“Everyone stands alone at the heart of the world
pierced by a ray of sunlight: and suddenly it is evening.” – Salvatore Quasimodo
By Franklin Frederick
9 Nov., 2018
Instead of a President of the Republic, Brazil has just elected a colonial administrator. And like every colonial administration, the tasks of the Bolsonaro Government will be simple:
1.Supervise the transfer of national wealth through privatizations — from public goods and public enterprises, including natural resources such as oil, minerals, water, etc., to international financial capital and large private corporations.
2.Ensure “security” in the colony for the interests of the metropolis — the same international financial capital and private corporations. On one hand, this means social movements and any attempt to defend public goods and the public property of natural resources will be criminalized and persecuted. On the other hand, the imposition of a totalitarian discourse through fake news and fake narratives to give legitimacy to this economic policy of submission to the metropolis; attacking any alternative economic proposal or vision as “socialism”, “communism” or “Bolivarianism”. No resistance or questioning of privatizations and the control of the public sphere by private interests will be tolerated.
3. Guarantee the supreme rights of the metropolis over the social and collective rights of the citizens and institutions of the colony. Consequently eroding human rights, labor rights, and the laws and instruments of environmental protection. In short, eliminating any obstacle to the predatory expansion of capital.
In other words: the Bolsonaro Government represents the imposition of the new colonialism of the neoliberal order in Brazil. In the international capital of neoliberalism, Washington D.C., the results of these elections must have been celebrated. I imagine the euphoria on Wall Street and their urge to gain brazilian riches… It was no coincidence to have the support and advice of one of the greats trategists of the neoliberal order, Steve Bannon, on board with Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign.
And the fact that, according to the polls, so many people with a university education voted for candidate Jair Bolsonaro only confirmed my old conviction that certain levels of stupidity can only be reached after much study. It is not easy.
But I confess that it is hard, very hard to impotently watch this combination of mediocrity, vulgarity and stupidity take over the country and be celebrated.
We, who have open eyes seeking to keep our humanity in tact and our spirits awake, now have the difficult task of moving on and continuing the resistance.
As in the verses of the Italian and anti-fascist poet Salvatore Quasimodo that I have put in the epigraph to this text, we are the bearers of the rays of sunlight that must keep shining in the night that suddenly fell on the country. Our responsibility is even greater now and our spirits must remain attentive.
International solidarity will be of utmost importance to keep this light shining in Brazil and in many other places. After all, fascism everywhere encourages us to forget our humanity and fully submit ourselves to the logic of capital accumulation. Therefore it is so important to remember, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote in «Cancer Ward», that:
«The meaning of existence (is) to preserver unspoiled, undisturbed and undistorted the image of eternity with which each person is born».
Τranslated from Portuguese:TranslationbyTamannaKohi
