> Listen to one of our most respected historians ...
Mentioning "O Globo" article from 2016, a news media that was part of the package that severely supported the coup, by constant manipulation of brazil's popular opinion, being one of the most influential TV channels of Brazil. A support that paved the way for Bolsonaro and all the right wing lunatics that are in power right now.
Also "one of our most respected historians", IDK, not from the field, but never heard of him. Maybe i should take from granted something he says over our past, but historians have not the best kind of training to understand the present time, sociologists and philosophers can do much better. Also knowing how 'Globo' works, it must have been hard to find a guy from social sciences that would corroborate with their distorted and manipulated point of view (And some point in time they will have to make a historical repair over all the wrongdoings in this case).
Marco Antonio Villa for instance is a well known historian, but is clearly a right wing supporter, with a clear political view and agenda, despite being against Bolsonaro nowadays. So there's no way to resort to prestige in the field and yet somehow say it have anything to do with objectivity, because we know this is not how it works in real life.
On the other way i can present you a lot of current newspapers pieces that say exactly the opposite. There is a trend now, that even people that supported this in the past, is starting to show a changed opinion about the subject, as the blind hate over Lula or PT is starting to make less sense nowadays, when all this had lead to this suffocating reality we are living.
> Lula, Dilma and her party tried to impeach Social Democrat President Fernando Henrique 45 (forty five!) times.
> By your own definition, they tried 45 coups, making them the biggest coupists in Brasil's history.
Don't know if those are the real numbers, but anyway, taking them for granted, none of them was approved, so it doesnt matter if it was 10, 100 or 1000. You are comparing oranges and apples here.
The only way to be comparable, it would be if one of them got approved, and without any legal grounds being proved, removed Fernando Henrique from his legitimate presidency. Than yes, i would say it would be a "soft coup", because it needs the green light from a lot of important people for this to happen without the right guidance under the law.
Because that's how you cook a coup that have the appearance of legitimacy, but once anyone digs enough, can see the how much it was flawed and corrupted from the very start (for instance, it started as a form of 'Cunha' blackmailing the president to stop the investigations on his corruption cases).