Trump, Bolsonaro and Brazil in the service of US imperialism

(Contributed)

 

The recent high-level diplomatic meeting with US president Donald Trump and his Brazilian counterpart, president Jair Bolsonaro, was primarily concerned with defence and security issues.

 

It should come as no surprise the US imperialists have sought to strengthen links with Brazil, a major player in Latin America, following the left-ward drift of many countries in recent decades. Far-right president Bolsonaro has also shown himself only too willing to openly identify with the US.

 

The talks, however, rested in two important considerations:

     the defence and security of the South Atlantic;

     the resurgence of far-right nationalist popularism.

In March, incoming Brazilian president Bolsonaro made his first foreign visit overseas to the US for 'security talks at the White House' with US president Trump. (1) Bolsonaro was accompanied by a delegation composed of six ministers. Official diplomatic media releases noted that the two countries were 'working in concert on a number of regional issues'. (2) The notion of working in 'concert' between the two countries has an interesting history, both official and unofficial. The latter including several shades of grey, with the military planning involved for defence and security considerations.

 

It is not particularly difficult to establish what the US regards as important regional issues.

In recent decades a significant number of governments have been elected across Central and Latin American on anti-US sentiments. This development, following on from the previous US presidential Bush administration, was in opposition to attempts by Washington to impose regional trade agreement upon the entire southern half of the Americas. Needless to say, the grandiose plan failed, backfiring in a spectacular manner. The US has sought for over two decades to regain their domination.

 

With Bolsonaro now at the helm in Brazil, the US imperialists have seized upon an opportunity in their favour. The Trump administration clearly intends to exploit favourable relations with Brazil.

 

Brazil is a major player in Latin America having the largest economy in the southern half of the Americas: its geographical size, large manufacturing base, strong financial and banking system together with a big merchant fleet for imports and exports, enhances its diplomatic standing. Its links with Portugal as a former colonial power, likewise, have historically provided Brazil with strong links to a major player in NATO, the Atlantic and Europe; further links with other former Portuguese colonies in Africa, similarly, have seen Brazil undertake major diplomatic initiatives with Africa countries.

 

The role of Brazil, therefore, has been very important for US military planning in the South Atlantic, with some interesting historical points of reference.

 

The previous Reagan administration in Washington during the 1980s established high-level diplomatic initiatives for a South Atlantic Treaty Organisation (SATO), resting upon earlier military planning and security considerations. (3)  

   

In 1972, for example, Brazilian vice-admiral Hilton Berutti Augusto Moreira, was an advocate of initiatives:
  
          to provide Brazil with adequate maritime power and to take maximum advantage
          of the country's geo-strategic position are essential decisions for the attainment
          of the national objective of rapid development and for support for a high degree
          of effective national security. (4)  

 

In the early 1980s a statement from Thomas Enders, Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, noted US-led defence of the South Atlantic was 'one of the three main objectives of the US in Latin America', primarily due to the centrality of Brazil for US foreign policy. (5)

Developments, elsewhere, however, had far-reaching implications for US foreign policy with Latin American countries including Brazil.

 

Behind the foreign policy, considerations which included the official opening in March 1973, of the Silvermine Naval Communication Centre, near Cape Town, South Africa, were important. Silvermine had the role of monitoring shipping and air traffic from North Africa to Antarctica, westwards to Latin America and eastwards across the Indian Ocean to similar US-based facilities on Diego Garcia. The extended range eastwards was then linked to Pine Gap, Central Australia. (6)

 

The US-led coverage of both the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean formed the Southern Ocean Defence Plan (SODP), an ambitious military plan to provide the US with hegemonic advantage over adversaries. (7) It is particularly interesting to note initiatives to establish the SATO section of the SODP also lay in US assessments that NATO was a 'leaky sieve'. (8) The US wanted to create an alternative to NATO, to serve 'US interests'. 

The real reason for the SATO initiatives, therefore, lay in US attempts to support Apartheid South Africa through covert means. The US, with its own large black population, needed to distance itself from the problem of racialism in South Africa and not have to deal with European countries who complicated the matter for Washington and the Pentagon.

