In the evening of 16/9/2020 at Thessaloniki, Greece, during a social intervention, anti-fascists were collectively erasing fascist hate slogans and graffiti, which were written a few days earlier by members of the new neo-Nazi party “Greeks for Fatherland” (Έλληνες για την Πατρίδα) - founded by Ilias Kassidiaris, an ex-representative of the Nazi party “Golden Dawn” (Χρυσή Αυγή) – and replacing them by antifascist graffiti instead. Around 10:30 PM our comrades were surrounded by a large group of police forces that attacked them without reason. Fifty-one comrades were taken into custody to the Police General Headquarters in Thessaloniki and kept there 2 to 4 days under the most deplorable conditions. In total, fifteen of them were injured while another two were even admitted to the hospital due to the heavy injuries caused by the police officers involved in the attack. Both during the arrest and under custody, the police did not cease to provoke and abuse their power - the ability to rule and control given to them by the state -, attempting to break the spirit of our comrades.

International statement of solidarity with the 51 antifascists who were arrested in Thessaloniki, Greece, on 16/9/2020.

In the evening of 16/9/2020 at Thessaloniki, Greece, during a social intervention, antifascists were collectively erasing fascist hate slogans and graffiti, which were written a few days earlier by members of the new neo-Nazi party “Greeks for Fatherland” (Έλληνες για την Πατρίδα) - founded by Ilias Kassidiaris, an ex-representative of the Nazi party “Golden Dawn” (Χρυσή Αυγή) – and replacing them by antifascist graffiti instead. Around 10:30 PM our comrades were surrounded by a large group of police forces that attacked them without reason. Fifty-one comrades were taken into custody to the Police General Headquarters in Thessaloniki and kept there 2 to 4 days under the most deplorable conditions. In total, fifteen of them were injured while another two were even admitted to the hospital due to the heavy injuries caused by the police officers involved in the attack. Both during the arrest and under custody, the police did not cease to provoke and abuse their power - the ability to rule and control given to them by the state -, attempting to break the spirit of our comrades.

The 51 antifascists arrested were presented before the prosecutor and the investigator who made the following outrageous and untrue accusations against them: i) disobedience, because they refused to have their fingerprints and photos taken; ii) breach of the public peace (a very common charge that is pressed against the accused whenever there is a protest); iii) destruction of the public site, for antifascists painted graffiti and slogans with antifascist content to cover the fascist ones. This proves us that, apparently, for the greek bourgeois “justice” courts the only permitted form of speech to be written on the walls of the city is fascist hate speech; iv) violation of the law on the protection of antiquities; v) illegal possession of weapons, for the activists who attended wielded anarchist flags and helmets; and vi) criminal prosecution for “monument damage”. That last claim was made by the curator of antiquities, which had no problem supporting this obscene lie, even though the “monument” which was damaged is nothing less but some benches located near the actual historical monument of Thessaloniki, the White Tower. What is also interesting about such a claim is that the construction of those benches in 2008, which were part of Vasilis Papageorgopoulos’s plan for business regeneration, was the one who destroyed the area around the historical monument of the city. Papageorgopoulos is no one less but the former city mayor and member of the now ruling right-wing party New Democracy, who was set free from prison after embezzling 30.000.000 euros from the municipal funds. Not unexpectedly, the antifascist slogans were easily cleaned the following days by the city street cleaners, of course leaving intact the fascist ones.

This provocative attack against the members of the anti-fascist movement demonstrates the true colors of capitalist oppression and the State's tolerance towards the fascists, whom they constantly nourish as their most reactionary reserve. What happened on September 16 against our comrades is for us an evident provocation by the state and the police, coinciding with the annual antifascist demonstration on the anniversary of the assassination of Pavlos Fyssas (anti-fascist hip hop musician who was murdered by members of Golden Dawn only a few days away from this year's incidents) and with the completion of the trial against the criminal neo-Nazi organization Golden Dawn (in which the prosecutor gave favorable treatment to the Nazis). And yet, on September 18 massive demonstrations took place all over the country and gave out a strong message of resistance and struggle against the State, the capitalists, and the fascists' involvement within the State. In the city of Thessaloniki alone, around 3000 protestors filled the streets for the antifascist demonstration.

We will not let our comrades or any member of the anti-capitalist and anti-fascist movement fall into the hands of state oppression. Our solidarity towards the antifascists arrested on September 16 will endlessly be provided. It is our collective obligation to create a safety net to defend them before the vindictive prosecution of the State. Offering political support and solidarity to our comrades is part of our duty as members of the international anti-fascist movement. As anarchists and anti-fascists we will stand by them in all ways possible, continuing our unwavering collective fight for social emancipation and contributing to the achievement of proletarian justice.

NO TO THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF THE 51 ANTI-FASCISTS WHO WERE ARRESTED IN THESSALONIKI, GREECE, ON 16/9/2020
UNCOMPROMISING INTERNATIONALIST AND CLASS STRUGGLE AGAINST THOSE WHO OPPRESS THE WORKING CLASS DEATH TO FASCISM
SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON

☆ Αναρχική Ομοσπονδία (Greece)
☆ Federación Anarquista de Rosario (Argentina)
☆ Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement (New Zealand/Aotearoa)
☆ Federación Anarquista Santiago (Chile)
☆ Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (Uruguay)
☆ Coordenaçao Anarquista Brasileira (Brazil)
☆ Organización Anarquista de Córdoba (Argentina)
☆ Die Plattform-Anarchakommunistische Organisation (Germany)
☆ Libertaere Aktion (Switzerland)
☆ Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland)
☆ Anarchist Communist Group (Great Britain)
☆ Grupo Libertario Vía Libre (Colombia)
☆ Alternativa Libertaria / FdCA (Italy)
☆ Organisation Socialiste Libertaire (Switzerland)
☆ Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (South Africa)
☆ Union Communiste Libertaire (France)
☆ Embat, Organització Libertària de Catalunya (Catalonia)

In The Dangerous Class: The Concept of the Lumpenproletariat (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming 2020), I argue that US President Donald Trump should be understood as a “Prince of the Lumpenproletariat.” The question that will confront us on November 3rd and long afterward is whether Donald Trump will become “Emperor of the Lumpenproletariat.” These terms are taken from Karl Marx’s 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, where he applied them to Louis Bonaparte III. I argue that Trump has followed the script of the 18th Brumaire, which is the story of the exceptional rise to power of a lumpenproletariat organized and led by an authoritarian populist.

Marx described Louis Bonaparte III as an authoritarian dictator:

“who constitutes himself chief of the Lumpenproletariat, who here alone rediscovers in mass form the interests which he personally pursues, who recognises in this scum, offal, refuse of all classes [i.e., the lumpenproletariat] the only class upon which he can base himself unconditionally… An old crafty roué, he conceives the historical life of the nations and their performances of state as comedy in the most vulgar sense, as a masquerade where the grand costumes, words and postures merely serve to mask the pettiest knavery… the serious buffoon who no longer takes world history for a comedy but his comedy for world history.”[1]

In his preface to a second edition of the 18th Brumaire, Marx observed that the purpose of his book had been to “demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relations that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part.” It is no coincidence that the cover of Time (June 18, 2018) features an image of Donald Trump looking at his reflection in the mirror and seeing a king reflected back in the mirror. The July 4, 2018 New York Daily News portrays Trump as “the clown who plays King.” The language used to describe the Trump Administration as a theatrical but dangerous “clown show” played out on a world stage is remarkably similar to Marx’s description of Louis Bonaparte in the 18th Brumaire.

