By MILTON PINHEIRO*

Neo-fascist hordes have been given free rein to develop their reactionary practices

In a political period of advancement of neo-fascism in Brazil and in the world, with manifestations of obscurantism, which is being elevated to the role of State policy, on September 1st, the despicable federal deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro (PSL-SP) presented a Project of Law nº 4425/2020, in which it suggests criminalizing communism, leveling it with Nazism under the terms of law nº 7.170, of December 14, 1983, which deals with the subject.

The proposal reaffirms the crazy positions of the family of the fascist agitator, Jair Bolsonaro, who are guided by the counter of small criminal businesses and reaffirm an extreme right conduct. This project hurts the beacons of formal democracy, operates from the perspective of a coup within the institutions and opposes the democratic freedoms that were bravely conquered by the opposition to the burgo-military dictatorship, in the redemocratization after 1985.

Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro is a repeat offender in actions that violate the legality of the institutional order, such as the suggestion to close the Federal Supreme Court (STF) and for plotting, on several occasions, against other representative institutions of the Brazilian State.

Manifestations of the same order are presented in public by neo-fascist hordes that have been calm to develop their reactionary practices. These groups have played blows to the political order, called on the military to carry out this action, proposed closure of the National Congress and the STF, attacked militants from the various social movements and acted violently in the contagion networks.

The global economic crisis and societal changes have generated, in various parts of the world, a movement characterized by hyper-conservative postures, which has operated in the gaps of the crisis of subjectivity of the working class and has been confirmed in the extreme right populist posture of governments European countries (Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, etc.). It is about the movement of the anti-communist ideology that wants to materialize in the state order, to act in an ally with US imperialism, confirm anti-popular actions, behave in a denialist way in science and reactionary in the face of culture.

In the wave of historical revisionism that started out wanting to destroy the legacy of the French Revolution, now these same conservative sectors are advancing against the classic historiography of the Second World War in a lying way. The European Union, recently, in its obscurantist manifestation, operated an ideological measure by placing, in its regulations, the equation of communism with Nazism. This measure taken by heads of liberal governments, heirs of colonialism and slave-owning past, is regrettable. But the attitude of social-democratic parties in Europe is also regrettable, as well as that of a part of the Brazilian left that leniently supports this interpretation or is silent in the face of this crime: we need to react…

It is a crime against humanity. This neo-fascist movement wants to hide from future generations the historical fact that it was the communists, the Red Army of the USSR and the workers of the world who gave their lives to stop Nazism and Fascism on the battlefields of World War II.

In many parts of the world, especially in Hungary, Ukraine and Poland, communists are being attacked, arrested, harassed and driven underground. But, as is historically known, we will not let neo-fascism prosper and the bourgeoisie in a state of decomposition win.

We will fight against barbarism, against attacks against workers and against the oppressions of capitalist sociability. We are millions, we will be in the most diverse trenches of struggle against the neo-fascist hordes. We are defenders of proletarian internationalism, therefore, where a fascist attacks democratic freedoms, freedom of expression, presents his chauvinist, racist, sexist and lgbtphobic conduct, there we will present ourselves for combat.

We are revolutionaries, we have been through dictatorships, we have faced the surrendering military scoundrel, there has never been a single fight, in the field of progress, in defense of workers, of the development of culture and science, in the history of humanity, that we communists have not we were.

The capitalist state and the current bourgeois leadership are capitulating to the possibility of a progressive future for humanity. The neo-fascist enemy, in its relationship with the extreme right and ultra-liberal governments, is one step ahead. However, we workers will be firm in the class struggle to defend our strategic interests, fighting for the end of capitalist exploitation, germinating, in the present, the struggle for Popular Power and the socialist perspective: they will not pass!

We were, are and will be communists!

*Milton Pinheiro is a political scientist and full professor of Political History at the State University of Bahia (UNEB)