The Fall of Brazilian Progressivism
Posted by Internationalist 360° on October 19, 2024
Observatory on Communication and Democracy (OCD) – Foundation for Latin American Integration (FILA) [Image: The moment when Lula da Silva and his companions ascend the ramp of the Planalto Palace on January 1, 2023 to proceed to the inauguration of Lula as president of Brazil. Credits: Ricardo Stuckert]
Lula’s government does not have a future project for the country while the dissonance between what the government and progressivism think and how it acts with the spirit of our times is evident.
Sunday, October 6, 2024 ended with some victories and many defeats to the Brazilian left and/or progressivism, which are compelled to combine the dispute of the second round with the balance of results. Without any doubt, the first round was a defeat for the progressive parties and for Lula da Silva’s government.
The conservative parties, only with the result of the first round, will already command the absolute majority of the country’s prefectures. Perhaps it is not a case of despair or defeatism for the progressive camp: Guilherme Boulos reached the second round in Sao Paulo, even at a disadvantage; the PT will compete in four other capitals in the second round and has already secured 252, in a slight recovery of the accumulated losses, which have made it fall from 638 in 2012 to 182 in 2020.
In the general framework of the country, the big winners were the center-right parties. Founded in 2011, the PSD has become the strongest center-right party in the country, overtaking the MDB after two decades.
The PSD won 867 prefectures, compared to 656 in 2020.
The MDB appears with 832, against 793 four years ago.In third place comes the PP, with 734 mayors elected in the first round. In 2020, it had elected 682. The Republican party went from 213 prefectures to 419. The PL grew, electing about 500 mayors, but fell short of its goal of 1500 prefectures.Lula’s PT went from 182 municipalities won in 2020 to 238 in the first round.
There are different types of defeats, there are numerous aspects and variables to consider, including tactics adopted and wrong forecasts.Now it is time to draw lessons from the first round and win the second round.
A fight goes on: the first round has just ended.
Will there be self-criticism? The municipal election is one thing, the presidential election is another, say the politicians. But when the parties that support the federal government do worse in a municipal election, something is not working. Either the population is not happy with the results of the government or the government is communicating very poorly with the population.
Likewise, the country is facing another phenomenon that the left has not evaluated as a determinant in its fall in popularity: the moral agenda, also known as conservative hypocrisy, propagated in an alliance between the extreme right and evangelical fundamentalism.
The moral panic established in society, through the call for a struggle of good against evil, having communism as the devil that corrupts young children and encourages them to change sex, consume drugs and vote for the left, the poor individual who earns little, forgets that his main fault is financial, embraces the divine cause of the moral defense of society and Christian values.
It is a fact that the most voted councilors in the main cities of the country are from the extreme right. Three million six hundred thousand votes.
This is the sum of the voters of the right and the extreme right in the city of Sao Paulo.This figure represents more than double the votes of Guilherme Boulos in the first round.
While a large part of the progressive camp continues to treat the Brazilian and peripheral population as intellectually poor, the extreme right is making this same population feel increasingly participative and decisive in the country’s electoral processes. The political articulation capacity of Brazilian fascism has been causing the left to lose important voters and votes with each universal suffrage.
In a country where education is deliberately discarded so that the poorest will not develop a critical sense and capacity to evaluate the social scenario in which they are inserted, all this sounds arrogant and presumptuous to their ears. And they respond at the ballot box without understanding the “academic” messages of progressivism.While Bolsonarism, the ultra-right, settles and wants all the power.
Bolsonarism
Since bolsonarismo emerged in Brazil, it became quite evident that the political phenomenon went beyond the character that gave it its name. Ineligible until 2030 for having committed electoral crimes, although it is not known if he will be in jail, former president Jair Bolsonaro is beginning to fear that bolsonarismo may even dispense with him.The warning came from a new figure named Pablo Marçal, who burst into the dispute for the mayoralty of São Paulo.
