I mean, it's a pretty big deal if he started it or not.
Punish crimes or take the laws off the books.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230108201723/https://www.busin...
What are you supposed to do when the supreme court starts violating the law and the constitution? Who are you supposed to turn to?
Their abuses started in 2019 with a "fake news" censorship inquisition and by 2021 they were disproportionately censoring Bolsonaro and his supporters for "fake news". Suddenly everything they said was "fake news", even provably true statements. People started to understand the court answered to no one and had itself launched a silent coup against brazilian institutions. That's the "countercoup" messaging in the article you cited.
If I had to point out someone as the "mastermind" of all this, I would say it was the supreme court. Society is merely trying to react to their profoundly destabilizing actions.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44748869
Well, you can
> ...[seek] to violently overthrow the democratically elected president Lula, who had been inaugurated on 1 January. Many rioters said their purpose was to spur military leaders to launch a "military intervention" (related to a misinterpretation of the 142nd article of the Brazilian constitution and a euphemism for a coup d'état) and disrupt the democratic transition of power.
> Several law enforcement officers assaulted and injured by rioters, at least 44 hospitalized [1]
You can have, in Donald Trump's words, "a day of love." [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_January_Bras%C3%ADlia_attack...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2024/10/29/nx-s1-5159868/2024-election-t...
He straight up tried to stop those people. There were lots of protests prior to that so called "attack". I saw him trying to call them all off. Numerous times. People protested anyway. Because they understood that Brazil was not a democracy.
He is a coward. He did literally nothing while the judge-kings were silencing his supporters with no due process. While people were going to jail in order to protect everything he came to represent, he was in the USA enjoying a vacation as if nothing was happening. He betrayed every single person who ever supported him from the very beginning.
And yet people are still assembling in the streets to protest the political unelected supreme court. Whatever Bolsonaro may or may not have started, it's bigger than him now. His current usefulness is limited to the fact Trump apparently likes him enough to sanction the brazilian despots who are persecuting him.