With outcry from the extreme right, Forum of São Paulo gathers only opportunists and renegades
We publish this unofficial translation of the article of the newspaper A Nova Democracia found here.
On June 29, the opening of the 26th Meeting of the ghostly Forum of São Paulo took place. Treated by the extreme right as the reincarnation of communism and the Revolution in Latin America, the Forum is nothing more than a place where the most irreconcilable opportunists and reformists of the subcontinent gather, united by anti-Yankee phraseology and the practice of parliamentary cretinism, pacifism, reformism and, when they are in the government, by reactionary “political pragmatism”.
Among the participants are 130 revisionist and opportunist groups and parties from 28 countries from Latin America and the Caribbean. The Brazilians who participated in the Forum, in addition to the PT and the PDT, are the PCdoB and the PCBrasileiro, in addition to the PCO as a guest, all wallowing in the same quagmire.
The extreme right made big accusations, as if the most dangerous revolutionaries and communists on Earth were gathered in Brasilia. The famous “Father” Kelmon, a visceral anticommunist, for example, tried to react to the meeting of the opportunists and created, at the last minute, the “Foro do Brasil” together with Carla Zambelli and 150 other people. Flávio Bolsonaro, on social media, made accusations that the PT was not in favor of democracy, as there were “parties that govern dictatorships” in other countries, accusing them of being communists. Anyway, bad jokes.
In turn, the meeting as it is was received by the president of the PT, Gleise Hoffmann, and Luiz Inácio. In his speech at the inaugural session, Gleise clarified that Luiz Inácio’s presence there was an opportunity to show that the São Paulo Forum is not what it is accused of: it is not revolutionary or even leftist. “It is a lie to claim that the Forum of São Paulo is a secret organization that supports or participates in armed or insurrectionary movements”, he declared, in order to immediately separate it from anything communist. “We are for peace, democracy and justice”, she reaffirmed. The question is: which peace and which democracy? The peace of police operations in the favelas, and the democracy that has the reactionary Armed Forces as guardians?
In his intervention, in front of the stage set up for his personal show of verbiage, Luiz Inácio said what the audience wanted to hear. “They accuse us of being communists, thinking that we are offended by this. We are not offended. We would be offended if they called us a Nazi, a neo-fascist, a terrorist. But a communist, a socialist, never. It doesn’t offend us. This makes us proud many times”, he said, drawing applause from hardened opportunists who are as far from that title as he is.
While claiming to be proud of the undeserved epithet “communist” (which Luiz Inácio was never really proud of and always vehemently rejected and condemned communists in his union days), Luiz Inácio also implicitly criticized the organizations present that had been critical of his government. “The same people who applaud us during the campaign are often the same people who boo us, because we didn’t do what we promised in the election campaign,” he said, simulating resentment. “We don’t make public criticisms because criticism interests the extreme right (…) It’s better to have a colleague of ours making mistakes that we can criticize than someone from the right who doesn’t even allow us to have space to criticize”, added, betting on the old blackmail of the “least worst” to paralyze popular organizations and the struggle of the masses. The truth is that, in the country, this discourse and opportunist management have been the most effective way of managing bureaucratic capitalism in crisis, precisely because it tries to immobilize the masses in the face of the fear that something worse will come, while opportunism itself applies the measures of the reaction.
The meeting of the opportunists will continue until the 2nd, Sunday, distilling its left-wing demagogic verbiage.