It is not known if there will be a further bolsonarismo beyond Jair Bolsonaro, since the space for a change of leadership or a process of inheritance in its social base and electoral capital has not been opened. The organizational form of the extreme right in Brazil is a combination of an ecology of political entrepreneurs that intersects with the logic of institutional politics to become pyramidal. At the highest point, the main figure functions as an intermediary between the ecology and the logic of institutions.
Is there a left?
The so-called left has no programmatic alternatives to the prosperity theology of the evangelicals and to the discourse of entrepreneurship in the peripheries.
Nor did they advance in the new approach to public health, articulating urban life with ecology, in the viability of common spaces for multiple activities and connections in the offer of local products and services, in the offer of spaces for the development of the city, in the creation of new public services, in the creation of new public spaces, and in the creation of new public spaces for the development of the city.
The left also failed to grasp the potential that digital technologies can offer in terms of innovations in public services, articulation of local economies in neighborhoods and peripheries, in the articulation of a collaborative economy and common good, in the structuring of new decentralized health services.
The leftists present proposals as formalistic and empty recipes of content. They are no longer the parents of the compensatory social programs of the Lulista governments: any party adopts them and applies them in their administrations.Nor did they advance in the new approach to public health, articulating urban life with ecology, in the viability of common spaces for multiple activities and connections in the offer of local products and services, in the offer of spaces for the development of the city, in the creation of new public services, in the creation of new public spaces, and in the creation of new public spaces for the development of the city.
In Sao Paulo, the logic did not work out: a second round was predicted between the “leftist” Guilherme Boulos and the neo-Bolsonarist Pablo Marçal. The right-wing Ricardo Nunes had made a mediocre administration, and the people of São Paulo wanted a change.But Marçal himself self-marginalized himself from the second round by publishing a false report on Boulos, and received a lot of attacks from all sides.The difference between Nunes and Marçal was about 80,000 votes….
Over the years, the left has given more importance to marketing and less to strategies. This has produced mediocre campaigns and poor results.To change this panorama, more incisive, more combative, more confrontational and more mobilizing campaigns are needed.
The left has lost the capacity to produce new leaders in line with our times. Just as they ignore the impacts of the digital transition, few applications have given centrality to the climate crisis and the ecological transition, issues that affect the universality of people, says Aldo Fornazieri, professor at the School of Sociology and Politics.
The left is also unfamiliar with the notion of technopolitics, understood as a set of activities that project new ways of doing politics through digital technologies, involving persuasive strategies with the use of political psychology and neuroscience, new forms and discursive languages to optimize persuasion and the construction of narratives that consider the impacts of the politics of affectations.
Technopolitics allows the design of new leaders and new political and social actors through digital media.It is no longer only in the territory or in the specific social or union movement that leadership and power are projected. The right has been noticing the projection potentials of digital technologies for a long time.
It is true: there is no direct relationship between the results of the municipal elections and the issue of the general elections and the presidential succession in 2026, when Lula will most likely not compete.
But the loss of programmatic and narrative substance of the left is worrisome mainly because of its inability to communicate with the people. The federal government, in the hands of Lula da Silva, could even take advantage of the favorable economic moment the country is experiencing… but it did not succeed in doing so.
Perhaps the problem is more serious: Lula’s government does not have a future project for the country while the dissonance between what the government and progressivism think and how it acts with the spirit of our times is evident.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/10/ ... ressivism/
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Is Brazilian Democracy Stunted By its Military and Intelligence Apparatus?
By Julian Cola - October 17, 2024 0

[Source: Arquivo Nacional/Jornal da Cidade]
Private interests and foreign influence helped to pave the path toward Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-1985). The armed forces is not an institution separate from society…It’s a reflection of that violent and authoritarian society. However, they are more dangerous because they have the prerogative to legally use firearms.
—Priscila Brandão
An Interview with Priscila Brandão, author of They Are Illegal and Immoral: Authoritarianism, Political Interference and Corruption Throughout Brazil’s Military History
On March 31, 1964, Brazil’s home-grown, foreign-supported military coup began. President João Goulart (Jango) had not abandoned the country, as was falsely announced by Senator and congressional leader, Auro Moura Andrade; Rather he retreated to the state of Rio Grande do Sul after a failed attempt to rally support against the armed takeover.