Longing for Greatness, Again

In the 18th Brumaire, Marx chronicles the defection of the peasantry and the urban petite bourgeoisie from the February Revolution of 1848, because even though they were “working classes,” they were also small proprietors whose commitment to private property made them leery of the more radical demands for a social republic put forward by the industrial proletariat in the ensuing June Days. These classes were not only threatened by the ‘socialistic’ demands of the proletariat; they were also nostalgic for an older capitalism based on local small producers and small farmers (peasants), who had flocked to the armies of Emperor Napoleon I – a dictator who had once made France great for them. As Marx observed, the urban and rural petit bourgeoisie longed to make France great again.

In the 18th Brumaire, Marx also identified numerous fractions of the bourgeoisie, which was far from unified in its preferred response to the revolutionary proletariat and even in its commitment to a republic in any form. The bourgeoisie, as Marx defined it, included large landowners (real estate), the finance aristocracy (bankers), large industrialists, and the professions – senior officers of the army, university intellectuals, priests, lawyers, and the press. The division of interest within the bourgeoisie, and the nostalgic longings of the peasants and the petite bourgeoisie, set the stage for Louis Bonaparte’s election as president of the Second Republic in December 1848. However, with little support in the French National Assembly, and facing the prospect that he would have to leave office due to a likely electoral defeat in 1854, Louis Bonaparte staged a coup d’état on December 2, 1851, with the support of army officers, who led the Mobile Guard and then the Society of 10 December, and the approving acquiescence of the finance aristocracy.

Bonaparte had initially won an election with support from the finance aristocracy and the votes of the rural and urban petit bourgeoisie, who were swayed by his promise to reduce their taxes and his pledge to make France great again. However, Bonaparte’s coup d’état ultimately relied on the mass support and violence of the lumpenproletariat. Marx and Engels did not consider the lumpenproletariat capable of independent political action, because of its dependent position at the margins of capitalism. Thus, when the lumpenproletariat does become politically active, it is often because it has been organized into in the political arena by other classes, although the lumpenproletariat is usually brought into the class struggle by the ruling class as a counterweight to the proletariat’s superior numbers. The ruling class will most often enlist the lumpenproletariat as “bribed tools of reactionary intrigue” by enrolling them in counterrevolutionary militias and special police forces directed against the working class. A uniform, a steady salary, medical care, a pension, and a gun are an appealing “bribe” to someone whose “conditions of life” offer no prospects for the future.

When Louis Bonaparte was elected President of Second Republic, he first relied on the Mobile Guard, which was the military arm of the Republican Provisional Government. Bonaparte disbanded the Mobile Guard and replaced them with a secret society called the Society of 10 December – the Decembrists – which had been organized by military officers seeking to ensure the election of Louis Napoleon as president of the Republic of France on December 10, 1848. Marx describes the Mobile Guard (and later the Decembrists) as belonging:

“for the most part to the lumpenproletariat… a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds, living on the crumbs of society, people without a definite trade, vagabonds, gens sans feu et sans aveu, varying according to the degree of civilisation of the nation to which they belong, but never renouncing their lazzaroni character.”[2]

Bonaparte’s coup d’état was made possible by the armed support of the lumpenproletariat and it was tolerated by the finance aristocracy so long as the latter class was allowed to pillage the state treasury with mounting public debt and corrupt financial schemes – “the pettiest knavery” pursued openly in public view, while the petit-bourgeoisie is quite literally lulled into a narcotic coma with promises of making the nation great again. Similarly, Trump promises to return the United States to its traditional (if mythical) way of life – white men working good jobs in mines and factories, intact nuclear families, Protestant religious values, and manifest destiny.

There is nothing new about the reactionary and nostalgic longings of the American petit-bourgeoisie, which has always suffered from what Richard Hofstadter called status-anxiety when squeezed by economic power of corporate and finance capital and the demands of a proletariat demanding higher wages and more public services (e.g., universal healthcare, free higher education). What is new in the United States, however, is the rise of a white lumpenproletariat, which now similarly is moved by nostalgic masculine images of a time when American men mined iron ore, oil, copper, coal, and bauxite from American soil, built automobiles sold around the world, and built military and civilian aircraft that dominated the world’s skies. Some political economists still call this class a deindustrialized proletariat, but the problem with the latter term is that these ‘masses’ are no longer a proletariat and they never will be again in their lifetimes. They have fallen into the ranks of the lumpenproletariat and, as Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto, they have become “the ‘dangerous class’, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”

Under President Donald Trump, there has been a massive expansion of special federal police forces with paramilitary capabilities and they are profoundly loyal to the president. One can substitute Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs & Border Protection (CBP), and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) for the Mobile Guard.[3] The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified 165 armed militia groups in the United States, including the Oath Keepers and the 3 Percenters, and this tally does not include numerous run-of-the-mill thugs like Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys. Donald Trump has an army of lumpenproletarian shock troops that he can activate on “December 2” to raise himself from the status of Prince to Emperor. President Trump has long boasted that his own security team is “rough” with those who challenge him and he encourages local police to not to be concerned about preventing physical harm to people being taken into custody.[4]

Meanwhile, the President’s HSI “jump out boys” whisk away protestors in unmarked vehicles with no official markings to identify them as law enforcement officers.[5] President Trump refers to armed neo-Nazis, fascists, and white supremacists as “fine people” and he hints that civil war is looming by claiming that “I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough – until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”[6]

This is the script of the Eighteenth Brumaire. This is the Chief of the Lumpenproletariat, who gleefully declares that “I love the poorly educated!”[7] Yet, from the standpoint of class analysis, it is therefore important to recognize that the mere act of removing Donald Trump from the Office of the President will not reverse the underlying logic of post-industrial capitalist development that has led to the rise of an angry and violent white lumpenproletariat. Donald Trump did not cause the white lumpenproletariat, although his words and actions have mobilized and unleashed them in a variety of alt-right, neo-Nazi, fascist, and white nationalist organizations, including armed militias that will probably become more active if Trump is denied the presidency.

The emergence of a white lumpenproletariat is the result of a long-term process of class formation that has generated an army of counter-revolutionary shock troops that will not disappear because of an election. The lumpenproletariat is armed and dangerous and, consequently, no matter the outcome of the 2020 election, a question will remain as to what is to be done with the white lumpenproletariat? In case you are wondering, The Dangerous Class is a pessimistic book and it does not have a happy ending – at least not in the foreseeable future.

Endnotes
Karl Marx. “Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in Marx-Engels Collected Works, (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1979), Vol. 11, pp. 149-50. Elsewhere, Karl Marx, “189 Marx to Engels in Manchester [London] 12 October 1853,” in Marx-Engels Collected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1983), Vol. 39, p. 388 refers to Louis Bonaparte as “the lumpenproletarian emperor.”
Karl Marx, “The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850,” Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 10 (September 1849-June 1851), p. 62. Italics added by author. Cowling, “Can Marxism Make Sense of Crime,” p. 59 correctly concludes that Marx and Engels “associated crime with the lumpenproletariat,” but only to the degree that it is a “recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kind,” but they do not view the lumpenproletariat, as a whole, as a criminal underclass.
Mitchell Ferman and Manny Fernandez, “In the Rio Grande Valley, the Border Patrol is the ‘Go-To’ Job,” New York Times, April 14, 2019.
Philip Bump, “Trump’s Speech Encouraging Police to Be ‘Rough’, Annotated,” The Washington Post, July 28, 2017.
Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg, “Think Federal Cops in Portland are Scary? Cops Use ‘Jump Out Boys’ All the Time,” The Guardian, July 29, 2020.
David Jackson, “Donald Trump Stirs Controversy with Breitbart Interview About His ‘Tough’ Supporters,” USA Today, March 15, 2019.
Dylan Stableford, “Donald Trump: I Love the Poorly Educated,” February 24, 2016, YahooNews.com.; Maya Oppenheim, “Jared Kushner ‘Admitted Donald Trump Lies to His Base Because He Thinks They’re Stupid,” The Independent, May 31, 2017.
Clyde W. Barrow is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He is the author of Toward a Critical Theoy of States: The Poulantzas-Miliband Debate After Globalization (SUNY Press, 2016) and his newest book is The Dangerous Class: The Concept of the Lumpenproletariat (University of Michigan Press, 2020).