 

Countries in Europe which were NATO members were regarded by the US as not being completely supportive of US-led military planning. Many of them openly backed sanctions against South Africa, including UN Security Council Resolution 418, which imposed a mandatory arms embargo upon the Apartheid State in November, 1977. Numerous M.P.s across Europe supported the Anti-Apartheid Movement. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Jamaica, May 1975, actually voted to support Cuba and national liberation movements in Southern Africa. (9) 

 

The legacy has continued, with the US continually questioning traditional allies about their support; many of the considerations of the Reagan administration are now being re-floated in the White House. While decades have slipped past, the US far-right still retain their positions in the Pentagon as shadowy figures within the corridors of power. They were quick to latch onto Trump, to serve their agendas.

 

Trump, for example, 'has been unstinting in his criticism of NATO's European members, accusing them of free-loading on the protection offered by the US military'. (10) Most NATO European member countries also have strong trade links with China, which have been frowned upon by the Trump administration, including a number which have not supported the US demand to ban Huawei from their telecommunications networks. The European tour by China's President Xi Jinping, has further increased diplomatic tensions with the US and Europe. While Portugal and Greece both signed for the China-led Belt and Road Initiative last year, Italy is now following suit, with France also expected to sign several co-operation agreements. (11)

 

While the SATO military plan eventually unfolded in fiasco with the Malvinas War which pitched Argentina against the UK in 1982, other considerations included the re-interpretation of the original NATO Charter to include Latin American countries as members or supporters, if required. US Admiral Harry Train, from the period, noted 'there is no NATO border. There never was the slightest thought in mind of the drafters of the NATO Charter that Article 6 should prevent collective planning, manoeuvres or operations south of the Tropic of Cancer'. (12)

 

The recent high-level diplomatic meetings between the US and Brazil were primarily concerned with two areas of security: the present crisis in Venezuela, and the 'pushing back against growing Chinese economic influence across Latin America'. (13) The chosen method of operation has drawn upon US-led defence and security initiatives which included the proposed SATO.

 

It was furthermore noted by an unnamed US official that the talks were 'a new North-South axis'. (14) And the stated outcome, therefore, was an invitation by the US for Brazil to be considered a possible member of NATO.

 

Against the backcloth of the US-Brazil diplomacy, however, lie far more insidious considerations including the resurgence of the far-right.

President Bolsonaro has been openly described as a far-right figure, with former paratrooper military credentials. It is also interesting to note he included his son, Eduardo, who is also an M.P. in his delegation. Eduardo Bolsonaro is closely linked to the far-right Brussels-based political grouping usually referred to as The Movement. (15) The organisation, established by former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, has the stated aim 'to promote right wing nationalistic values and tactics', with Europe as a main theatre of operations. (16)

 

Involvement of the Bolsonaro family with The Movement reveals how their Brazilian connections have become useful intelligence assets for the Trump administration and the nefarious agendas of some of those closely associated with the White House and Pentagon.

Two related matters, therefore, arise.

 

Firstly, a significant number of the NATO member countries have far-right wing political movements, in some cases with ruling government experience.

 

Secondly, the new Brazilian government of President Bolsonaro will be undertaking a second high-level diplomatic meeting with Israel in late March. It should be no surprise: many far-right political movements now openly support Israel. Decision-makers in Tel Aviv are only too pleased to accommodate Christian-Zionists, who serve their purpose. In Australia, for example, far-right political figures including Senator Fraser Anning have actually been responsible for lobbying support for Israel. (17)

 

With both considerations, Brazilian involvement with the US and NATO will strengthen the hand of the far-right in formal political and military bodies in Europe and elsewhere.

 

We should be on our guard!

 

We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     Trump floats idea of Brazil joining European alliance, Australian, 21 March 2019.

2.     Brazil's Trump to meet the real thing, Australian, 19 March 2019.

3.     The politics of South Atlantic security: a survey of proposals for a South Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Andrew Hurrell, International Affairs, February/1983 – 0020-5850-0179, pp. 179-93; and, The military pact project in the South Atlantic – Pretoria opts for Latin America, Le Monde Diplomatique, March 1977; and, United States and South America, The reactions of Brazil, Argentina and Chile, El Universal (Caracas), 8 June 1981.
4.      The politics of South Atlantic security, ibid., page 185.

5.     El Universal (Caracas), op.cit., 8 June 1981.

6.     Silvermine Communications Centre, Signals Units of the South African Corps of Signals and related services, Walter Volker, (Pretoria, 2010), page 609; and, UK decision to leave Persian Gulf – implications, Le Monde Diplomatique, December 1976; and,      Maritime Operational and Communication Hq., The Star (South Africa), 10 March 1973; and, Security in the Mountain, The Star (South Africa), 17 March 1973.

