By TARSUS GENUS*
Bolsonarism, in a single blow, weakened both democracy and the way of life guided by the values of the Republic
Bobbio recalling the emergence of fascism in the midst of the crisis of Italian democracy said that “the fascists were arch-Italians; in contrast, antifascists did not consider themselves Italians in the same way. Fascists were from another Italy.” And he goes on: “from this concept of the two Italys, we could also develop the distinction between fatherland and nation.”
We are from the same nation, but the real Bolsonarist homeland – which consciously induces the acceptance of programmed death (of those outside its concept of “nation”), is certainly not ours. Our concept of nation, in the Republic, is instrumental in making us equal in rights; the concept of fatherland, in fascism, is instrumental in inciting essential inequality among humans. And this is how he practices it when he accepts the death of the “national” other and exercises his necrophiliac policy in everyday life.
None other than Karl Polanyi demonstrated that the destruction of regulated economies, formatted in the post-war period, was a “reactionary” historical fact that would generate a “shock” in liberal-democracy, “producing a greater concentration of income and power”, and thus creating the conditions for political unity between right-wing populist movements and the “deregulated market”. Market and fascism, in the global order of hegemonic financial capital, could be reconciled, both for short periods and for an entire cycle.
Beyond the crisis of liberal democracy that occurs on a global scale, attention is drawn – here in Brazil – to some canonical episodes of its degradation. One of them is the “naturalization” of ultraliberalism, removed from the field of politics to become – through the global financial casino – a technique for private accumulation without generating work. And so it tuned in with fascist and proto-fascist movements financed by broad sectors of the ruling classes.
What is the critical “sense”, which is formulated in an almost hypnotic way, in terms of big politics by media managers of manipulated opinion? Here's the thing: Bolsonaro is not bad because he is fascist, misogynistic, with genocidal tendencies, but because he is not making it possible – in a consequent way – for Paulo Guedes to carry out his devastating reforms of the Welfare State until the end.
This posture of the right and its neoliberal epigones generates a consequence and two opportunities for the democratic opposition – left and center left – in its relationship with a supposed republican “center” in the country. The consequence is that this “centre”, represented by the caricature of the “centrão”, cannot be the faithful of institutional stability in a forthcoming democratic government, because the attempt at republican regeneration of institutions will be fulminated by it, as happened with all governments after from 88.
What's the first opportunity? This concrete situation makes possible a division of “blocs”, giving rise to – through the autonomy that politics can acquire in crisis situations – the formation of a “republican democratic” bloc, in opposition to Bolsonarism, with a broad agenda and committed to stability democratic: combating socio-environmental devastation, the war against human devastation by hunger, the resumption of economic growth outside of “rentism”, with a foreign policy that recovers national dignity in the fragmented global space where all crises are inspired.
This agenda is not just of the left in today's national scene and if we narrow our vision of unity against fascism, we will give an opportunity for the rhetoric of fascism to become a religion without God, to articulate itself in a definitive way with the “centre”. ” and the religions of money and turn their rhetoric against “communism” into a fanatical movement of permanent tension of democracy until it breaks and destroys it for a long period.
In addition to this political opportunity, which can be seized by the democratic camp to remove the possibility of a second term from Bolsonaro, another one emerges, in the field of ideological dispute. It is an idea that can only become a material force with a unitary language of rejection of fascist dogmas, which ruin the minimum conditions of social solidarity that define the Republic: unitary speeches that contain values of a project of social solidarity and equality, that reject the fascism both as a political project and as a wild and violent way of life.
Rosa Luxemburgo, saying that democracy is only democracy if it works for everyone – excluding those who want to kill it -; and Bobbio, saying that it is necessary to eliminate occult powers in the Republic, because “infinite power corresponds to perfect invisibility” were, in their respective lives along this path. Bolsonarismo, in a single blow, weakened both democracy and the way of life guided by the values of the Republic, as an ideal form of State that feeds on the virtues of citizenship, which – even if not mostly virtuous – can suffer at its core the correctives of democratic life.
The “vestibular” to enter the “third way” made by Globo News commentators, applied in making the equivalence between the PT and Bolsonarismo – a method accepted by the vestibulandos exposed there – made it clear to me that it is important that all the real political blocs present their presidential candidates. This process will lead us to pacts and disagreements in the second round – if it takes place – to new pacts and commitments, aiming to save the homeland and the nation from the violent and incompetent hands of Bolsonarismo in crisis, so that the voter is the filter of alliances to govern a new republican Brazil, rescued from the fascist metastasis.
*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.
