A thwarted plot targeting a Lady Gaga concert attended by over two million people is the latest in Brazilian anti-LGBTQ+ violence
On Sunday, May 4, two people were arrested for an alleged plot to detonate explosives in a targeted attack against the LGBTQ+ community at a Lady Gaga concert hosted at Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro. The event attracted an estimated 2.5 million people, who, according to police, were targeted by a coordinated hate movement “motivated by sexual orientation” that promoted “the dissemination of hate crimes, self-harm, pedophilia and violent content.”
The Global Project Against Hate And Extremism (GPAHE) has warned of widespread, and growing, anti-LGBTQ+ hate in Brazil through an extensive report on the far-right extremists and hate groups operating in the country. Anti-LGBTQ+ movements in Brazil such as Movimento São Paulo Independente (São Paulo Independent Movement), and Nova Resistência (New Resistance) are still active on social media peddling bigotry. Some of these groups aren’t isolated to Brazil, like the Hammerskins Brazil, who are part of the larger transnational neo-Nazi Hammerskin Nation (HSN) network which originated in Texas in 1988.
Lady Gaga has long been an advocate for queer rights and has a large LGBTQ+ fan base. She has called for marriage equality and protested the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which forced gay military personnel to keep their sexual orientation a secret in the United States. More recently, she has openly spoken about the silencing of queer communities and her determination to help protect LGBTQ+ and other marginalized groups in the wake of Donald Trump’s second administration. She’s also the co-founder of the Born This Way Foundation, named after her hit song that is lauded as an LGBTQ+ anthem. The foundation conducts research and connects young people with mental health resources.
The hate group (the name is unconfirmed at the time of publishing) responsible for planning the terrorist plot used social media to lure and entice young people into using improvised explosives and molotov cocktails to attack children, teens, and LGBTQ+ individuals at the concert as part of a “spiritual war” against Lady Gaga. In a new development, a third person was charged with terrorism after it was found they planned to carry out “a satanist ritual by killing a child or a baby” during the concert. Authorities reported the would-be attackers were found on Discord, a text and video chat platform used predominantly by gamers.
Social media is a known medium for extremist recruitment and radicalization, having played a part in multiple mass casualty events around the world. Video games and gaming-adjacent platforms, which are used by far-right hate movements for recruitment and real-world organization, play a major role in the proliferation of violent hatred and are mentioned in several manifestos of ideologically-motivated attackers worldwide. Recent examples include the Nashville shooter, who killed one and injured two others in January 2025, the Abundant Life Christian School shooter, who killed two and injured six in December 2024, and an attacker in Turkey who stabbed five people at a mosque in August 2024.
Other organizations like the violent extremist group 764 have a presence in Brazil. 764, an offshoot of the violent neo-Nazi Order of Nine Angles (O9A), originating in the UK and known for human sacrifice and terrorism, is a transnational network originating in the United States targeting LGBTQ+ youth, and that spreads child pornography and neo-Nazi content through Discord. This violent cultish behavior is similar to what the concert’s would-be attackers also planned in Brazil. The targeting of mass gatherings of LGBTQ+ people using improvised explosives and molotov cocktails mirrors the devastating attacks on the 2009 São Paulo Pride Parade by the neo-Nazi group Impacto Hooligan (Hooligan Impact), whose members detonated a bomb in the parade, injuring 40 people, and attacked a young gay Black man, who later died in the hospital. The former leader of Associação Cívica e Cultural Arcy Lopes Estrella (Civic and Cultural Association Arcy Lopes Estrella, ACCALE), another Brazilian anti-LGBTQ+ movement, was indicted in a 2019 molotov cocktail bombing of the Porta dos Fundos video production company in Rio de Janeiro, likely triggered by its release of a Christmas special on Netflix which depicted Jesus as gay.
While Brazil has criminalized extreme forms of racism, such as using symbols linked to Nazism and speech considered to excuse the Nazi regime, the country suffers from a long-standing epidemic of anti-LGBTQ+ hate. In 2023, 221 LGBTQ+ people were killed in Brazil, making it the country with the most recorded killings against the queer community in the world. Of this number, over 100 transgender people were murdered. Organized hate groups in Brazil contribute to this violence, targeting LGBTQ+ events, people, and those who support LGBTQ+ inclusion. During a 2015 protest led by Movimento Linearista Integralista Brasileiro (Brazilian Integralist Linearist Movement, MIL-B), a teacher was assaulted at Campinas City Hall during a meeting to vote on whether to end the inclusion of gender ideology, meaning use of the term “gender” or “sexual orientation,” in the city’s school curricula. The football hooligan group Torcidas Anti-Antifascista (Anti-antifascist Fans) have a history of attacking LGBTQ+ fans and preventing them from entering stadiums.
The normalization of anti-LGBTQ+ hate in Brazil has devastating consequences for political participation by LGBTQ+ people. In 2018, Marielle Franco, a gay politician and supporter of LGBTQ+ rights in Brazil, was assassinated. In 2022, Rodrigo Amorim, a state lawmaker and ally of former far right President Jair Bolsonaro, called transgender candidate Benny Briolly, who has endured over 700 death threats since entering the public eye, an “aberration of nature.” Only last year, in September 2024, transgender politician Leonora Áquilla survived an assassination attempt after a motorcyclist hit her car and attempted to shoot her.
As Pride Month, a time meant to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and inclusivity in general, is under siege by far-right governments worldwide, including in the United States, as a result of Trump’s anti-DEI orders and white supremacist targeting, and Hungary, which recently outright banned Pride parades, this terror plot is a worrying indicator for the kinds of reprehensible violence hate groups will resort to when they feel their views are justified by political leaders, those with power, or by anti-LGBTQ+ religious dogma. Public demonstrations across the world against LGBTQ+ communities were common during Pride Month in 2023, and, in May 2024, the U.S. State Department itself warned of possible terror attacks against LGBTQ+ people in places they organize publicly. The foiled attack in Brazil, a month before Pride begins, should serve as a sobering reminder of the threat of anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry and its gruesome consequences.
