{"id":163497,"date":"2020-06-29T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T11:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=163497"},"modified":"2020-06-24T10:46:36","modified_gmt":"2020-06-24T09:46:36","slug":"requiem-for-democracy-brazils-darkest-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/06\/requiem-for-democracy-brazils-darkest-hour\/","title":{"rendered":"Requiem for Democracy \u2013 Brazil\u2019s Darkest Hour"},"content":{"rendered":"

24 Jun 2020 –<\/em>Once again, after so many other times, Brazil\u2019s wealthy would rather run the risk of descending into dictatorship (if that\u2019s not what they wanted to begin with) rather than have the lower classes express their aspiration to be included in the nation, which the wealthy have always conceived of as their own personal property.<\/p>\n

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\"Jair<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Jair Bolsonaro, the 38th president of Brazil | Photo from Wall Street International<\/a>. <\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Reading the transcript of Brazil\u2019s April 22nd Council of Ministers meeting is a painful, frightening and shocking experience. The fact that this video was made public and transcribed is an eloquent sign that democracy is still alive.<\/p>\n

It happened as a result of former minister Sergio Moro\u2019s accusation that the president tried to interfere with the Rio de Janeiro Federal Police investigation into one of his sons for serious criminal conduct.<\/p>\n

By ordering the release of the video, Celso de Mello, minister of the Federal Supreme Tribunal (STF), inscribed his name in the golden book of the brief and tortuous history of Brazilian democracy. Let\u2019s hope that this promising sign he has given us has the potential to awaken democratic forces on the left and the right, a wake-up call from a deep and restless sleep composed of historical ignorance and myopic vanity, a sleep that lets them dream of electoral calculations without realizing how frivolous that is when their own democracy is hanging by a thread.<\/p>\n

The fascists don\u2019t even hide their intentions. The president makes a direct and unequivocal call for armed conflict. More than a call, it means that he is ready to arm civilians outside of the armed forces. And he\u2019s doing it with the generals by his side! He is confessing to a high crime and a crime against national security, and nothing happens.<\/p>\n

\"Sergio-Moro-Minister-of-Justice-and-Public-Security-from-2019-to-2020\"<\/p>\n

S\u00e9rgio Moro, Minister of Justice and Public Security from 2019 to 2020<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

| Photo from Wall Street International<\/a>. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Next to the vice-president is seated the fearless and foolhardy Sergio Moro, then Minister of Justice, the man most responsible for the destruction of institutionalized democracy, who has always relied upon the complicity of the wealthy and their media.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s announcement is not only met with complacent smiles by those listening, but various ministers do their best to release gutterfuls of hate and prejudice, besides other malice aforethought.<\/p>\n

What you are about to read is so dreadful that it has to be read to be believed:<\/p>\n

President<\/strong>: \u201cThey\u2019re always fucking trying to get to me, messing with my family. I already tried to change our security people officially and I couldn\u2019t do it. This ends now. I\u2019m not going to wait until they fuck with my family or my friends because I can\u2019t replace someone from security at the end of the line \u2013 that belongs to our administration. They\u2019re going to be replaced. And if they can\u2019t be replaced, then replace their chief. And if you can\u2019t replace their chief, then replace the minister. End of story\u2026 Minister of Justice and Minister of Defence, I want the people to arm themselves! To make sure that some son of a bitch doesn\u2019t come along and impose another dictatorship! It\u2019s so easy to impose a dictatorship! Some crappy mayor makes some crappy decree, and everyone is locked up at home. If they were armed, they\u2019d be out on the street. And if I were a dictator, huh? I would want to disarm the populace, as they all did in the past whenever they wanted before imposing their respective dictatorship. So what do we do, I ask Fernando and Moro to please sign this shit today so I can send a big fucking message! Why am I arming the people? Because I don\u2019t want a dictatorship! It can\u2019t go on anymore. Right? It can\u2019t go on anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minister of Education (Extreme Right)<\/strong>: \u201cMe, I was putting all these deadbeats in jail. Starting with the STF. And this is what kills me\u2026 We\u2019re talking to the people we have to fight. We\u2019re not being tough or against privileges enough, at the State level and that\u2019s \u2026 I am really just here wide open, like you all know, and I get shot down \u2026 hate \u2026 I hate the communist pity party. They\u2019re trying to turn the people into a colony. This country is not \u2026 I hate the term \u2018indigenous peoples,\u2019 I hate that term. Hate it. The \u2018gypsy people\u2019. There is only one people in this country. Take it or leave it. It\u2019s the Brazilian people, there is only one people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minister of the Environment (Macchiavelian Moment)<\/strong>: \u201cBecause everything we do is just fodder for the judiciary a day later. So that\u2019s why we need to join forces here at this time when it\u2019s quiet in the media because they\u2019re only talking about Covid, and run past the herd and change all the regulations and ease laws \u2026 Now is the time to join forces and ease regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights (Reactionary Evangelicism)<\/strong>: \u201cNow during the pandemic we\u2019re seeing the clowns at the STF putting abortion again on the agenda, and then the question of \u2026 women who got zika virus are going to get abortions and now the coronavirus? So they want everybody who gets coronavirus to be able to get an abortion in Brazil? Legalize it for everyone? (to the Minister of Health) Your ministry, Minister, is full of feminists with a single agenda which is legalizing abortion \u2026 Because we received word that there would be criminal infection in Roraima and Amaz\u00f4nia on purpose in Indians, to wipe out villages and entire peoples and blame it on the president.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minister of the Economy (Vanity Fair)<\/strong>: \u201cI understand this completely, in detail, not just from hearing about it. From reading eight books about each of those reconstructions (Germany, Chile). Then I read Keynes, it\u2019s \u2026 three times in the original before I got to Chicago. So for me, it\u2019s not music, it\u2019s not dogma, it\u2019s not bla-bla-bla.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

None of this is new. As for what the president said, one only has to look back to after the 1932 elections when Hitler expressed the same thing, invoking the need for dictatorship in order to protect democracy from dictatorship. The meeting took place on the day Brazil was approaching 3000 deaths due to the coronavirus. This was not mentioned, however.<\/p>\n

Or, even more perversely, the intent is to use the media\u2019s preoccupation with the pandemic to advance the loss of rights, the casinos, the privatization, the dismantling of the Amazon and the elimination of environmental restrictions. The Brazilian democratic system has become so unbalanced that it has bifurcated, where any act or political omission can just as well rescue or sink it.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Professor of Sociology Emeritus at University of Coimbra (Portugal), and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. He earned an LL.M and J.S.D. from Yale University and holds the Degree of Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa, by McGill University. He is director of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra and has written and published widely on the issues of globalization, sociology of law and the state, epistemology, social movements and the World Social Forum. His most recent project ALICE: Leading Europe to a New Way of Sharing the World Experiences<\/a> is funded by an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council. bsantos@ces.uc.pt<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Translation from Portuguese by Danica Jorden<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – human-wrongs-watch.net<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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