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size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/08/bolsonaros-win-brings-big-dangers-but-brazils-left-more-united-than-ever/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/08/bolsonaros-win-brings-big-dangers-but-brazils-left-more-united-than-ever/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Bolsonaro’s Win Brings Big Dangers, but
Brazil’s Left ‘More United Than Ever’</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/bevast8prad6set/"
rel="nofollow">Frederico Fuentes</a> - November 8, 2018</span></div>
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<p><em>Brian Mier, editor of <a
href="http://www.brasilwire.com/">Brasil Wire</a> and <a
href="http://au.blurb.com/b/8510734-voices-of-the-brazilian-left">Voices
of the Brazilian Left: Dispatches From a Coup in
Progress</a>, spoke to Federico Fuentes about the
victory of fascist candidate Jair Bolsonaro in
Brazil’s presidential elections, and what it means for
the coming period.</em></p>
<p><strong>Much of the media has portrayed Jair Bolsonaro
as a kind of “Trump of the Tropics”, but what does
Bolsonaro’s victory really represent?</strong></p>
<p>The only thing that Bolsonaro and [US President Donald]
Trump have in common is that they’re racist and Steve
Bannon apparently worked on both campaigns.</p>
<p>Bolsonaro is not a “Trump of the Tropics” because,
although Trump has used racist, homophobic and sexist
rhetoric to generate controversy and ratings, he’s
essentially a conman. He’s not someone that you get the
feeling grew up believing this sort of stuff.</p>
<p>Bolsonaro, on the other hand, is literally a
neo-fascist who comes out of Brazil’s neo-fascist
tradition.</p>
<p>[US academic] Noam Chomsky and others coined the phrase
neo-fascist to describe the dictatorships of Latin
America, especially in Brazil, in the 1960s and ’70s.</p>
<p>That’s the time in history Bolsonaro values most
highly.</p>
<p>He has appointed into top cabinet positions three
military generals who were active during the
dictatorship and his vice president is a military
general.</p>
<p>He’s also not someone who inherited a lot of money; he
is petty bourgeois.</p>
<p>And he has talked openly about killing large amounts of
people in Brazil. In the week before the final round of
elections, he spoke of about arresting or expelling
leftist from the country. He uses the kind of
myth-building that fascists use. Fascists have always
accused leftists of being corrupt.</p>
<p>So there is enough in common between Bolsonaro and
fascist rulers of the past to say he’s an actual fascist
and not a racist demagogue like Trump.</p>
<p>What can we expect from a Bolsonaro government? Well,
we can expect that the current polarisation and
political crisis will be considerably aggravated.</p>
<p>He will probably respond to any challenges to his
government, or to governability, with threats and
repression instead of dialogue. This could be enough to
push Brazilian democracy over the edge and spell the end
of democracy.</p>
<p>In terms of the economy, he has appointed Paulo Guedes
as his economics chief. Guedes was an advisor to the
[Chile’s] Pinochet regime.</p>
<p>Guedes is already talking about copying Chile’s failed
pension model, where they only get 40% of the minimum
wage. In Brazil, pensioners are guaranteed a pension
equivalent to 100% of the minimum wage.</p>
<p>We’re looking at an extreme sell-off of all of Brazil’s
natural resources, probably at below market rates,
building on a process that started under Michel Temer
[who was installed as president following the
parliamentary coup against former Workers’ Party (PT)
president Dilma Rousseff in 2016].</p>
<p>He’s talking about eliminating indigenous reservations.
He has no qualms about wanting to sell off as much of
the Amazon rainforest as possible, along with
privatising public banks and other public companies.</p>
<p>These kinds of extreme austerity measures have never
worked in the developing world, and they’re not going to
start working now.</p>
<p>Brazil’s role on the international stage, which was
built up during the PT administrations, as a player in
BRICS [the bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China and
South Africa], reaching out to other countries like
China and Turkey, countries in Africa; not depending
entirely on the US for everything; getting more involved
in the United Nations system. This kind of stuff is all
completely out the window under Bolsonaro.</p>
<p>He’s been mistakenly built up as a nationalist, but
he’s not a nationalist at all. He worships the US and
he’s going to hand over everything he can to the US.</p>
<p>Also, the fact that he never condemns fascist mob
violence means we can expect more violence against gays,
Blacks, women.</p>
<p><strong>What do some of the voting patterns in these
elections tell us about what is happening in Brazil?</strong></p>
<p>The overall voting patterns show, first, that all of
the political parties that were involved in the 2016
coup were decimated: the MDB [Brazilian Democratic
Movement], Democratas, which used to be the official
governing party in the dictatorship, and the PSDB
[Brazilian Social Democracy Movement].</p>
<p>This is the first election since the 1980s where the
PSDB did not finish either first or second. PSDB’s
support plummeted: they dropped from almost winning the
elections in 2014 to not even getting 5% this time.</p>
<p>These three parties, which are generally considered to
be centre right — although Democratas is neo-fascist —
lost about 50 seats in Congress between them. They’ve
essentially been wiped out of as a factor in Congress.
