Organize the resistance and self-defence of the workers and oppressed, blacks, women and LGBT!

Brazil, October 29, 2018

The “New Republic”, founded under the Constitution of 1988, died. A new political regime is born. The country’s (tax, labor, fundamental constitutional guarantees) legislation was profoundly modified after the 2016 coup. The Temer government’s exception regime will give rise to another, neo-Nazi type, and increased state terrorism against the working population.

In 2014, the escalating coup in Brazil began to be perceived by many, from the fall of the airplane of the presidential Eduardo Campos. The strange “accident” killed the candidate of the PSB and cleared the electoral ground almost allowing the election of the gangster Aécio Neves, of the PSDB, then, the main party of the bourgeois opposition to the government of the PT. The election of Dilma was contested, followed by pressure from the right that was answered with capitulation, fragilization and demoralization of the PT government before its foundations, a process that culminated in impeachment, a parliamentary coup d’état that made possible the expropriation of the people’s historical rights.

In two years (2016-2018), the Temer coup government, the NSA and CIA espionage, with the complicity of the Brazilian Armed Forces, and the US-based judicial intervention operation, the Lava-Jato operation, persecuted the PT and prepared the ground for finally installing an anti-PT government.

But, the persecution provoked the opposite effect and through a passive but growing popular reaction, Lula’s popularity skyrocketed. The people expropriated by the exception regime of Temer, the most unpopular in history for its counter-reform, identified with Lula, persecuted, imprisoned and banished, who had carried out popular reforms; the government was seen as their government. The phenomenon has been expressed in all polls of voting intention since 2017 and the PT leader threatened to win in the first round of 2018.

The coup regime had to double the ante. More judicial maneuvers were launched, in addition to the campaigns of slander and defamation, intimidation, violence, attacks on freedom of expression, military intervention in Rio de Janeiro and murders such as that of Mariele Franco, a parliamentarian of PSOL. The media massacre carried out daily by the mainstream bourgeois traditional media against the PT intensified in quality and paved the way for the right-wing transfer of political protagonism (PSDB-DEM-MDB) to the far right.

But what exerted the most pressure on these elections were the unconventional apparatus of communication. These elections were influenced more by social networks than by TV and radio. All traditional methods of manipulating elections by the economic power of capital, coupled with anti-PT political persecution, have proved to be insufficient, and the fraudulent characteristics of the election need to be accentuated.

Imperialism was divided. The sector most closely linked to financial capital and scholarships, politically more closely tied to the US Democrats, preferred that Brazil should be governed by the traditional right-wing party, the PSDB, which was presided over by the governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin. The Economist and much of the world media, linked to Atlantic financial capital condemned Bolsonaro. This has confused the Brazilian left that believes that imperialism is a homogeneous whole. But the White House, occupied by an outsider tied to the US military-industrial-energy complex corporations, such as the Koch brothers, had more radical plans for Brazil: appropriating oil and launching a new offensive on the Latin American continent , where Brazil will occupy a central role in the future “anticommunist crusade” against, first, Venezuela, and then Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Cuba.

The transformation of a marginal Brazilian right-wing parliamentarian into a populist president was only possible because he was projected through an immense hysterical campaign of terror against the PT, accusing Lula’s party not only of being corrupt but of being a communist threat against morality, good manners, and private property. An accusation proven absurd by the very experience of the four capitalist mandates of the PT during which they never considered approving the right to abortion or agrarian reform and during which several privatizations were carried out. But irrationalism took over, and the crusade was intensely instilled in the more reactionary sectors of the middle class through the manipulation of neo-Pentecostal evangelicals on the proletarian masses they lead, and chiefly by a propaganda made feasible from a large financial volume of capitalists committed to the interests of the US and Israel, with an interest in destroying the most fundamental rights in exchange for maximizing exploitation.

Longtime Donald Trump ally Roger Stone (left) said he advised Trump on upcoming debate negotiations and the hiring of fellow dirty trickster Stephen Bannon. Stone is one of the most disreputable people in American politics: He’s advocated killing “cunt” Hillary Clinton, attacked opponents with racist and sexist slurs, and pushed conspiracy theories about the Clintons murdering their opponents.

The wing of the most determined coup campaigners against the PT gathered a fund of at least 12 million reais (£2,540,000), setting up the largest operation of “two boxes” (campaign money not officially declared by the candidate) of history. Curiously, this is the largest crime which the Lava Jato judicial operation charged PT. [1] This fund was used to hire marketing companies and digital strategy to make mass shots of news by WhatsApp through robots. For the first time in history, hybrid warfare apparatuses were used on a large scale in Brazil. The big capital financed bombings of Fake News social networks, a psychological political propaganda infinitely more powerful than those that Goebbels, the minister of the Nazi propaganda, had.