Divido esse artigo em três partes para um debate urgente, que deixou de estar no universo da imaginação para entrar na conjectura especulativa. Nas últimas semanas a pergunta “vai ter golpe?” tornou-se recorrente em diversos debates. E reconhecemos que existe algo de muito podre na República do Bananistão. O texto que segue se dedica a especular sobre possíveis manobras da extrema-direita no país. Não me dedico a tentar “dar linha” pela internet, considero essa posição pretensiosa e desnecessária, já que tomo como únicas linhas possíveis as tomadas em decisões coletivas dentro de partidos, coletivos, movimentos e demais agrupações mais à esquerda. Como disse o mestre Lupicínio Rodrigues, aos quem têm “nervos de aço”, vamos ao debate.

Por Bruno Lima Rocha - 21 de junho de 2020 - charge de Rafael Costa
Divido esse artigo em três partes para um debate urgente, que deixou de estar no universo da imaginação para entrar na conjectura especulativa. Nas últimas semanas a pergunta “vai ter golpe?” tornou-se recorrente em diversos debates. E reconhecemos que existe algo de muito podre na República do Bananistão. O texto que segue se dedica a especular sobre possíveis manobras da extrema-direita no país. Não me dedico a tentar “dar linha” pela internet, considero essa posição pretensiosa e desnecessária, já que tomo como únicas linhas possíveis as tomadas em decisões coletivas dentro de partidos, coletivos, movimentos e demais agrupações mais à esquerda. Como disse o mestre Lupicínio Rodrigues, aos quem têm “nervos de aço”, vamos ao debate.
Primeiro debate – Vai ter golpe?
Quero arriscar a projeção de alguns cenários. Reconheço o risco político de golpe e afirmo, com certo nível de especulação, que não passa de 20%, mas que pode entrar em espiral de incertezas, diante daquilo que não é mais possível de ser planejado. Creio que a única forma de haver um golpe de Estado no Brasil atual seria uma espécie de autogolpe tutelado com o clã Bolsonaro à frente e com apoio direto das Forças Armadas, intermediadas pelo quase 3.000 militares que ocupam cargos na administração federal do atual desgoverno. A fórmula do autogolpe não é uma novidade na América Latina (Bordaberry no Uruguai, em 1973, Fujimori no Peru, em 1992) e tampouco no Brasil, com a implantação do Estado Novo, em 1937. Nas três ocasiões, o líder golpista civil, incluindo Vargas, contou com apoio incondicional do alto comando das forças armadas, sendo que já vinham se preparando para a tomada parcial ou total do poder de Estado. Logo, ao estabelecer tamanho contingente na gestão direta da União, militares de carreira podem pensar que se sentem preparados para assumir um governo, mas jamais para novamente tomar conta do Estado, como fizeram em 1964.
Que tipo de motivação pode haver para um autogolpe resultando num golpe de Estado, com Bolsonaro à frente, mas diante de pressão e tutela dos generais de seu governo? Vejo como única possibilidade a cassação da chapa Bolsonaro-Mourão, pelo Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE). Não vislumbro, caso essa decisão seja tomada na mais alta corte eleitoral do país, possibilidades de que o núcleo mais duro do bolsonarismo aceite a resolução. Logo, de imediato, seria necessária a quebra evidente da disciplina militar, seja por parte do Exército Brasileiro ou mesmo de setores inteiros de Polícias Militares nos estados, talvez em estados-chave (como Rio, São Paulo ou Minas Gerais), quiçá no Distrito Federal (unidade da federação que não considero defensável, caso o governo distrital se mantenha legalista) ou, numa jogada de mestre, sublevar algum governo estadual comandado pela centro-esquerda (como Bahia, Maranhão e Ceará).
Entre uma decisão do TSE e algum recurso impetrado no STF estaríamos diante de uma escalada de mobilização de forças políticas, sociais, econômicas (sim, porque parte do empresariado que apoiou Bolsonaro em 2018 recuaria), com ênfase dentro dos estamentos que comandam os aparelhos Judiciário (incluindo os MPs), Policial (militarizado ou civil) e militar. Existe alguma ala legalista acima de tudo? Existem generais, almirantes e brigadeiros dispostos a ir às ultimas consequências para assegurar o arremedo de ordem constitucional que sobrevivera ao golpe com apelido de impeachment de 2016? Sinceramente não sei e desconfio que inexista. Ao mesmo tempo, reconheço que ao que se anuncia nos grandes portais que ainda se reivindicam como jornalísticos, tais pontes e relações de segurança estariam sendo construídas em todo momento.
Segundo debate: primeiro bloco de angústias
A baderna militar pode anteceder a tomada do poder pelos generais de Bolsonaro? Tal tomada de poder pode constituir uma ordem política nova, de tipo semi-parlamentarista, algo fundamental para garantir tanto a estabilidade da república como também a imutabilidade das relações de privilégio e acumulação de riquezas e recursos de poder? Seria possível forjar uma saída tão rápida em pouco tempo? Se esse suposto semi-parlamentarismo for implantado, o modelo é transferível ao menos para os governos estaduais? Quais dos poderes fáticos da república e dos blocos de poder e interesses identificados e com envergadura nacional estariam se antecipando? Por exemplo: no pré-1964, o plano de contingência seria um governo rebelde à direita com Magalhães Pinto em Minas Gerais, co-governo da UDN com a milicada fascistóide. Por isso que o general integralista Olympio Mourão Filho arrancou pela Rio-Bahia para tomar a Guanabara. Paratal, Magalhães, Lacerda e o impagável Adhemar de Barros fizeram viagens à Washington, tomaram a bênção do futuro finado John F. Kennedy e receberam garantias da embaixada do Império que receberiam reforço militar. Não foi necessário à época. Já agora não tem nada disso. Será que o viralatismo fardado se arrisca a tal ponto sem a garantia de apoio explícito dos gringos? É de se duvidar, mas operações paralelas sempre se desenvolvem nos Estados Unidos.
Dúvidas cruéis e de tirar o sono – segundo bloco de angústias
Realmente admito e entendo que estamos por diante de uma escalada do risco político. Quando Romero Jucá proclamou o arranjo de quase todos para safar da Lava Jato, trouxe a ideia de que seria “com o Supremo, com tudo”. Enquanto isso, nos quarteis, a milicada disse que não iria interferir. Por que não interferir? Aponto quatro possíveis razões: uma é a cruzada moralista do tipo “revolução colorida”, em que o vento a favor jogava o poder político no colo do Nosferatu Adhemarista, que traria um protagonismo de generais muito ressabiados com a Comissão da Verdade (tímida, incompleta e que não resultou em justiça de transição). A segunda é a aparência de legalidade, com os Lavajeteiros Made in U$A deitando e rolando nos terninhos, nas caras e bocas, com seu linguajar punitivista e o aval dos gringos. Uma terceira, porque houve a aparência de legalidade o tempo todo, mesmo quando o Marreco da Republiqueta de Curitiba assumia todos os riscos de fraude processual, com o famoso “não temos provas, mas temos convicções!”, dito pelo Danoninho em rede nacional. A quarta e última é o fator inequívoco que, com transmissões ao vivo e a cores, a Globo e outras emissoras transmitiam as versões contemporâneas dos fariseus, entreguistas, vigaristas de todos os tamanhos, enquanto os “meninos do Brazil”, do MBL e outras excrescências, clamavam por mais “Marchas com ‘deus’ pela democracia de mercado e o fim dos direitos sociais!”. Nada disso acontece agora, muito pelo contrário, e essa ausência não deixa de ser um alento.
O viralatismo fardado está presente – terceiro bloco de angústias
