By TARSUS GENUS*
Celebrate this 14th of July — in a multi-party, libertarian, egalitarian and fraternally conceived way — the French victory against hell
The stupendous victory of democracy in France, against the extreme right and the other heirs of Vichy, combined with the victory of English Labor who returned to Government after 14 years, restores — in Europe — the oxygen of liberal democracy. In France, in particular, the turnaround was due — among other factors that do not fit into this short text — to the speed with which the French left reorganized its electoral lists to favor candidates from any of the center and center-left factions, to accumulate votes against the extreme right: accumulate votes to defend liberal democracy against the fascist, racist and anti-republican danger that loomed on the horizon.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of “Unsubmissive France” had an extraordinary role in this movement, as soon after the results of the first round he warned that his group would do all they could to unify anti-fascist voters against Madame Le Pen and her cohort of violent reactionaries. , who were on the brink of power.
And he warned again: this was the danger that surrounded Europe and directly threatened the postulates of the French Revolution, already strongly constrained by the conception of “capital's Europe”, different from the also Europeanist conception of “social Europe”, always defended by Jean-Luc Mélenchon and for his formation “Unsubmissive France”.
Its unwavering stance in defense of political democracy, which France Unsubmissa integrates as a constitutional commitment, has a fundamental political reason, which is in the field of principles; and a pragmatic reason, which responds to the urgencies of the political struggle of any left, within democratic legality.
The Brazilian experience shows that in times of mutation in the forms of exercising power and controlling hearts and minds, through new means of communication and information, new forms and means of producing goods and controlling and processing opinion, any hesitation in defense of Democratic legality weakens political democracy and ends up favoring fascism.
The rise of fascism and its banditry to the status of rulers, capillarized in the State and helped by the oligopolitical media, could even “take over” institutions such as the Judiciary, weakening their constitutional duties of impartiality and neutrality in the major political disputes of the moment. .
It was like that with Dilma Rousseff, it was like that with Lula. The “fundamental political reason” — which is in the realm of principles — is never to concede or omit to make it easier for fascists to come to power; the “pragmatic reason” concerns the choice of paths that must be taken to create political majorities against ascending fascism, which can be evaluated based on the following question: is it better to face fascism when it is outside the government or when they already occupy the state apparatus?
It must be taken into account, to understand the French political phenomenon, that the traditional left there — the Socialist Party today more of a center-left formation, the French Communist Party which no longer leads progressive majorities in the country, and the small communist and socialist organizations heterodox — have not been able, after François Mitterrand (1995) until the present, to form a stable Left Front to govern.
This electoral victory shows that well-organized fronts around principles and programs visible to the people, even if on the edge of the precipice, can rescue the ideal principles of the great revolutions of the last century, with new foundations within democracy.
The New Popular Front, formed in the presence of the disaster, rescues — for now — the culture of (political) freedoms, of (formal) equality that fascism does not even respect as a constitutional doctrine, and rescues the (polyclassist) fraternity contracted in the country's Constitution . This is little, but this is a lot. In contrast to the culture of death, the naturalization of inequality and the end — formal and material — of the legal contract of popular fraternity, which presided over the fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, this is a lot.
Wouldn't it be providential, I ask myself and ask my fellow fighters, if it wouldn't be good for us to celebrate, on this 14th of July — in a multi-party, libertarian, egalitarian and fraternally conceived way — the French victory against hell?
*Tarsus in law he was governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, mayor of Porto Alegre, Minister of Justice, Minister of Education and Minister of Institutional Relations in Brazil. Author, among other books, of possible utopia (arts & crafts) [https://amzn.to/3ReRb6I]
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