By MARCELO GUIMARÃES LIMA*
The notable coup attempt by Jair Bolsonaro, his military, his business friends, his troops in parliament, is yet another crime among the flood of crimes during his presidency
Was it really a scam? Some experts ask themselves, experts, whether qualified or not, those who are curious and careful about their own and others' opinions, guessers, amateurs and professionals, among many others, and even the so-called “big” press with its very peculiar vision of the country and the world. .
After all, a coup without tanks in the streets, with a riot squad made up mostly of civilians enticed via the internet, amateurs of physical confrontations, weekend vandals, with handwritten plans and documentation distributed in messages, stored in the cloud, forgotten in drawers and desks, plans announced between partners and recorded in face-to-face meetings, etc., goes beyond what we know or believe we know about scams based on abundant examples in Brazilian history.
Or so it seems. Is a coup without the support of Big Brother of the North plausible? Could this be a new type of scam? The question is pertinent if we remember the novelty of the 2016 parliamentary-legal-media coup supported by the military leadership. Would it be a kind of rehearsal? “If it sticks, it sticks” strategy?
This last hypothesis takes us back to the well-known assessment attributed to the distinguished president of France, General De Gaulle, who in the 1964th century stated: “Brazil is not a serious country”. Not even scammers are serious in Brazil. Except, perhaps, in recent history, in the dark example of the XNUMX coup and the military dictatorship commanded by generals who announced themselves as “moralizers”, conservative Christians and efficient administrators in a country in crisis and who quickly revealed themselves as torturers, murderers, incompetent and corrupt.
Is it necessary to remember once again that no torturer or coup general, none of the supporters, allies and beneficiaries of the military dictatorship were punished in Brazil? The military dictatorship, with its generic “anti-communism” of manipulators and semi-literates, created schools and produced its offspring in institutions and civil society. Jair Bolsonaro is one of them.
Like everything that concerns Jair Bolsonaro and his followers, the amateurism, the improvisation, the shyness of a worldview limited to the practices of normalized and normative corruption of the lower parliamentary clergy, with their cracks and influence traffic, to the subculture of exploitation of marginalized populations, as occurs in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, that is, to militia pragmatism, the feared, awaited and announced coup proved to be a step bigger than its legs, a wishful thinking, a mere desire of narcissists with no real means of accomplishing what they promised. Nothing serious, then?
What would then be the criteria according to which we would have definitive certainty regarding the issue, which persists among many, both scholars and amateurs today, on the networks and in the news, about Jair Bolsonaro's coup? Too much analytical “rigor” would lead us to the somewhat paradoxical conclusion that the triumph of the noted coup plotters would be the ultimate and unquestionable criterion of the actions and intentions of the far-right gang and their suited liberal allies, professionals, businessmen, congressmen, parajournalists, gentlemen from the Press Party (Coupist), etc.
In this case, if the Brazilian historical experience has any relevance, I would not be here writing this text. Many of us would not be in the country, but in exile, not doing our daily tasks, but in prisons, between interrogations and torture.
Those involved have their reasons for denying the facts, or the “interpretation of the facts” that classifies them, among other things, and among several imputed crimes, finally as incompetent: as failed coup plotters.
What is clear is that these gentlemen did not commit mere “crimes of opinion” or expressions of fascist fantasies. The practice of blackmail is not simple talk, or the delirium of irresponsible people, but a typified crime. For not having punished torturing generals, their subordinates and supporters at the end of the military regime in the last century, we live under blackmail from the right and military leadership, blackmail that has until now been naturalized in the daily life and institutional life of the country.
The notable coup attempt by Jair Bolsonaro, his military, his business friends, his troops in parliament, is yet another crime among the flood of crimes reported (and shelved) during his presidency, crimes against legal norms, against the Brazilian people, against the nation. It would be enough to remember his denialist conduct, conduct subject to criminal liability, during the pandemic and the more than 700 thousand victims of Covid as a direct result of the actions and inactions of his misgovernment.
There is no shortage of reasons to judge Jair Bolsonaro. In the country's modern history, conservative rule has for centuries, in different forms, fueled authoritarian conduct and exclusionary structures, racial and class prejudice, violent repression and unbridled exploitation of the popular masses, workers, various minorities, and indigenous peoples. . The eventual conviction and imprisonment of fascist civilians and military personnel opens up some perspectives on the country's backward and backward history.
With all the evident contradictions of the situation inaugurated with the 2016 coup, it will be like a first crack in the wall of impunity that surrounds those at the top, the protectors of national wealth and their representatives in the institutions of the always precarious and threatened Brazilian democracy.
*Marcelo Guimaraes Lima is an artist, researcher, writer and teacher.
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