By JEAN PIERRE CHAUVIN*
Unhappy with the pseudo country in which the executive power, under the connivance of the legislature and the silence of the judiciary, directs actions aiming not at the well-being of its inhabitants, but at their extermination
“The counterrevolution is predominantly preventive and, in the Western world, entirely preventive. Here, there is no recent Revolution to be dismantled, nor is there any in the making. And yet it is the fear of revolution that generates the common interest and creates the links between the various phases and forms of the counterrevolution. It runs the gamut from parliamentary democracy to open dictatorship, passing through the police state” (Herbert Marcuse).[I]
We were quite suspicious. From the supposed anti-corruption rage to the dismantling of strategic sectors of the State, the distance was very short. The signs appeared in June 2013, when occasional movements, financed by mega-entrepreneurs from here and in the USA[ii], surfed the so-called “anti-leftist” sewer wave. First, there were the stamps in spray who decreed “Less Marx, More Mises”; then came the return of camouflage clothing – a plague thanks to that dressed the already brutalized subjects with the colors of civil militarization.
When, five years later, the main de-ruler was elected, the issue was not reduced to clothing. From the presidential playpen to public agglomerations against the STF and pro-Covid, it became worth everything. Of course, “everything” as long as the subject's family continued to say and commit crimes against life and public coffers safely.
Initially, the spokespersons for the tragedy were groups led by young people from the middle class who affected civility, simulated patriotism and pretended to defend freedom, in selfies next to PMs. They have a fixed idea: it is necessary to denationalize the country. Here is one of the dogmas reproduced by those detractors of history, chair inspectors, censors in the name of “freedom”.
Between setbacks and advances, according to particular convenience, these subjects, who emerged in 2013, condemned former President Dilma Rousseuf; they condemned neoliberal parties such as the MDB and PSDB, assuming that they were effectively concerned with the “Social”; reappeared alongside Eduardo Cunha et caterva, in 2016; supported the PSL candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, in 2018; and, when useful, they distanced themselves from some sectors of politics, while intentionally confusing ideologies, to the delight of their minions (who know nothing and only shout).
But, as I said, they come and go. In order not to sound abstract, let's talk about a bill proposed by a federal deputy from the DEM, who put his head out on the MBL wave. I refer to PL 561/2021, of February 16, 2021[iii]. O caput states that the bill intends to “Amend[r] Law 9.491 of 1997 in order to include Banco do Brasil in the National Privatization Program” (p. 1). In the item “Justification”, we find the following argument:
“Banco do Brasil SA is a mixed economy company, with shares traded on the stock exchange. Carrying out its privatization is much simpler than the privatization of other public banks, because it does not have any peculiarity that hinders its privatization, just as occurs with Caixa Econômica Federal, which is part of the national housing system and controls the lotteries” (p. 2).
A document of our dystopian times, the PL is objective and concise, also because the proponent and his caption colleagues are in a hurry: “Thus, in order to start the privatization of Banco do Brasil as soon as possible, I ask eminent colleagues to approve this project of law” (p. 3).
Unhappy of the pseudo country in which the executive power, under the connivance of the legislature and the silence of the judiciary, directs the actions aiming not at the well-being of its inhabitants, but at their extermination. To the Brazil of Temer and Bolsonaro, which re-edited the years of technocratic stupidity, subservience to the United States, torture and gunpowder, one could apply the formula of the state versus State[iv], in possible analogy with the thesis that a significant part of this society is averse to the Social, as noted by Renato Janine Ribeiro[v].
In the synthesis of Vladimir Safatle[vi]: “The Brazilian State has never needed a war because it has always been managing an undeclared civil war. Its army served no other purpose than periodically turning against its own population. This is the land of preventive counterrevolution, as Florestan Fernandes used to say. The homeland of endless civil war, nameless genocides, undocumented massacres, processes of capital accumulation carried out through bullets and fear against those who move. All of this applauded by a third of the population, by their grandparents, their parents, by those whose circuits of affection have been trapped in this unconfessed desire to sacrifice others and themselves for generations”.
And since we are talking about persistent concepts, it seems opportune to return to the state of maximum alert in which supporters of the false Messiah contaminate their friends, relatives and relatives by resorting to groups of chat and social networks. Electing supposed communism as a constant threat, his speech – when we understand it – sounds ambivalent: he denies the past and preaches modernization, although the minister of economy is a follower of the Chicago Boys (current in the 1970s). An intimate subject of banks, which affects the lives of more than two hundred million people according to the speculative logic of the capital market.
As Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval have pointed out: “Neoliberalism defines a certain norm of life in Western societies and, beyond that, in all societies that follow them on the path of 'modernity'. This norm imposes on each of us that we live in a universe of generalized competition, calls upon wage earners and populations to enter into economic struggle against one another, orders social relations according to the market model, obliges us to justify ever deeper inequalities , changes even the individual, who is urged to conceive of himself and to behave like a company”.[vii]
In the name of freedom of expression, they continue to spread fake news and make this replication of unfounded news a way to scramble the not exactly lucid minds of its supporters. At the same time, they announce methods of controlling users of Internet whose post reverberates in criticism (albeit fair and pertinent) of mismanagement.
On behalf of the family, the pastor-minister preaches the submission of women to men and projects personal delusions at the top of their voices, sometimes on the stage of the neo-Pentecostal temple, sometimes in absurd meetings led by her boss. The minister of the environment is a lawyer specializing in agribusiness. The health ministry is occupied by a military man who, like the captain, specializes in delaying care for the population, amid the pandemic. The minister of education is another pastor. Coming from a private educational institution, he is interested in seizing the best conditions for the butchery education market, called “superior”, in which he expresses his resentment with his colleagues who work in public institutions.
Generally speaking, these guys don't talk or act as if they represent a loving god; evoke the punishing god of the Old Testament. Under the long halter of sadism and the short rein of morality (which only applies to others), Bolsonaro and his troupe were pantomimes taken seriously. When the (unfunny) clown Tiririca was elected deputy for the PR, we did not foresee that the Brazilian electorate would promote a collective, in his image and likeness, in 2018.
From here, the belief remains that surviving the virus and mismanagement has become profit. But let's not be completely unfair. Occasionally we come across aberrant subjects who insist on resorting to terms in vogue, such as “empathy”. It is a pity that these same beings, self-proclaimed "good men", do not realize that empathy it does not mean mobilizing because “something could happen to us”, but the ability to show solidarity without seeing who.
At circo Brasil, numerous issues have become worthy of being featured in the arena located in the Federal District. Resorting to the metaphor, in our case there is a tarp with which facade politicians and occasion try to cover up the more than two hundred and fifty thousand dead by Covid-19, the 41% of informal workers in the country[viii], the growing number of feminicides, murders against lgbtq+ and “lost” bullets – which always find the black and poor.
These terrible interpreters of the patriotic and modernizing farce try to transform the frayed canvas into a republican mantle. It remains to be seen whether the material they use to assuage the horrors will have the same substance and quality.
than the first-line products consumed by the president (addicted to lies and cans of condensed milk) and by the generals, armed with nationalist fallacy, matured picanha and champagne.
*Jean Pierre Chauvin is a professor at the School of Communications and Arts at USP.
Notes
[I]Counterrevolution and Revolt. Trans. Alvaro Cabral. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1973, p. 112.
[ii] “The 'great architects' of Consent [neoliberal] from Washington are the masters of the private economy, usually gigantic corporations that control most of the international economy and have the means to dictate policy making and the structuring of thought and opinion” (Noam Chomsky. Profit or People? Neoliberalism and global order. 8th ed. Trans. Peter Jorgensen Jr. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 2018, p. 22).
[iii] The document can be found on the website: https://www.camara.leg.br/proposicoesWeb/prop_mostrarintegra?codteor=1963969&fbclid=IwAR11TWSK0lRZhtC2WgL3Z2k9iWWbXrB3NbVqAwmyacurJ9Q_aE3es2QkhIY.
[iv] “[…] if capitalist imperatives today cover the world, they have not displaced the territorial State. On the contrary, the more capitalism becomes universal, the more it needs an equally universal system of reliable local states” (Ellen Meiksins Wood. The Empire of Capital. 1st reprint Trans. Paulo Cezar Castanheira. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2015, p. 115).
[v] “Society against the social ou The privatized society”. In: The Society against the Social: the high cost of public life in Brazil. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras / National Library Foundation, 2000, p. 19-24.
[vi] Available at: https://crisisycritica.net/publicaciones/sobre-o-estado-suicidario/ -.
[vii]The New Reason of the World: essay on neoliberal society. Trans. Mariana Echalar. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2016, p. 16.
[viii]Check it out at: https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/economia/noticia/2020-11/ibge-informalidade-atinge-416-dos-trabalhadores-no-pais-em-2019.