Por outro lado, o fator militar não estava presente e menos ainda se tinha a legitimação de 57 milhões de votos para um mentecapto que não sabe o que é governar. No balanço de contas, mesmo que eleito, Bolsonaro ganha o campeonato de crimes de responsabilidade, comanda um ministério de alucinados e se recusa a governar durante a pandemia. Talvez ele nunca baixe de 25% e jamais ultrapasse novamente os 30% de apoio. Vejam bem, estou falando de chance de autogolpe com virada de mesa e regime de força com a cassação da chapa pelo TSE. Esse não é caso de impeachment com Mourão assumindo numa gambiarra de tipo semi-parlamentarista e com algum cardeal da política, como Rodrigo Mais (DEM-RJ), dando as cartas e servindo de fiador com os grupos de mídia, o baronato financeiro, os grandes capitais ainda operando no Brasil e o cada vez mais delicado equilíbrio entre os estamentos à frente dos aparelhos de Estado, com carreiras perenes.
Será que os generais, brigadeiros e almirantes arriscariam tomar o poder estando à frente do Poder Executivo, subordinando os demais poderes oficiais e fáticos do país? Será que a ditadura de 1964 consolidaria um regime com regras autoritárias, se não fosse a azeitada máquina do SNI e depois da Guerra Interna? Evidente que não. E como agora não tem nada disso, existe sim um risco real de associação ao bolsonarismo, por cumplicidade de nada haver feito durante a pandemia.
Terceira parte – o que implicaria uma tomada de poder pela força de um autogolpe
Conjecturas de horror. Quando da decisão pelo TSE, se houvesse uma manobra de tipo autogolpe, o Distrito Federal, mais especificamente, o Plano Piloto, teria de estar sob Estado de Sítio, com toque de recolher e dispositivo de tropas federais, subordinadas ao Comando Militar do Planalto. Uma imagem semelhante ao ocorrido quando da votação das Diretas Já, em 25 de abril de 1984. Mas, naquele momento, já havia no país aquilo que os clássicos da transição política chamariam de Diarquia, com os governos estaduais sob comando da oposição, sendo que, na época, o aparelho destes poderes sub-nacionais ainda estava intacto (contando, inclusive, com bancos e instrumentos de política econômica para emitir títulos e créditos).
Se hoje o país é mais centralizado na União, na década de ’80 já não era tanto, ainda estando sob o comando dos palácios de governadores uma coleção de instituições importantes. Restam no âmbito estadual os aparelhos Judiciários e Correcionais, incluindo nestes últimos as polícias civis e os departamentos de sistema prisional. Imaginando a crise das crises, parto da premissa que a extrema-direita só arriscaria um golpe se tivesse uma certeza da cadeia de lealdades das PMs, cujos coronéis se subordinariam aos comandos golpistas e prenderiam os governadores estaduais. Os poderes seriam cercados como no golpe de Yeltsin contra o parlamento russo, em janeiro de 1994. Tanques e tropas de combate cercariam os palácios dos poderes federais e estaduais, incluindo os Tribunais de Justiça dos estados. Ao mesmo tempo, não daria conta comunicar aos seguidores da extrema direita apenas através das redes sociais.
No campo da comunicação social, não basta tuitar desesperadamente. Necessariamente precisariam tomar os estúdios da Globo e afiliadas, ao menos das maiores, incluindo as instalações da emissora líder no Rio, São Paulo e Belo Horizonte. Simultaneamente, seria necessário uma aliança com conglomerados midiáticos à disposição, como um pool de redes de fariseus e daqueles que “topam tudo por dinheiro”. Imediatamente, algum sentido de ordem deveria ser imposto, silenciando as oposições institucionais e reprimindo com vontade os focos de resistência popular. Quase sempre isso não dá certo se não tiver um apoio da população disposta a se mobilizar pelos golpistas. Jango tinha mais de 70% de apoio em todas as classes, mas a direita golpista era barulhenta e contava com todo o vento a favor nas frações organizadas das classes dominantes. O risco de “quebra da hierarquia militar”, com a sindicalização de soldados, cabos, sargentos e suboficiais motivou a adesão de comandos de tropas ao putsch de 1º de abril de 1964. Agora seria tudo ao contrário.
Entendo que o período imediatamente posterior a essa aventura tresloucada dos galinhas verdes, pintinhos amarelos, fascistoides de pijama e outras aberrações seria de muita repressão, mas também abundando o caos e o desgoverno. Se a baderna militar começar, o seu final é o imponderável absoluto, mas, necessariamente, passam pelo controle sobre os governos estaduais, o poder judiciário nos estados e o mesmo em nível federal. Também implica em subalternizar as polícias judiciárias, a saber, as Polícias Civis estaduais e a toda poderosa Polícia Federal.
Seria possível centralizar os poderes da república em torno do Poder Executivo federal e, ao mesmo tempo, subalternizar os governos subnacionais de estados e capitais ao menos? Possivelmente não, mas isso não significa que seja absolutamente inviável e, menos ainda, que os decrépitos herdeiros de Sylvio Frotta, João Paulo Burnier e Carlos Penna Botto não tentem e quiçá, desgraçadamente, venham a ser temporariamente bem sucedidos.
Alguma conclusão
Não sei se um movimento como esse pode ser bem sucedido nas manobras táticas, nem qual seria o objetivo estratégico tipo “segurança nacional e desenvolvimento”, nas versões mais ponderadas de Golbery do Couto e Silva, ou do suposto “potenciômetro” de Carlos de Meira Mattos. A soma caricata e ridícula de extrema direita com entreguismo, o protofascismo com mentalidade “marielita miamera”, e “Zeus, Patrão e Familícia”, com as festas de arromba do chuveiro dourado, não traz meta alguma de longo prazo, a não ser o desmonte das capacidades e recursos de nosso país.
Como disse o finado ditador Ernesto Geisel, “golpe é coisa muito séria”. Golpe teve em 1945, 1954, tentativa em 1955, 1957, 1959, vitória dos golpistas com a emenda parlamentarista em 1961, golpe de tomada do poder em 1964, golpe dentro do golpe em 1967 – com a Constituição autoritária e a posse de um marechal sucedendo a outro - e depois outro golpe dentro do golpe, em 13 de dezembro de 1968, com o AI-5. Mas, tomada do poder do Estado, pelo menos até onde sei, se deu no 1º de abril de 1964, um mês depois quando foi estabelecido o SNI como cabeça de um Sistema de vigilância. Aí havia um controle de acesso aos postos dentro do aparelho de Estado, ou seja, a tomada de controle e censura por dentro do Estado, uma sanfona que poderia esticar ou apertar.
Por mais que haja controle ou alguma verticalidade dentro da caserna com roupas civis ocupando milhares de postos no desgoverno Bolsonaro, a situação está muito, mas muito distante do tipo de conspiração que a literatura da ciência política e da história recente exaustivamente nos demonstra. Só não vejo como um gesto responsável ignorar completamente as bravatas e não supor - por algum mecanismo de negação – que uma parcela dessas falas não tenha alguma capacidade de serem materializadas. E mais: se as falas ameaçadoras são de autoridades constituídas, a ideia “fantasiosa” se esgota e acaba como uma projeção de possibilidades, com baixa proporção de ser realizada.
Por fim, peço, sugiro e suplico para que todas e todos que militem mais à esquerda tomem esse texto como uma projeção de um futuro possível, e que se organizem a partir daquilo que já está constituído. Temos um tecido social profundo e cada vez mais auto organizado, que jamais permitirá que o regime seja fechado para privilégios da extrema direita e uma escalada ainda mais repressiva. Sem bravatas e com os dois pés no chão: os povos dos Brasis conseguirão resistir a esse intento – caso ocorra – e avançarão nos direitos sociais, coletivos, individuais, difusos e de avançada, no rumo de uma democracia participativa, plena de direitos e com justiça social e reparadora.

