The rejection of the opportunist government – AND Editorial

We republish below an unofficial translation of an article from the Brazilian New Democratic newspaper A Nova Democracia, originally published on January 29, 2025.

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by AND Editorial Team

In this scenario of demoralization of an opportunist government submissive to the generals and in agreement with the right, in which there is a risk of a new offensive by the ultra-reactionaries against it, within the preventive counter-revolutionary offensive, the initiative of the masses and of the progressive and democratic forces in the fight for their rights is even more urgent.

The way in which the 88 Brazilians deported from the United States by Donald Trump’s government were treated, including on Brazilian soil, is an intolerable insult. They were subjected to torture, such as deprivation of water, excessive heat and aggression, by American agents. They were deported, but not as humans, but as living objects. The nation-state that boasts of being a “democratic country”, the nation-state that imprisons the most people in the world, reveals all its affection for freedom, including so-called “human rights”. The reality, revealed in brutal form in this case, is just the tip of the iceberg of a nation-state built on the enslavement of black African people and their descendants exploited to the maximum along with the entire proletariat of the country, in which immigrants occupy the worst positions, even today, the most exploited and the most oppressed.

Worse than the fact itself is the abject attempt to justify it: Jair Bolsonaro, for example, considered such an episode normal, suggesting that if he were in Donald Trump’s place, he would do the same. He said, in a metaphor as unfortunate as the author’s own, that immigrants are like the MST, and the USA is like a large productive farm: the landowners should react as they see fit to the “invaders”, just like the Yankee government. For Bolsonaro, the poor peasants and Brazilian immigrants deserve all the violence, in short, because they are parasites. He managed to defend, not the tortured Brazilians, but the torturers, as he is accustomed to. And this is the patriot of the extreme right: certainly, a patriot, who has absolute devotion to the country, but not to Brazil, like a renegade, sycophant and bootlicker of the “USA”, who must make even the most chauvinistic Yankees blush with embarrassment.

Furthermore, the discourse that attributes all the evils of Yankee imperialism to Donald Trump on the issue of immigration is nauseating. No one doubts that this lumpen-enriched man expresses, in a condensed form, all the worst values ​​of an imperialist superpower; but, in any case, that is what he is: a concentrated expression of the rottenness that gives rise to him. Let us not forget that Joseph Biden, the genocidal of the Palestinian people, deported 7,168 Brazilians in his four years in office, 5.79% more than Trump to date, with the latter having served a few more days in office. Nor should we forget the case of Kesley Vial, a young Brazilian who died in an immigrant detention center in Houston, Texas, while trying to visit his mother in 2022, given the quality of the treatment given to him by the “Democratic” government. And he was not the only one.

In this recent incident, the aggravating factor is that agents of the US agency decided, against Brazilian laws, while already on Brazilian soil, to keep Brazilian citizens handcuffed, even under protest. Now, what right do they have? Faced with such an act, the government of President Luiz Inácio asks its ministers to charge discreetly, or, in his words, to “act discreetly”. Lewandowsky, the Minister of Justice, said publicly, after a timid protest, that he does not want to “confront” the US – as if the torture meted out to compatriots and the violation of Brazilian law on Brazilian soil were not sufficient reasons to at least raise the tone! We are not asking for much, gentlemen, we just hope that a “national government” does not humiliate the nation even further. But the level of subservience does not even allow for the staging of national honor.

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The new Genial/Quaest poll on the government’s popularity, released on January 27, threw cold water on the government and revealed a milestone in the pace of development of the latent political crisis. There was a five percentage point drop in approval compared to December (47%), and an increase of the same five points in disapproval (now at 49%). It is worth noting that the Northeast dropped seven percentage points in government approval. These numbers cannot be explained by “communication problems”, as the government itself claims, but rather by its class collaboration in the economic sphere and appeasement with Bolsonaro supporters and the landowners in the political sphere.

The R$400 billion from the 2024-25 Harvest Plan earmarked only for a handful of large landowners contrasts with the relatively paltry R$79.2 million earmarked as credit for millions of peasant families (“family farming”) and for millions of other landless families, in the “agrarian reform” projects of the old State, which are no longer being implemented due to the imposition of the landowners on this same government. A bad joke, this pittance was criticized by the national leadership of the MST itself, which defends the government. With state funds indecently financing large-scale primary production for export, the price of meat for domestic consumption soared by 20.8% in 2024 alone. Inflation for basic food items also soared in January, putting everyone in the government on alert. After all, it is not the agricultural latifundia that produces the basic food basket, but the peasant economy of small landowners and the business economy of medium-sized landowners, all without access to minimally satisfactory credit and better payment conditions, without logistical and infrastructure support. Inflation, in the countryside and in the cities, erodes the purchasing power of the masses of people: Paraná Pesquisas, for example, released a survey on January 18 in which 65.7% believe that the prices of products in supermarkets have increased since the beginning of the government. The soaring dollar, which benefits the local big bourgeoisie and the landowners who produce for export, also erodes the purchasing power of the middle sectors and especially of its lower layers and the large impoverished masses of people (the Brazilian minimum wage, today, is worth less in dollars than it was in 2019, during the Bolsonaro government). As can be seen, the popular masses have a “political memory”, they are not as “politicians” mock them: the growing disapproval of the government results from its economic policy, which is a reflection of its class positions, its alliances and political composition: the same gentlemen who governed under the facade of the Bolsonaro government – ​​Mr. Arthur Lira and company – continue to govern today.

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In this scenario of demoralization of an opportunist government submissive to the generals and in agreement with the right, in which a new offensive by ultra-reactionaries against it is in danger, within the preventive counterrevolutionary offensive, the initiative of the masses and of the progressive and democratic forces in the struggle for their rights is even more urgent. Any attempt to subject the organized popular masses and their struggles to the defense of a government that is demoralized by promising to the left and delivering to the right is to confuse them, disorganize them and, ultimately, to favor fascism in taking them away for its counterrevolutionary terrorist ends. The emergence of Bolsonarism and the revival of coups are phenomena that arise from this combination: the failure and demoralization of a government that claims to be left-wing and is treated as such by the most reactionary right-wing, in reality a bourgeois left, for implementing a right-wing government program, on the one hand, and the disorganization of the masses caused by its opportunism, which sought to mobilize them, not to win their economic and democratic rights from anyone, but to defend itself as a bureaucratic-landlord government that has precisely attacked such rights. Now, more than ever, in order to win over the masses and lead them, through thick and thin, to the revolutionary path, it is urgent to mobilize on all fronts and apply the only Marxist tactic in the class struggle, that of just rebellion.

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