"Not even the military dictatorship never defended an ideology so openly fascist like Bolsonaro does today. He does not care about being compared to Hitler," said to Pravda.ru the sociologist Michael Löwy.
"It is difficult to explain the emergence of a phenomenon of the political pathology of these proportions," said to Pravda.ru the French-Brazilian sociologist Michael Löwy, asked about Jair Bolsonaro's ascension, Brazil's presidential candidate whose great-grandfather was a Nazi soldier.
A former lawmaker that delivered just two bills across almost three decades, as a presidential candidate now Bolsonaro promises, among many other fascist "policies" layered in a total lack of project to the country as he refuses to debate, to make the "police free to kill" without any investigation.
The candidate of the Liberal Social Party (PSL, totally in favor of privatizations, and deeply nationalist) who leads the polls, has once said that a civil war is the only solution for Brazil. Bolsonaro often attacks his opponents with much violence, especially leftists and homosexuals promising a "zero tolerance" against them once he is elected, which includes torture and assassination.
Not surprisingly, the nation is living a vertiginous growing of violence of the eve of the second round of the election.
'Enigmas' Flying Over the South-American Giant
In June of 2013, Brazil lived its social "Spring": another sociological "enigma": hardly explained up to date, it was very similar to others all over the world whose multitudes did not know exactly why, how and to what they suddenly took to the streets (as teleSUR showed interviewing Brazilian citizens at the time).
Movements which have produced around the world, cooperated by the mainstream media - locally and internationally distorting facts, or not putting news in context: the minimization of the rule of law hurting civil liberties, increasing repression, corruption, and foreign influence.
Filled with hate, resentment, discrimination, and violence including by State forces, sometimes infiltrated among people: even those protests, an important part to overthrow the then-President Dilma Rousseff three years later and to boost Bolsonaro, were a consequence of dark winds blowing from the offshore against the South-American giant.
"The stranger, of course, is not the fascist preaching of an individual, but the adhesion of a large part of the electorate to these ideas," observed the sociologist based in Paris.
"The spectacular success of Bolsonaro is something that still needs to be explained," stated Löwy as he astonishingly mentioned that the former captain army does not care about being compared to Adolf Hitler - Bolsonaro also praised the Nazi as a great strategist, saying he would have enlisted in Hitler's Army.
In retribution, David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, has manifested his enthusiastic support to Bolsonaro: "Sounds like us." Inside his country, Bolsonaro's supporters are in general on the same level, of course.
In the Information Age, there is no international conspiracy that both Julian Assuage and Edward Snowden cannot bring to light.
Chaos State
The Brazilian Economist Ladislau Dowbor said to Pravda.ru that, supporting Bolsonaro, the oligarchy once more time in Brazil's history "prefers to bury the country than to acknowledge the mistakes."
The fragility of the democratic institutions have been aggravated since President Dilma Rousseff was impeached, in August of 2016. "There is not much mystery about what is happening in Brazil. This is the good old fight for social surplus", the specialist says.
Talking to Löwy, Pravda.ru considered three aspects of Brazil's today that could have contributed to Bolsonaro's ascension and the high possibility of putting into practice his police State:
1. A social discredit toward politics;
2. The long vacuum left by the main opposition to the Workers' Party (PT), the Brazilian Social-Democratic Party (PSDB) through a lack of political proposals, and moral crisis (largely hidden by the mainstream media, and the Brazilian "Justice");
and, 3. An international scenario which, leaded by U.S. President Donald Trump, favors far-right wing politicians.
The specialist agreed, adding some more points:
"The social impact of crime in Brazil; leading sectors of society opting for violent repression as the only solution; the hatred of certain social strata to PT, leading them to support the 'totally destruction of the party'; the strong political influence of conservative evangelicals; and the hostility to democracy of important sectors of the ruling classes."
Challenging the Local and International Elites
Dowbor pointed out that the "leftovers" in a hyper-financialized economy in PT years, "did miracles" that the upper classes cannot permit to be back in Brazil.
"Family Allowance [a national program that helped lift millions of Brazilians out of poverty, and remove the country from the U.N. World Hunger Map], which reached 50 million poor people, costed about 30 billion reais [about U$D 8 billion]. In comparison, in 2015 the payment of interest on the public debt was 500 billion reais [about U$D 134 billion]", said the economist.
Dowbor remembered that in 2012, Dilma decided to to contain interest rates.
"From that moment, a war started. Many account holders left private banks such as Itaú, Bradesco and Santander, taking refuge in the moneylender in public banks.
"As of 2013 there is no more government in Brazil, only boycotts [by the Congress], and [public] manifestations enthusiastically inflated by the media. Dilma was impeached without any crime, Lula is imprisoned without any proved guilt."
Löwy agreed to:
"The coup against Dilma is explained by the oligarchy desire - agribusiness, entrepreneurs, financial capital, rentiers - to end the long PT realm, despite the willingness of the center-left governments to negotiate agreements, and make numerous concessions.
"The oligarchy, in the new economic situation created by the crisis, no longer wanted to negotiate anything, and was not content with concessions: it wanted to directly govern, and fully put into practice its anti-popular neoliberal program.