7.     New role seen for SA navy, The Star (South Africa), 4 October 1969; and, Not in Europe Alone, John Biggs-Davidson M.P., Brassey's Annual – Defence and the Armed Forces, (London, 1972), pp. 78-87.

8.     Veil – The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-87, Bob Woodward, (London, 1987), page 212.

9.     Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Kingstown, Jamaica – 29 April – 6 May 1975, Final Communique, Section 16 The Caribbean, page 4, Section 17-26 Southern Africa, pp. 4-5.

10.   Australian, op.cit., 21 March 2019.    

11.   Xi starts European tour to sell Belt and Road in a house divided, Australian, 22 March 2019.

12.   The politics of the South Atlantic, op.cit., footnote 72, page 193.

13.   Australian, op.cit., 21 March 2019.

14.   Ibid.

15.   Australian, op.cit., 19 March 2019.

16.   Ibid.

17.   Anning is no Nazi or anti-Semite: senator, Australian, 9 January 2019.

Study of growing menace of fascism in Brazil helps deepen our understanding of social-democracy

This analysis of events in Brazil is worthy of close study by Australian Marxist-Leninists and other progressive people.

Brazil is a member of the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). This group, which meets annually, aims at the creation of a centre of finance capital independent of the US imperialists. It has endorsed a new reserve world currency and established its own New Development Bank with reserves of US$100 billion.​

US imperialism has counter-attacked, hoping to prise both Brazil and India, in the first place, away from the group.  In the case of Brazil, there are echoes of the semi-fascist coup that saw Australian Labor Party Prime Minister Whitlam removed from office after he showed signs of becoming more independent than the US was prepared to allow. And like Australia, the Brazilian social-democrats are complicit in their own demise by refusing to stand with the people in defiance of the coup masters.

The new Brazilian leader Bolsonaro shares many of the repugnant features of Duterte in the Philippines. These are leaders who revel in their macho images, who have no hesitation in attacking women in the crudest and most sexually violent terms, and whose only response to workers and other democrats is straight-out coercion.

Our Party has written extensively about the sham of parliamentary democracy and its role as a fig-leaf for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.  We have recently republished the July 2016 booklet Parliament and Elections -  a superficial democracy.  It can be downloaded from our website.

We are not experts on Brazil, but we believe in learning from the experiences of others.  Belief in social-democracy (in a parliamentary “labor” party and the sanctity of parliamentary democracy) still has a strong hold on the outlook of many otherwise progressive Australians. The analysis that follows confirms our view that the working class must have its own independent political agenda and its own revolutionary party based on Marxism-Leninism.
………………………….
The political execution of Lula and the shadow of fascism falling across Brazil
18 April 2018. A World to Win News Service.

Lula (Luiz Ignacio da Silva), the Brazilian ex-head of state U.S. President Obama once called “the most popular politician on Earth”, is now in prison serving a twelve-year sentence for accepting the renovation of an ocean-front apartment placed at his disposal by a contractor.

The federal facility where Lula is now entombed bears a plaque commemorating the day when, as president from 2003 to 2011, he inaugurated it. Like any inmate, his access will be limited to family visits on Thursdays and consultations with his lawyers. Lula had generally been expected to easily win the upcoming October presidential elections on the ticket of the Workers Party (PT), which identififes itself as “democratic socialist”. Now it is considered very unlikely that he will even be allowed to run.

This is far from the first time a Brazilian politician has been jailed for corruption. But it’s not just more of the same of the country’s usual rough-and-tumble political manoeuvring. For Lula is not just the country’s most popular politician by far, especially among the lower classes, but also a symbol of their hopes for change – and his imprisonment is bound up with aggressive attempts by an amalgam of rising fascist forces to crush these hopes and usher in a much more reactionary order.

Two crucial lessons can be drawn from this episode: first, Lula and the Workers Party (PT) he represents were arguably the leading showcase of what militant social democracy can achieve when it forms a government in today’s world. The humiliating turn of events with Lula’s imprisonment following 13 years of PT governance during which, despite some limited and temporary success with the redistribution of income, overall saw a continuation of intolerable conditions of life for the great majority of Brazil’s oppressed, not least in its notorious urban shantytowns, the favelas, where police murder people with unrivalled impunity – in 2016, 4224 people (according to the 11th Annual Brazilian Yearbook of Public Security), more than four times the number killed by police in the US, even though Brazil’s population is one-third smaller. A generation of reactionary governnance by social democracy was one of the key ingredients in the rise of the fascist forces that have increasingly set the terms in the country’s political life.

