Cadeirada Do Datena / Brazilian "Cadeirada" Incident

Overview

Cadeirada Do Datena, also known as Pablo Marçal Cadeirada or Brazilian "Cadeirada" Incident, refers to a controversy in which Brazilian politician Datena hit his adversary Pablo Marçal with a chair during the 2024 São Paulo city Mayor debate in mid-September 2024. The incident became widely shared on the internet as the "cadeirada" incident, which sparked many memes, photoshops, parodies and jokes, with some treating the chair as a "hero" for knocking out the conservative candidate.

Background

On September 15th, 2024, during the debate with the candidates for Mayor of the city of São Paulo, Brazil, José Luiz Datena attacked his adversary Pablo Marçal with a chair after Marçal called him a "coward" for not being man enough to slap him in the face. The incident was broadcast live by TV Cultura, who had to temporarily interrupt the debate.

Several netizens shared clips of the aggression that day as the viral video spread, including the X / Twitter meme page @AssLatam,^[1] which amassed more than 173,000 views and 3,900 likes in a day.

Marçal had a fractured rib and his arm was immobilized, his team told local media, also pointing out a police report was made against the politician who threw the chair, Datena.^[2]

Developments

Shortly after Marçal was hit with the chair, his team posted several memes and videos comparing his assault with the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro's stabbing incident. The video^[3] (seen below) amassed more than 9 million views and 330,000 likes in a day.

Online Reactions

The cadeirada do Datena incident became a viral topic on the internet in a few hours, sparking Photoshop edits of the chair, parody videos adding a humouristic tone to the aggression and other memetic formats. For example, on September 15th, 2024, X^[4] user @_nbkrd edited the cadeirada meme alongside a scene from the Kill la Kill anime (seen below), which received roughly 58,000 views and 2,300 likes in a day.

On September 16th, 2024, TikTok^[5] user @vitinho_brandao posted a stop-motion reenact of the cadeirada meme (seen below), amassing over 227,000 plays and 41,000 likes in a few hours.

Search Interest

External References