"At first, thanks to the media and corruption scandals also involving PT leaders, an important part of the population seemed to accept the arguments of the coup."
The sociologist also pointed out that Temer's "solution" by the local oligarchy, wrecked very soon:
"The aggravation of the socio-economic crisis, the deeply anti-popular measures of the Temer administration, corruption scandals against several members of his government and his parliamentary base, and above all with the gross growth of unemployment, poverty and social inequality."
In an international context, Lula and Dilma highlighted the cooperation South-South, supported Venezuela and strengthened the BRICS.
All this, intolerable to the local oligarchy and the Washington regime, which historically fights democracy in the region through boycotts, coups, and assassinations.
'Phenomenon' Made in U.S.A.
In July of 2013, less than a month after the "Brazilian Spring" had started, the national paper O Globo published a series of reports denouncing the US espionage on Brazil, echoing Edward Snowden: according to the former CIA employee, the country had been the Latin American country most spied in the 2000's, and in January of 2013 the world's most spied, also Petrobras (later a target of attacks and dismantled) and the then-President Dilma.
In other countries who lived its "Spring" such as Syria, the Washington regime also silently invaded the nations, spying on key personalities and institutions, pouring billions of dollars for many years according to several secret cables released by WikiLeaks.
The mainstream media (including The New York Times), well-known by its conservative and pro-elites biases, praised "Brazil's Spring" and its vague "purpose": like Bolsonaro's today it was based on the rhetoric, "we are against everything."
The local media performance was then very similar to that on the eve of the 1964 military coup, with tendencies to a new authoritarianism by the Army.
Largely promoted by fake profiles on Facebook, those protests contained many evidences of foreign influence, as many as related to movements that have leaded massive protests in the last years, such as Movimento Brasil Livre (Free Brazil Movement) and Vem pra Rua (Take to the Streets), are funded by US billionaires.
Serious threats of a new coup by high military echelons in recent years especially since Dilma won her second term in 2014, were followed by Marielle Franco's murder (mocked by many conservatives, who falsely fight corruption and violence in Brazil), which coincided with the militarization of Rio: since the first days of the intervention, the military is giving out magazines to children with a cover that shows a red monster (the "red danger") trying to attack a white-skinned, blond-haired boy, protected by the military.
The Brazilian "Justice", historically pro-upper classes and too corrupted as the political system, has been trained by the Washington regime which also funds, through the State Department, travels of judges and prosecutors to the US according to cables recently released by WikiLeaks - including the judge Sergio Moro, responsible for Lula imprisonment; Moro himself has been involved in corruption, long ago.
Marielle assassination itself has been neither clarified, though evidence point to a state crime as Bolsonaro freely commits, without any punishment, several electoral crimes, such as:
Indiscriminately and funded by private companies, abusing of economic power spreading fake news; illegal using social media; getting private funding to his campaign, not permitted by the Brazilian electoral law, since 2016; and his well-known incitement of violence against those he opposes, also praising the crimes against humanity committed by the military dictatorship (1964-1985).
The Brazilian "Justice" has been too strict in fighting corruption, arbitrarily condemning some parts at the same time it is now, in Bolsonaro scandal, totally silent: how to explain that?
The persecution, first of all by the local "Justice" against leftist journalists, activists for human rights, social movements and academics, is long ago unbearable in the South American country, with a scary increasing since Dilma Rousseff was impeached.
Under the "no ideology" discourse promoted by the mainstream media and "politicians" like Bolsonaro, the Brazilian society has too aggressively fought any worldview, many times even if not related to politics - as vegetarianism (!). It has been forbidden to think in Brazil.
If a conception approaches social justice, it will much likely be combatted through physical aggression or even assassination by citizens against citizens (in the current presidential campaign, there have been more than 70 people stabbed and hundreds others beaten).
The impossibility of dialogue, the spread use of violence and the worship of his image, raw materials of fascism, are resources on which Jair Bolsonaro relies on promising a constitutional breakup and a series of arbitrariness that has frightened a historically anesthetized society, an inert people due to an absolute depoliticization (which the Workers' Party did not anything to change, thirteen years in power generating consumers of basic products, but never citizens, much less equality social).
So it has been easy for Bolsonaro's campaign, which prevails by demagogy and irrationality, to substitute political intentions by (false) propaganda, fear and hate, for empty, tragicomic prophecies and a complete distortion of reality.
Substituting a project to the country for fear - in this case, fear meaning weakness, undoubtedly. Fear of the PT as the icon of the Great Satan, the origin of all the problems ("We have to strafe PT militants"); fear of the local "red danger" ("Dictatorship's big mistake was torturing without killing"). Fear of Venezuela ("One of my first measures, will be the invasion of Venezuela"). In his hysteria against leftists, followed by reactionary movements and the local society as a whole, Bolsonaro has said that anyone less than the former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a rightist of PSDB, should be killed as a "communist."