Second, anyone who holds out hope that mainstream social democrats will lead a fight to stop the rise of fascists in their own country needs to take a long, hard look at this episode. If Lula and the PT, despite substantial continuing popularity, accepted his imprisonment like this do you really think social democrats anywhere else will do any better?! The problem lies not in any personal flaws in Lula, but in the character of social democracy itself. This article will examine these two points in more depth.

The severity of Lula’s sentence in comparison to the banality of his alleged crime is all the more remarkable in a country where the current president and his party have escaped prosecution for far more serious charges, backed by ample evidence. This political execution was demanded by a broad section of the ruling class as reflected in the media owned by its handful of leading families, and, under their baton, a significant section of the traditional middle classes. Whatever the various political agendas behind it, this step opens the way for the advance of naked fascism and has awakened frightful memories of the way a military junta ruled the country from 1964 to 1985.

After keeping a low profile in the decades since the junta, the generals have stepped up their public interventions recently. The commander of the army reserves warned that the army would move in if Lula were allowed to remain free and win the elections. This stepped-up intervention by the military is linked to the rise of broader fascist forces in the country. One of the most prominent of their political representatives is Jair Bolsonaro, a former army officer who considers himself the junta’s political heir, recently baptised in the Jordan River and now born again in alliance with Brazil’s Evangelicals. Pentecostals and other Christian fundamentalists who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible have captured a quarter of Brazil’s 210 million population. Their proselytism and emphasis on personal conversion have made them more able to politically mobilize millions of people on a grass roots level than the equally reactionary Catholic Church that until a few decades ago claimed hegemony over Brazilian minds.

Bolsonaro, called “the Tropical Trump” by the Guardian, is far from the only prominent politician in this mould, but with Lula out of the way, he is touted as a frontrunner in the upcoming elections. He embodies the extremely dangerous intersection of generals and preachers with an organized mass following eager for war against what they consider the permissiveness that has taken hold of Brazil over the last decades. Even if he doesn’t win the elections still six months in the future, his sudden and unexpected advance, winning respectability and far more broad support than other, more traditional reactionary politicians these days, signals an upheaval in the political landscape.
Bolsonaro brags that after decades in the political wilderness he has restored the respectability of right-wing views unspoken for many years because of their association with the hated junta. He flagrantly proclaims his admiration for the general considered the most bloodthirsty of all the members of the junta that murdered hundreds of people, drove many thousands into exile and extinguished the cultural and intellectual scene that was Brazil’s gift to the world.

What Bolsonaro advocates goes beyond the replacement of of parliamentary democracy by a form of political rule based on open terrorism against the people. He wants this political “revolution”, as he calls it, to bring about an equally radical imposition of the traditional values that have lost some of their hold since the days of the junta. This has happened, in large part, because of the changes in the economic and social structure of Brazilian society brought about by the country’s development since then as part of developments in the world as a whole. Bolsonaro represents a qualitative ratcheting up of the traditional ideological values that have held together Brazil’s exploitative and oppressive society and are a key part of what gives the ruling classes anywhere the legitimacy and authority that no form of rule can long survive without.

Above all, this means what Bolsonaro calls “family values” –  the enforcement of the oppression of women and other forms of oppression associated with that, especially what reactionaries everywhere call “gender ideology” (the idea that traditional male and female social roles are not inherent in biology). Much of his violent discourse is aimed at LGBT people – he infamously said that he would prefer to see any son of his dead rather than “come home with some guy with a moustache.” This extends, however, to women as a whole. In parliament, he opposed the passage of more serious penalties against rape. When a fellow parliamentarian accused him of encouraging rape, he replied that she was “too ugly” to “deserve” being raped by him.

The prohibition of abortion is central to Bolsonaro’s platform. This issue came to the centre in Brazilian politics a few years ago, when the Catholic Church excommunicated medical personnel for performing an abortion on a nine-year-old Brazilian girl pregnant with twins after being raped by her stepfather. (Her mother was also excommunicated for complicity in the abortion. The stepfather, while jailed, was deemed to have committed a lesser sin and allowed to remain in the Church.)

