By MARCELO GUIMARÃES LIMA*
The recently revealed coup plot has as its historical background the impunity of crimes committed during the military dictatorship that began in 1964
There are times when it is not too much to repeat what everyone already knows. For so-called common knowledge can end up hiding important questions and facts precisely because it is not properly expressed, assumed as “obvious”, that is, something that does not need to be repeated because it does not announce anything beyond what “everyone knows”. Does anyone doubt that the recently revealed violent coup plot at the end of Mr. Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency, including, in addition to the removal of the constituted powers, the planning of assassinations, that such a plan has as its historical background the impunity of the crimes of the military dictatorship that began in 1964?
I believe that not even General Augusto Heleno, a military man active in the high echelons of the armed forces during the dictatorship, would have doubts if he had reflected. But what can I say? General Augusto Heleno, as an ideologue and activist of the extreme military right, undoubtedly reflected, that is, expressed in his actions, according to the news, his deep political convictions of great radicality.
Coup-plotting generals, generals who organized torture during the dictatorship, civilian and military torturers were never actually punished by the justice system. With the military dictatorship, the Brazilian armed forces adopted as their own the Cold War ideology developed in the United States and which expressed the worldview and power plan of the North American ruling class. The Brazilian armed forces subordinated the country to the hegemonic project of Uncle Sam. In my limited understanding, since I am not an expert in military matters, this is precisely the name given to treason against the country. I see no other appropriate meaning.
The “conciliation of the elites”, as Florestan Fernandes characterized the transition from military dictatorship to monitored and restricted democracy, left us as a legacy, among others, General Augusto Heleno himself and Jair Bolsonaro, among so many Cold War ideologues and activists.
In the fable of the scorpion and the frog, the scorpion's killer instinct led him to kill the frog that was carrying him halfway across the lake, thus sealing his own fate as an animal that could not swim. It could be said that the scorpion, by not paying enough attention to the new context of the journey by water, died from its deepest “convictions” inscribed in its nature as a violent and fatal predator. The animal symbolism of the fable takes us back to the corridors of power in Brasília, an unlikely setting for the destruction of the democratic order “from within.”
The monitored and restricted democracy, inherited from the military dictatorship, is the “same” one we have in Brazil today. Essentially the same, with the active and equally unpunished Coup-Producing Press Party, with the extreme right within the state apparatus, in parliament, in the legal system, in the police and armed forces, in the media, with the instrumentalization of religion as a reactionary ideology, etc. All very familiar to those who lived through the military dictatorship. Does anyone doubt it? I don’t think so. I am here fulfilling the tedious role of “repeating the obvious.”
What was already “obvious” in the fall of the dictatorship and in the half-hearted transition that the representatives of the military regime managed to manage in favor of the impunity of corrupt individuals and murderers, some protected by uniforms, others by suits and ties, remains evident in the impunity of those who ordered and managed the coup d’état on January 8th. The “riot” organized in Brasília was part of a comprehensive plan to violently subvert the political order of this poor democracy of ours, which was born with obvious disadvantages of a “bastard” child, bearing the stigma of its condition as a servant of the usual powers of the anemic Brazilian republic.
Working “in stages,” the justice system is now exposing the second military echelon of the failed coup. At this rate, we will have to wait for some time for the perpetrators to be punished. In the meantime, the most reckless far-right groups and activists will have time and opportunity for more actions, such as the recent terrorist attack on the Supreme Court that killed a “peaceful” citizen who was a member of the Bolsonarist militias, driven by apocalyptic convictions about the cosmic struggle “between good and evil,” which, on the part of some, hides very specific material interests, while on the part of others, it expresses the deep frustrations, humiliations, and oppression of the so-called “meritocratic” competitive order, an order that feeds its most convinced defenders among the various victims of the system itself in a perverse process that is paradoxical to the outside observer, but no less effective.
Hegel observed that history seems to repeat itself twice in its most significant episodes. The first time as tragedy, the second as farce, Marx concluded. In the case of Brazil, tragedy and farce seem to repeat themselves continually, mutually implicated. Our tragedies have something of farce, our farces much of tragedy, in the example of the 2016 coup, repeating in the context of the 1964st century, the anti-popular, anti-democratic and anti-national coalition of the XNUMX coup that in the XNUMXth century set back the clock of national history by at least half a century.
In 2024, Brazilian democracy still lives in the shadow of coup plotters in the offices of Faria Lima, in institutions, in the media, duly protected, far from the uncles who carry explosives, act on hate speech and end up dead before causing the destruction they planned.
The “lone” terrorist from Brasília can be considered a “suicide bomber” of Bolsonarism, just as the uncles and aunts of January 8, amateur shock troops of the coup planned by professionals, can be considered, with their severe legal punishments, as agents and victims of political violence commanded from barracks and offices.
The unbelievable Flávio Bolsonaro writes in X that planning coups and assassinations is not a crime if there is no actual coup and assassinations. From which we can conclude that if someone plans an attack against the noble politician son of the former president (may his faith in God prevent and protect him from such a fate!) he should, if he is aware of it, wait for the fact to happen before asking justice to intervene.
*Marcelo Guimaraes Lima is an artist, researcher, writer and teacher.
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