Goebbels is credited with the phrase “a lie repeated a thousand times becomes true”. Even denied, lies like the “gay kit” (a supposed package of books and videos created by the PT government to turn children into homosexuals) and that PT candidate Haddad was a child rapist bombarded undecided voters. This technique was used trillions of times during the campaign until it “became true”, not with radio and print newspaper as in the 20s and 30s of the 20th century, but with updated communication technology and tweaked algorithms of facebook and WhatsApp contemporaries. Techniques of persuasion, already employed in the Brexit and Trump elections, which appeal more to the unconscious than to mass consciousness, were mounted by the think-tanks of imperialist reaction, such as Roger Stone and Steve Bannon, were now used in the Brazilian elections. As Bannon himself reveals:

If it had not been for Facebook, Twitter and other social media, it would have been 100 times more difficult for this populism to rise because we would not be able to get past the media barrier. Trump could do that, Salvini and Bolsonaro too. (Folha de São Paulo, October 29).

All previous manipulation was carried out in combination with this scheme, thus allowing a new authoritarian regime to be legitimated by the ballot box.

We will have to reorganize ourselves to build a real resistance to the neo-Nazi project. We have chosen to use neo-Nazi and non-neo-fascist terminology because Nazism is racist, a preponderant element in the inheritance of the class struggle in Brazil. This resistance must learn to fight the hybrid against imperialism and capitalism as well.

Haddad (above) won in 98% of the poorest cities. Bolsonaro won in 97% of the richest cities. A real division of classes in the elections.

We need to reach and organize the 47 million who voted for the PT candidate (he won in more cities than Bolsonaro, 2,810 vs 2,760). Haddad won in 98% of the poorest cities. Bolsonaro won in 97% of the richest cities. A real division of classes in the elections. Which further demoralizes the leftists who remained neutral, supporting the annulment of the vote or the abstention. We need to co-opt for resistance also those who have not chosen anyone. And finally, let us establish bridges with the most gullible sectors of the exploited and oppressed population who, deceived by the bombardment of lies; neo-Nazi propaganda awakened barbarism in their subconscious and voted for their tormentor. These same voters, sooner than we think, will regret their choice, mainly thanks to the action of the new regime against them. These workers need to be recruited to defeat neoliberal and theocratic militarist neo-Nazism, representing the new project of imperialist colonization for Brazil.

Resistance will inevitably take on the face of freedom, equality, development and social justice which the bourgeoisie has been unable to defend and which the working class alone can regain and defend. That is why we can not count on the bourgeois ‘allies’ who at best and only formally oppose the Bolsonazi wave.

However, while the snake of neo-Nazism shocked and gave birth to its egg, while the neo-Nazi candidate himself repeated that he was preparing a civil war against the workers and the left, once again the PT sought reconciliation, removed Lula’s image from the campaign in the second round and directed their militants not to mention the name of Bolsonaro. Haddad, who had grown from 4 percent to 30 percent in the first round, stalled at the start of the second round of the election. It was only in the last week of October that, with much hesitation, the campaign began to grow when the PT’s electoral propaganda began to explicitly (albeit timidly) criticize Bolsonaro’s adversary, denigrating him with torture and military dictatorship.

But, unlike the FCT and a few sectors of the left, the well-behaved political campaign of Haddad did not warn the workers against this new coup. At no time did the PT and CUT, who direct the mass movement, prepare the working class for the ensuing civil war. On the contrary, they downgraded the program and Haddad immediately accepted the defeat without any denunciation that the result had been the result of an immense manipulation of the elections, the hybrid war, and no recollection that Lula remains a political prisoner of the regime. Haddad acknowledged the outcome as if the elections had not been the most fraudulent, dirty and bellicose in the country’s history. As if the majority candidate, Lula, had not been arrested and if a mass of 3 million votes had not been rejected, as if the agents of imperialism had not manipulated everything, “legal” and illegally, as if the generals of the army had not threatened not to recognize the results and had not blackmailed the Federal Supreme Court and the Superior Electoral Court.

There was a great defeat of the left and the workers for the most truculent sector of the bourgeoisie, but a defeat still on the ground controlled by the enemy. The fight continues and now changes shape and content. For those who accompanied the political evolution of the masses within the left-wing campaign, the third round begins, in popular committees, in the reorganization of the exploited and oppressed, in overcoming the bureaucratic vices of the period of class conciliation. We will manifest collectively but individually preserve ourselves.

There is a pedagogical side to all this. From now on, every right will have to be secured by the struggle. The new generations will no longer be able to enjoy rights acquired by generations of previous exploited, since slavery, and will have to fight to defend their working conditions and their lives. They will learn to forceps, but will still have the advantage that the path has already been opened by previous social fighters.

It will not be easy, but we will have to learn to make mass and collective resistance and fight with courage the persecution and violence that we will see in the next few days. We must prepare our axes in the united front and fight for the construction of popular committees and self-defense of that united front in all the places where the fight presents itself. We will be together in the struggle for our civil, political, democratic, labor and social rights.

Alerts and together we will win comrades!

Notes

[1] Operation Car Wash (Portuguese: Operação Lava Jato) is an ongoing criminal investigation being carried out by the Federal Police of Brazil, Curitiba Branch, and judicially commanded by Judge Sérgio Moro since 17 March 2014. (Wikipedia). It was primarily used against the PT, although the majority of the criminals were their opponents.