Current Brazilian law allows abortion only in cases of rape, incest and danger to the life of the mother. Until recently, many people expected those restrictions would soon be removed. Christian fundamentalists like Bolsonaro consider even these limited exemptions a threat to a social order based on God’s will that must be restored.

Bolsonaro also attacks the political stirrings among formerly totally marginalized people in the favelas and the countryside. In reaction to new demands to end colour-based discrimination, he said people in black communities were too lazy to “do anything, even bother to procreate”. Like Bolsonaro’s views of women, these rantings have a political programme. Earlier this year, the military was sent in to take over “security” in Sao Paulo. Military police and soldiers have conducted operations to take over one after another of the mountainside favelas that ring the city. In January alone, they killed at least 154 people, many of them black. Military officials have complained that they can’t do their job without guarantees they won’t be subject to civilian justice some day, as happened after the end of the junta. Bolsonaro proposes to legalize the murder and torture at the hands of the security forces that are already extremely widespread – to go from covering them up to making them the official order of the day.

How have Lula and his party reacted?

A judge ordered Lula to surrender to the authorities immediately, even though the process of appealing his conviction is far from exhausted. Instead, he took refuge in the Sao Paulo union headquarters where he began his career as an organizer before the founding of the Workers’ Party (PT) that eventually came to power under his leadership.

Although tens of thousands of supporters gathered to protect Lula from the authorities, they found themselves playing a different role, begging him not to give himself up and even twice blocking his car to prevent him from leaving. Finally he walked through their lines and boarded another car, beginning a journey to the city of Curitaba, where police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse still more protesters lining the streets and in front of the prison. As many as 1,500 people a day are joining a vigil in the surrounding streets. Many plan to camp out there indefinitely.

Why did Lula and his party decide on this course of action, rather than defy the fascist forces, call out their illegitimacy even under the rules of Brazilian law, expose their horrific goals and unleash his supporters eager to stage massive resistance in the streets and force all the sections of the ruling class to soberly consider the consequences of an explosive political situation?

Lula explained that he wanted to show that no one, even him, is above the rule of law. But the rule of law the PT considers sacred has never been neutral. It reflects and perpetuates an inherently exploitative and oppressive economic and social system. In surrendering, Lula led people away from doing what is most urgently needed: to stand up and defeat fascist moves to take over the state apparatus and wield it to bring about a catastrophic change – the replacement of today’s form of rule by an undisguised, terror-based, unbridled fascism.

Lula’s  defenders, critical and otherwise, argue that by refusing to give the armed forces an excuse to stage a coup, he acted to save electoral democracy in Brazil. Yet the workings of the courts and parliament served to bring down Lula’s successor from the PT, Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s president from 2011 to 2016, who was impeached, and now, by jailing Lula, thwart the PT’s hopes for a comeback through an electoral process that is instead providing a platform for the views of Bolsonaro and his ilk and allowing them to claim they represent the will of the people. The terrible irony is that the PT’s reactionary opponents have not flinched at defying judicial rulings when it suits them, while also using the courts and the electoral system as fronts on which to fight for their fascist goals.

The PT and its defenders use the term “soft” coup d’etat to describe the sequence of events that began with the impeachment of President Rousseff and led to the jailing of Lula. If that’s true, why hasn’t the PT more seriously resisted it? The state’s repressive power can’t be the only reason, since the ruling class must consider the political consequences that the unrestrained use of that power could bring. Further, while a considerable section of Brazil’s ruling classes have turned against the PT and many support Bolsonaro, the PT was able to win acceptance from broad sections of ruling class forces in the past.  The starting point for the PT project is to work within the electoral system of bourgeois democracy, in reality a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the ruling class representing a capitalist system whose workings define what is possible for the lives of the people and even the exploiters themselves. This requires that the PT confine themselves to what that system defines as acceptable politics even when major parts of that ruling class are moving toward an open dictatorship based on undisguised terror, abolishing established rights, openly labelling sections of the people undesirable and unleashing soldiers and religious fanatics against them. This is fascism, with all its Brazilian specificities, but fascism just the same.

