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Brazil's Independence Day has become the moment for the country’s nationalist, right-wing movement to take to the streets, protest the left and hoist the yellow and green of the Brazilian flag.
This year, it carried a new banner.
An American flag the size of a basketball court unfurled over several lanes of São Paulo’s main avenue on Sunday, with demonstrators holding the flag aloft as they protested the expected conviction this week of former President Jair Bolsonaro on charges of planning a coup.
The flag was a message of thanks to President Trump for trying to intervene in Mr. Bolsonaro’s case. It became the defining image of the day’s enormous protests, plastered across social media and newspaper front pages. And it may soon be at the center of a police investigation that could involve the National Football League. (More on that later.)
It was also a sign of the U.S. flag’s shifting global image as Mr. Trump transforms how America is seen abroad.
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This year, right-wing demonstrators in South Korea waved American flags when protesting what they believed was a rigged election, echoing cries of “Stop the Steal” as Mr. Trump’s supporters did after the 2020 election. After Mr. Trump won last year’s election, conservative Israelis excited about stronger U.S. support for the war in Gaza hung American flags from their windows and wore red-white-and-blue skullcaps.
