“What we are witnessing is a terrorist attack,” the news anchor Erick Bang announced on the GloboNews television. Thousands of supporters of Brazil’s far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro invaded the country’s congress, presidential palace and supreme court on Sunday, in a grim echo of the US Capitol invasion two years ago by backers of former president Donald Trump. Shocking video footage showed pro-Bolsonaro militants sprinting up the ramp into the Palácio do Planalto, the presidential offices, roaming the building’s corridors and vandalising the nearby supreme court, whose windows had been smashed. Videos posted on social media showed fires burning inside the congress building. Furniture was broken and tossed around, objects were reportedly stolen in the presidential palace and the supreme court, and in some places sprinklers appeared to be dousing chambers. “They are throwing chairs out of the windows,” said another bewildered GloboNews commentator, Eliane Cantanhêde. “They are destroying public buildings.” Lula, a veteran leftist, was sworn in as Brazil’s new president last Sunday in celebrations attended by hundreds of thousands of Brazilians. But thousands of pro-Bolsonaro extremists have refused to accept Lula’s narrow victory in October’s election, spending recent weeks camping outside army bases across the country and calling for a military coup. Although unbelievably popular and successful while in office, Lula was imprisoned on corruption charges in 2017. These charges were later annulled by the Supreme Court, and he was free to run for president again in the 2022 election. #Brazil #Brasilia #JairBolsonaro #Lula