Editorial – AND – On the march
The Brazilian crisis has already reached the point of unbearability, where a rupture is not only possible, but even inevitable. The resurgence of the pandemic, with the open catastrophe that plagues all units of the federation, associated with famine, hunger and record unemployment isolate Bolsonaro and his extreme right-wing entourage, an effect that the resignation of Pazuello – the butcher – will not be able to mitigate.
Editorial – AND – 23rd of March 2021
On the march
The Brazilian crisis has already reached the point of unbearability, where a rupture is not only possible, but even inevitable. The resurgence of the pandemic, with the open catastrophe that plagues all units of the federation, associated with famine, hunger and record unemployment isolate Bolsonaro and his extreme right-wing entourage, an effect that the resignation of Pazuello – the butcher – will not be able to mitigate. The response of this militia of vagabonds and losers is and will be radicalization: the captain of the undergrowth strains the other powers and, today, any cornerman feels entitled to incriminate someone in the national security law. As there is still an imposition of legality, soon these punitive expeditions will overflow from the courts, where as a rule they do not prosper, and will be made extrajudicially by the action of paramilitary groups, which multiply all over the country. Coup d’état is something that Bolsonaro, the weak, bound by a thousand crimes that can be thrown in his face at any moment and with little popularity, will not be able to accomplish in the short term. To be frightened by his bravado is to play the game of the right wing, which wants to drag the masses in its tow with a view to a new institutional reordering that will be beneficial to them, including preparing the ground to reach the regime that is necessary for its nefarious ends.
The High Command of the Armed Forces sees in the approaching catastrophe not only the opportunity to recover and consolidate the spaces lost after 1988 and to reinforce its historical tutelage over said civilian power, but also to centralize it to the maximum by ensuring the unity of the corporation as the only way to save the system of exploitation of which it is the guardian from total ruin. It is de facto a military government and for the generals who run it Bolsonaro is now only a lesser evil: they push him to pull their chestnuts out of the fire, that is, to make or let him fall “the worse the better”. That serves to restrict democratic freedoms as much as possible, before discarding them. The year of the military intervention in Rio de Janeiro, in which the executions carried out by the police exploded and the areas under the control of the “militias” expanded – not to mention the blocking of the investigations for the murder of councilwoman Marielle – clarifies more about their position than a thousand theoretical schemes. Look at the model in Colombia, where periodic elections coexist with the systematic extermination of dissidents, even those who pray for the primer of reformism: it is because of it that we are making great strides. An eventual government of Mourão, for example, for which those who bet all their chips on political judgement work objectively, would mark the deepening, not the mitigation, of this ongoing militarization process.
The release of Lula, which delighted those who believe in a peaceful solution, and which seems like an attempt at a grand national agreement of the civil right (Congress and Supreme Federal Court) to counter both Bolsonaro’s bravado and the protection of the generals, will not have the ability to resolve the crisis, neither in the short nor in the medium term. In the first place, because such a late turn was not due to the attachment of those forces to democracy and the letter of the law, as the vile analyst wants, but to defend their own corporations and their arch-privileges, protected by the current status quo. To divide them, therefore, later, to satiate their petty interests, or simply to show off the club, is not and has never been a difficult task. It is the nature of the liberal bourgeoisie to betray. Secondly, and for us this is the main one, because the reality of uncontrolled misery and pandemic will prevail. Not even great men can change the course of history; even less so the impostors. Let us remember, by the way, that the announced commotion that was expected with the arrest of Luiz Inácio, and then with his release, which occurred even before the pandemic, failed. The PT and its satellites will sabotage even more decisively any independent popular mobilization, since they will throw all their chips in the electoral game, thus pretending to present themselves as the authentic white doves of peace. They are the pampered opposition, as MDB had been, smelling musty, as their allusions to the past smell musty. Especially in the 13 and a half years in which they reigned in the upper echelons of the old landlord-bureaucratic State and went out of their way to manage the crisis of imperialism, making stipulations and maracutas for class conciliation and undermining the class struggle of the working class and peasantry, and no less, in the name of this old decadent State, presided over the repression of the masses in struggle, in short, a dead and buried historical reality that will never return. We are witnessing before our eyes a sort of repetition of the long-suffering political history of Latin America, always squeezed between the populist element and the military element, whose outcome is usually tragic: the more a warlord promises to govern for all – an impossible task – the greater the frustrations and resentments he arouses, the greater the divisions inside and outside the government, and the greater the chances of everything ending up in a new cycle of coups d’état. They are, indeed, the populist element and the military element, a sort of Siamese twins identical in several points, especially in their commitment to the latifundia, to imperialism and to the perpetuation of the misery of our peoples.
One thing is certain: in Brazil today, a year and a half is equivalent to a century, so that any electoral prognosis now has as much validity as the prescription of chloroquine to treat Covid-19. From the point of view of democrats and consistent revolutionaries, it is necessary to mercilessly attack this genocidal military government of Bolsonaro / generals, and explain to the masses patiently, but openly, that there is no possible solution to the problems that beset us, that does not pass through the overthrow of this rotten system of exploitation and oppression, responsible for the massacre of biblical proportions that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Brazilians since last year. In the pandemic situation, we have revealed in a very concentrated way the totality of miseries that have always beset us, such as the brutal inequality between rich and poor, the hypocrisy that “we are all in the same boat” when some can stay at home protected and others cannot, the contempt of the ruling scum for the people which is clearly seen in the lack of vaccines, the role of this old State as a mere coercive device that exists to defend the interests of the privileged minority, is the naked truth that the life of the worker is a disposable commodity, cheaper than the goods it delivers. Therefore, we cannot entrust our destiny to any ruling class politician, only our own struggle and organization can reverse this situation. These are the little big truths that a self-respecting tribune needs to explain, explain and explain every day, because they are precisely the ones that hold the hope for better days. Hard times lack this: a force that says the masses can win and shows clearly through what program and path. At the critical hour, this handful of stubborn and organized clairvoyants will be able to drag millions.
