A Nova Democracia nº 207 Editorial – on the cowardly execution of Marielle

The cowardly attack that killed Marielle Franco, councilor for Psol in the city of Rio, with four shots to the head on the night of this past March 14, shocked and moved millions of people in Brazil and abroad. Raging with indignation, the raised the cry for justice which is so often caught in the bosom of thousands of mothers in the face of the cruel extermination of their sons and daughters, and because of their condition as humble workers, their pain and voice echoed among their neighbors of misfortune, in the cities and in the fields of Brazil.

The declarations of solidarity with Marielle’s family members have grown, many among them demagogic, when unabashed and cynical, such as those of the old state authorities, politicians of various acronyms and, in particular, the scoundrels that monopolize the media, especially the Rede Globo, with its refined work in twisting the facts, lying and ventilating poisonous gases in order to numb minds.

On the other hand, the gigantic protests that do not want to be silent, demand answers far beyond the whining of an “attack on democracy” by reformist bullies and the “furious” promises of electoral opportunists to do “revenge” at the polls. The mobilized masses, especially the youth, resorted to protests in hopes of not only punishing criminals, executors and constituents, but raising protests to the level and forms of the revolutionary struggle, in order to overthrow this system of exploitation and oppression sustained and maintained by this old and genocidal state of big bourgeois and landowners, servants of imperialism, mainly Yankee.

From context and evidence, Marielle’s execution was a display of discontent over the conflicting interests of well-structured power groups in the organs of public security, chiefly military police chiefs, in the face of the threat posed by military intervention to their monopoly on violence and abuse of authority, which in addition to profitable business is a considerable part of political power. To throw a corpse on the table of the general intervenor, besides being a demonstration of force, was a fascist message to the fighters of the town. And, to demonstrate it with great repercussion, they reaped the life of a black woman, defender of the “human rights” and militant of the legal left as a member of the parliament.

The clumsy assassination and the massive protests against it show that not only has the political crisis that shaken the country since 2015 deepened as a crisis of public and military security, but also and especially that the revolutionary situation that emerged in 2013 with the massive explosions of youth across the country, is coming to a new moment, foretelling new and greater waves of popular protest.

On the side of reaction, this means that its attacks to the popular struggle have developed. The constant attacks on the struggle for land (with massacres and the murder of activists and leaders in the countryside), the systematic practice of the massacres of the poor in the city, and the political persecutions and draconian condemnations of activists and leaders of the June / July protests of 2013 and 2014, have developed with the elimination of political militants and popular fighters.

On the side of the people it represents the passage of the growing conviction of the masses in the rejection of the electoral farce and in actions of rebellion, in expectations and hopes for an increasingly bellicose way, to which will be added many others, who until then were believers in the promises of changes of a country better for the people by the peaceful and electoral route, now disillusioned by the brutal crime against someone who believed and acted for changes within the system.

On the part of the military intervention, it is necessary to question: do the silence and lack of clarity of the laconic declarations of members of the military High Command and the intervenor on the execution of Marielle contrast with or agree with the specialized preaching of General Heleno, to eliminate any suspected hostility? Furthermore, how should we judge, in this context, the army commander’s requirement for “legal security” for the actions of his troops? Is it a euphemism for impunity for perpetrators of violations and crimes that will be committed? And what about the bravado about sanitation within the police forces, when the military intervention, after 30 days, did not even touch the situation of the 41st PM Battalion, known for spreading terror and extortion to the populations of Chapadão, Acari, Rocha Miranda and other contiguous areas (facts which are well-known by the police inspector-general). And what about their silence on the complaint made by the collective “Fala Akari” and echoed by Marielle, four days before her execution, about the murder of two young men who had their bodies thrown in a Walloon? And, finally, what about the fact that the Armed Forces cover up the violence that is practiced by the municipality of Rio in Vila Kennedy?

This reactionary civil war against the people and its supporters, whether in the city or in the country, is not the work of chance. It is the crude reality of the advanced decomposition of a genocidal and decrepit bureaucratic-administrative-police machine. As a reflection of the general crisis of its infirm bureaucratic capitalism, the political and moral crisis, aggravated by the crisis of public security, has already entered the ground of a crisis of domination of the old state. It is expressed in the quarter-by-quarter struggle between the fractions of the local ruling classes and their respective power groups for control of the old state machine in all its spheres.

In this desperate struggle, the political and partisan forces of the corrupt and bankrupt political system are only united in one issue: supporting the increase of repression of the poor, either through the extermination groups organized by the mafias of the police-military apparatus, or through the most declared form: military intervention. All these forms are aimed at containing the growing popular revolt and preventing a revolutionary uprising under the pretext of combating organized crime. They give this pretext as if the delinquency that is exacerbated exponentially in society – offspring of the prevailing misery and inequality and general putrefaction of the State – was the main and biggest problem of the country – which in fact is not. Far from it – it is a mere symptom of the nature of the present system of exploitation and oppression of the people and of the subjugation of the Nation.

In matters of organized crime, the official political associations of the country, which appall the Nation for being at the top of the party of the president of the republic, are insurmountable in their robbery and plundering of public coffers, to the point that the system itself has to move an Operation “Car Wash”, in an attempt to salvage appearances, to recover a minimum of legitimacy and credibility of the institutions of its “Democratic State of Rights.” Incidentally, this operation failed in the face of the resistance of the official political world to having its domes overthrown.

Hence, military intervention, for a reason greater than the public security crisis in Rio – as we have already stated here – is being planned in the long term due to the gravity of the crisis of domination that has taken root in the country. It is a march for the imposition of the centralization of a power that is threatening to fragment itself, and it is being launched like a test balloon to create public opinion favorable to the extended military intervention, in the objective of future counterrevolutionary coup d’etat.

A regime of monopolies and secular imperialist domination which condemns national production to be its mere complement; concentration of land ownership and misery for the peasantry, starvation wages and constant crises with massive unemployment, withdrawal of workers’ rights, cultural, scientific and technological submission. In short, continued injustice, abuses, repression and genocide over the people, and indecent and endless privileges for a tiny minority of riches. These are the crucial problems of our people and our country, they are the manifestation of the historical situation in which the democratic revolution has been crushed to iron, fire and blood. Never realized, stagnant, and pending.

The solution of this contradiction can only be solved by the revolutionary violence of the masses applied against their oppressors and exploiters. Their growing rejection of the electoral farce is already becoming something more than a mere demonstration of what they no longer accept. The old state and its rotten political system, in its spirit to keep its old order intact, can only offer the masses more repression, oppressive social control and deceit.

In order to remove the three mountains of exploitation and oppression on the people and the nation – semi-feudalism, bureaucratic capitalism and imperialism – a greater determination of the masses is required, under the firm leadership of the vanguard party of the proletariat and based on the peasant-worker alliance, to demolish these mountains, which will take a relatively long time, and to wage the inseparable and relentless fight against its auxiliary force in the bosom of the popular movement, the colossal waste heap of electoral opportunism, to establish New Democracy on the basis of a New Economy and a New Culture.

Source: http://anovademocracia.com.br/no-207/8501-editorial-a-covarde-execucao-de-marielle

C. Kistler

Also editor of Nouvelle Turquie.