Lula’s surrender to the authorities encapsulates the role he and his party have played since the beginning as loyal participants in the country’s political system. His supporters’ slogan, “Elections without Lula are a fraud”, has some truth to it, insofar as removing the only truly popular candidate risks revealing to many millions of people a truth that is usually hidden: that the ruling class sets the terms for and manipulates the electoral process and decides what’s permissible. But what about the elections that Lula and the PT took part in, drawing people into the system’s machinery by raising hopes that were never anything but an illusion?

By channelling popular discontent into elections, the PT played an important role in shoring up the legitimacy of the Brazilian state following decades of rule by the hated military junta. The party’s supporters grew to include sections of the urban middle classes and people in the favelas around Rio, Sao Paulo and other cities, many of them, like Lula, immigrants from the country’s extremely impoverished, deeply oppressive backlands whose cheap labour has been at the heart of the Brazilian “miracle” from which they have been largely excluded –  the explosion of wealth produced by environmentally disastrous enormous soy farms and cane fields, cattle ranches often built on stolen land, manufacturing in foreign-owned firms and construction.

As a Brazilian economics professor explains, when Lula ran for president for the first time in 1989, he made a promise – one that he was to keep – to maintain “the main economic guidelines of his predecessor: a primary fiscal surplus goal, a low inflation target and a flexible exchange rate”. However, Lula significantly expanded spending on fiscal transfers to the relatively poor, and extended previous social programmes, broadening their coverage. The Bolsa Familia programme was held up as a global example, touted by the World Bank as a “’quiet revolution’ that significantly reduced poverty.” (Matias Vernego, “Goodbye Lula?”, nacla.org). These welfare payments were made possible by a booming international market for the exports on which Brazil’s economy depends, especially oil and agricultural commodities.

But the country’s economic independence, a precondition for the people’s ability to liberate themselves as part of emancipating all humanity from the global imperialist system and all forms of oppression, is impossible without the revolutionary transformation of every aspect of life in Brazil. Instead, the PT policies made the country more dependent on the global market and international investment. That made it even more vulnerable to the 2008 global financial crisis and subsequent downturn in commodity prices. In 2013 the PT government was hit by widespread protests against public transport prices so high that they often kept people imprisoned in favelas and other neighbourhoods, and found itself unleashing harsh repression.

Lula’s surrender is consistent with what he and his party have represented all along. Whatever their initial apparent successes, this appeasement of the military and far right, and their insistence on keeping the struggle within the limits of what the ruling class will allow, along with the disillusionment in electoral politics that their broken promises, brokered politics and corruption helped produce, have greatly aided the rise of fascists who promise to put an end to “politics as usual” by replacing it with openly violence-based rule.

What’s happening in Brazil will have huge repercussions on the continent and beyond. The 1964 military coup was aimed at a government that Washington feared would lessen Brazil’s economic dependency and seek more political independence from the U.S. Washington encouraged and financed the coup plotters and eventually stationed warships off the country’s coast in case the coup forces needed assistance. Then Washington used the Brazilian junta to help install U.S.-dominated military regimes in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, and wage horrendous wars to save US domination of Central America. But this is not a matter of history repeating itself. Events are being driven by global developments in the imperialist system and their dynamic interaction with the particularities of Brazil’s place in that system and its national and historical specificities.

Imperialism, rather than spreading enlightenment and progress as its apologists once claimed, today is giving rise to different kinds of fascism in different ways, along with new varieties of religious obscurantism. Crises in the old structures of political rule, and in the ideological glue holding together exploitative and oppressive societies, are major factors at work in many countries. One common feature in the rise of fascism in different countries is a move toward resolving the contradiction between the reality and false appearance of freedom for the people under bourgeois democracy by instituting openly dictatorial rule. Bolsonaro has openly proclaimed, “I am in favour of a dictatorship”.

This applies to what’s happening in Brazil. People like Lula and the PT, not just in Brazil but everywhere, are stubbornly – and maybe fatally – holding on to preconceptions that do not stand the test of reality (such as the belief that the capitalist system can be made tolerable for the broad masses of people by using its own political structures). Everywhere classes and people whose interests are rooted in the global workings of the imperialist system are, by that very fact, doing their best not to endanger those interests and the stability of the imperialist order by confronting these fascists.

Confronting these trends requires the most thoroughly scientific theory and method to identify the real dynamics driving developments and determine an adequate course of action, not only to defeat the rise of these fascist forces but to take humanity to a world free of oppression and exploitation where monsters like Bolsonaro can only be read about in courses on ancient history.