By EUGENIO TRIVINHO*
The São Paulo and anti-Christmas shot of the “necropolitical progress” of legal demolition of social rights in Brazil
The revocation of the free pass for seniors (from 60 to 64 years old) on public transport in Greater São Paulo, carried out on 23/12 by the two main executive bodies in the region – the State Government and the City Hall of the metropolis –, is in line with the typical decision-making role of current neo-fascism in Brazil: the gradual and intentional decomposition of social rights from within the State itself, in the “form of the law”.
Neo-fascism is the invisible political fury that today enters the palaces of conventional politics through universal suffrage – through the front door –, makes up its necropolitics with neon lights of technocratic competence and justifies official demolitions with the euphemism of “legitimate revisions”, under the dissuasive alibi of a “modern and efficient management”.
Usually neat in public discourse (with exceptions in Brasilia) and always macabre behind the scenes, neo-fascism is a neutron bomb: it preserves only carcasses of privilege for the enjoyment of victorious and selective peers, without ever exposing itself as a state of exception.
Skilled in serpentine opportunism, he now institutionally benefits from widespread anti-pandemic fear. Cynical and without guilt, he reaches, with a hammer – but with shooting force –, who he should prioritize and protect, for constitutional and humanitarian reasons.
For neo-fascism, Christmas is a mere fake party: a gift voucher that is scabrous the day before. The pain of others is less than an accounting trait.
The streets e windows, the only ones that can push back this necropolitics (more than the social networks themselves), are silent. The silence of inertia ennobles intolerant progress.
Let there be, at least, sensitive thunderstorms of legal and parliamentary representation against the executive measures adopted and in favor of preserving the social rights of the elderly to the city and free mobility in São Paulo.
* Eugene Trivinho is professor of the Graduate Studies Program in Communication and Semiotics at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP).
