AND: Editorial – The Insides of the Failed Military Coup Conspiracy are Exposed

We share an unofficial translation of the last Editorial by A Nova Democracia.

The facts brought to light with the conclusions of the research by the Federal Police that investigated the preparations and execution by the far right for the institutional rupture, undoubtedly confirm the degree of decay of the old democracy. Generals, colonels and other middle-ranking officers of the Armed Forces, active and in reserve, together with Bolsonaro, are at the center of these reactionary attempts, which ran in a frenetic race since the second half of 2022. There was no so-called separation of which the radicals did not represent the Armed Forces and were “people without troops”. Officers commanding important troops, such as General Estevam Theophilo Gaspar de Oliveira, then head of the Land Operations Command and member of the High Command, were completely involved and are accused. Bolsonaro, Braga Netto, Augusto Heleno, Paulo Sérgio, all are acused. More than that: it is evident that the “legalists”, those who apparently would have resisted the institutional rupture, were not, in fact. First, they only opposed the institutional rupture at that moment and fundamentally because they knew that they would not have the support and financing of Yankee imperialism, which deterred the intermediate elements and guaranteed the unity of the troops in that position. Second: most of the “legalists” had this position out of pure “comfort zone” (as the Bolsonarists themselves, General Mário Fernandes and Colonel Reginaldo Vieira de Abreu, said in messages exchanged during the period and intercepted by the police). And, thirdly: mainly, because the so-called “legalist” wing, which opposed and continues to oppose the institutional rupture in these conditions, is in no way respectful of legality, but rather, it is united with the High Command of the Armed Forces (Alto Comando das Forças Armadas – ACFA) in a preventive counter-revolutionary offensive, launched in 2015 and continued to this day, of gradual military intervention, but in fact, guided by the same strategic principles of “low-intensity warfare”, with warlike actions or coercion, blackmail and specific threats, in short, through psychological warfare operations, to conduct the political-institutional and economic-social process in accordance with the guidelines outlined in its “Nation Project”. If the military coup that the far right aspires to is an open and immediate rupture of the constitutional order to install a military regime, the hegemonic right in the ACFA, in fact, always intended to achieve the same objectives of boosting bureaucratic capitalism and counter-revolutionary repression, with the tactical difference of establishing a regime of maximum centralization of power in the Executive, through changes to the constitutional framework, gradual and combined with specific, partial coup actions, so as not to completely deny the old democracy and achieve, as much as possible, popular resistance being as small as possible and less widespread in society.

Now, the ACFA and its hegemonizing right are forced to assist their peers being indicted and exposed. In no way is this a change in its nature in general, nor in its intentions. They know that they must sacrifice the little to save the whole; They know that they will have to let their peers, who took a stand for rupture, be punished to save their own interventionist cause. On the other hand, they cannot remain completely inert in the face of punishment, because, in order to recover the strength previously obtained and to be able to completely impose their positions on other reactionary institutions, the generals need a mass political movement, which is moved from the barracks, which is used as pressure and a source of legitimacy for their political activities. Therefore from time to time they raise one or another objection to the operations or criticism of the conduct of the process by the Supreme Federal Court. The active generals continue – now in a more covert way – with their preventative counter-revolutionary offensive, although they know that their situation has deteriorated a lot and many difficulties have been created. They act behind the scenes, reinforcing the wear down by the opposition on the government and exercising a kind of political supervision over it (a discreet guardianship), to open up a favorable arena in 2026, when they will be able to have an openly right-wing force that will give them an active and greater voice, freedom of action. Furthermore, they are waiting for new crisis conditions so that they can come forward brandishing their “constitutional mission” of guaranteeing the constituted powers, even while replacing them with their own discretion.

The appeasement of Luiz Inácio’s government with the ACFA is, in fact and in purpose, a criminal policy of betrayal of the people and the fatherland, as it plays into the hands of reaction and gives the number one enemy of democratic freedoms the truce it needs to replenish provisions. More than that: it provides the reaction with the respite it needs after the partial suffered defeats, and gives it an active supply of provisions while providing to the reaction a voice of supervisory power in the government itself. If it is not like that, then why has the government not changed the curricula of the academies of the Forces, which teach their officers that the 1964 military coup, since its beginning, was a “democratic revolution” – and therefore educate them to repeat the feat? If, after all, the ACFA has a democratic right, which would have emerged strengthened from this appeasement, why is this not changed? And, why did the PT give the “final form” to the project that would alter article 142 of the constitution, which is ambiguous and which the coup plotters rely on to give the intervention an air of legality? Or, even, why not finishing the Army’s “Special Forces”, that school of professional assassins and conspirators who are soaked in the blood of Haitian national resistance rebels, and who call themselves “freedom guerrillas”, incorrigible visceral anti-communists and chronically ill by the counter-revolutionary rage, all trained by the Yankees!? There is, in fact, no democratic sector in the ACFA: the two sides are divided regarding the method and criteria for intervening militarily and regarding the form of the regime that will follow; opportunism and the liberal right, cowards and appeasers, by seeking to coexist peacefully with both forces in the ACFA, only feed them.