Fear of homosexuals ("I'd rather my son to die in an accident, than to appear with a mustache guy"). Fear of women ("A woman has to receive lower wages [than the man], because she can get pregnant"). Fear of black people ["They (negroes descendant from slaves, from "Quilombola" community in Brazil) do nothing! I do not think are useful neither to procreate"). Fear of all "immoralities" threatening religion and family - solution: killing immoral people, in the name of God and good customs.
Fear of real problems like violence to be "resolved", as Bolsonaro and his followers often rampage, "arming people, and authorizing policemen to indiscriminately kill." Fear of the economic crisis to be resolved "privatizing everything." Fear of corruption authorizing the "Justice" to put itself against Brazil's "enemies", or even closing every institution linked to justice in the country.
Fear of democracy ["He (Adolf Hitler) was a great strategist: annihilated his enemies as everyone does at was; I would have enlisted in Hitler's Army").
As fears more and more dominates every Brazilian citizen today, Bolsonaro's campaign is based on a total absence of thought and a deep, schizophrenic fear of differences - the perfect image of the local society. To his millions of followers and to this candidate, who explores the worship to his messianic personality, truth matters less.
Any similarity to nazi-fascism "policies", that takes advantage of fear and hate, of an enemy, generally nonexistent, to force people to abandon their liberties in the name of the common good and security?
Democratic institutions have been totally destroyed by fascist influences in Brazil, who openly break the law without any embarrassment and excess of aggressiveness, as if they (including judges, public prosecutors, policemen and even public workers) were the owners of the state and a blatantly corrupt power.
The nation has been delivered to the hands of the worst bandits.
A totally demoralized "Justice" system: this weekend, Federal Member of Parliament Elect Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the messianic candidate, threatened the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) saying that "a soldier and a corporal are enough to close the institution," after calls for an investigation to to bar the popular right-wing candidate from the presidential race, and from politics for the next eight years due to spreading fake news along with Brazilian big companies.
All this, under the world's sheriff silence: so where is now Uncle Sam, to advocate for democracy in Latin America?
Though the Brazilian culture is deeply colonized, elitist and reactionary, deeply discriminatory (Brazil was the last American country to abolish slavery) which, of course, favors authoritarianism in politics and in social relations in general, there is not any phenomenon to be sociologically understood from the many coups against democracy in the South-American country; the most recent assassin puppet terrifying the Brazilian long nightmare is called Jair Bolsonaro, who saluted the U.S. flag in a travel to that country in October of 2017.
None of this can be understood without considering the international scenario, neither fundamentally helped by Assange and Snowden.
Tragedy Just Starting?
Löwy sees a military intervention as a real danger. "For the first time since the end of the military dictatorship, generals begin to intervene in political life for example by threatening judges, if they free Lula."
Unlike many people think, Brazil's Superior War College in Rio, following the Washington indoctrination, advocates for a gradual action in politics leading to a militarization, not necessarily immediate.
The Brazilian military has, long ago, a national security ideology based on the US': combating the enemy, starting by the internal one - a communist, the poor, the subversive by force. Brazil's "justice" system, including the Public Ministry, follows this pattern, which helped this sector to work side by side with the military dictatorship, torturing and murdering.
In the case of a Haddad victory, the French-Brazilian analyst considers a danger that "few people have said," that is, a "parliamentary coup," so repeating what happened to then-President Joao Goulart in 1964 "to weaken the President's power".
"The Parliament in Brazil is a caricature of democracy, entirely dominated by the Bullets (military, police, paramilitary), Bull (agribusiness), Bible (conservative evangelical)" and Banks lobby in Congress," he says.
"The oligarchy, which controls the Assembly, has lost all presidential elections since 2002, hence the possible 'parliamentary' coup against the presidency," added the sociologist.
Both Lowy and Dowbor agree that if Bolsonaro is elected president, the chaos state in Brazil starting by the excluding neoliberal policies taken to their last consequences as promises the far-right candidate, will be multiplied by several times.
"Bolsonaro election would be an immense disaster for the country, for democracy, for the Brazilian people," pointed out the sociologist who says his popularity is an icon of the hate that marks the Brazilian society.
Fleeing from debates, Bolsonaro both reflects and increase the social averse to dialogue.
The former army captain and his running mate, General Antonio Hamilton Mourao, have threatened a self-military coup if they are elected next October 28, which is much likely to happen given the country's social deterioration, a new coup depending, too, on how the opposition will react to a Bolsonaro's victory.
Another troubling scenario is considered, in the case of PT candidate Fernando Haddad be elected president: Bolsonaro has said he would not accept any result but his victory. Brazil seems like a dead-end country, ready to ebullition.
The imperialist tactic in Brazil has been as clear as old: dividing - especially generating extreme poverty and too much violence - to justify a hardline policy, and dominate.
The State against citizens, and citizens against themselves tragically is the most accurate way of describing today's Brazil, left by Michel Temer - a tragedy just starting in the country?
(*) Edu Montesanti is an independent analyst, researcher, translator, teacher and journalist whose work has been published by Truth Out, Pravda, Telesur, Caros Amigos magazine, Observatorio da Imprensa, and numerous other publications across the globe.