Aug 12 2021from CrimethInc. via Anarchist News collective see full article HERE

An earlier version of this text appeared in Portuguese here.

Ahead of the 2022 elections, Brazil is now reprising the same dramatic showdown that the United States faced in 2020. As the pandemic intensifies alongside corruption scandals and the unrestrained plundering of Indigenous lands, Jair Bolsonaro’s government faces pressure from the streets and the left wing of the state.

But what will it take to unseat him and break out of the patterns that brought him to power?

The parallels between Brazil and the United States run deep. Both are settler colonial states founded on slavery. The United States has largely completed its frontier phase, while Brazil continues to expand extraction efforts into Indigenous territories.

In both cases, the state has become a battleground between the far right, represented by Donald Trump and Bolsonaro, and a centrist technocracy seeking to transition to a slightly more “sustainable” and “inclusive” form of capitalism.

Globally speaking, these represent competing models regarding how to preserve capitalism in the face of climate change and global economic crisis—barefaced violence versus the likes of the “Green New Deal.”

Though Trump narrowly failed to hold on to power in 2020, it is entirely possible that the struggle in Brazil could turn out differently, setting a precedent for the spread of fascism in the 21st century.

Of course, neither of these models points the way out of the current nightmare of exploitation and police violence. If we want to have any hope of changing the world for the better, we have to build social movements outside the logic of reaction and reform.

Had there not been four years of intense grassroots struggles under Trump, he would likely have succeeded in holding onto power one way or another—and if those struggles do not continue under Biden and whoever succeeds Bolsonaro, far-right politicians will once again be able to present themselves as the only alternative to the status quo.

In the following report, Brazilian anarchists frame the government’s genocidal approach to COVID-19 in the context of a legacy of military rule, explore the latest wave of combative protests, and show how the institutional left functions as the first line of defense to preserve the existing order.

They make the case that the conditions they face can only be fundamentally changed by means of autonomous organization and revolt.

Anti-fascists in Belo Horizonte blockade the street in front of a burning barricade.

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Dual Crises, False Hopes

Brazil is facing a dire situation. With no federal plan to vaccinate the population, the COVID-19 death toll—already the highest average in the world at more than 1000 per day—continues to grow.

People across the country are once again taking the streets to face a government more dangerous than the virus. In addition to exacerbating the pandemic, the federal government and Congress are facilitating attacks on Indigenous populations, threatening their continued existence on their lands and turning over what is left of the forests to mining and agribusiness.

At the same time, the opposition within the Senate is leading a Congressional Inquiry Commission (CPI) seeking to prove that the federal government’s negligence was intentionally designed to spread COVID-19, with a particularly deadly impact on poor, Black, and Indigenous people.

The investigation has found evidence confirming this, alongside corruption scandals in the purchase of vaccines.

In this context, many people have renewed their hope that the existing institutions might punish those responsible for more than half a million deaths.

Yet those who choose to protest in the streets face unions and center-left parties that seek to channel the revolt solely towards improving their prospects the next elections. With our loved ones dying, it makes no sense to wait for verdicts or elections.

Bolsonaro’s administration and the reactionary populist movement around it have doubled down on genocidal and ecocidal responses to the current crises.

The institutional left and the “moderate” sectors of the social movements are actively undermining grassroots efforts by attempting to dictate what forms of struggle are legitimate and by cooperating with the state to advance their own political goals.

Facing this dual threat, the only way out is through autonomous organization and revolt, as demonstrated by pockets of Indigenous, Black, anarchist, and unaffiliated resistance.

The official number of COVID-19 deaths in Brazil has surpassed 560,000. The slogan on the Brazilian flag translates to “Order and Progress”—a fitting slogan for the genocidal government of a colonial slave state.-

..Continues

see full article HERE