Brazil bomb attack hurts Bolsonaro comeback efforts, deepening political divide

A failed bomb attack on Brazil's Supreme Court looks set to reunite Brasilia against far-right radicalism and scuttle a possible comeback by former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is fighting a court decision to bar him from the ballot.

But any such institutional response will also feed his supporters' belief that they are being silenced, further polarising the country which has seen a surge in political violence since the rise of Bolsonaro in 2018.

The attack, which killed the bomber but caused no other casualties, brings into sharp focus the extent to which Brazil's Supreme Court has become the target of the hard right's wrath, driven by a deep sense that the court has sought to expel them from the political arena.

It also comes after the re-election of Donald Trump as US president had raised hopes among some Bolsonaro supporters that it could help spur their resurgence.

As in the United States, both sides in Brazil believe democracy is at risk.

Progressives point to violence such as Wednesday's bombs as a direct attack on Brazil's democratic institutions, while the right insist those very institutions are rigging democracy against them.

In the wake of the explosions, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes doubled down on the view that far-right hate speech is threatening Brazil's democracy and spurring violence, the grounds he has used to silence some of his harshest critics on social media.

"It is not an isolated incident," Moraes said on Thursday. "This has been growing under the false mantle of criminal uses of freedom of expression."

He compared the bomb attack to riots in the capital on Jan. 8 last year, when Bolsonaro supporters rampaged through the court and other government buildings to protest his electoral defeat to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Wednesday's explosions, which also blew up a car in a congressional parking lot, appear to have hardened consensus in Congress against a proposal to offer amnesty to participants in those violent protests last year.

Senior sources from two of Brazil's biggest centrist parties in Congress said that amnesty proposal, which was already losing steam, now looks dead in the water.

"The possibility of an amnesty for the people in the Jan. 8 attack, and by extension for Bolsonaro, is finished - end of discussion," said Andre Cesar at consultancy Hold Assessoria Legislativa.

It may also be the death knell for Bolsonaro's hopes to reverse his ban on running for office until 2030 due to his baseless attacks on the legitimacy of the 2022 election.

Any final decision on such an appeal would likely fall to the Supreme Court.

The bombing comes as federal police are wrapping up an investigation into Bolsonaro's alleged role behind the Jan. 8 riots and a plot to overturn election results with military backing.

"This comes at an awful moment for Bolsonaro," said Carlos Melo, a political scientist at the Insper school in Sao Paulo, referring to the pending criminal complaint.

Bolsonaro, who has denied any wrongdoing and called the criminal probes a witch hunt, responded to the bombings in a post on X that called for "Brazil to return to cultivating an adequate environment so that different ideas can confront each other peacefully."

After allies' strong showing in municipal elections and the US election, Bolsonaro's party was touting his chances of overcoming obstacles to join the 2026 presidential race.

For now, however, the bomb attack looks like it has closed ranks in Brasilia against Bolsonaro and his supporters.

That may only inflame tensions further.

"If on the one hand Moraes comes out of this stronger ... the flip side is that you will also have people that are further radicalised," said Creomar de Souza, head of the Dharma political consultancy firm.