By TARSUS GENUS*

Brazil is the ideal country for the experience of the French New Popular Front, and Rio Grande do Sul and Porto Alegre are axial points of this reference of political mimesis

1.

In his victory speech, shortly after the proclamation of the electoral results, Jean-Luc Melenchón, leader of Unsubmissive France and central figure in the formation of the New Popular Front, said (and thanked!) that – through the veins of 1/4 of the French – ran the blood of immigrants. And he said – facing the sea – in Marseille, that in those waters that brought this blood were also the graves of thousands of children, whose parents came from the former colonies, in their precarious boats, in search of a dignified life.

What do you expect from France, the democratic world, the left, the democratic center and the global center-left? We don't know yet, but we already know about the fascist right, as Thomas Piketty and Julia Cagé say in article published in the newspaper “The Guardian” and translated on the website the earth is round, we should expect that “lacking a credible economic platform, the far right will return to the only thing we know – the exacerbation of tensions and the politics of hate.”

An article by Dani Rodrik (Jul/10.14, “Project syndicate”), on the other hand, proposes what we should expect from a left-wing political force, historically anchored in the working classes, in the current moment of crisis in the perspectives of the socialist idea around the world: that our speech must refer to the new world of work, which is being co-opted by corporate conservatism – with the illusion that everyone can be their own entrepreneur – and by the apparent facilities of fascism as a way of exercising power through excessive violence.

The author says, speaking beyond the important climate and gender issues, about which the cultural elite has different opinions than the general public: “focus directly on good, safe and productive jobs for workers without a university degree. The increase in economic insecurity, the erosion of the middle class and the disappearance of good jobs in declining regions were at the heart of the rise in right-wing populism (…), only by reversing this trend can the left present a viable alternative.”

The elections on July 7th showed a brilliant victory for the New Popular Front and created a new scenario of blockade against fascism in Europe. It is not the revival of the traditional left of the old Popular Front of 1936, just as the right and extreme right factions, unified around Madame Le Pen, are not the same as they were in the last century.

2.

It can be said that these represent the same barbarity that led to the Nazi occupation, but today they are articulated with social and economic sectors that are unified around other ideals. The disorganization of traditional class society brought to the fore “big politics”, new political actors representing other social subjects and also raised other poles of dispute. One of them, in these elections, played a decisive role in the victory of the New Popular Front: immigrants anchored on the periphery of the capital power system.

The fascists and the authoritarian extreme right want to integrate a Europe without immigrants – white and financially elite – together with vast marginal sectors of the “cosmopolitan” elites, who are on the edge of organized crime (financiers, militarists and weaponsists), who have called upon themselves the disinherited from the welfare state in crisis and conquered the unemployed proletarians (or those in secondary jobs) and a socially blocked white sub-proletariat – as well as the lower middle classes, resentful of the decline in the quality of their jobs.

What unified the anti-fascist opposition, however, in the second round, in addition to the fight for a better life – as is natural in any electoral process – was the search for a new type of cohesion, with a humanist and democratic character. It was the defense of a nation not unified by “race”, but the search for a more supportive social coexistence, based on the spirit of the old social democratic contractuality, which despite its crisis survives in the consciousness of a good part of the population.

A France unsubmissive to fascism, as seen by the result of the union of the center with the left and horizontally unified by the anti-racist fraternity, culturally porous in its noblest and most vibrant sense – not by the new neoliberal ideals of Europe unified by capital – but by old imagery of his Revolution that toppled the Bastille.

3.

I arrive at the object of my article. I think that Brazil is the ideal country for the experience of the French New Popular Front and that Rio Grande do Sul and Porto Alegre are axial points of this reference of political mimesis, due to their virtues and their tragedies.

Tragedies: Brazil emerged from a government driven mad by hatred, sponsored by most of the traditional media, which fought to put the country's greatest popular leader in jail, who would win the presidential elections for the defender of torture and fascism; and Rio Grande do Sul is going through the greatest social and climatic tragedy in its history, whose causes are universal, but which were aggravated by the inattention of these same elites, who now dominate the city, focused only on their public “businesses” and private interests.

Let us now think about the virtues: Brazil repressed a coup d'état through the strength of its State institutions and through a position that became hegemonic, in favor of democracy, within our Armed Forces, which gives us an enviable stability, perhaps long-haul, in Latin America.

Porto Alegre is a city of global prestige in democratic and environmental issues, which recent administrations have failed to erase from the Planet's memory, the birthplace of the World Social Forum and the great environmental struggles that have developed in the country over the last 50 years.

Now it is necessary for the Federal Government to have the courage to say that it will do and will organize a great institutional and political movement to – from Rio Grande do Sul in reconstruction – bring about a new type of political unit, from the State, for a process epic construction of a new socio-environmental model of growth, educational, technological and social development for Brazil.

The main platforms of this leap are there, they go from the south to the north of the country, which have as landmarks: the rebuilt and built Rio Grande do Sul, the Pantanal of Mato Grosso and the gigantic Amazon – the lung of the world and the heart of Brazil.

*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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