So Brazil has convicted Jair Renan Bolsonaro, the former president’s son, of colluding with American interests to aid his father. The charge: a sordid little scheme to sell influence, allegedly involving US lobbyists and a plot to undermine Brazilian sovereignty for daddy’s benefit. UK legal experts, predictably, are wringing their hands about the diplomatic precedent this sets. But let us be honest: this is less a constitutional crisis and more a glorified soap opera with better tailoring.
I am not here to defend the Bolsonaro clan, a family that has given us more scandals than a Victorian bordello. But I am here to ask: what exactly is the precedent? That a country can prosecute its own citizens for colluding with a foreign power? That has been a crime since the days of the Roman Republic, when Cicero had the Catilinarian conspirators executed for plotting with the Gauls. The novelty is that Brazil is actually doing it. And that, my friends, is where the real trouble begins.
We live in an age where the word 'collusion' has been weaponised. Remember the Russiagate farce? That was a five-year, multi-million dollar exercise in hysteria that turned out to be a damp squib. Now Brazil wants in on the action. The conviction of a former president’s son for colluding with the United States is a gift to every populist leader who wants to claim that the 'deep state' is after them. Bolsonaro will milk this for years. And the US? It will inevitably be dragged into the theatre.
Let us consider the deeper rot. The Bolsonaro affair is a symptom of intellectual decadence. We have forgotten that politics is about interests, not moral crusades. The irony is that Brazil is using the same playbook as the Americans: prosecuting domestic enemies for foreign entanglements. But this only works if you pretend that nations do not have competing agendas. The US meddles in Brazil; Brazil meddles in Venezuela; everyone meddles in Bolivia. This is the game of nations. Why pretend otherwise?
The real danger is not that Brazil sets a precedent for prosecuting collusion. The danger is that it sets a precedent for using the law to settle political scores. The Bolsonaro clan is odious, no question. But if you tear up the rule of law to get them, you end up with a system where every election loser is tried for treason. That is how democracies die: not with a bang, but with a subpoena.
In the Victorian era, we had the decency to keep our scandals in the drawing room. Now we stage them in the courtroom, with global audiences. The Bolsonaro conviction is a tawdry little affair, but it is also a mirror. We stare into it and see our own obsessions: the lust for foreign enemies, the rage at domestic betrayal, the desperate need to feel righteous. Rome fell because it forgot how to govern. We are falling because we have forgotten how to disagree.
So let Brazil have its conviction. Let the legal experts pontificate. But do not mistake a telenovela for a tragedy. The precedent here is not diplomatic; it is cultural. It is the precedent of a world that prefers spectacle to substance, and that, I fear, is a precedent from which there is no appeal.
