AND Weekly Editorial – Resisting the counter-revolutionary offensive in the new situation

Editorial Staff of AND

17 November 2022

Weekly Editorial – Resisting the counter-revolutionary offensive in the new situation

Four factors arise as developments in the new situation. First, the existence of an articulation of the extreme right, promoted by the President Bolsonaro, who has been removed from office, and which has unfolded as an armed anti-communist mass movement, obstinate in questioning the elections and the old democracy; second, the coupist actions of the reactionary Armed Forces High Command in openly questioning the electoral system and attacking the other institutions of the old Republic; third, the election of the new government by the minority of the nation, which lacks internal cohesion, will have a strong opposition in Congress (and of the extreme right, in the streets, in addition to the popular masses) and will not be able to fulfill its demagogic promises in a satisfactory manner; fourth, the unstoppable tendency of growth of the popular protest – especially the struggle for land and the Agrarian Revolution – pushed by the latent process of decomposition and acute crisis of the economy and the inability of the decadent and corrupt political system to resolve it in the short and medium term, after an enormous electoral boycott in which a third of Brazilians did not vote in the second round (49.64 million).

The coupist movements, which blocked the country’s highways for a few days and are now concentrating on stoking the barracks, are the fiercest enemies of the people and of national sovereignty. They form a relatively centralised movement, from the political point of view, heavily armed and sufficiently willing to serve as a terrorist shock troop for the counter-revolution (as shown by the armed actions of the Bolsonarists in the blockades in Pará, and the attack on an editorial office of a newspaper in Rondônia). These hosts, from the sewers of society, came shamelessly to the surface, plotting and executing their provocations, political attacks and armed assaults, instigated by decades of reactionary and anti-communist bellowing by this same liberal right that today wants to play “democrat”. Now this extreme right, defeated in the ballot-boxes of the electoral farce and more bittered than ever, is – and increasingly will be – used by the reactionary armed forces, both to combat popular protest and revolt, and as a factor of instability which justifies the growing militarization of political power.

This set of factors gives the revolutionary proletariat and the other popular classes difficult but decisive tasks. In addition to fighting the far right unrelentingly and forcefully, it will be necessary to unmask the future government of opportunism with the civilian centre-right, which will apply the most draconian measures to give a new impulse to bureaucratic capitalism, and will seek to intimidate the masses by blackmailing progressive people to defend the government against the far right. The struggle against the Bolsonarist phalanxes and other fascist hordes will necessarily require striking them measure by measure and with all fury. Systematically denounce the manoeuvres of the High Command of the Armed Forces, that will play both with the extreme right and with the government with opportunism, with the aim of advancing with its preventive counter-revolutionary offensive to impose its absolute centralisation of power to the executive, and its control, tutelage and threats, in order to restrict democratic liberties and fight popular protest and the Revolution with an iron fist.

The democrats and revolutionaries will have to fight, more than before, with unbreakable firmness to win laurels for the popular struggle in this period. The central question and decisive task, everywhere, is to teach the masses to defend their immediate interests and democratic rights and liberties by all means and uncompromisingly. The large number of the boycott, on the one hand, and the explosiveness of the masses, on the other, are the favourable ground for achieving this. There must be no mistake: do not allow yourselves to be dragged into the defence of this corrupt old democracy on the pretext of fighting the armed extreme right and the coup d’état of the generals, nor allow them to drag the masses into the coup d’état on the pretext of fighting opportunism and old democracy. They should instead raise high the banner of the New Democratic Revolution.