Bolsonaro’s return poses risks for the former president — and Brazil

…election loser Jair Bolsonaro, whose supporters assaulted the Presidential Palace, the Supreme Court and Congress after his defeat, has been uncharacteristically quiet from his seclusion thousands of miles away in Kissimmee, Fla.

But now Bolsonaro, who rose to power by exploiting a succession of culture war battles and spent his four years as president deepening those divisions, says he’ll return soon to the country he polarized like few politicians before. His reappearance carries grave risks not only for Bolsonaro, who is facing multiple criminal inquiries and the possibility of arrest on a wide range of alleged wrongdoing, but also for Brazil, whose barely salved political wounds Bolsonaro’s inflammatory politicking could reopen.

“Bolsonaro’s return will swell the belligerence and polarization in society that is already polarized,” said political scientist David Magalhães, coordinator of Brazil’s independent Observatory of the Extreme Right. “He’s not coming back to talk about high interest rates and the central bank. He will go the ideological path.”

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