Media Matters reports today on many of the American extremists who expressed support for the Brazilian insurrectionists yesterday which is not surprising. It’s clear that the US right has become quite the inspiration. Here’s an example: Of course. But then he was probably involved in the planning. This piece by Anne Applebaum recalls how the American revolution inspired the French Revolution and Haitian slave revolts in the years after independence. And she writes: The American Revolution also inspired scores of democratic and anti-colonial revolutionaries. Simón Bolívar, remembered as the Liberator in half a dozen South American countries, visited Washington, New York, Boston, and Charleston in 1807 and later recalled that “during my short visit to the United States, for the first time in my life, I saw rational liberty at first hand.” Visits to the U.S. inspired independence leaders from across Africa and Asia, and they still do. Would-be democrats from Myanmar and Venezuela to Zimbabwe and Cambodia reside in the United States, and study the institutions of the United States, even today. As I wrote on January 6, 2021, That tradition was broken, not just by the Trump administration but by the claque of men around Donald Trump who began dreaming of a different kind of American influence. Not democratic, but autocratic. Not in favor of constitutions and the rule of law, but in support of insurrection and chaos. Not through declarations of independence but through social-media trolling campaigns. Many of the actual achievements of this claque have been negligible…