Bruno Lima Rocha é pós-doutorando em economia política, doutor em ciência política e professor universitário nos cursos de Relações Internacionais, Jornalismo e Direito. Editor dos canais do “Estratégia & Análise, a análise política para a esquerda mais à esquerda”.
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Why write about sadism and shamelessness now? Because it’s worse, it’s complex and its causes and effects need to be better understood. Its physical and psychological manifestations are day-to-day, uninhibited, and public: daily extra-judicial police killings like George Floyd in Minneapolis, the police killing of 32-year-old Iyad el-Hallak in Jerusalem, Muslims in India.

Historian J. Huizinga 100 years ago wrote about the waning of the middle ages and poetically characterized “the violent tenor of life” at that time. He found that as things fall apart, salient tendencies become more extreme. Our modern age may be an especially awful waning of all human life, with an emergent “sadistic tenor of life” in many quarters across the world. Despite many laws against torture, cruel and unusual punishment, incitements to violence, and abuse of civilians’ and particularly children’s rights, state-sanctioned violence is now practiced with relish and impunity.

Can “genocide” be applied here descriptively or legally? Has the Holocaust and its usages contributed to reticence about the genocide question in current brutalities? Israel is one of many culpable nations but its practices focus questions about genocide. Michel Warschawski, director of the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem, wrote: “The whole society is sick, terribly sick.” In addition to the political sleeze of corruption and Israel’s limitless confiscation of land and resources, Israeli Jewish dissenters themselves report gratuitous sadism that is now manifest in many of Israel’s state-sanctioned responses to Palestinians in the time of pandemic and in its world trade in grotesque weaponry. There cannot be legitimate claims of “not knowing” about intentionally inflicted human disasters in well-documented cases like Gaza and Yemen, as there was by Germans about the Holocaust.

Silencing Debate
Just this past May 6th, a public letter by a number of Jewish academics was needed to defend historian and philosopher Achille Mbembe’s comparative use of the Holocaust: Mbembe was scheduled to speak at an academic conference but the German federal antisemitism commissioner banned him from delivering his paper because of his use of “holocaust” analogy. Mbembe compares South African apartheid with Israel and has written pointedly about Israel: “since all they are willing to offer is a fight to the finish, since what they are willing to do is to go all the way – carnage, destruction, incremental extermination – the time has come for global isolation.” In response to the German commissioner, “Some 600 leading Holocaust scholars asserted that banning analogies from the debate about the Holocaust is ‘a radical position that is far removed from mainstream scholarship on the Holocaust and genocide. And it makes learning from the past almost impossible’.”

Even more troubling is the fact that Israel has long attributed genocidal intentions to the Arab world in general, to Iran and to Hamas, and has successfully used these allegations in its foreign policy and military assaults against Gaza. Defending Operation Protective Edge in which Israel killed 550 Gazan children while one Israeli child was killed, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel wrote that the crisis in Gaza and Israel is a battle between “those who celebrate life and those who champion death… Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas’ turn,” the headline reads. In response, forty Holocaust survivors and 287 of their descendants signed a statement declaring that Israel is genocidal.

The title of this article is an allusion to psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich’s book about Nazism The Mass Psychology of Fascism. In contrast to Reich, I am not assuming a homogeneous mass. The same behavior has different functions, meanings, and causes for each person, and an individual person’s behavior may change in groups. Also, the appearance of social homogeneity may be due to many factors including punishment for dissent. Nor does the idea of a mass character trait indicate capacity to change individually or societally. What is considered here is the presence of uninhibited, public malicious sadism at the present time. I am also differentiating psychopathy from Reich’s “psychology” to describe a specific pathology in which there is no working conscience, no guilt, and no shame, in which being cruel typically evokes pleasure and pride.

Constructing the Biggest Ghetto
There has long been profound concern and moral indignation about similarities between Israeli and Nazi practices by some Jewish people. At the inception of Israeli statehood, Albert Einstein brought attention to the parallels between future prime minister Menachem Begin’s party and Nazis. His 1948 letter to the New York Times, co-signed by Hannah Arendt among others, was written when Begin came to the United States to gather support from American Zionists. Einstein wrote that Begin’s political party is “closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.” Einstein wrote about the terrorist massacre of the peaceful village of Deir Yassin and how Begin’s party even kept a few villagers alive “to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem.”

Quoting from the Olga Document, signed by over 100 prominent Israelis in 2004: “The State of Israel was supposed to tear down the walls of the ghetto; it is now constructing the biggest ghetto in the entire history of the Jews; …it has set up a colonial structure, combining unmistakable elements of apartheid with the arbitrariness of brutal military occupation – in the heart of darkness.” They state that Palestinians are depicted as “sub-human.” This is “seconded and assisted by members of the cultural elite, media barons, vain functionaries and light-scribblers, right and left.”

Yitzhak Laor of Tel Aviv University asked why the “Holocaust Day drew a ridiculous comparison between those of us in the besieged Warsaw Ghetto and those of us surrounding the besieged Jenin refugee camp?” “Gas chambers are not the only way to destroy a nation. It is enough to destroy its social tissue, to starve dozens of villages, to induce high rates of infant mortality.”[1]

Michel Warschawski describes photos of soldiers “forcing men and women to crawl on their knees, run naked or roll in the mud…” They order “men to the right, women to the left” just like Auschwitz. He cites an article “‘From Tatooed to Tattoer’, reporting that Palestinians were having numbers tattooed on their arms.” A high-ranking Israeli army officer explained that they had to “learn from others’ experiences, including the way the German troops took control of the Warsaw Ghetto.”[2]

Nurit Peled-Elhanan, professor of education and recipient of Sakharov Prize, whose 13 year old daughter was killed in a suicide attack, testified at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, said that “The Star of David is equated with rallies all over the world to the swastika… When peace becomes negatively associated with the destruction of Israel and presented as an existential threat.”