Lock, stock and barrel with the coup plotters, O Globo, Brazil’s largest media conglomerate both then and now, was left virtually unscathed by two decades of ensuing round-ups, torture, forced disappearances, and assassinations; indeed, the paper championed the unfounded, foreign concept of a “domino effect” extending from the shores of revolutionary Cuba to the South American giant and other regional countries. Meanwhile, dictatorships mushroomed across the continent to stave off communism. So did Operation Condor.
In place of Jango’s government, an administration that proposed modest economic and agrarian reforms, came 20 years of strong-arm military rule, along with the military police which persists across Brazil to this day. Traditional Brazilian political history teaches that civil society movements, not to mention underground resistance organizations, rendered the weakening of the dictatorship, forced democratic presidential elections, and reclaimed democracy. The end process saw Tancredo Neves elected (via an electoral college) president in 1984.
However, just one day before assuming office, Neves was hospitalized. Thirty-nine days later, after seven surgeries and other medical procedures, Neves died on April 21, 1985, from what was eventually reported to be stomach cancer. Coincidence or not, one day after Neves’s death, his butler, João Rosa, died after being hospitalized for 16 days due to poisoning. While this fueled doubts over Neves’s official cause of death, added misgivings loomed in light of his presidential replacement, Congressman and ex-governor of Maranhão José Sarney. At the time of his swearing in, Sarney held a military post, not to mention his staunch, long-standing support for the military rulers he was slated to replace.

José Sarney (left) and Tancredo Neves (right). [Source: wikipedia.org]
Awash in favelas, ghettos, landless rural workers, and oppressed Indigenous nations, such as the Guaraní-Kaiowá and Yanomami to name a few, the idea of Brazil’s “re-democratization” in 1985 was debunked long ago. Last year (2023), for example, Brazilian police killed 6,392 people, 82.7% of whom were Black people. In six cities the police killed more people than armed gangs and crime.
Do Brazil’s security apparatus and intelligence agencies function, by and large, as they did during the military dictatorship? To gain more insight, I reached out to public security specialist and historian Priscila Brandão, author of They Are Illegal and Immoral: Authoritarianism, Political Interference and Corruption Throughout Brazil’s Military History. This book has not been translated into English. Brandão’s work focuses on the South American country’s military dictatorship, military history, federal police, secret services and the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN). She coordinated Brazil’s first Specialization Course on Intelligence and Public Safety, and served as a consultant for the federal government and various state administrations to develop intelligence and security policies. Here are excerpts from that interview.
Priscila Brandão is author of the book They Are Illegal and Immoral: Authoritarianism, Political Interference and Corruption Throughout Brazil’s Military History. She coordinated the country’s first Specialization Course on Intelligence and Public Safety, and served as a consultant for the federal government and various state administrations to develop intelligence and security policies. [Source: analisepoliticaemsaude.org]
JC: What was the impetus of your interest in the areas of intelligence and state security?
During my university studies I started researching the military’s repressive system and practices. I then turned my attention to a specific group called the Group of Eleven, which was organized by Congressman Leonel Brizola at the end of 1963 to resist the possibility of a coup. From there I completed my master’s degree at the Federal Fluminense University, where I studied with Professor Maria Celina D’Araujo. She selected me to undertake research about the closure of the SNI [National Information Service]. I recorded testimonies from military personnel as part of a groundbreaking project of the CPDOC. I even interviewed former [military] President Ernest Geisel, a trifecta figure due to his involvement with the “years of lead,” the coup, and the re-democratization process. Being from Belo Horizonte, I made contact with Marco Aurelio Cepik, a lecturer at Minas Gerais Federal University (UFMG). He worked with intelligence services from a public policy perspective and was completing a Ph.D. with a focus on intelligence service reforms in the United States. My contact with Marco transformed my work profoundly because I started to focus more on the ABIN rather than the SNI, as well as reflecting about the intelligence apparatus as it relates to public policy. Since 1998, I have worked a lot with Marco Aurelio. Today he is the director of the ABIN.
