AND: Editorial – The Punishment of Bolsonaro and our ‘Heroes’ of the ‘Democratic Right State’
Hereby we publish a unofficial translation of the Editorial of A Nova Democracia.
The decision of the Minister of Supreme Federal Court (STF), Alexandre Moraes, to put Bolsonaro under home arrest, has shaken the already weakened unity in the center of the local ruling classes in the conduction of the process. There is no unity in the High Command of the Armed Forces, in the opinion if Bolsonaro should be imprisoned, he and his closest will turn themselves the canon-meat of the anti-communist putsch generals. There is also no unity in the “center” of the liberal right, that wants to fill the electoral space left empty, in favor for a more “moderate bolsonarism”. But the vacillations grow, which will be utilized now by the extreme right in order to help their chief. For example for the spokesmen of the bourgeoisie of São Paulo, Estadão and Folha de São Paulo, only need to ask for an impeachment of Alexandre Moraes in their Editorials of the 5th of August. Last managed to shout for the reestablishment of the “constitutional guarantees” of Bolsonaro, what would be in total synergy with the Bolsonarist discourse, just look at it! It is remarkable that the enthusiasm with which the media monopolies defend the “constitutional guarantees” of Bolsonaro, does not apply to their own coryphaeus of the left, when they are being attacked, who are helping so much in maintaining the old order. And not without reason, towards their permanent and systematic anti-poor practice they act as if they are numb.
The reactions of the Bolsonarist made the impeachment of Moraes grow, under the pressure of the Congress in order to put on the plan the “amnesty” to the “Green Chickens” of the 8th January and even back in 2024, tried to back them with the ministers cabinet’s perforated messages. It all takes even more unstable outlines, when the economic sanctions against Brazil by Yankee imperialism and their blond-haired dog of the “White House”, will reverb on the economy and in consequence on the government. On the one Hand, the main tendency stays that such pressure wont liberate Bolsonaro of his condemnation, and on the other hand this pressure will accentuate the political and institutional crisis – with the obstinate attitude of the Bolsonarist opposition in order to plot the Congress’ agenda, creating instability which will in a even bigger blackmail of the “center” against the government in order to maintain themselves in the “allied base” etc. In total, the whole situation will result in a bigger bleeding of the government in turn, with the perspective of the return of the Bolsonarist right to the republic’s presidency, all this backed by the government’s low rates of popularity. It is clear, all leads to a lower sentence, that will receive Bolsonaro after the detention.
***
By the way, you can say that the sanctions of Donald Trump on one side have connection to Bolsonaro’s case. Right now, Washington has put new economic sanctions against India – which are equal to Brazil, with 50% — for trading oil with Russia. The immediate objective of Trump is strangling the commercial partners of Russia, which have been essential for the continuation of the war in Ukraine: Putin has to show himself very agile in behaving as if the direct sanctions do not affect him, basing more and more on China and the BRICS, made possible to continue the war and conquest new Ukrainian territories. What is bad for the Yankees, who need to distract themselves from their main objectives in the Pacific, in order to sustain the rotten and corrupt bureaucracy in Kiev. A bureaucracy that shown incapable in defending the Ukrainian patriotic cause, but more then that, positions itself as a simple and slightly competent character of the Yankee and NATO (USA and imperialist powers of Europe) interests.
All that is evidence that the economic sanctions against Brazil, are on one hand in order to tighten the collar that controls its semi-colony Brazil, with the goal to maintain them distant to alliances with Russian imperialism and Chinese social-imperialism (even if this expresses itself in small and weak alliances) and on the other, longing to rob certain strategic resources which exist in abundance in our country, like “rare earths” and “critical minerals”. The Government of Luiz Inácio already says that could step back on the second topic. Let’s see how long he will pretend to have a anti-Yankee position on the first one.
***
After some days of Bolsonaro’s home arrest, in a process which is full of proves of the criminal putsch organization which he started and lead, it becomes clear that this false polarizing Bush Captain’s will stay, and the political survival of this dog is to a certain degree unchangeable. At least 38% of the Brazilians see prison as necessary, meanwhile 32% consider it as “political persecution” (DataPoder360), that’s a pretty equal result. In an other research of the same institute, 55% of the population is rejecting the amnesty of the “Green Chickens” of 8th of January and 35% are in favor of it. More than this, in this years March, 45% believed that there was political persecution of Bolsonaro and 42%believed that he has participated in a putsch intent. Therefore, the far rights chief maintains in this phase of the process a higher support of the public opinion, then the approval rate of his own government, which in the midst of 2021 achieved 19%. And despite the fact that today the entire scheme to reestablish the fascist military dictatorship is clear and proven, there is still a significant portion of the public that doesn’t believe it. Of those who support Bolsonaro, there’s no doubt that a significant portion harbored hopes of a constitutional rupture, although some reject the term “coup” used in polls.