In any case, this tribune in September 2017 alerted the entire Country about the existence of a military intervention process; which now is the preventive counter-revolutionary offensive in the form of a step-by-step military coup d’état, launched after the 2013-14 uprisings and conducted along the lines of a “low-intensity war” and which later, with Bolsonaro, an openly military coup was attempted. In short, these conspiracies and machinations that have so far failed are completely clear. No one can doubt, manipulate or make fun of this process. Likewise, no one doubts the extent to which the degradation and bankruptcy of the old democracy has reached. This dark picture of institutional and military crisis is unparalleled since 1964, it is the biggest crisis and danger to democratic freedoms in the last 60 years. It is the result, for all intents and purposes, of the degree of demoralization of the old democracy in general, and of opportunism in particular by not carrying out any of its historical and programmatic promises, particularly during the first 13 years of the PT government, the false left. Although people’s perception separates its leader Luiz Inácio from it, which still guarantees it a lot of electoral prestige, has almost completely unmasked itself.

And since it (the false left) is the anchor of popular illusions with the democracy of cemeteries, when it sank, it drawned the old regime with itself. Useless, from a strategic and programmatic point of view, both the false left and the old democracy cannot now guarantee the political legitimacy and stability necessary to face the period of unprecedented general crisis of the imperialist economy and its social order. The masses do not accept being flogged, now more than ever, by political “representatives” who do not represent them and cannot even pretend to represent them. The reactionaries, unable to count on the current order to carry out their sinister tasks of greater exploitation and oppression, fight for even more ultra-reactionary solutions to meet the needs of imperialism. Fascism and the far right, the coup and the liquidation of democratic freedoms are risks arising from the historical exhaustion of the old democracy.

The struggle against fascism is not carried out through police trials and investigations. These, however, are not negligible, as they unmask the legend of the Armed Forces as defenders of the fatherland and saviors of the Nation that the ACFA intends to show to public opinion, while alerting the broad masses of this deception. Furthermore, it feeds the contradictions within the reaction and entangles it with internal struggles – which is always a reserve for the revolutionary masses. However, no inquiry can solve the problem: the reactionaries, no matter how much they struggle on which solution to adopt to save the regime they share from the final crisis, at a given moment they make compromises, conciliate and appease. After all, for them, it is an ultimately non-antagonistic contradiction. The indictment only occurred now because a criminal Bolsonarist decided to blow himself up in Brasília: if it weren’t for that, the investigation would drag on until 2025, so that it could take place close to the presidential elections the following year, and would probably end in amnesty, as certain Federal Supreme Court ministers admitted in anonymity. Conciliation prevents the full resolution of coupism and fascism; and as the old democracy continues to fail, new supporters of fascism emerge and adhere to it, nourishing its social base, from which the “green chickens” and paramilitaries are recruited in the cities and the countryside.

Therefore, the true struggle against fascism and in defense of democratic freedoms is done within class struggle. Putting fascism in defensive mode, placating it, attacking it, diminishing its social and political importance and its adherents, growing progressive forces, propagating democratic values and boldly mobilizing supporters of democratic freedoms: all this is possible under the only condition that it mercilessly strike the “green chickens” organized into paramilitary groups at the service and command of the latifundium – the main birthplace of far right-wing values and its most important social stronghold. The anti-fascist united front is the revolutionary class front that serves to support the revolutionary struggle; the anti-fascist struggle is the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggle; the defeat of Bolsonarism and the far right is the advancement of the anti-imperialist Agrarian Revolution, as the basis and first phase of the New Democratic Revolution. It is urgent for all democrats to raise this propaganda, shout it at the top of their lungs, mobilize the popular masses in the countryside and cities to defend the land for those who work on it and in defense of their trampled rights. Either that, or there is no struggle against fascism.