Norman Finkelstein describes the “Kristallnacht-like-assault on Islamic houses of worship in Gaza by Israel’s military in 2014.” Israel “… every couple of years launches – with overwhelming popular support and without a hint of remorse – yet another high-tech blitzkrieg against a defenseless, trapped civilian population…”[3]

Acknowledging Sadism
Sadism is seductively exciting. Noam Chomsky, in a chapter called “Exterminate all the Brutes,” writes of “formidable military might exercised with extreme savagery,” passing from “merely vicious to truly sadistic.”(p. 115) “Since the terms ‘aggression’ and ‘terrorism’ are inadequate, some new term is needed for the sadistic and cowardly torture of people caged with no possibility of escape.”(p. 90) Chomsky quotes former Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan of the Israel Defense Forces and former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir: the Palestinians are like “drugged cockroaches scurrying around in a bottle…. [They are] like grasshoppers compared to us” so their heads can be “smashed against the boulders and walls.”[4]

Journalist Amira Hass describes the “most moral army” after its raid on the offices of the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Culture in Ramallah. “In every room of the various departments – literature, film, culture for children and youth, books, discs, pamphlets and documents were piled up, soiled with urine and excrement…. in emptied flowerpots, even in drawers they had pulled out of the desk. Someone even managed to defecate into a photocopier.”

In an interview that took place during the fourth international session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP) in New York City, November 6-7, 2012, Nurit Peled-Elhanan analyzes school books published during leftist and right-wing education ministries. “Children are taught that massacres confer dignity and pride on the military. From kindergarten to grade 12, the military is the idol, role model and god of the Israel youth. Jews are depicted as superior and emblematic of universal values whereas a ‘Palestinian life does not count as life.’” Palestinians are described as “cockroaches, non-human vermin, creatures who should be stamped out.” “The mythological heroes are fearless murderers.” Israelis are “prepared to sacrifice their children on the ‘altar of their leaders’ megalomania, greed and bloodthirstiness’.”

Psychological Perspectives
Psychoanalysts working with delinquent adolescents have found that in some cases, parents foster and reward their child’s psychopathy. Avi Mograbi’s documentary Avenge But One of My Two Eyes shows the ways Israeli children from very early childhood through late adolescence are taught by adults in authority that disproportionate aggression is exciting and heroic. They repeatedly hear that “Samson the Hero had a spiritual power. Every punch of his would kill 10,000 people.” In one scene at Masada a group is asked to look at the remains of the cruel “separation wall” and the watchtowers built by the Romans. They are told to empathize with the ancient victims, to listen to their feelings, and to choose what they would do if under siege. They cheerfully said that if they were going to die they might as well kill their enemy at the same time. Not one connects this with the Gaza siege. Mograbi’s film shows the psychopathic process of how Israel intentionally provokes a Palestinian response that is used as a pretext for Israel’s overwhelming Samson reaction. Palestinians carry the guilt and Israel revels in self-righteous power.

Victimhood can lead to empathy, or alternatively, to a sense of being an exception, to entitlement, or at worst to a psychopathic rationalization of exploitation. In newsreels, the people of neighboring Sderot, an Israeli settlement, depicted as terrified victims of a possible Hamas attack, did not seem fearful as they sat on lawn chairs watching the massacre of Gaza.

What is the effect on the children of Gaza who observe first-hand sadism against their parents? The late Dr. El-Sarraj, founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, writing in 2008, in words that sill fit the military occupation today, “For many of these children the most excruciating ordeal was to see their fathers being beaten by Israeli soldiers – and not offering any resistance. This is truly a terrifying experience… This will have a lasting impact on any observer, but particularly on children. No wonder the Palestinian child will see his model not in his father, but in that soldier; and no wonder his language will be the language of force and his toys and games the toys and games of violence.”

Institutions
The UN preamble is “We the people of the United Nations…” Are the global people taught about the UN, do they have personhood status, and do they have a voice? In videotaped testimonies, Holocaust survivors speak of the crucial ability to see and feel others’ humanness, and at times they even saw soldiers refrain from killing when that human connectedness happened. On May 11, 2020, Palestinian legal, human rights, and medical organizations sent a report to the British Medical Journal “highlighting the lack of any meaningful progress toward accountability in these and other cases even though the UN investigation clearly recognized that Israeli snipers intentionally shot at journalists, health workers, children and persons with disabilities.”

International law expert Richard Falk remarks on the psychopathy built into the UN: “the global legalization of such rogue behavior is embedded in the UN Charter, most openly expressed by vesting a right of veto in the five permanent members of the Security Council, the only organ within the UN system with the authority to reach binding decisions. In effect, the UN Charter rather shockingly acknowledges the uncontrollability of the five political actors, although these are the states that most endanger international peace and security.”

To summarize: physical and psychological sadism is practiced with impunity and even with pride and now plays a deadly part along with other forces in societies. The focus on Israel shows its historical continuity in that society, how it is rationalized in such a way to reflect an ideal and necessary way of protecting society rather than depravity, how it is cultivated and generated in that society from early childhood and evoked in excited and pleasurable experiences of power and sadism, how the genocide is used to claim exceptionalism and to reverse culpability, and how the international regulatory institutions have failed and that collusion with violence is built into the very structure of the UN Security Council. The representation and reversal of vicious practice as virtuous and legalized enactment is not untypical, and examples include Obama’s kill lists to Mao’s cultural revolution, to many current leaders’ (including women) machismo, to the financial institutions imposing killer debt. In the US right now, there are massive outcries of indignation erupting over the police killing of George Floyd. Indignation and moral revulsion about shameless psychopathy trigger these actions. Bus drivers in New York and Minneapolis refuse to transport police to protests and protesters to jails:

“‘As a transit worker and union member I refuse to transport my class and radical youth to jail’, Adam Burch, a 32-year-old bus driver for Metro Transit in Minneapolis and a member of ATU Local 1005, posted on Facebook on Wednesday. ‘An injury to one is an injury to all. The police murdered George Floyd and the protest against it is completely justified and should continue until their demands are met’.”

Endnotes
[1] Yitzhak Lior (2002). “After Jenin” in Roane Carey and Jonathan Shainin, eds., The Other Israel: voices of refusal and dissent. New York: The New Press, pp. 118-20.
[2] Michael Warschawski (2004). Toward an Open Tomb: The crisis of Israeli society. New York: Monthly Review Press.
[3] Norman Finkelstein (2018). Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom. Oakland: University of California Press.
[4] Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé (2010). Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s war against the Palestinians. Chicago: Haymarket. p. 98-99.

Judith Deutsch is a member of Independent Jewish Voices, and president of Science for Peace. She is a psychoanalyst in Toronto. She can be reached at judithdeutsch0@gmail.com.

The rise of an authoritarian populist politics, which presents itself as against the “Establishment,”” for the “common” people and “anti-globalisation,” is happening worldwide — and there are dangerous signs in South Africa. The populist upsurge sees voters reject big, established parties that embraced neo-liberalism after the economic crisis of 2007, in the context of a retreating working class and left. The author argues that the solution is to build from below for a new society beyond the state, class rule and capitalism based on self-management and production for need.

What is authoritarian populism and why should it be combatted?

by Shawn Hattingh

Like maggots crawling out of a decaying carcass, authoritarian populist parties and politicians have emerged in many parts of the world over the last few years. All of these parties and politicians practice a vile form of politics based on hatred, crass stereotypes, blatant lying, spectacle, bigotry, anti-democracy, misogyny, racism, and militarism.

This brew of toxic politics has been served up as “anti-establishment” and in the interest of the common people by the strongmen that are at the heart of these authoritarian populist movements. In reality such politics are profoundly frightening – they point to the possibility of a future not of hope and greater egalitarianism, but decay, intolerance, enforced inequality through extreme violence and ethnic cleansing. They are, in many ways, the frightening side of identity politics.