This implies that there is a portion of hundreds of thousands to a few million Brazilians who support Bolsonaro, knowing that he intended to “turn the tables.” That’s the gravity of the situation. Now, these facts demonstrate that Bolsonarism and the far-right were not defeated, either politically or ideologically, by the bureaucratic path of opportunism and the liberal right, through their path of reactionary elections or criminal prosecutions. The consternation that grips the petty-bourgeois intellectual upon realizing that, even with the facts, support for Bolsonarism hasn’t fallen below 30% is typical of someone who doesn’t understand the phenomenon.
Of course, the problem is that the far right and fascism, manipulating the immediate interests of the masses, supported by the successive failures of opportunism in government and popular frustrations with the old, corrupt democracy that represses the poor, have captured a degenerate and very backward portion of the proletariat and semi-proletariat and a good portion of ruined small landowners in the countryside and cities—not to mention the broader sphere of the alienated faithful blackmailed by their “spiritual guides” whom Bolsonarism influences through false electoral polarization.
Combating the far right, in this scenario, can only be achieved through the revolutionary mobilization of the masses in the class struggle, which presupposes that they mobilize for their own class interests. In this relatively long process, it will gradually be unmasked to the masses kidnapped by Bolsonarism that this is nothing more than the same project of domination, only in a more blatant form, disrupting the already few hard-won democratic freedoms of the people. It will not serve their interests because, like social-democratic electoral opportunism and the entire reaction of small parties that have already held positions in federal, state, and municipal governments, it is also committed to interests that override its own: those of the local ruling classes and imperialism. Opportunism and the liberal right have no interest in mobilizing the masses, because doing so means heightening the clash between the antagonistic interests that pit, on the one hand, workers, peasants, honest students and intellectuals, women, and small and medium-sized landowners against, on the other, the local bourgeoisie (bankers, industrialists, merchants), landowners, and imperialist corporations—and opportunism and the liberal right are precisely on the side of the latter.
Therefore, although it causes justified positive feelings among the progressive masses—as a kind of relief from all the slaughter for which this canine was responsible, not to mention all his coup conspiracy that sought to reestablish the counterrevolutionary terrorism of the military regime—Bolsonaro’s house arrest is not the panacea for the democratic cause, as the champions of the “Democratic State of Law” would have it. Quite the contrary, they use the far-right’s nonsense not to advance democracy, but rather to maintain their old shell that justifies the centuries-old system of exploitation and oppression that impedes the progress of working people and the independence of the nation. For our part—progressives, patriots, revolutionary democrats—we celebrate every punishment visited upon the extreme right and fascists, even if they come from hardened reactionaries, without ever forgetting that such hardened reactionaries must be fought with the same determination with which fascism itself is fought, for both are nothing more than two sides of the same coin—bureaucratic capitalism imposed on the nation and maintained by imperialism—sides that occasionally clash. Therefore, it would be criminal to forget or ignore that democratic freedoms, threatened with death by Bolsonaro, continue to be raffled off by the same “democratic institutions” and “noble figures” who pose as “champions of democracy,” but who are also committed to combating the progressive working masses themselves, fighting for land, better wages and labor rights, and social security benefits. Likewise, it would also be a crime to ignore that the 30% of the population invariably attached to Bolsonaro, whether he is imprisoned, alive or dead, until they are neutralized or ideologically won over by the advance of the New Democracy Revolution, will continue to serve as the political base and maneuvering force of the fascist counterrevolution, from which will emerge obstinate hordes of “green chickens,” the counterrevolution’s shock troops, ready to mobilize, unarmed or armed, and unify around the next fascist to lead this movement.
Until the revolutionary struggle penetrates and overtakes the stronghold of fascism in Brazil, which is the unproductive and speculative latifundium, just like the productive primary export monoculture, the seed of counterrevolutionary terrorism will continue to reproduce, with advances and retreats, but in a growing wave for a long time. Therefore, the struggle of the poor peasants, being precisely a struggle for the democratization of land ownership and the end of the latifundium, when proletarian leadership prevails within it, merges with the basic struggle of the peasant masses and the political struggle for a New Brazil, democratic, anti-fascist, prosperous, sovereign and anti-imperialist. For all these reasons, true democrats are only true democrats if they defend, as the center of the anti-fascist struggle and the class struggle, the Agrarian Revolution.
