AND: Editorial – The Coup Cause is Weakened, but Alive

We share an unofficial translation of the latest editorial by A Nova Democracia.

The High Command of the Armed Forces (ACFA) was forced into a retreat that it did not want. The arrest of Braga Neto is certainly an important event, more due to the demoralization it brings to the forces, which creates difficulties in carrying out its military coup according to the logic of “low intensity war”. This presupposes achieving certain ultra-reactionary political and economic objectives through dissuasion, blackmail or partial and punctual interventions on other constituted powers, in order to create as little fuss or resistance as possible in society, based on legality, stability and legitimacy –today, values and conditions far from the image of the Armed Forces.

This shows the degree of military crisis that has been reached – as a byproduct of the entire general crisis of decomposition of bureaucratic capitalism and its reflection as a deep social, political and institutional crisis –, so we were just a few steps away from the consummation of an institutional rupture which, fundamentally, was not consummated due to the veto of the Yankee’s State Department, which had dissuaded, on one hand, both the majority of the ruling class establishment, including the majority of the High Command, and had also neutralized the initiative of the far right, which – as the investigations show – they did not execute their operational plan to culminate the coup, they capitulated from it, focusing on the preparations and the very serious and dangerous agitations of anti-communist masses; and they capitulated out of the awareness that they would not drag the majority of the ACFA, as they did not have the political conditions to threaten the discipline and hierarchy of the troops as a whole.

However, the interventionist cause has deeper roots that cannot succumb in the face of political setbacks: the reactionary Armed Forces, who in Brazil consider themselves “Moderating Power” – which is at the genesis of the republic “proclaimed” by the military in 1889 –, have in their formulations the positivist belief that the young Brazilian nation tends towards fragmentation, from politics to territorial power, which would threaten its unity if it were not of them, the Armed Forces, and their active role to maintain this unity. That is why they will not stop exercising military intervention, even if they are now forced to pretend to be submissive, but they are just waiting for better political conditions, which were already awaited by them in 2026. Thus, the coup plotters in boots believe that they are fundamental, when in fact it is the reactionary Armed Forces maintaining this system of exploitation that generates all the problems that have been making our people unhappy for centuries and overwhelming the Nation, even preventing its full conformation due to the feudal concentration of land, poverty and subsequent rampant crime and many other problems, as it acts as a force in the service of foreign imperialist interests, for the national subjugation and oppression and exploitation of the masses that make up the core of nationality.

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Strongly demoralized, the Special Forces of the reactionary Brazilian Army must be extinguished: they are a school of anti-communist murderers, incorrigible coup plotters, whose promotion took place during the military regime; Therefore, it is about the survival of 1964 in full “democratic rule of law”, not so “democratic” and not so “lawful”.

The Special Forces are the genesis of what is worst in current society: the special battalions of the Military Police arise from the intersection and joint training of the “Kid Preto” with selected elements that made up the conventional troops of the civil and military in Rio de Janeiro (former state of Guanabara), in 1969. From there, the group called “Ten Golden Men” was born, in Rio de Janeiro, who made headlines in the state’s news as excellent “bandit hunters”, that is of the poor, whether or not they were fond of crime, but in any case presented as such. These, in turn, gave rise to the Scuderie Le Cocq, the largest and best-known extermination group, death squad, that operated in this state, being the origin of the current extreme right-wing paramilitary mafia groups poorly called “militias” and which control most of the territory of Rio de Janeiro. This process, with particularities, was reproduced throughout the country: the special troops of insatiable killers in the Military Police were all trained directly together with the Special Forces or following their training manual; training curricula are based on “low-intensity warfare” against the impoverished masses, siege operations and annihilation of any manifestation of danger to the reactionary order – and the first manifestation is the existence of revolting poor people, regardless whether or not they are involved with some form of crime. No wonder, in the countryside, these bands, with the same genesis, rose to big landlords paramilitary groups, groups of killers of poor peasants struggling for land, today recruited directly from these same special police forces and grouped into “honorable” movements of large feudal properties, who enjoy CNPJ [translators note: National Register of Juridical Enitites in Brazil] and everything, but who are true hordes of nationally organized Bolsonarist paramilitaries.

There is no doubt that the Special Forces are a great harm for the country, for democratic freedoms and for the rights of the people, not just because of the coup and anti-communism – which are the daily bread of these anomalies typical of an outdated system. That said, the information conveyed that the current government considers the proposal, by some parliamentarians, to abolish the Special Forces, to be “exaggerated” is causing outrage among Democrats and progressives in general. The level of cowardice, of stubborn subservience, is nauseating; Furthermore, this is, in fact, the opinion of the military high command, to which the current tenant of the Planalto only repeats the chatter.

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Accordingly to the government’s cowardice, its approval slowly declines. The Datafolha survey, from December this year, indicates that 35% consider the government “ excellent or good” – practically the same number who consider it “bad or terrible” (34%), a technical tie; another 29% consider it “regular”. The point is that this is “falling stability”, because in fact the government never recovered that 38% that considered it “excellent or good” in December 2023. But since then, the Negative evaluation increased: from 31% to the current number. If you compare it with Luiz Inácio’s other terms, the situation becomes more serious: in the first term, after two years of government – the same moment as the current one – Luiz Inácio enjoyed 45% positive approval and 13% negative; In his second term, he received 70% approval and 7% disapproval.

But, as we have said since day one of this government, 2022 is not 2002; the crisis of decomposition of imperialism, unprecedented today, limits the margins for maneuver and welfare policies, which garner electoral popularity, more than they did before. The dangers of global conflicts and the intensification of struggles for semi-colonies and spheres of influence make the scenario extremely dangerous, times of conspiracies, wars, revolutions, acute political and institutional crises and coups d’état. The people’s masses in Brazil have accumulated repeated experiences with the electoral farce of the old bourgeois democracy and with the deceptive social democracy, hearing a thousand promises and receiving only crumbs, increasingly reach frustration and disillusionment with this whole old putrefied order, raise the consciousness, even though spontaneously, but with a high explosive content. The historical trend towards the fall of the government of opportunism shows its strategic-programmatic defeat, due to decades and decades of class collaboration, inside and outside the government, as well as presiding over the repression of the people’s and revolutionary movement when trapped in the old State. Its bankruptcy is also the bankruptcy of this cycle of the old bourgeois democracy, which although produces the growth of the extreme right and fascism as a new reactionary path that disputes the consciousness of the masses as a way out of the crisis, but is also the terrain where the Revolution can take leaps: only the revolution stops fascism and if it imposes itself, it fuels the revolution.

Far from cooling progressives, this scenario should mobilize them all in defense of the Agrarian Revolution – where, in fact, the “green chickens”, fascists and reactionary murderers, creatures of the anti-communist “Special Forces” are being fought and defeated. The Agrarian Revolution – the basis and first phase of the New Democracy Revolution – is the hope of the popular masses in cities and the countryside, of progressives and anti-fascists; it is urgent to raise it, as propaganda, in every mass struggle for demands in the cities; It is urgent that it take leaps in its organization in the countryside, with new land seizures and resistance to evictions. This – and not lamentation – is the order of the day for democrats and revolutionaries.