Prime examples of hatred

The prime examples of such authoritarian populist politicians, in Europe and North America include the likes of far right wing fanatics such Donald Trump in the United States (US), Marine Le Pen of Front Nationale in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Danish People’s Party, Alternative for Germany, Golden Dawn in Greece and the League in Italy. All of these parties and politicians share a platform of white supremacy and islamophobia.

Their “anti-establishment” politics goes no further than blaming immigrants or minority groups for all problems. They claim to oppose the unfairness of free trade, yet deny that internal class rule lies at the heart of economic inequalities that are driving discontent. Likewise, few of these right-wing fanatics identify capitalism as the cause of people’s misery. Given their deliberately shallow and crude analyses, for these politicians the solution is the ridiculous and racist notion of keeping immigrants out and for the return to some mythological past – which never existed – of a white Europe or North America in which prosperity reigns under capitalism.

While sharing racism, nationalism and a commitment to some form of capitalism, not all of the authoritarian populist parties and politicians in Europe and North America share exactly the same economic policies, at least on the surface. While all rail against the “establishment” and claim to be for the “common” people and even to be “anti-globalisation”, some like Trump on a domestic front follow a rabid form of neoliberalism that has involved huge tax cuts for corporations, which he falsely sells as a stimulus to encourage investment in production and to create jobs, along with slashing welfare for the working class. Yet others like the openly fascist Golden Dawn in Greece (who are not in power), rhetorically are proponents of bringing back welfare capitalism for ethnic Greeks.

Such politicians and parties are not just present in the heartlands of imperialism; they are also to be found in parts of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East (this does not even include the long established authoritarian regimes in places such as Russia and China). In India there is Narendra Modi. He harks back to a mythical golden age when only Hindus were supposedly citizens and seeks to ultimately ethnically cleanse India of people that are part of religious minorities – such as Christians and Muslims – who he blames for the country’s ills. In Brazil, the far right misogynist Jair Bolsonaro has vowed to kill progressive activists from the Landless People’s Movement. He is also fanatically anti-immigrants having called people from Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean coming to Brazil the “the scum of humanity”.

During his rise to power, Recep Erdogan in Turkey – an authoritarian Muslim fundamentalist and right wing nationalist – railed against the Kurdish minority blaming them for all tribulations in Turkey; while claiming that he would provide welfare for ethnic Turks should he become president. Once in power, however, he imposed further neoliberalism. But the one frightening promise he did keep was to ethnically cleanse hundreds of Kurdish villages. As the economy declined, far from moving away from neoliberal policies that were driving the crisis, he began to blame unnamed foreign powers for Turkey’s economic woes. In this Erdogan followed the long history of far right, authoritarian populist and fascist politicians scapegoating specific ethnic/race groups or immigrants.

In the Middle East and parts of Africa we have also seen the rise of the authoritarian Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This is a fascist movement based on religion that is misogynistic to its core. Thousands of people have been killed and raped by this movement on the basis of not fitting into ISIS’s view of religion. ISIS, like all of the above authoritarian politicians, grew out of a crisis – in its case it was birthed in the chaos of war and economic collapse in which the US played a central role.

Why the rise of authoritarian populists globally?

The reality is that the rise of authoritarian populist politicians can largely be traced back to the worldwide crisis of capitalism that erupted in 2008. In the prelude to the crisis, established political parties around the world had imposed neoliberal policies that set the stage for the crisis. In Europe, it was mostly the established social democratic parties that had imposed these policies. In the US it was both the Republicans and Democrats; and in many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America it was former liberation movements.

It is these policies that freed up financial capital, which then set the crisis off: through unregulated financial institutions and speculation on debt derivatives on a massive scale. Along with this, in most countries, neoliberal policies that allowed corporations to shift to regions of the globe where wages were lower caused discontent amongst the working class who lost their jobs in the process. Sections of the ruling classes in such cases did not blame themselves or neoliberalism; they blamed the “other” and turned to racism to deflect attention – for example, against the “Chinese” or “Mexicans”. Adding to the working class’s misery, established parties then bailed out the very same corporations that were central to the crisis and made the poorest pay for it by ransacking social benefits. Since then, such established parties have been unable to resolve the capitalist crisis – all they have done is to protect the interests of their class, the ruling class, and shift the burden to the poor and workers.

The attack of neoliberalism also restructured the working class on a global scale. There has been a weakening of the traditional organisations of the working class, such as trade unions. The working class has become more fragmented. Permanent lifelong jobs have largely disappeared, and there has been a rise in low paid and precarious work. In many countries unemployment has grown and the share of wages to gross domestic product has declined. Coupled to this, the ruling classes around the world have pushed the ideology of individualism and large sections of the working class have inculcated this. The consequences have been that progressive working class struggles have been weakened and it is in this context that authoritarian populism has been arising.

Since 2008, voters in numerous countries have been electing authoritarian populist politicians and have rejected established parties. Social democratic parties across Europe have shrunk; numerous established parties in countries like India have been ousted, and even in South Africa an established party such as the African National Congress (ANC) has lost significant support. Many voters are voting for so-called “anti-establishment” authoritarian parties and politicians to punish the established parties with some hope that such politicians will be messiahs that bring back a mythical golden age, fix the economy or at least keep out immigrants that they see as taking their jobs or encroaching on social benefits.

This has posed a problem for the ruling classes in countries such as France, Italy, Hungary, India, Philippines, Brazil, and to a lesser extent the US. This is because the established parties were the traditional parties of the ruling classes. Through these parties the ruling classes could govern through consent and push through their agenda whilst still getting sizeable sections of the working class to vote for these parties. With established parties collapsing, sections of the ruling classes have now turned to politically and financially supporting authoritarian populist politicians such as Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro, Erdogan and Rodrigo Duterte.

Sections of the ruling classes are now backing these authoritarian parties and politicians precisely because they scapegoat minorities and immigrants; while keeping class rule, capitalism and the state’s coercive power firmly in place. They are now seen by some within the ruling classes as the only means to keep capitalism going under its permanent conditions of crisis. The primary means of this is violence or the threat of violence. As such, they guarantee that they will violently maintain the interests of the ruling classes under the notion of defending tradition and order. It is precisely why authoritarian parties strengthen the repressive arms of the state, shut down debate and it is why sections of the ruling class are funding, backing, joining and founding such parties.

Authoritarianism in South Africa?

South Africa has not been fully spared the rise in the popularity of authoritarianism. A study in 2017 by the University of Stellenbosch found although a minority of people felt some form or another of authoritarian government in South Africa could be a good way to run the country, the data showed that that minority is growing. In fact, it more than doubled from 1995 to 2013 and such sentiments were expressed by 46 percent of the sampled respondents in 2013. The legacy of apartheid has also ensured that racial and ethnic identities – rather than class and non-racialism – remain a dominant lens through which much of South African politics is practiced. The space is, therefore, unfortunately ripening for authoritarian populist politics to grow, and signs are it is already happening.

With capitalism ailing in South Africa, numerous small political parties have arisen on overtly authoritarian populist, xenophobic and/or racist platforms. These include the likes of the African Basic Movement, the People’s Revolutionary Movement, and Black First Land First. There are also a number of far right wing parties that are still based on the notion of white supremacy, including the ludicrous Cape Party that wants independence for the Western Cape in the name of protecting white and “coloured” interests.

While there is need to battle such parties, if an authoritarian populist party or politician ends up gaining very wide popularity or even power, their rise will probably not come from the quarters of these fringe parties (although this should not be ruled out). Rather it would most likely come from one or the other of the two competing sections of the ruling class – one section being an aspirant black elite tied to the Jacob Zuma [former president] faction in the ANC and leaders of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF); the other section being white capitalists, their allies in the Democratic Alliance (DA) and a section of the ANC leadership opposed to Zuma and his cohorts. If it does, neither one of these broad factions would in the end claim to be far-right (to do so would be their political death knell in South Africa), but authoritarian populist they could most certainly be.

