. So they arrived to Brasilia on Saturday and on Sunday afternoon, supporters, hundreds of supporters essentially stormed the esplanade of the ministries. They were met with a narrow or a very small security cordon of the military police, which they quickly breached with very, very little resistance from the security forces. And also, they staged a march throughout Brasilia, and they were escorted by the military police. So it's very important to keep this in mind. When thinking about what happened, there was kind of full awareness of the security forces in Brasilia of what was happening. And they get to the esplanade and they go straight for the National Congress building. And essentially, as you said, they vandalized, they destroyed. There's a lot of different videos and photos that are circulating across social media. For example, all the artwork they destroyed, the hardware, the equipment, computers, everything, windows broken. And they did this, as you said, in the National Congress building in the Supreme Federal Court and in the Plananto Palace, which is where the President's Cabinet and the President work out of. And this is a clear attack on kind of the entire Brazilian state. These are the three powers, the judiciary, the legislative and the executive. And it's interesting, for example, one of their biggest, say, opponents in their struggle to kind of say that electoral fraud was committed and saying that the elections are farce was specifically directed against Alexander Moraes, who was the Minister of the Supreme Court. They, of course, destroyed his office and even took the door off of his office and took it outside of the building. And following this, they continued to wreak havoc in Brasilia until the executive called for the federal intervention in their security response. So the federal police arrived. And in the later hours, the army intervened as well. Arrest started to be made yesterday. Until now, there's over 1,200 people have been arrested because of these violent acts. But yesterday afternoon, Lula made an announcement from a city in Sao Paulo where he was visiting because of a torrential floods that had been happening. He made an announcement saying calling for the federal intervention in the security forces. He also vehemently condemned what had happened, calling the participants in this fascist fanatics, Nazi fanatics. And since then, the Alexander Moraes has called for the governor of Brasilia, Ibanez Rocha, to be taken out of his position for three months. This is, of course, because of the complicity that he had with what was happening. But, of course, the blockades are still continuing in Sao Paulo. Following the invasion of Brasilia, actions began to pop up along in this area of the southeast, which is Bolsonaro's support area. A major road is blocked in the city of Sao Paulo. Other road blockades happening and other major highways. So it's definitely a developing situation. It is by no means over. And it has, as you said, caused a lot of concern internationally and, of course, across Brazil nationally. Of course, you actually covered some of these blockades when you were in Brazil right after the elections. And that time, people, like I said, many of these supporters were waiting for some kind of signal from Bolsonaro to continue their protests. And I think a big question that people across the world have are actually what do these right-wing groups, these people, actually want? What are the demands? How is it that after the elections, after the swearing in, you know, new government is taken over, these kind of actions still take place? It is interesting. And also, I was present in one of the mobilizations that took place on Republic Day on September 7th, which was a massive show of force of Bolsonaro supporters. And essentially, having seen that, having seen these road blockades afterwards, again, there's not a necessarily clear political motivation. It's not like right now, it doesn't seem likely in any way that Bolsonaro is going to return for the United States. He's definitely not going to return now, given the amount of charges that he'd be faced with. But they essentially want to create a situation of extreme instability, of chaos. And one of the things they demand is a military intervention. They want the military forces to intervene in politics and essentially overthrow the status quo. They believe that the National Congress, even though it is dominated by conservatives, they believe that the Supreme Court and the executive are all essentially corrupted, that they're fraudulent, that they need to be purged, and that the only way to do this is through military intervention. It's obviously they don't have a necessarily clear idea of the structure of command. Of course, now the military forces have intervened and are responsible for arresting hundreds of people in Brasilia, but they do want to create a situation of chaos and instability. They believe that Lula and his government represent a communist threat that they're going to destroy Brazil. They don't want him to be in office. But as you say, it is a little confusing because there's not a clear way forward. But as of now, the main strategy is to create chaos. I think it creates a situation of ingovernability. They're trying to make it hard for Lula to carry out his reforms, to carry out all of these policies which he's promised to implement, which could threaten in some way their interests. I think it's also important to point out that the majority, and that's not to say all, but many of the people who are participating in these protests are middle class, are coming from situations of wealth, are coming from the region in the south, which has a very, very large agro industrial influence. There's also major backers of these protests, which Lula has also sworn to go after and bring to justice. So there's major economic interest behind these protests to create instability, to create a situation where it's very hard for the government to do anything, because then later they can say, oh, look at what happens when you elect the left to power. Look what happens when progressives are in power. It's complete chaos. They don't do anything. It's instability. And we need to return order to Brazil. Of course, these are the people that are creating this order. So it's a bit of a paradox for them. Something we've seen, I think, in many parts of the continent where the right-wing creates chaos and then keeps saying that, oh, look, there's chaos. But Zoe also quickly, finally, one last question regarding what has been the response from the side of progressive movements, the left. We know that there were massive mobilizations which led to the victory of Lula, because it was truly people's mobilization. So what have been the initial responses? Immediately, there's been complete condemnation of what's happened. People calling this a coup attempt, as you said, a fascist, terroristic attack. And today they're calling for people to be on the streets and defend democracy, because there's also an attempt with all of this violence by the right-wing to create a situation of complete fear. This was a huge tactic during Bolsonaro's government. I mean, he's someone who has extremely hateful and violent speech against all sort of the masses of Brazilian people. And so this was, many people saw the Bolsonaro government as an attempt to kind of demobilize and instill fear in people, make them think that violence was just around the corner. And so today the people's movements are saying we have to be on the streets, we have to defend our communities, we have to defend the democracy that we fought so hard from. It's important to remember that the democracy that Brazil has today is the product of struggling against the military dictatorship, to end the military dictatorship, to implement a new constitution that would create important and necessary changes to the Brazilian people. As you said, the Lula victory was a people's victory. It involved massive mobilization from movements, being part of the campaign, going door to door and defeating the discourse of Bolsonaro. And so once again, they're going to be on the streets demanding the defense of democracy and no to terrorism, no to fascism once again. Thank you so much, Zoe, for talking to us. We know you'll be covering this situation as it develops. Like you said, it's something that's continuing. It's not just one day's incidents. And we'll also be closely following the counter mobilizations, the responses by progressive forces as well. We'll be covering this and more on People's Dispatch, so keep watching.