Lula Becomes a Global Symbol of Democracy Against Fascism

What the world saw

On the night of October 25, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) proclaimed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reelected with 64,256,232 votes, 51.79% of valid votes, against 59,826,041 for Flávio Bolsonaro. It is Lula's fourth presidential term by direct vote, something no other Brazilian has achieved. The next morning, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen summed up in one sentence what the chancelleries repeated all day: “Democracy and multilateralism won in Brazil.”

It was no routine congratulation. António Costa, president of the European Council, phoned Lula on Sunday night and wrote that “the Brazilian people have spoken.” Emmanuel Macron called for strengthening the strategic partnership “in the face of the great challenges of our time.” Pedro Sánchez, who faces an early election in Spain, went further: “What has happened in Brazil will happen in Spain.” The prime ministers of the Netherlands and Portugal joined in. In Latin America, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said democracy prevailed, and even Chile's right-wing José Antonio Kast called to congratulate him.

The world made the L

The gesture was born in 2022 as a campaign catchphrase, became an opposition joke in 2023, and in October 2026 crossed borders. The posts below were checked one by one on X's official embed service; each screenshot opens the original post with one tap.

The artists, before the vote

Five days before the runoff, Roger Waters, co-founder of Pink Floyd, posted a video asking for votes for Lula and remembering Marielle Franco. On Friday, October 23, Madonna reposted on her stories the art of Brazilian photographer Rafael Pavarotti, which says “Vote Lula. Vote 13,” and actor Jason Momoa posted a video of support on Instagram.

The same day, filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho posted a video with artists from several countries asking for votes for Lula; Pedro Almodóvar, Mark Ruffalo and Tilda Swinton made the L, alongside Javier Bardem, Juliette Binoche, Guillermo del Toro and Gael García Bernal. “The world is watching Sunday's election,” the director wrote. The day before, former Chilean president Gabriel Boric, who in 2023 had already made the L at a Caetano Veloso concert in Santiago, called Lula “this beautiful old man who, at 80, keeps fighting”.

The L on election day

On Sunday, October 25, Swedish singer Zara Larsson posted a photo with her hand in an L and a single phrase: “Vaamoos, Brasil!” The same day, Justin Bieber posted a video making the L, a day after his wife, Hailey Bieber, shared Pavarotti's art. He wrote nothing in the post. Chilean actor Pedro Pascal made the L on his stories, captioned “#BORALULA”.

After the count

On Monday, October 26, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum opened the daily press conference at the National Palace by making the L and called the result “a breath of fresh air for Latin America and the Caribbean.” Mark Ruffalo returned to the subject to explain the turnaround: “New Deal” policies, he wrote, are “the antidote to right-wing populism.” In the United States, Senator Bernie Sanders said Lula won “despite the Big Tech oligarchs and Trump tilting the field against him.”

In New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at the next day's press conference that, walking home on the night of the count, he saw New Yorkers pour out of a bar shouting Lula's name. And he closed with the cry Latin American leftists have sung for half a century: “the people united will never be defeated.”

In Spain, which goes to the polls earlier than planned, the L became a rallying cry. Ada Colau, former mayor of Barcelona, asked a rally crowd to raise an arm with the L, and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wrote that “what has happened in Brazil will happen in Spain” and repeated the idea at a rally: “If Brazil could do it, Spain can.” In France, supporters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon began recording videos in which they make Lula's L and then fold their fingers into an M. In Argentina, Peronist supporters opened a channel called the Peronism Army, copied from the Lula Army.

Olê, olê, olê, olá, Lula, Lula, at the Mexican racetrack

On Sunday, November 1, a week after the election, fans who entered the track at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez after the checkered flag at the Mexico City Formula 1 Grand Prix sang “Olê, olê, olê, olá, Lula, Lula.”

The heads of government who congratulated Lula

Brazilians voting abroad went the same way. Lula won in 62 countries, against 39 for Flávio: he had 83.96% in France, 79.09% in Germany and 59.42% in Portugal. Flávio won in the United States, with 62.65%, and in Japan, with 80.08%. By October 31, according to the TSE's monitoring panel, 112 heads of state and international leaders and 11 organizations, from the UN to the African Union, had congratulated the reelected president. Below are those who did so publicly on X, from left to right, including presidents who had rooted against him.

Why the Brazilian election became a symbol

The Associated Press, the most widely read news agency in the world, opened its analysis with the thesis that Lula “stemmed the regional shift to the right and denied Trump a powerful ally.” The sequence of facts the agency describes is what turned a national election into a global test. Donald Trump imposed double-digit tariffs on Brazilian products to punish Brazil for holding Jair Bolsonaro accountable for a coup plot. Flávio Bolsonaro campaigned promising to join the U.S.-led security coalition “with great enthusiasm and great honor.” Washington's ostentatious support for the Bolsonaros, the AP writes, “reinforced Lula's message and fueled a nationalist backlash” summed up in the cry “Brazil belongs to Brazilians.”

Political scientist Kenneth Roberts of Cornell University explained the mechanism to the agency: when a regional power threatens the democratic institutions of a country, “defending Brazilian national sovereignty also becomes a way of defending Brazilian democracy.” Lula said the same in his own words in the victory speech: the result is “a demonstration that this country refuses to be anyone's backyard.” The phrase has a long pedigree. At the UN podium in September 2025, he had already said that “poverty is as much an enemy of democracy as extremism,” and in 2026, twelve days before the first round, he again framed the choice as democracy or extremism, sovereignty or subordination.

The word in the headline is his. In July 2021, Lula defined the contest against the Bolsonaros as a choice “between fascism and democracy.” Five years, a coup attempt and a trial later, the electorate made the choice for the second time, now against the son, and the democratic world read the result in exactly those terms, even without using the word.

South African professor Lyal White wrote in the Daily Maverick that the election “carries geopolitical significance far beyond Latin America” and was “a rejection of the Bolsonaro family's attempt to return to power,” while also exposing “the resilience of Brazilian democracy and the fragility of its political settlement.” He and the AP make the same caveat, which this piece records: the victory was by 3.6 points, the right remains strong in Congress, and the regional tide has not turned. The symbol is real; what it symbolizes is a democracy that survived by a narrow margin, not one that has rested.