Part of the reason why the possibility exists of an authoritarian form of politics gaining dominance in South Africa lies in the deal that led to the 1994 elections. This deal saw the established capitalist class (a small section of the white population) dump the National Party and enter into an alliance with sections of the ANC leadership. In exchange for gaining state power, the capital of the largest corporations was left untouched and a few of the [black] elite in the ANC were incorporated through Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and heading the state. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, the ANC then drove through policies that favoured corporations and the wealthiest individuals (i.e., neoliberalism), all whilst maintaining the majority of the working class’ vote. That began to change gradually with the rise of the global capitalist crisis and the emergence of the Zuma faction (which included the likes of Julius Malema of the EFF), who were a part of the ANC leadership that had not benefitted from the BEE of the 1990s and early 2000s.

The rise of the Zuma faction, therefore, represented an aspirant black section of the ruling class that intended, and did, use its rise to power within the state to accumulate wealth. In the process it began stepping on the toes of the white section of the ruling class and their business interests. As a consequence, two sides of the ruling class have been engaged in a battle over the wealth and the future of the country. One of the results of the fallout however, was a decline in the ANC’s popularity at the polls.

This posed a major threat to established white capital and their allies – now spearheaded by Cyril Ramaphosa – in the ANC leadership. In the process, they chose to back Ramaphosa’s rise to the top of the ANC and the state, in the hope that this would revive the ANC’s fortunes and deal a deathblow to the rival faction of the ruling class that backed Zuma. White capital, however, was and is not opposed to the Zuma faction because of corruption; white capitalists have a very long history of corruption, as it was key to colonialism and apartheid. Rather, white capital found Zuma’s corruption too blatant and it was leading to the decline of the ANC’s popularity. The Zuma faction – while not fundamentally opposing white capital – did to a degree also favour handing out contracts to black capitalists. This was beginning to impact on white capital’s business interests with the state.

These are the reasons white capitalists generally backed Ramaphosa’s faction to oust the Zuma and return to a status in which established companies were favoured when tenders were handed out. Along with this, it was a ploy to try and revive the ANC’s popularity at the polls under a new leadership that would supposedly deal with blatant corruption. If this fails, however, white capital in alliance with sections of the ANC could turn to more overt authoritarian means to maintain power – in fact, signs of how this could happen have already been seen in events such as Marikana.

The scapegoating of immigrants frighteningly already forms part of the politics of this faction of the ruling class (it also forms part the politics of Zuma’s faction too). Indeed, the largest parties in South Africa in the form of the ANC and DA already have significant numbers of members who have targeted immigrants, and both parties have leaders that have made overtly xenophobic statements blaming “foreigners” for unemployment and calling for greater control. In late March 2019 such forms of xenophobic electioneering by politicians in KwaZulu-Natal saw immigrants being attacked and their shops and houses looted. In parties such as the ANC, violent forms of authoritarianism already are a problem at the lower levels of the organisation, with rivals for positions being assassinated rather than engaged in debate.

The possible threat of full-blown authoritarianism does not just come from that section of the ruling class based around established capitalists, but also from remnants of the original Zuma faction within and outside the ANC. The faction fights within the ANC are far from over. Those backed by white capital currently have the upper hand; but this could easily change. When the Zuma faction gained control of the ANC there was already a creeping authoritarianism; should they (re)gain state power there is no reason to believe that their authoritarian politics would not continue. If challenged electorally and faced with the prospect of again losing their grip on power, this faction could easily turn to a renewed and even more virulent form of authoritarianism.

There are also the remnants of the Zuma faction that are outside of the ANC, most notably in the form of the EFF. While the EFF likes to claim economic freedom for the majority as its key objective, despite what many people believe it is not anti-capitalist nor opposed to rule by an elite –even according to its own documents. It rather favours a combination of private and state capitalism.

The reason for this is that the group of aspirant black elites that head the EFF wish to use state power to free up economic opportunities for themselves to accumulate wealth. As was clear from the conduct of EFF leader Julius Malema before the EFF was formed, this group were already engaged in this approach at the provincial and local levels within the ANC before their expulsion.

What the EFF does, however, do is that they opportunistically tap into the very justified frustration of the black working class (defined here as workers and the unemployed) – including their on-going experiences of racism and exploitation – to gain votes and a following. The fact that in South Africa the full liberation of the black working class was not achieved in 1994 as a result of the institutional (state) and economic (ownership) status quo being kept intact, meant the continuation of their impoverishment. The reality is that if the EFF came to state power, it would probably throw some crumbs to the black working class as its own form of populism, but it won’t mean liberation.

At the heart of this is the fact that the EFF does not seek to genuinely end capitalism or expand democracy – it only wants another form of capitalism in which its leadership has power. This can be seen in the plans, contained in its 2019 election manifesto, to provide billions in support to black industrialists/capitalists and to make R2 trillion (about US$143 billion) available for black asset managers to gain shares within companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

Indeed, authoritarianism already defines the politics of the party; it fetishes millenarianism and a militarised and male dominated hierarchy, all summed up by the title of Commander in Chief. In other words the EFF is defined by a personality cult. In state power, those authoritarian tendencies and the tendencies to violently silence any opponents would be amplified. Their overt nationalism and race baiting of all Indians and all whites – often defined by crass stereotypes – is South Africa’s own version of authoritarian populism; it is dangerous and needs to be combatted.

Given all of the above it is not beyond the realms of possibility that in some form or another, South Africa too could easily drift towards a fully-fledged authoritarianism; the warning signs are there. This would be especially the case if the capitalist crisis continues to deepen, since ruling classes and factions therein, have a history of turning towards authoritarian populist politicians during such crises.

The question though is how to combat it.

Resistance to authoritarianism

In most countries resistance to the rise of authoritarian populism has occurred. For example, Antifa (Antifaschistische Aktion) in Europe and North America has resisted the rise of the far right and fascism. In Brazil, formations such as the Landless People’s Movement have protested and mobilised against Bolsonaro. These, however, have mostly been defensive; a reality that is directly related to the weakness of progressive working class struggles as a result of the onslaught of neoliberalism. One area in the world where there has been an offensive struggle against authoritarian politics has been in the north of Syria. There activists – mainly, but not exclusively Kurdish people – have successfully fought against the authoritarian Assad regime and the fascist ISIS. These struggles though have not been to defend a parliamentary system, but rather to create a new and more directly democratic, egalitarian and feminist society under the name of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria.

Through this, a new system of direct democracy based around federated communes and councils has been created to run society from the bottom up – in other words to expand democracy into all spheres of life to combat the threat of authoritarianism. Much of the economy too has been socialised and democratised and is now largely based around democratic workers’ co-operatives that produce to meet people’s needs.

If we are going to successfully fight and defeat the rise of authoritarian populist politics, we are going to need a vision of creating a new society beyond the state, class rule and capitalism. It is these systems that authoritarian populism ultimately defends. The struggle in the north of Syria, while not without its own contradictions, is important as it give us a glimpse of what can be done. It also shows that South Africa too could follow another path beyond the state and capitalist systems; a path that holds the promise of an egalitarian future as opposed to the current situation, or even worse a future of authoritarian populism.

* Shawn Hattingh is a researcher and educator for the International Labour Research Information Group, South Africa.

This was also published in Pambazuka News, 10 April 2019.