Analysis: Verdict Will Not Mean the End of Populist's Rightwing Movement

Four years have passed since Jair Bolsonaro laid out three possible denouements for his extraordinary political career, during which the oft-ridiculed fringe politician rose to become one of the leading lights of the global populist right alongside Hungary's Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump.

- Tom Phillips

"Going to jail, being killed or victory," predicted Brazil's then president as he grappled with a deluge of political crises in August 2021. Bolsonaro was right on the first count. A majority of Brazil's supreme court judges found the 70-year-old guilty yesterday of masterminding a failed military coup designed to stop the leftwing winner of the 2022 election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, taking office.

The historic verdict – the first time a former Brazilian president has been found guilty of trying to overthrow the country's democracy – appears to have extinguished Bolsonaro's hopes of one day reclaiming the presidency of South America's largest democracy. But experts and politicians from across the spectrum agree the former paratrooper's political movement, Bolsonarismo, will continue to thrive despite the incarceration of its creator.

Bolsonaro received more than 58m votes in the 2022 election and, despite his conviction, remains wildly popular with certain sectors of society, including the fast-growing evangelical community, in Brazil's agricultural heartlands, and among members of the security forces and well-educated middle-class conservatives who loathe the left. Pro-Bolsonaro protests still draw tens of thousands of citizens onto the streets.

"It might be the end of Bolsonaro but it is not the end of Bolsonarismo... Bolsonarismo will live on with or without Bolsonaro," predicted Thaís Oyama, a columnist for O Globo newspaper and the author of a book about the former president.