The undeniable hand of the United States in the anti-democratic riot in Brazil

In Washington, there is a legion of people invested in the business of promoting democracy. In think tanks, congressional offices, human rights organizations, and even the media, an entire professional class goes to work each day, charged with the driving conviction that the values ​​that underpin the American democracy must extend to the whole world and that the American government has a major role to play in extending them. But we have learned over the past half-decade that this project, often shrouded in hymns to American exceptionalism, is at odds with a harsher reality. Democracy in the United States is under duress, stretched both by the political gains of nationalist extremists and by the grating anachronism of some of the country’s political institutions. And rather than exporting democratic values, the United States has played its part in also fomenting illiberal and autocratic reactions elsewhere in the world, from trucker blockades in Canada to anti-vaccination campaigns in Germany. Capital insurgencies in Brazil and the United States echo violent violations elsewhere.