Watchdogs of the social order

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By LUIZ MARQUES*

Political crises are born and grow as the credibility of the values ​​of one of the poles of the dispute crumbles in public opinion

The corporate media, which does not accept dissonant positions among “collaborators”, defends freedom of expression only outside its jurisdiction. The indignation manifested with the official reception of the president of Venezuela, coming to Brasilia for the meeting of leaders of Latin American nations, at the Itamaraty, was false. Leaders from the left and right were present, with the exception of Peru, which removed the ruler. The objective was to strengthen the continent in a world dominated by the Washington Consensus (1989), which did not bring the promised sustainable economic growth, with job creation and income distribution.

In order not to escape the lese-patria rule, reminiscent of the colonial-slavery period, the “crabs” of national journalism preferred to augur the event, instead of publicizing the pluralist articulation for the uplift of Unasur. The allegation bordered on cynicism: “Each current has its pet dictators”. As if the formation of a regional political bloc had as a criterion, to recall Max Weber's deontological categories, the identity founded on an “ethics of conviction”, and not on the “ethics of responsibility” when dealing with globalization.

It bordered on hypocrisy, idem, due to denial about Nicolás Maduro’s status as head of state: “The decision to roll out the red carpet could bring more harm than profit”. To the United States? To the promoters of the neoliberal agenda? On the neo-fascist right? Unnecessary to pick up egg hair. It was simply about seeking the economic, political, social and cultural integration of the peoples of Latin America – without the mongrel complex.

For an idea of ​​the unscrupulous journalism in Rio Grande do Sul, I recommend reading Carlos Águedo Paiva's report “The contribution of the gaúcha media to the decadence of RS”, published in Democratic Station Network (31/05/2023). A great reflection on the neoliberal rise in southern lands, and the intervention of the press in the architecture of this political-ideological process. In the whirlpool, criticism sank into the gap between the people and the nation, without forging counter-hegemony.

the counterrevolution

The media and sectors of the vanguard of backwardness lack a transnational empowerment program in a multipolar historical context, to insert the demands of commoners (us). The hypostatized and submissive look prevails in the face of the eroded US imperialism. Neoliberalism is not weighed against its bad consequences. The grammar of Homo economicus it registers profit, income and accumulation, not social suffering. The dystopia of rapid conservative evolution against state functions is covered up by salaams.

Public opinion is manipulated. The media replaced the public use of reason with the public expression of feelings. “The subjects are equivalent, they are reduced to the banality of 'I like' or 'I don't like', of 'I thought it was great' or 'I thought it was horrible'”, denounces the media analysis of Marilena Chaui, in the book power and simulacrum. Receivers are infantilized, made of idiots.

Neoliberalism is the theoretical principle and doxa of a new form of State action, oriented towards the maintenance of public order, the unification of the national market, the consolidation of the world market and the competition that it imposes. The phenomenon hinted at an unprecedented domination in contemporary history, as it penetrated the subjectivity of human beings through radio waves, television and big tech. One world is possible.

“Modernization” then became synonymous with “realism”, “fiscal balance” and a “sense of decorum”. think tanks propagated the mythology, at a crazy pace. They accounted for 5.465 cores in 2008. In 2019, there were 8.248. In Brazil, in the same period, they jumped from 30 to 103 in the footprints of free trade. It was up to the Mises Brasil Institute (IMB) to influence the family Bolsonaro in the areas of education, health, economy, foreign affairs, etc. Behind the State's sabotage there was, in the background, the troupe's option for anarcholiberalism.

The protest at the Gare

On December 12, 1995, Pierre Bourdieu gave a famous speech at the Gare de Lyon, in support of the French civil service strike against the government’s neoliberal reforms: “The State nobility that preaches the extinction of the State and the absolute reign of the market and the consumer, commercial substitute for the citizen, assaulted the State: it made the public good a private good, of the public thing your thing. What is at stake is the reconquest of democracy against technocracy. It is necessary to put an end to the tyranny of the 'experts', World Bank or IMF style, who impose the verdicts of the new Leviathan, the 'financial markets', and who do not want to negotiate but rather 'explain'. It is necessary to break with the faith in historical inevitability”.

Among us, the reconquest of democracy against technocracy refers to the jacks of the Central Bank and stratospheric interest rates at the service of the financial ciranda (a robbery in the sunlight). The leaders of Parliament are included among the pseudopatriots in endorsing the extermination of indigenous ethnic groups and the devastation of the Amazon. This is what the “timeframe” approved by the Chamber of Deputies means – a sad representation. If ratified in the Senate, it is estimated that indigenous people are at risk in 871 of the country's 1.393 reserves, stipulates the Missionary Indigenous Council (CIMI). Reasons abound to stop the criminal genocide of the original inhabitants.

A “new internationalism” is urgently needed to update political and intellectual engagement in the fight against status quo Boldness can galvanize civil society and awaken citizens to act in the public sphere and change the social order. We have to face the climate hecatomb, the threat of a nuclear war, the crisis of democracy (the serpent's egg of totalitarianism) and surveillance capitalism, with tentacles in artificial intelligence (AI).

It's not easy. It implies defeating the communicative and dissimulating logic that obscures and suffocates common sense, by opening the doors to ignorance that proclaims itself on a level equal to that of knowledge and science. Against the grain of Enlightenment philosophers who deconstructed popular beliefs, traditionalists resurrect the father of conservatism, Edmund Burke, for whom prejudices are useful for organizing a God-fearing society.

Cynicism and hypocrisy

It is worth remembering that Artificial Intelligence is just an extension of the system, with a great impact on world GDP. The question is: does the solution lie in regulating capitalism (indomitable, by nature) or in handing over resources, people and work to foment the economy in the direction of ecological imbalance, warlike irrationalism, the sighs of political democracy detached from social and the controlling mechanisms of the will of individuals. Neoliberal capitalism is the very serious problem to be faced in such dramatic times.

In the final phase of the oppression and exploitation combo, the guard dogs' task is to faire l'opinion in favor of the abysmal inequalities between social classes. Hence, they channeled dissatisfaction against anti-systemic movements, such as the MST, hiding financial rent by confusing the perception of the masses about the really existing capitalism.

For Bolsominions, the national tragedy is located exclusively in the “superstructure” – Federal Superior Court/STF, Superior Electoral Court/TSE, Congress of the Republic, Catholic Church, Human Rights, Universities. Slightly cancel the accusations that blame the economic "infrastructure" for the ills that sacrifice the Brazilian people, exemplified by the commodities of agribusiness that do not add value and by deindustrialization, which generates multitudes of excluded people. The methodological error compromises the diagnosis.

No wonder the reliance on fake news to undermine democracy and truth. Political crises are born and grow as the credibility of the values ​​of one of the poles of the dispute crumbles in public opinion. This is what the watchdogs intend to tattoo on Lula and, by extension, on the left in general, complicity with “dictatorships”, shifting the attitudes of cynicism and hypocrisy from the bourgeoisie to the popular-democratic spectrum. As in the verse of the Trotskyist poet, Paulo Leminski: “nothing like one day going after another coming”.

* Luiz Marques is a professor of political science at UFRGS. He was Rio Grande do Sul's state secretary of culture in the Olívio Dutra government.


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