JC: Re-democratization is a keyword in Brazil’s political and educational affairs. Apart from the conspiracy theories, how do you analyze what happened in 1984/85 with the re-democratization process and the rise of José Sarney, a man who held a military post and supported the military dictatorship, to the presidency?
Re-democratization is a strong term. Just the other day we discussed this issue…during a meeting here at ABED [Brazilian Association of Defense Studies] in Belo Horizonte. We were discussing Guillermo O’Donnell’s statement that authoritarian processes have ended. Well, that doesn’t mean re-democratization. We’ve never went through—rather, Brazil’s never had a democracy in the strictest sense. Ever since the end of the Brazilian Empire at the end of the 19th century to the establishment of the republic, what was created was not a democracy. They established a liberal government that completely concentrated powers and fomented inequalities…I don’t think we can speak about democracy in the strictest sense. Our democracy is more delegating. In no way does it have anything to do with Sarney.
JC: How does the military exert influence and even power over present-day Brazilian politics?
Think about the power of Leônidas Pires Gonçalves [Minister of the Armed Forces during Sarney’s presidency] and what the military did concerning the constitutional process. All of the lobbying they did. Honestly, considering the other questions you’ve asked, the military’s had an articulation capacity that derives from the constituent assembly period. Their representation capacity is absurd within the legislative branch. They even have representation at the municipal level, within the assemblies, congress, and senate…Their interference is immense. They also control many things. For example, at the ABED, an organization that we academics established to hold public discussions, they [military representatives] came along, opened their own section while knowing everything we intended to research, and refused to provide us space. They are completely against civilians fomenting any type of discourse or developing teaching materials for military training. Their level of control and dressage is absurdly complete.
In Brazilian politics they [the military] have veto power. At the end of 2023, three of my former students, all of whom are pursuing Ph.D.s, and I published an essay discussing the military’s authoritarianism within the Brazilian republic… We’ve never had a democracy. At its limits, our democracy is always conditioned to the interests of the military. They can put on the brakes at any moment. They are the limit. If the power of the president always stumbles before the autonomy of the military, then we can’t speak about democracy. As you can see, President [Luíz Inácio] Lula [da Silva] did not allow any public [or governmental] processions critical of the 1964 coup. Why not? To appease the military. It is a reflection of military politics, including what happened on January 8 [2022, when Bolsonaro supporters attacked the three branches of government in Brasília]. So they [the military] still have plenty of power. Lula is completely pressured by them.
JC: Did the National Truth Commission, established in 2011 to seek answers, justice and reconciliation for criminal acts committed during the dictatorship, fulfill its mandate?
The National Truth Commission [NTC] was an entirely late response [to the military dictatorship]. As you see, Chile, at the end of its dictatorship, albeit much more tied down and conditioned compared to Brazil, instituted their truth commission much sooner. Brazil’s NTC cannot legally try anybody. So our transitional justice [re-democratization] is incomplete.
This past week, during a debate at the ABED, Cepik and I participated in the release of a two-volume book about the [Brazilian] republic and the military. It was organized by Professor Lucas Rezende [UFMG] and Celina D’Araujo…I wrote about intelligence activities within the military. We said that while we don’t bring an end to the liability left by the dictatorship, while the military does not submit to transitional justice or admit to their wrongdoings during the dictatorship, Brazil will never have an efficient intelligence agency. Why? Because the military believes it must keep an eye on the MST [Landless Workers Movement] or spy on a soldier who lives in a favela to ascertain if he is involved in “drug-trafficking.” A poorly resourced [intelligence] agency, as long as ABIN continues spending funds on matters it does not need to, it will keep neglecting its actual purpose. It must be efficient. So, if the intelligence agency is really going to be intelligent, its work must be directed toward its real purpose.
