brilliant comment overall.
i’d like to bring to discussion, though, the fact that many 20th century theorists have associated fascism to industrial and financial capital, but to me it seems that 21st century fascism is more tightly linked with landowners and agribusiness. if you check voting patterns in Brazil, the US and Italy it seems to corroborate that - at face value it looks like a fight between god hating cosmopolitan globohomos and common folk.

one of the best takes i’ve ever seen on hexbear

trotsky wasn’t reformist though

is this a bit

the tiny dildo soothers are pretty much the most iconic part of the 2018 election. he pretty much won that election on the back of fake news like that. :yea:

I mean… the radical left is taking these protests pretty seriously. Even MTST, which is pretty reformist and supported Lula from the first round, has instructed their chapters to organize themselves to help end fascist road blocks . Even if that weren’t the case the fact that “no one is taking these protests seriously” is not an argument in itself. People keep shrugging at fascists as incompetent goobers (which, to be clear, they are) up until the point that they take power, and then it’s way too late. Either we smash fascism before it’s born or we’ll suffer defeats to it in control of the State.

Not being a radical has never stopped the CIA from killing or couping popular leftist leaders in LatAm. A lot of CIA-backed repression in LatAm in the late 20th century eas against lame ass reformists or socdems. It doesn’t have anything to do with radicality, any vaguely leftist economic program will go against American interests, which is why despite being a super republican socdem Lula was politically persecuted.
He isn’t being smart, he’s being naive.

They have had plenty of socdem blunders since 2014, but I’ll limit myself to 2020 onwards. Last year a united leftist front organized protests against Bolsonaro’s government, his mishandling of the pandemic and the increase in hunger among the brazilian people. The Worker’s Party and a few other reformist parties tried to boycott the protests, when it became obvious that wasn’t feasible, some tried to call off their members from going to the protests the day before, attempting to weaken them. The protests ended up being a massive success, they were being scheduled every few weeks and Bolsonaro’s approval rate was melting off. After a certain decline in his approval, the reformist parties decided not to rock the boat too much and consciously avoided pressuring congress to go ahead with an impeachment process. They stopped participating in the protests. It is worth mentioning that at this point there were talks of organizing strikes to further undermine Bolsonaro and that the biggest unions in the country are aligned with the Worker’s Party. They wanted Bolsonaro in the presidency with a weaker government so that Lula would get what they thought would be an easy dub come this october. I don’t even have to explain what a fucking dogshit approach this was. They let up on Bolsonaro to double down on electoral politics when they could’ve dealt Brazilian fascism an absolutely massive blow.

Now, they double down yet again on bourgeois institutions against fascism, when historically that has never played out in the working class’ favor. It is also important to note that in 2016 Dilma Rousseff, president of Brazil and member of the Worker’s Party, was couped through a sham impeachment process. After thar PT members started being persecuted for corruption, notably ending in the wrongful arrest and imprisonment of Lula. So after years of being failed by bourgeois institutions the party leadership still refuses to be the masters of their own destinies. They have the apparatus of the biggest party in Brazil (and probably LatAm) at their disposal, yet their petit-bourgeois sensibilities stop them from doing so. Their (lack of) decision making is not only shameful and pathetic, it is borderline irrational.

it’d be significantly less cringe if that were the case. they are socdems, don’t need any help betraying working people with naive idealism.

This article offers a decent summary, just keep in mind that the military is not distancing itself from politics lol They are probably just weighing their options, most notably the complete lack of international support for a coup. Still, if push comes to shove and the Worker’s Party keeps cowering from any show of force from the people I have no doubt that either we’ll see a coup before Lula takes office or a very organized, emboldened fascist movement that will take power before the end of the decade.