AND Weekly Editorial – The second bolsonarada is just a warning, no?

Editorial staff of AND

10 January 2023

Weekly Editorial – The second bolsonarada is just a warning, no?

Around 4,000 coup militants assault Brasilia. Photo: AND Database

We denounce, repudiate and strongly reject the coup demonstrations that stormed the headquarters of the “Three Powers” in Brasilia. This fact and the decree of federal intervention by President Luiz Inácio – although this measure was only in the area of public security of the Federal District and not in the whole Federal District – are blatant facts of a political, institutional and military crisis that the current government, the official parties and the press monopolies pretend not to see its gravity, hiding it from the Brazilian population; as well as, they try to hide that its causes are in the decomposition of the whole old order of exploitation and oppression of our people and subjugation of the Nation, secularly in force. In the first place, this is the question that arises.

In the second place, it is necessary to lay bare the background to this event which shook the federal capital and amazed the country. It is a fact that the demonstrators camped out at the gates of the barracks, for months, calling for military intervention and their organizers are the same actors in the actions of the failed bombing of Brasilia airport and the same actors in the assault on the headquarters of the “Three Powers”. Likewise, it is a fact that the military high command encouraged the encampments at the doors of the barracks with declarations that these acts were “democratic” and “legitimate”. Furthermore, it is not enough that the reactionary coalition government accepted, in the dead of night, the imposition of tutelage over itself by the Armed Forces High Command (ACFA) with the nomination of one of its puppets, José Múcio, to the Ministry of Defense, As well as the nominations for the command of the three forces, this same minister, as soon as he was sworn in, did not rest from stroking the anti-communist coup movement of camps with the barracks, repeating the generals’ claim that these were democratic demonstrations.

In turn, the petty-bourgeois illusion, of the government that is beginning, of relying exclusively on the law, as is the custom of the demagogues of those in power, has also encouraged the coup plotters in their much-heralded intentions. There are two possibilities: either the government deliberately opened the flanks of the defence of the security of the headquarters of the “Three Powers” (at least, the one in the Planalto Palace) as a trap, favouring the event, and thus wearing down the coup plotters politically, or it has shown pusillanimity as a continuation of the closeness seen throughout its electoral campaign in the face of the fascist threats and intimidation of the Bolsonaro campaign.

As for the first hypothesis, it is the least likely, but it is strange because the President of the Republic Luiz Inácio, the entire government, its information services, in short, a large part of the Brazilian population knew that the coup caravans would not go to Brasilia to make cookies. Knowing this, leaving the seats of power unprepared for possible attacks, relying solely on the powers of the government of the Federal District in the security of the federal capital, is something that goes completely against the protocols of state security of any government in any country. The Presidency of the Republic has the Army’s Presidential Guard Battalion (subordinate to the HQ in Brasilia), where was this contingent when the attacks occurred, and why did they not prevent the invasion? The outspoken Minister of Justice is full of lies about the failures of the intelligence services of the Federal District government, that the governor was deceived, etc., well, well, well! Who didn’t know that Anderson Torres was the security secretary of the Federal District and who he really is? Besides everything, it would be an absurd tactic, a game of cat and mouse that does not correspond to the critical situation the country is experiencing. Although the illusion of legality of the current government may be absurd, it would be atrocious naivety to count on the failure of this attack, which alone will stop the movement of the coup plotters. Once the facts occur, with all the consequences that will fall on the coup protesters, and however harsh their punishment may be, they will not stop, because the hole is much deeper.

As for the second hypothesis, the most probable, it can only be explained by the cowardice of the government and institutions in the face of constant threats, blackmail and provocations from generals and Bolsonarists. The same pusillanimous behaviour of Lula’s electoral campaign, based on the postulate that to respond to the aggressions of the coup would be to fall into provocation and that the correct thing to do would be to act considering the position of the ACFA to attract it (acceptance of the tutelage), and that in the end it is possible to stabilise the situation in the country through elections, that you can get the country out of the crisis with the IMF prescription, that you can end hunger and create a “new middle class” by giving the cake to the bankers and the leftovers to the people, that the country can be a world power while being a semi-colony of the Yankees, and blah, blah, blah

Thirdly, we need to unmask the hypocrisy of the “champions of democracy”. Wasn’t it the Globo Network and all the reactionary liberal editorialists who, since 2014, have mobilised public opinion in a veritable crusade of fascist ethics? Who does not remember the anti-communist mobilisations in 2015 and 2016 in all capitals, with exclusive coverage by the Globo Network, in prime time, with banners demanding criminalisation of communism and the “closing of Congress”? Now, angry, as if it had all the morals in the world, it uses the worst insults of its vocabulary against the coup plotters. Now, gentlemen, those sectors of the so-called “middle class” politicized by the Globo Network, is the same that yesterday elected Bolsonaro and that, today, radicalized and organized by Bolsonarism, presents itself as a shock troop of the coup counterrevolution. Deal with your share of responsibility.