Why does [former Brazilian President Jair] Bolsonaro have so much appeal and fertile soil here? Because our society is authoritarian, violent and racist. There is no acknowledgment that the military operates contrary to how it is supposed to. That is why people believe: Oh well, that person who got beat up was not beaten up so badly; not so many people were killed; a good thief is a dead thief. It has a huge impact on our society. The NTC did not fulfill what it needed to fulfill. It should have investigated further. It should have uncovered more. The NTC is just the beginning, not the end. It failed to do many things.
JC: What is the Parallel ABIN and how are the investigations going?
There is no such thing as a Parallel ABIN. For example, if today, during Lula’s administration these people were operating, then you could say there is a Parallel ABIN. However, as these people operated during Bolsonaro’s government, it is not parallel. Numerous federal police were assigned to ABIN and they operated under the command of ABIN’s former director, Alexandre Ramagem. Ramagem was subordinated to [former Secretary of Institutional Security] Augusto Heleno. Ultimately, Heleno was subordinated to Bolsonaro. So it was not a parallel organ. It was ABIN operating legally, operating with legal technology for which it had no mandate. There is nothing parallel about it. What must be understood is that the ABIN of today has nothing to do with this. Investigations are proceeding and many people are who had nothing to do with this are being investigated. Among staff there is a state of utter frustration, melancholy, discredit and a sense of devaluation even though ABIN’s school, personnel examination and training processes, operational definitions, missions, and a separation between its internal and external sectors are undergoing radical structural reforms.
I can tell you that I have seen a revolution because Marco Cepik is heading the agency now…He has studied intelligence operations for over 30 years, traveling to China, India, United States, Britain. He has operated in various sectors and he has brought forth all of our criticisms and proposals, about professionalism, institutionalism and transparency. It is quite impressive to see the transformations he has made this year. Just having reformed the intelligence doctrine is impressive. I spent two years attempting to reform the public security intelligence doctrine, coordinating with various military personnel, some of whom served as part of the dictatorship. I could not make any advancement. The current public security doctrine is a product of the military dictatorship’s National Security Doctrine. However, the doctrine ostensibly published by ABIN and is publicly available is completely different. It is a phenomenal advance and I really hope it influences the public security intelligence system.
JC: In 2013, it was revealed that the U.S. government spied on former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, some of her top advisers, and Petrobras. Has ABIN or another intelligence agency implemented counter-intelligence measures to thwart such activities?
The U.S. government has always done this. At times they do it conspicuously, other times not so much. For example, the DEA and CIA have operated within the federal police and the CDO (Operational Data Center) for years. The CIA financed the installation of 15 CDO centers where every last computer was furnished by them. By claiming they wanted to test an officer’s degree of trustworthiness, the CIA used a polygraph test to evaluate federal police officers at the CDO. In fact, they used these polygraphs to test a person’s level of obedience or malleability when given orders by the CIA. For years they financed these offices in Brazil.
The safeguarding of knowledge not only in terms of patents but also organic security is of great concern to ABIN. They host many awareness campaigns in these areas. However, ABIN’s budget is minuscule and since it is an organization that is being discredited more and more, whenever the government wants to cut spending, it cuts ABIN’s budget. That is a big problem.
JC: What is the solution?
It is difficult because you are not sure what comes first, the chicken or the egg. ABIN must produce positive effects that are visible to society. This work is currently under way. However, it is taking place precisely when ABIN is at the peak of a crisis in which the media are constantly looking for reasons to discredit the agency based on what happened during the previous administration. So, ABIN is experiencing a positive moment while, simultaneously, receiving bad media coverage. Unfortunately, this is very bad. If you interviewed me a year and half ago, of course, I would have said shut down ABIN, during Bolsonaro’s administration. That was a mafia.
The law that created ABIN is bad. A decree was recently passed which better regulates ABIN. However, there is no chance to even attempt to change the actual law because, with Brazil’s overloaded, right-wing congress, the situation can only worsen. It would be foolhardy to submit ABIN’s legislation to a rewrite because congress is dreadful.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/1 ... apparatus/