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kin wrote

Not surprising at all... But yeah, I have seen many Left side people (even anarchists) focusing the critique in the insurrection part and calling for police and State force... Well imho if you are an anarchist and you hope those fash trash to be imprisoned or the State to tighten the grasp on derelict fash lumpen and their stormtroopers you are missing the picture. The Popo will never be an ally, and we are letting those chumps recuperate the insurrection and neutralize it.

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roanoke9 wrote (edited )

I like when anarcho-dems out themselves as bootlickers tbh, it saves time. Kind of like, interpersonally, when a trusted friend says "if you ever did x, I would call the cops". It's a nice forewarning to have.

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GoddamnedVoodooMagic wrote

Lotta dumbass anarchists think they can just weaponize the police and state against people they don't like (which, first of all, championing the actions of cops or the state in any context...in my opinion, shows how "anti-authoritarian" someone really is), not knowing that the police and state will just turn on them next, or crack their skulls at the same time. Not to mention, tighter crackdowns are never applied to an isolated instance. They're applied all around, to everything.

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anarresinfoshop wrote (edited )

fascist coups are not insurrections in any serious sense. The former seeks to constitute authority, the latter attempts to demolish it. This distinction is lost on media outlets like Al Jazeera, an establishment media outlet in the Persian Gulf States which are hypercapitalist, imperial collaborationist, migrant-kidnapping, queer-killing, reactionary nightmare fuel.

the bigger story here, beyond the media hype around this "insurrection" that didn't even remotely threaten any government officials, wandered around the empty buildings, smashed some windows and then got mass kettled by riot cops...the real story, is that the class character of brazil has changed so greatly since the last time Lula was president. He won the election by a slim majority, in comparison to the first time. This is because the working class of Brazil has been hyper-policed, and brutalized by precarity and changing economic conditions.

Particularly, Lula faces a challenge due to low commodity prices internationally, the export of which were how he funded his social democratic welfare policies in the past (along with the attendant destruction of the environment and on-and-off alliance with extraction industries; Lulapalooza's "Save the Amazon Rainforest" rhetoric being as empty as the buildings Bolsonaro supporters just stormed...)

It's not these goofballs wearing Brazillian flags and getting wrecked by riot police, who are the threat to Lula's grip on power. Instead, it is the inherent contradictions of the social democratic politics which he espouses.

It is in this context, in which people in Lula's electoral base will find Lula to have very few palatable, effective options for making good on his campaign promises. It will be crucial for such disappointed persons to be exposed to anarchist critiques of social democracy.

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kin wrote

I don't dispute the narrative of fascist coup or show of force, but I don't deny either the insurectionary element of this. Maybe you are talking about the international coverage about it, I am experiencing it in the soil as I am spending vacations with my folks here. I don't have interest in liberal propaganda or pseudo-liberal (aljazeera)

This is because the working class of Brazil has been hyper-policed, and brutalized by precarity and changing economic conditions.

I would say this is the reality since 1500 when the Portuguese came. Imo the difference is that Brazil is one of the biggest projects of the International Nazi. Let me explain what I mean, the main difference is the open adherence of great part of the population to fascism and alt right rhetorics. The first Worker's Party terms was a centrist social democracy that lifted many part of the population from poverty and famine, but the populist stance of the govt left a new consumerist middle class with no "class consciousness" or any political ideology besides the conservatism that is typical is LatinAmerica.

Instead, it is the inherent contradictions of the social democratic politics which he espouses.

I hard agree here, and that's where the parallel with Biden makes sense despite of their previous origins. The so called left and the communists are trying to make an active counter point to the new govt now that the Bolsonaro was defeated in the elections. I suspect that the culture war here will be exacerbated in the next years. The anarchists here (especifismo, and social anarchism) in my perception are an accessory to the leftist players, they will sure be critical of this social democracy and it's alliance with neoliberal market.

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anarresinfoshop wrote

I don't deny either the insurectionary element of this.

So, you're saying that the crowds of people demanding a military coup to install a far-right president, have an insurrectionary element?

I'm sorry, as an anarchist in the United States I find this really hard to believe, even from so far away. I don't use "insurrectionary" to describe things or people which support hegemonic oppressive forces, because that doesn't make any sense to me. Can you explain what you mean by this?

