By MICHEL AIRES DE SOUZA DIAS*
The State currently not only kills poor and black people in the outskirts, but also prevents the most humble populations from accessing essential public services.
Power dynamics in Brazil have historically been characterized by illegality and violence. The police state that eliminates young people from the outskirts, black people, the poor and the socially excluded maintains a permanent state of exception for the poorest classes. There is an authoritarian tradition here that has its origins in colonialism and that has been reproduced throughout the republican period up to the present day.
Although the rule of law is based on the principle of eliminating arbitrary decisions in the exercise of its powers and guaranteeing individual rights, historically there have always been authoritarian practices on the part of public officials. These authoritarian practices constitute the political culture in our country.
Em Brazil roots, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1995) had already noted an excessive taste for authority, for the centralization of power and for the categorical imperative of blind obedience. This fact already explains the authoritarianism embedded in the soul of the Brazilian people, as a kind of collective conscience, which expresses itself through racial prejudice, the despotism of the privileged white man, the laxity of institutions, political personalism and the social reality marked by great inequalities. In Brazil, “all hierarchy is necessarily based on privileges” (Holanda, 1995, p. 35)
Even today, the patriarchal values of colonial life are predominant in politics and customs. The elites continue to control and perpetuate themselves in institutions and public offices, just as in the colonial past. Power is passed down from generation to generation, as if the high positions in the republic were hereditary. What is public has always been an extension of private interests.
During the colonial period, slave-owning farmers and their descendants, trained in liberal professions, monopolized power, electing themselves or ensuring the election of their allies. Today, this dominance persists, now exercised by agribusiness entrepreneurs and urban entrepreneurs, who, together with their heirs, control parliaments, ministries and the main decision-making positions: “The patriarchal family thus provides the great model by which relations between rulers and ruled must be based in political life” (Holanda, 1995, p. 85).
The result of the historical domination of patriarchal families throughout the colonial period and at the origins of the republic is extreme conservatism and authoritarianism in social structures and political institutions: “colonial absolutism was simply transformed into the absolutism of the elites” (Pinheiro, 1991, p. 52). Today, the behavior and values of the middle classes and the ruling classes are determined by authoritarian traits inherited from colonial Brazil.
Sexist, racist, misogynistic behavior and an extremely authoritarian personality are characteristics of a part of the Brazilian population. In recent years, prejudice against blacks, women, the poor and people from the Northeast has become explicit on social media and in speeches by politicians and authorities. This shows that the values of the Big House are still present in our time: “Stereotyped by long years of rural life, the Big House mentality has invaded the cities and conquered all professions, without excluding the most humble” (Holanda, 1995, p. 87).
Within democracy, authoritarianism produces a parallel regime of exception. Arbitrariness, physical repression, illegal violence, abuse of power, and symbolic violence are disseminated: “The organizations responsible for this repression begin to act, without limits, according to the needs of the dominant groups. Thus, authoritarianism reveals in practice what in democratic phases remains concealed: the nature of authoritarian repression and the contours of illegal physical violence” (Pinheiro, 1991, p. 49).
Authoritarianism is part of Brazilian political culture and is directly linked to the systems of hierarchies implemented in the colonial period: “It seems to be inscribed in a great authoritarian continuity that marks Brazilian society (and its 'political culture') directly dependent on the systems of hierarchy implemented by the dominant classes and regularly reproduced with the support of instruments of oppression, the criminalization of political opposition and ideological control over the majority of the population” (Pinheiro, 1991, p. 55).
Power relations in Brazil have traditionally been marked by illegality and violence. Hostility, abuse, coercion and repressive practices have always subjected the population to the arbitrary power of the powerful. These authoritarian practices have never been affected by institutional or governmental changes. They have always remained, whether in authoritarian or democratic periods.
During transitions of power, it became common for illegality and violence to persist, without the intervention of the judiciary: “Throughout the Republic in Brazil, the repressive practices of the State apparatus and the ruling classes were characterized by a high level of illegality, regardless of whether or not constitutional guarantees were in force. For the poor, miserable and destitute, who have always constituted the majority of the population, we can speak of an uninterrupted parallel regime of exception, surviving the forms of regime, whether authoritarian or constitutional” (Pinheiro, 1991, p. 45).
