Like the triumphalism of many from the West’s far right in earlier election cycles, such enthusiasm may be short-lived, a moment of transcendence soon to be subsumed by the churn of polarization and the sclerosis of daily politics. Sánchez’s plans on keeping his job hinge on, at best, cobbling together enough votes to form a stronger coalition than the minority government he currently leads. In India, the B.J.P. retains outsized control over the apparatus of state, the media, and the courts. In Brazil, inflation is high and public debt is surging, and the legislature and state governments are dominated by Lula’s opponents. But his win has blocked what seemed an inexorable advance of the right across Latin America, where left-leaning governments have fallen in rapid succession over the past two years, and has thwarted the Bolsonaros’ broader project of judicial overhaul at home and the potential yoking of Brazil’s foreign policy to Trump’s hemispheric agenda. Ahead of the runoff, Lula cast himself as the defender of Brazilian sovereignty from the predations of Washington and U.S. tech giants, and as the ally of working people against callous élites—he didn’t shy away from his own brand of populism. In the election’s aftermath, Bolsonaro briefly attempted to claim that the result was illegitimate, but he saw right-wing heads of state in South America recognize Lula’s victory. By Tuesday, it was reported that Bolsonaro, who is under investigation for corruption, money laundering, and tax evasion, for accepting millions of dollars from a disgraced financier to produce a movie about his father, had left the country and would receive visas for himself and his family from the U.S. State Department. (Bolsonaro has not been formally charged and has denied any wrongdoing.)
Between the defeat of Bolsonaro this past week and events earlier this year in Hungary, where the long-ruling nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was ousted in elections, the White House has lost two hugely symbolic allies in its broader right-wing global culture war. By Wednesday, no clear winner had emerged in the Israeli election, in which Trump had endorsed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and which saw a historic turnout of Arab voters. And the U.S. President may be humbled further in next week’s midterms, as Democrats eye taking both the House and the Senate. Former President Barack Obama, while stumping for Democrats in Ohio, blasted the Republicans in terms that would have been familiar in Brazil and elsewhere, pointing to the wealthy élites and tech titans who “are able to buy and sell elections like never before,” in service of a Republican Party that “now seems to stand for corrupt government, or inept government, or no government.”
Lula withstood an anti-incumbency challenge on the same day that another once indomitable leader succumbed to one. The Serbian President, Aleksandar Vučić, a close Orbán ally, an erstwhile friend of the Kremlin, and a right-wing strongman effectively in power since 2012, saw his bid to stay in office by running to be Prime Minister foiled by an upstart student movement. The slate of candidates from its de-facto party, called the Student List, outperformed Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party, and he conceded. The students had been protesting since 2024, when the deadly collapse of a canopy outside a train station in the city of Novi Sad triggered a revolt over perceived state corruption and mismanagement. The protests, which were met at times with sweeping police repression, were resilient, and morphed into a strategic political project that persevered in the face of Vučić’s tactics, which included using state-media channels to tar the students as foreign stooges abetting a deep-state globalist agenda. Now they are trying to figure out how to form the next government in Belgrade, and, like Orbán’s opponents in Hungary, they have embarked on a campaign to reinforce the rule of law in the country and to purge state institutions of those who enabled their autocratic capture.
Those efforts are being mirrored elsewhere. “The vision of Serbian youth converges with that of many other young Europeans,” Nathalie Tocci, an Italian political scientist and former foreign-policy adviser to top E.U. officials, wrote in La Stampa. She pointed to the series of protests convulsing the Continent: there’s the Flamingo movement in Albania—where demonstrations have pulled in a cross-section of society, including students and professionals, infuriated by the government’s handling of a project backed by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to open a luxury resort along a coastal ecological preserve, and have surfaced wider public rage against oligarchs in the country. And then there are those who have marched in recent weeks in France, Belgium, Spain, and Italy, calling for access to affordable housing, relief with the cost of living, and greater investment in their schools. “It is a vision of democracy, equality, and social, environmental, international, and intergenerational justice,” Tocci added. “A vision and a commitment expressed through street protests.”