Fascism, while it may be "insurrectionary" in aesthetics, is in reality a recapitulation to authoritarian systems. It is an appropriation, from revolutionary movements for social change, of the aesthetics of those historical revolutionary movements. It then appropriates those aesthetics, in service of the opposite: the reinforcement of the existing system, the existing privileges, the existing hierarchies. This is my understanding of this type of "insurrectionary element", basically regardless of where it crops up: the United States, Brazil, China, etc. Perhaps my understanding is not attuned to the specific circumstances in Brazil?

I would say this is the reality since 1500 when the Portuguese came.

Well, in a sense, maybe yeah. But obviously there was no modern police force in Brazil (or anywhere) until the 19th and 20th centuries, so this seems to me, that it is an ahistorical way to describe what has been happening. Additionally, it's also ahistorical to elide 500 years of historical oppression into a homogenous description like that-- of course there have been ebbs and flows in the precise nature of that historical oppression, it's been five centuries, right?

The first Worker's Party terms was a centrist social democracy that lifted many part of the population from poverty and famine, but the populist stance of the govt left a new consumerist middle class with no "class consciousness" or any political ideology besides the conservatism that is typical is LatinAmerica.

Yes, we are entirely in agreement. In fact, it is odd to me that you are saying this in this way, because that is what I am referring to in my original comment/post, yet the way you are communicating it sounds like you are trying to correct me.

The so called left and the communists are trying to make an active counter point to the new govt now that the Bolsonaro was defeated in the elections. I suspect that the culture war here will be exacerbated in the next years. The anarchists here (especifismo, and social anarchism) in my perception are an accessory to the leftist players, they will sure be critical of this social democracy and it's alliance with neoliberal market.

Indeed, the next stage now that fascism is on the retreat, is to confront the inherent neoliberalism of the social-democratic coalitions. This seems to me, to be true in both Brazil under Lula's PD governance, and the USA under Biden's DP governance.

The crucial thing for anarchists, is to avoid playing second fiddle to the electorally subsumed "left". It is critical to define an anarchy that is demonstrably and definitively distinct from "leftism", because leftism has been absorbed into cults of personality around presidential elections and party politics, and as a result, at this point "leftism" has been basically neutralized of any class character or revolutionary/insurrectionary potential that it could have had.

It's better for anarchists to leave that toxic idea of "leftism" behind, now more than ever.

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kin wrote

I am going in circles to respond this, and I think I got the language barrier affecting me as English is not my native tongue and my head is a mess, but I will try.

Maybe my point is that the "insurrection" or "revolution" are categories that don't belong exclusively to a political group. Maybe it's a language thing, maybe it's cultural. You are totally right about the reactionary and fascist element on it tho. There aren't any specific context to Brazil here, it was just my opinion there and wasn't to counter your post, was more to weight it with some details.

I guess my tone is weird sometimes, not wanted to "correct" you or anybody ever (only if I say explicitly otherwise lol)

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anarresinfoshop wrote

For my part, I apologize for any combativeness that may have been received by my own tone; I totally understand the language barrier thing. I am currently working on my spanish, and can relate to the difficulty in discussing abstract concepts in a second or third language.

In my country, "insurrectionary" has been kind of co-opted by liberals to refer to right-wing agitation since 2021, but before that it was clearly a term that refered to anti-establishment, definitely-not-reactionary activities. This is because of the Jan 6 thing that happened up here in the USA, which is very similar to the events in Brazil in a lot of ways. This also may explain my inquisitiveness/defensiveness, as I've been trying to push back on the use of "insurrectionary" to describe fascists in my own country, you know? It feels like a counter insurgency tactic, here, when liberals have been using the term in that way, so that's just my context with that particular discourse.

Hope you are doing well today, all that aside! Greetings from USA

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roanoke9 wrote

I was thinking about 1/6 and the recent copycat brazilian version as if they were psy ops. So, it goes like this: explicitly right wing group stages sad coup attempt against implicitly right wing authorities. Does not succeed. Causes increase in status quo support because the boogeyman fascism was averted. But 90% of their goals are moving full steam ahead. Win win for authoritarianism.

I'm not saying the participants do not earnestly want their coup to succeed or that if successful somehow they will not do great harm, but it is hard to see authoritarians trying to take over an authoritarian structure because it isn't horrible enough and not see aomething disingenupus in it.

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