AND Editorial – Mobilize the broad masses in defense of the Resistance of the Palestinian people!
We share an unofficial translation of the latest Editorial by A Nova Democracia.
The beginning of the second genocidal campaign by the Zionist Armed Forces in the Gaza Strip, in this second half of March, demands the utmost condemnation and unwavering support for the Palestinian National Resistance and its revolutionary national organizations. Without any scruples, when interviewed after the first bombing of Gaza, in which 400 people died – including 140 children and 89 women – Benjamin Netanyahu said: “It is just the beginning.” What his genocidal arrogance prevents him from seeing is that the more insane the martyrdom of the Palestinian nation, the greater the punishment that the war criminals will face. And they will pay, and not in a future as distant as their defenders and allies imagine.
The resumption of genocide is not without reason. First of all, Nazi-Zionism was humiliatingly defeated after almost a year and a half of combas in the Gaza Strip. Its objectives of rescuing the “hostages” and destroying Hamas were far from being achieved. The “hostages,” released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, were freed after Israel found itself forced to yield to the Palestinian Resistance and to the world public opinion, which is largely favorable to the Palestinian cause and opposed to the genocidal actions of Zionism, and had to agree to a ceasefire. This period of truce was used by the Palestinian National Resistance to regroup and consolidate its forces, expand its militias, replenish its strategic reserves, and continue preparing for new tactical offensives. The families and friends of the “hostages” are certainly outraged at Netanyahu, because the return of their loved ones will become increasingly uncertain as the escalation of criminal bombings and the infamous massacre of Palestinian civilians grows. Netanyahu is wielding a double-edged sword, the sharpest and most pointed side of which turns against him: the more he intends to behead Palestine with it, the closer he comes to beheading himself and the Nazi-Zionist occupation project.
On the other hand, the Zionist extreme right sees no choice: if it moves forward, it further enhances the current revolutionary situation in the occupied territories, generalizes anti-Zionist hatred in the Arab and Muslim world, and generates more elements to the crisis of decomposition that is opening up for the Zionist state of Israel. Conversely, failing to do so will mean alienating itself from State Power, perhaps not to return for many years, and having its highest representative, Benjamin Netanyahu, imprisoned for war crimes. In a situation where the Zionist state will not be able to launch demagoguery, the Resistance will have every opportunity to deepen the struggle for the extinction of that cursed colonial enclave in the region. In decades of its existence, through an incessant and heroic Palestinian anti-colonial resistance, a crisis of such depth has never been seen regarding the Nazi-Zionist state; it is an unmistakable sign of the great disorders and revolutionary storms that world history is entering, within which there is a significant danger of a third world war, although the main trend is towards revolution.
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Looking at the current situation in Brazil, the Selic interest rate has risen to a scandalous 14.25%; the current head of the Central Bank is no longer the bolsonarist Campos Netto, but Gabriel Galípolo, appointed by Luiz Inácio. It is unnecessary to elaborate on the extent of the destruction to the genuinely national economy that such a rate produces: small rural producers, small and medium merchants, and medium industrialists can attest to this, as they face an average interest rate higher than the profit rate of these sectors, which are crushed under the heel of monopolies, resulting in the complete destruction of the genuinely national economy. In contrast, the monopolies of bureaucratic capitalism tied to imperialist financial capital rejoice at this news, as their parasitism on the national economy and public finances turns into a hemorrhage of fabulous wealth for their coffers.
The issue here is that it is now clear that Luiz Inácio was not a “hostage” of the high-interest policy of bolsonarist Campos Netto; Luiz Inácio is a “voluntary hostage,” by his own decision, of the high-interest policy of financial capital, for whom Campos Netto was just an intermediary, as dispensable as any other technocrat who proliferates in the management of puppet governments in the hundreds of countries dominated by imperialism around the world. After all, now it is Luiz Inácio’s man who is the president of the Central Bank – and the high-interest rates are rising. Are these necessary rates? Obviously not, as the high inflation in Brazil is not the result of high consumer demand, but rather a reflection of the deformation of the local economy, based on monopolistic production complementary to the economy of imperialism, primarily of primary products (commodities), which is therefore even more unstable in price variations due to international factors, stemming from the crisis of decomposition of imperialism. Why does Luiz Inácio, now, instead of raging against the financial oligarchy as he did before – since he cannot portray Campos Netto as the villain – say that he will respect the rise in interest rates? The masks fall again.
The high prices of eggs and coffee, which plague the domestic economy of the proletarian and semi-proletarian masses in the cities, are merely an expression of the severity of the deformation that is the Brazilian economy. Brazilian coffee, due to the failure of local and international crops, is being directed in large volumes to export, where the dollar pays more for the same quantity; eggs are inflated by the monopolistic price imposed by intermediaries and by the absurd increase in inputs for poultry farming, reflecting a big landlord economy of monoculture and primary production aimed at export. The popular masses are the ones who pay the price.
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While the monopolistic press dedicates its pages and voices to reporting the pantomime of the “patriot” Eduardo Bolsonaro’s escape to the U.S., where he will expend his best efforts (which is not much) to plead for an “intervention from the American government against the STF,” the armed extreme right launches its attacks against the poor in the countryside. The antifascist struggle is now taking place in the vast rural areas, which increasingly resemble battlefields of an “irregular war.”
The most recent episode is the armed clash between big landlords and poor peasants and indigenous people in the municipality of Prado and its surroundings, in southern Bahia. On the 10th, the young Pataxó Vitor Braz was executed by an extreme right paramilitary group (at the service of the latifundium) in the Barra Velha territory, and the house of the chief of the Indigenous Land Comexatibá was set on fire. The big landlord paramilitary group, according to reports, is called “União Agro Bahia,” and it also attacks contingents of MST peasants in the state. “We will fight them, with an increasing number of producers, to guarantee our rights to private property,” said the vice president of the group in an interview with the far-right magazine Oeste. For its part, the PT government of Jerônimo Rodrigues mobilized the Civil Police! – but not to attack the paramilitaries, but to disarm the Pataxó indigenous people, who, they claim, are operating with armed self-defense in their recoveries.
There, where the armed far right is deeply linked to the latifundium, as in other regions of the country, the true clash, armed and paid for with blood, with fascism and the extreme right takes place. It is the poor peasants and masses of indigenous people and descendants of Quilombolas, the poor of the countryside, who are carrying out the true cleansing of our country, by destroying – with Agrarian Revolution – simultaneously the latifundium, a scar of slavery and servitude still open in our country, the greatest evil of our history and our present, and by destroying it, they also sweep away the extreme right and the fascism that feed off it. It is urgent, in the cities and in the countryside, that the masses of progressives and democrats mobilize, organize, and confront all fascist and extreme right forces in legitimate self-defense – which is not only a democratic right but a revolutionary duty.