Bolsonaro’s tiny PSL [Social Liberal Party], which had
eight MPs, now has 52 deputies and four senators.</p>
<p>What has happened is that the so-called centre right,
led by the PSDB, has spent so much time and energy
attacking the PT for the past 15 years, instead of
putting forward solid proposals, that it got to the
point where the conservative electorate said well if
you’re going to go this far, why don’t we go all the way
against them and side with the real fascists?</p>
<p>These elections represent blowback against the parties
that orchestrated the coup. Unfortunately, this did not
translate into the PT retaking power; it translated into
a further right-wing party rising up to the point where
it is now the second largest party in congress, after
the PT.</p>
<p><strong>The left was seemingly divided under the PT,
but largely united in the second round against
Bolsonaro. What has been the response of the left to
confront what many call a fascist government?</strong></p>
<p>With the 2016 coup, they illegally imprisoned the PT’s
most popular candidate [Lula], who was leading in all
the election polls and was predicted to win in the first
round; that the PT was forced to come up with another
candidate at the last minute, one who was not well known
on the national scale, due to the legal persecution of
other, more well-known candidates; it’s really
impressive that the PT even made it to the second round.</p>
<p>This is now the eighth election in a row that the PT
has come first or second. This means that they are still
a powerful party — except the worry now is Bolsonaro is
going to try to outlaw the PT.</p>
<p>He’s promised to arrest all leftists. He’s using the
old neo-fascist technique of declaring an internal enemy
in order to declare war on it. The internal enemy is the
PT, which just won 47 million votes and still represents
a large section of the population.</p>
<p>It’s kind of a testament to its base, which is the
unions and the social movements, representing about
15-20 million people, who campaigned the old-fashioned
way: knocking on doors, talking to neighbours.</p>
<p>It’s a testament to it that, with all of the anti-PT
campaign, it still managed to do that well.</p>
<p>But more generally, the left is in shock. It’s in
shock, but they’re talking about regrouping and taking
to the streets. I think a lot of this was expected after
the first round, but it’s still a shock to a lot of
people.</p>
<p>The left is more united than at any time in the past 23
years that I’ve lived in Brazil. [This comes out of] the
immediate response to the 2016 coup, when these two big
popular fronts were formed — People Without Fear and
Popular Brazil Front. I think the left is very united
right now.</p>
<p>One problem is that some elements of the Anglo left
have been feeding into conservative, anti-PT arguments,
which has hampered solidarity with the Brazilian left by
buying into some of the myths.</p>
<p>For example, accepting the corruption accusations and
not challenging them. Hitler attacked the German
Socialists on corruption, Mussolini attacked the Italian
Socialists on corruption, the Brazilian military
dictatorship attacked social democrats on corruption.</p>
<p>Given the history of fascists using corruption as a way
to attack the left, some sections of the left really did
a disservice to the Brazilian left by not challenging
these accusations.</p>
<p>Now that all the evidence is out, everyone who’s
looking into it knows that Lula didn’t do anything.
That’s why Angela Davis and Noam Chomsky, why most of
the trade unions in the world, are standing in
solidarity with him. They know that Lula didn’t do
anything.</p>
<p>I feel that sometimes in the Anglo world, it almost
looks like some people on the vanguard left are rooting
for more fragmentation on the Brazilian left instead of
unity.</p>
<p>At this moment, in which Haddad gave his concession
speech last night, with Guilherme Boulos from PSOL
[Socialism and Freedom Party, founded by a 2004 split
from the PT] and Manuela d’Ávila from the Communist
Party of Brazil standing right next to him, the left is
more united than it ever has been.</p>
<p>And it’s going to have to be if it’s going to fight
this fascism.</p>
<p><em>This article originally ran in <a>Green Left
Weekly</a>.</em></p>
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