This anti-communist movement – which, by the way, in its camps relied on vast experience in logistics, typically military – was structured in the last four years directly by the then president of the republic, Jair Bolsonaro, agglutinating what is worst in the basements of the police and the Armed Forces, “militia”, professional killers guided by “morals and good customs”, arms dealers and the ultra-right wing of the small and middle bourgeoisie, clearly financed by a certain sector of the big bourgeoisie and landowners who are thieves of federal land and impose serfdom where they parasitize. This movement will continue to harass the government, just as during the Bolsonaro government it attacked the peasant movement with military operations, and will soon turn with even more fury against the revolutionary movement of the masses, as soon as it manifests itself forcefully on the national political scene.

And it does not cease to be worrisome, although not a single comma has been written or spoken by the press monopolies and official parties, the ACFA’s shameless connivance with this coup plot – by the way, not even the speech of the shift manager Luiz Inácio, whose government is under attack, touched on this point, but rather, in a first pronouncement on these facts, preferred to compare the extreme right with the “fanatical Stalinists” making fun of and chorusing with the sophisticated anti-communists of Rede Globo.

About the high commanders, it is worth asking: where did this gang of anti-communist hooligans come from, where were they camped out in Brasilia all this time? Weren’t they in front of the Army Headquarters, with the right to daily talks with military authorities, who even granted them more space in their camp? To whom do the coup plotters turn, clamouring for a coup solution, if not to the military high command, receiving from them, amidst apparently ambiguous messages and less noisy expressions of encouragement, flattering declarations that these are democratic demonstrations?

These are the high-ranking generals who, since 2015, have been blackmailing the nation, saying that either the country will bow to their “project of – subjugation of – the nation”, or chaos will ensue, in the face of which they will impose their “military intervention”. Isn’t that what the boorish Hamilton Mourão said in a Masonic lodge in 2015, repeating recently on the occasion of the 87th anniversary of the 1935 Popular Uprising? Isn’t that what former Army commander Eduardo Villas-Bôas said repeatedly, including on the eve of the 2018 elections, and days before the 2022 ballot? Is it not this “chaos” for coup purposes that this extreme right is seeking to create? Therefore, it should be stressed in the first term the fact that those most responsible for the growth of this whole anti-communist movement are the active military high commanders and generals in pajamas, as well as the coward Bolsonaro, all of whom have always been visceral anti-communists. Which is nothing new: the Armed Forces institutions themselves make a point of making it clear in all their mouldy, patriotic liturgy. Anticommunism across the board is, in essence, coup and pro-fascist, and the contemporary history of our country fully proves it.

It is necessary that all true democrats and revolutionaries, in unity of action, fight firmly against this anti-communist coup movement. Through disturbances of all kinds, it aims to drag public opinion, discredited by the rottenness of the institutions of the old State of landlords and big bourgeoisie, servants of imperialism, mainly Yankee, to be the social base for the re-edition of the nefarious military regime. It is necessary to make clear to the masses of the people that these are the greatest enemies of the Fatherland and of the interests of the people. To do this, it is necessary to definitively break the illusions with the bureaucratic path of the old State and of this old, moribund democracy. The old institutions have only systematically deviated the masses from the democratic path of the new democratic revolution, which is still pending, because it was always frustrated by the bloody coup d’état of these same anti-communist armed forces. Throughout the contemporary history of the country, when the dictatorial regimes created by military coups did not prevail, the regimes of the old bourgeois democracy prevailed, which only brought illusions and frustrations to the masses, making them easy prey to the manipulations of the coups. Thus were the military governments that inaugurated the republic, the governments of the oligarchies of the café com leite politics, the Vargas dictatorship and the coups against him in 1945 and 1954, or the coup threats to JK’s government, the coup against Goulart and the impeachment of Dilma, in a cycle that repeats itself replaying cruelties against our people and the subjugation of the Nation by foreign imperialism. The task could only be to mobilise the masses by raising high the banner of the revolution of new democracy, in direct confrontation with the counter-revolutionary offensive of the coup d’état, and without illusions with the old democracy and its shift governments!