The Bolsonaro Coup Trial Is Next — Riding Trump’s Wave Of Lies And Disinformation

–Analysis–

SÃO PAULO — On March 25, the first panel of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court will decide if Jair Bolsonaro must face trial for attempting a coup after his electoral defeat in October 2022.

The evidence of his involvement in the coup plot is overwhelming: Bolsonaro met with and pressured military generals, authorized a plan to assassinate his victorious opponent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was aware of a coup-themed letter signed by Army officers.

There is also evidence that he helped draft a decree declaring a state of defense — including the arrest of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes — and even had the so-called “Green and Yellow Dagger” plan printed inside the presidential palace, where he lived.

According to the Federal Police, Bolsonaro “planned, acted, and had direct and effective control over the execution of the coup.”

There is no doubt that the case has enough substance for Bolsonaro to be tried — something unprecedented in Brazil’s history.

But the real battleground where this will play out is not the courts — where documents, witnesses and facts still hold weight. More than ever, it’s the digital arena — online and on social platforms — that defines public opinion.

And in much of that chaotic space in Brazil, Bolsonaro is not a coup plotter — he’s a victim of political persecution.

It’s all part of a grand conspiracy, they say, one that began with the Supreme Court’s “illegal” release of Lula, followed by the “rigged” election that stole Bolsonaro’s re-election, and then capped off with Moraes’ “censorship” campaign.

In that world, everything adds up to a case of persecution of an innocent man.

Big Tech’s role

It’s nonsense to claim that Big Tech is actively supporting Bolsonaro, as if Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter/X are explicitly boosting his defense.

What’s happening is actually far more sinister.

The playbook is clear.

Since Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020, the playbook has been clear: convince people that facts themselves no longer exist — only competing narratives. And Mark Zuckerberg’s cold embrace of this view points directly to this; social media platforms have also decided that the truth simply doesn’t matter.

In the U.S., the idea that the 2016 election was rigged remains a key talking point for Republicans.

In Brazil, Bolsonaro’s supporters have been somewhat more restrained, largely due to Supreme Court pressure.

But a telling moment actually occurred in the U.S. in the weeks after Trump’s inauguration, at an event hosted by Steve Bannon. Eduardo Bolsonaro, Liberal Party lawmaker and son of Jair Bolsonaro took the stage before a MAGA crowd at the annual right-wing CPAC conference.

He said that the last elections in Brazil and the U.S. were “difficult” and that “everyone saw what happened.” Bannon grabbed the microphone and declared, “The elections were stolen from them.” Bolsonaro hesitated and replied, “Maybe in Brazil, you can get arrested for saying that.”

That moment reveals the deep divide in how the justice systems of the two countries have handled attempted coups fueled by disinformation and psychological operations.

Killing disinformation

With the deeply American myth that the First Amendment is absolute — where “everyone can say anything at any time” — Trump’s strategy, ever since his defeat in 2020, has been to keep gaslighting the public, publicly hammering home outright lies, with the idea that only his version of events and that of his enemies exist.

It’s a way to sap truth itself of any meaning

In other words, the next phase of the strategy is to kill the very concept of disinformation, which is just a way to sap truth itself of any meaning.

We’ve read about social media platforms dialing back their moderation of coup-related content. But there’s also been a targeted campaign against well-known scholars who have studied, tracked and exposed the spread of disinformation and its direct ties to these platforms’ business models.

First, Harvard University. According to Professor Joan Donovan — one of the world’s top disinformation experts and founder of the Technology and Social Change research group — she was gradually forced out of Harvard due to pressure from a Facebook executive with ties to the leadership of the Kennedy School, where she worked. Her departure led to the shutdown of the prominent research group — one year before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

Then, just months before the election, Stanford University shut down the Stanford Internet Observatory, another major research center on disinformation. In June of last year, the Election Integrity Partnership project was disbanded after a barrage of lawsuits, online harassment of researchers, and a Republican-led crusade by Congressman Jim Jordan, who swamped the team with investigations, accusing them of violating the First Amendment.

In Brazil, the NetLab at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, led by Professor Marie Santini, has been facing similar attacks from members of Congress.

Next came efforts to discredit USAID’s funding of journalism, with Elon Musk and his watchdog allies framing it as “funding for censorship.” One of them, Mike Benz, even went so far as to claim that if it weren’t for USAID funding, Bolsonaro would still be president of Brazil. Musk retweeted that lie. The goal of this campaign is not just to cut off USAID funding, but to intimidate all other foundations that support research on disinformation.

Just the facts

With a direct line to the White House, Bolsonaro’s U.S.-inspired strategy for keeping the coup narrative alive is gaining ground in Brazil.

So, the Supreme Court has its work cut out for it. It will have to convince the public that this isn’t just about endorsing one version of events over another — especially when the rival narrative is still alive and thriving online, with the blessing of social media platforms.

The justices would do well to lean on concrete facts that prove Bolsonaro’s involvement, rather than getting lost in adjectives that can easily be chopped up into viral clips on social media. The new realities of communication also affect the Supreme Court.

And one more thing: the justices must recognize that their audience now extends all the way to the White House.

The last thing Trump and his techno-oligarchs want — and the Bolsonaro supporters too — is for the Supreme Court to convince the public that the truth actually matters.