AND Editorial Staff
16 January 2023

Weekly Editorial – The ‘green chickens’ are puppets in the hands of the High Command

Minor corrections were made at 9:45 a.m. on Tuesday, 17 January.

The Bolsonarada of January 8 continues to have serious ramifications. The draft of the State of Defense decree that would be signed by Bolsonaro while he was president, found in the home of former Justice Minister Anderson Torres – the same one who flagrantly facilitated the invasions of the headquarters of the Three Powers – explains two things: first, that all of Bolsonaro’s coup preaching before and during the elections, the road blockades, the armed actions of the far right after the result was announced, etc. corresponded to his plan that if he did not win the elections, he would sign such a decree before the inauguration of his opponent, which was not carried out because the Armed Forces High Command (ACFA) does not agree with an institutional rupture at this time. It is known that the former president had several meetings with the ACFA after the election, and came out of all of them angry. Second, that the camps at the gates of the barracks throughout the country were a measure of the ACFA’s orientation. Even the family of the retired general and former Army Commander Eduardo Villas-Boas was involved in the organisation of the encampment in front of the Army Headquarters in the federal capital, which was visited by the same general. For this reason there was an open defence by the generals that the encampments were a “democratic manifestation” and a “right to freedom of expression”.

The camps were the way chosen by the ACFA, manipulating the Bolsonarists and using them as a cannon fodder, to promote a “riot” and make it clear to the new government what it can do, and that the military is, in fact, the “Moderating Power”. It was for no other reason that in the middle of the federal intervention in the area of public safety in the Federal District, in the midst of investigations and interrogations of protesters, and the decree of arrest of Anderson Torres, the president of the republic Luiz Inácio stated, in an interview with journalists, that “the Armed Forces are not the moderating power they think they are. But the participants of the assault on the headquarters of the “Three Powers”, especially its organizers, in the face of Bolsonaro’s isolation and silence, were convinced that by carrying out the takeover of those headquarters, the next act would be military intervention and this was circulating in those days in the “social networks” among various Bolsonarists.

For its part, the opportunist government owes the nation an explanation as to why it left these headquarters so unprotected, particularly the Planalto Palace; and why, after the march of demonstrators toward the Esplanade of the Ministries and even with the invasions, it did not activate the so-called “Shield Plan” [1], about which the PT and its acolytes are baldly aware. It is already known that the Cabinet of Institutional Security (GSI), headed by General Gonçalves Dias, was informed by the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) about the risk of invasion of the installations. The instruction to reinforce security was not only solemnly ignored by the military, but also, it came from the GSI the written order to dismiss 36 soldiers from the Presidential Guard Battalion (BGP) 20 hours before the attack of the “green chickens”, leaving a ridiculous contingent mobilized and only carrying rifles with war ammunition, that is, without conditions to respond to the invasion.

It also came to light that the BGP commander tried to help the gang escape through the Planalto emergency exit, and even got into an argument with the MPs. As if that were not enough, there is video footage of the BGP remaining apathetic while the fascists approached the Planalto. To complete the day, that night, the Army Police, in front of the HQ in Brasilia, prevented the arrest of Bolsonaristas camped by the MP, blocking the accesses with the parking of war tanks.

Therefore, these are not isolated facts, nor are they individual insubordination. The ACFA allowed and concurred, deliberately and planned, for the invasions to occur on the 8th, mobilized by the Bolsonarists, as well as stimulated it for months, actively and tacitly, with gestures, pronouncements – questioning the fairness of the elections and defending the offensive of the Bolsonarists as democratic demonstrations – and even offering military facilities and logistical structure – in a more or less covert way – to set up the camps.

This far-right anti-communist movement wants the military coup now, but it can only play the role of a pawn in the hands of the generals. What the ACFA wants, using such a movement, in the first place, is to make it clear to the new government not to challenge it about the role of “Moderator Power” and, in general, to go on bumping up the political and institutional terrain, in order, if necessary, to create the “social chaos” that they have been announcing since 2015 that they will intervene in. While they ambiguously stimulate the Bolsonarada – or explicitly, in the case of the reserve generals, especially Villas-Bôas -, the ACFA is sewing the following message in public opinion: “this is what happens with the election of a corrupt leftist, in a process in which we do not certify the smoothness, whose electoral court took the lead in the country, unbalancing the independence of the three Powers, throwing the Brazilian society into chaos and disorder; that is why society asks for military intervention and we are the guarantors of the instituted powers”. That is what the ACFA is stitching up. Objectively, Bolsonaro and the “green chickens” are cannon fodder in ACFA’s plan, that is the truth. In this sense, the second Bolsonarada – on the 8th – was only a warning.

Why? Because the ACFA, which is the backbone of this old order, knows that it will have to act as a whole body, since the old order cannot sustain itself. Bureaucratic capitalism and its old state are seriously threatened by a revolutionary situation developing by leaps and bounds. Those from above do not understand each other, those below no longer accept domination as before, and although the smaller part of these still deludes itself with the electoral farce, the more conscious and organised part is preparing the revolution. After eight years of attempts, threatened by the danger of subversion, the generals are increasingly convinced that it will not be possible to carry out the three reactionary tasks [2] with the present agonising political system. The situation is heading towards its denouement.

Another point is how to resist this counterrevolutionary pre-emptive offensive in the form of a military coup in progress.

In the first place, the fact that what happened in Brasilia produced nothing but a neutrality of antipathy in the basic masses for the way it happened is a sign that the defence of these institutions, which have been massacring and deceiving the masses for 30 years, is not capable of mobilising them in defence of democratic liberties and against coups d’état. To persist in this line is to hand over the masses to the fascists.

Secondly, the current government of the reactionary coalition – despite Luiz Inácio’s bravado about the military – is building its castle on quicksand, because it thinks that laws and political-institutional support alone can stop the march towards coup d’état. He is dangerously underestimating the situation of the country and the world. The present century is not the century of “democracy” and “institutional peace” as cackled by the right wing and opportunism; being in the epoch of the most advanced and unprecedented decomposition of imperialism, this is and will be precisely the century of fascist reaction and restriction of liberties across the board, because a new period of revolutions in world history has opened and however radical fascism may become, the revolutionary movement will grow throughout the world, and nothing can stop its eruption and growth. Brazil will inevitably be one of its main storm stages.

In this constitutional illusion, the new government believes that it has united political forces and institutions, and will now be able to go on the offensive and “subdue military power”. In reality, the new government is weaker than ever and is trapped, because it does not have reliable material forces, as it has not built them up in years of class collaboration; and if it radicalises the co-opted social movements, this will be used by the ACFA to create even more favourable ground to launch itself into the culmination of the coup.

In view of this, there is no other way out: the masses can only guarantee their basic interests – labour and pension rights, public services and minimum conditions of survival – and their democratic rights and liberties through revolutionary struggle, that is, by building Popular Power, step by step and in the midst of the most serious combats of the class struggle, which everything shows that it has taken the unavoidable path of political violence. This demands a consistent leadership, and not a leadership of hardened opportunists and bureaucratic social democrats with a big mouth, who must be unmasked before the masses. The order of the day is: fight the counterrevolutionary offensive of the coup d’état, break constitutional illusions and raise the banner of the revolution of new democracy.

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Notes:

1- Plano Escudo (Shield Plan): in an article in the Estado de São Paulo newspaper, journalist Marcelo Godoy informs that this is the protocol for presidential security in the case of a threat to the area of the Praça dos Três Poderes (Three Powers Square); it is up to the Cabinet of Institutional Security of the Presidency to activate it.