A society with a slave-owning tradition like ours, where slavery lasted for centuries, created a matrix of subordination that is found today in all spheres of social life. Authoritarian relations have become part of political culture and popular imagination: “We then have a general system of classification in which people are marked by extensive categories in a binary way. On one side, the superiors; on the other, the inferiors” (Damata, 1997, p. 204).
These hierarchical relationships, which have existed since colonial Brazil, are at the origin of class prejudices. They are the root of socially implemented authoritarianism, since it is always the poor, the miserable and the excluded who are stigmatized and become objects of violence.
For Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro (1991), there are three components of socially implemented authoritarianism: racism, social inequality and state violence. These three ingredients are responsible for making Brazilian society extremely authoritarian and violent. Despite the apparent legality of the State, the judicial and penal institutions are negligent. The police apparatus is not neutral, as the discourse of authorities and politicians intend to show. The police apparatus is at the service of the dominant classes in the defense of property and capital.
Terror, abuse, arbitrariness and the death penalty are practiced every day, with the complicity of institutions: “Both torture and the elimination of suspects and other routine practices of the 'pedagogy of fear', systematically applied to the popular classes (home invasions, operations sweeps street cleaning, beatings, kidnappings, murders in the countryside, massacres), are tolerated” (Pinheiro, 1991, p. 51).
These authoritarian tendencies also manifest themselves on the ideological plane (violence sweet). Violence against beggars, the poor, the homeless, and popular movements is reinforced and encouraged subtly and sometimes explicitly in the mass media. The poor are generally seen as lazy, insubordinate, living on family benefits and unwilling to work. Those who demand land and housing are seen as invaders and terrorists. Black people from the outskirts of the city appear on television in a stereotypical way, as servants and often as criminals.
There is also a Manichean discourse of good versus evil in the entire Brazilian press, with simplistic narratives about reality, especially in matters of politics and economics. Attacks on political opponents and opposition groups have become common, as has the criminalization of popular movements. The poor population is the one that suffers the greatest consequences of this discourse. Police programs such as Datena, Alert City, 190, Direct line, Risky operation, Police command etc. With the support of these programs, an authoritarian character is fostered in the population, which helps to reproduce repressive and authoritarian practices in society.
Socially implemented authoritarianism is very similar to what Cameroonian philosopher Achile Mbenbe (2016) called “necropolitics.” He understood necropolitics as a form of political rationality that seeks to eliminate the undesirables of the capitalist system. For the philosopher, the ultimate expression of sovereignty today lies, to a large extent, in the power and ability to say who can live and who must die. The fundamental attributes of this policy are to kill or let live.
In this sense, the exercise of sovereignty does not mean the struggle for autonomy, but the instrumentalization of human life and the material destruction of bodies and populations. What defines this policy of exclusion and elimination is racism, since “this control presupposes the distribution of the human species into groups, the subdivision of the population into subgroups and the establishment of a biological divide between some and others” (MBEMBE, 2016, p. 128).
The State currently not only kills poor and black people in the outskirts of cities, but also prevents the poorest populations from accessing essential public services. By restricting rights, making the job market precarious, cutting social benefits, preventing free access to medicines, privatizing public services, preventing the poorest from having access to health care, and making education precarious, the State practices a policy of death, a necropolitics.
*Michel Aires de Souza Dias is a professor in the field of education at the Federal Institute of Mato Grosso do Sul (IFMS).
References
DAMATTA, Robert. Carnivals, rogues and heroes: towards a sociology of the Brazilian dilemma. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1997.
HOLANDA, Sérgio Buarque. Brazil roots🇧🇷 São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995.
MBEMBE, A. Necropolitics. Art and Essay Magazine. Rio de Janeiro, n° 32, p. 123-151, 2016.
PINHEIRO, PS Authoritarianism and transition. USP Magazine, Brazil, n. 9, p. 45-56, May 1991
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