By JORGE LUIZ SOUTO MAIOR*
It is necessary to face the challenge of formulating thoughts that go beyond the calculation of immediate political pragmatism
Whereas many said they were surprised by the terrorist acts of January 08, 2023 that hit the premises of the three Powers and confronted Brazilian democratic institutions; and seeing the enormous, necessary and opportune reaction of indignation promoted against these same acts, it is opportune to remember that, in fact, we are facing a historical process whose course has long been initiated, or that, even if we look at the completeness of the history of Brazil, was never, in fact, interrupted; a process that even permeates the absence of an equal reaction to the genocide that took place during the pandemic.
It is only this more extended view of terrorist acts that will allow us to extract lessons and provide direction for action that is effectively capable of bequeathing us a future in a different direction. Otherwise, even with a few shavings, we will follow the same path, stimulating irrationality and the social and economic bases that feed on it.
Concretely, we experienced, so to speak, the accumulation of: (a) the absence of a true will to promote an effective confrontation of Brazilian structural and human problems, always haunted as we were by the logic of the lesser evil and by the blackmail of multinational economic power; (b) changes of historical periods without deeper cuts, making, for example, structures, including legal, slavery, anti-republican and anti-democratic, persist in force in our reality, which, when admitted and applied in supposed defense of order, provide, in a linguistic process of a comparison even if odd, notion of logical plausibility to conservatism that, even, playing the victim, reaches the stage of a kind of “enlightened fascism”; (c) a recurrent attempt to reach an environment of political and social stability through conciliation with the forces that only exist because of inequalities, exploitation and oppression and which, thus, legitimize and perpetuate themselves.
In this context of historical perceptions of the factors that militate against social advances, especially when we have in mind what happened on January 08th, it is important to remember the unfriendly way in which the police forces act when the subject is social demonstration for preservation of life, the improvement of social and human conditions and the conquest, realization or preservation of rights!
It is therefore necessary to face the challenge of formulating thoughts that go beyond the calculation of immediate political pragmatism, which, rivaling fascism, naturalizes it and, so often, generates inertia, with an air of “caution”, “consideration”. ” and “reasonability”.
Indeed, since before the election, the still-candidate Jair Bolsonaro had expressly advocated how, through weaponry and the spread of counterculture, the process of destroying democracy and the entire legal apparatus for the protection of social and human rights would take place. , all in favor of serving the interests of the international economic power and its alliance with small sectors of the internal ruling class.
In the period of the pandemic, putting this booklet into effect, including through daily public disclosures of speeches aimed at producing a rational and logical inversion of reality, an authentic genocide was promoted, which affected, above all, the peripheral population, economically excluded or overexploited and, almost entirely, black.
However, prevailing the mentioned historical accumulations, what was seen was a total absence of effective institutional reaction to the atrocities and violence committed and, even, from the calculation of the political opportunity, which is almost always represented by the expression, “it is not the opportune moment”, a kind of admitted impunity was established. Furthermore, not even learning about the value of life and human work remained integrated into our culture. Incidentally, comparing the indignation felt at the criminal destruction of the physical heritage of the buildings of the Powers of the Republic with that which occurred in the face of 700 deaths, a large part the result of an authentic institutionalized murder, it is urgent to ask how much, after all, we consider that a life is worth .
We also saw the strong reconciliation of progressive rationality with the large corporations that economically appropriated “science” and with the representatives of the dominant forces that survive on human suffering.
Having said that, I think it is quite pertinent to reread two small works of fiction written in March 2021,[1] that portray future measures that, however, are required at the present time and not in 2026 and 2031, as advocated, because, given the precipitation of the historical process, either one reacts effectively and completely now or it will only remain for us to enter history as a generation that did not know how to face the challenges of its time!
*Jorge Luiz Souto Maior is a professor of labor law at the USP Law School and president of the American Association of Jurists – AAJ-Rama Brasil. Author, among other books, of Moral damage in employment relationships (Studio editors).
Note
[1] https://www.jorgesoutomaior.com/blog/uma-noticia-vinda-do-futuro.
https://www.jorgesoutomaior.com/blog/nova-noticia-vinda-do-futuro
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