Brazil: The Struggle to Defeat Neofascism and the Reorganization of the Left

PSOL supports Lula´s Campaign Against Bolsonaro but Advocates Its Own Political Program

By Fernando Silva

The October elections in Brazil will have a significant impact on the debate over the direction of the country, after a period of scorched earth tactics against all kinds of people’s rights under four years of president Jair Bolsonaro’s administration, an openly far-right government. Elections are taking place for the president, 27 state governors, 513 Federal Deputies, all state legislators, and one third of the Senate.

Former President Lula – Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from the Workers Party (PT in Portuguese) – the main leader of the Brazilian left historically, stands out clearly as the candidate favored to win the elections. The latest polls in May, June, and July suggested he might even win in the first round.

Against this backdrop, Bolsonaro is threatening to repeat, in an even more violent manner, the Trumpist strategy of denouncing the elections and refusing to acknowledge the result if he loses. Bolsonaro has been attacking the Supremo Tribunal Federal (Supreme Court), the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (Superior Electoral Court) and the electronic voting system (used in the country uncontested since 1996). He has been spreading a myriad of lies against his opponents and calling for his supporters to engage in putschist street mobilizations.

The danger of a “Brazilian Capitol uprising” or something similar is even greater than the Trumpist adventure in the US, since Bolsonaro has strong ties and support in part of the Armed Forces and in state police forces. Moreover, there are signs that Bolsonaro may create a provocation just before or during the elections, trying to make them unviable instead of trying to change their outcome after they are held.

Coups and Setbacks

Since 2016, Brazil has experienced a historic roll-back of rights – social, economic, environmental, and democratic. This period opened up with the judicial/parliamentary/media coup that overthrew President Dilma Rousseff. The goal of this blatantly undemocratic operation was to deepen an agenda of neoliberal reforms and remove former president Lula from the political scene.

The government of Michel Temer (2016-2018) took power and passed a constitutional amendment freezing public spending for 20 years as well as neoliberal reforms to the labor laws. The year 2018 was another peak of the reactionary wave, with the assassination by two former police officers of Marielle Franco (a socialist feminist opponent of police brutality and a member of the Socialism and Liberty Party – PSOL), Lula’s imprisonment, and Bolsonaro’s electoral victory.

Under the Bolsonaro government, the scale of attacks against people’s rights has deepened. During the worst years of Covid, Bolsonaro’s genocidal policies claimed the lives of approximately 700,000 Brazilians, due to the president’s refusal to support vaccination, masking, and basic safety measures.

Under Bolsonaro also came the neoliberal pensions reform, environmental destruction on an unprecedented scale, the institutionalization of the extermination policy against indigenous and Black populations (the majority in the country), especially in the peripheries of big cities, and increased violence against women and LGBTQIA+ people and political violence in general.

A Turn in the Situation and Bolsonarist Despair

The point is that the pandemic and the neoliberal agenda have greatly deepened Brazil’s historic social inequality, worsening the economic crisis (sky-high unemployment, the highest inflation since the 1990s) and the social crisis (increased job insecurity). Hunger has returned to the level of tens of millions of people. Thirty-three million people face hunger on a daily basis (according to a Penssan Network study), and around 61 million live in permanent food insecurity (according to a UN report).

In 2020, with the beginning of the pandemic, Bolsonaro’s support began to weaken and he gradually lost his majority support. There was also a growth in popular resistance, which peaked in 2021 in the National Campaign against Bolsonaro, with regular street demonstrations in over 500 cities across the country. Calls for his impeachment grew, but the president was shielded by the Chamber of Deputies.

But in this case, what could have been seen as a sign of the government’s strength was in fact its opposite; because in order to avoid impeachment, Bolsonaro handed control of the narrative to the so-called “Centrão” (the bourgeois parliamentary majority that historically controls the National Congress). This was the opposite of what he had said in his election campaign and during part of his term in office when he had attacked the Congress for its corruption – which in the end became a characteristic of his own government and its family clan.

Lula’s release from prison in late 2019 was also an important factor for the opposition. It was an important victory that increased the prospect of winning the elections.

Finally, the Brazilian situation shouldn’t be looked at in isolation from the broader context across Latin America, where authoritarian or neofascist projects have been defeated a number of times in recent years. Trump’s defeat was a weakening factor for Bolsonaro, as well as the defeats of the coup in Bolivia and the coup attempt in Venezuela, the mass movement in Chile, and the election of the leftist Boric as President of Chile. The recent election victories in Colombia of President Gustavo Petro and his running mate Francia Marquez and the massive anti-neoliberal mobilizations in Ecuador set the tone of a strong left/progressive shift on the continent, which has increased the isolation of the Bolsonarist project.

The Race is Undecided, But We Can Win

But it would be a serious mistake to assume the left will win the Brazilian elections. Not only the elections, but Brazil’s direction in general remains undecided for a number of reasons.

First, it’s unclear what effects Bolsonaro’s desperate social benefit measures will have; he increased emergency aid for the poor and provided a subsidy on gas prices as well as assistance for truck drivers. It remains to be seen whether these measures will help Bolsonaro recover some popularity, which could improve his chances in the election.

Secondly, Bolsonaro may take steps toward organizing a coup as a Plan B. Or if he doesn’t have a majority in the institutions of the political regime or in the Armed Forces for a coup to keep him in power in the case of an electoral defeat, provocations and adventures might be instigated to make the electoral process simply unviable. But he has enough parliamentary and social support to try some sort of legal maneuvering after a provocation, which could be instigated at the extremist demonstrations scheduled for September 7 (Independence Day in Brazil).

Lula has on his side a clear social majority among many groups: the poor, the working class, Black people, young people, women, the LGBTQIA+ community, middle-class progressives, and almost all social movements and the Left.

Bolsonaro is the expression of a clearly neofascist social current among the masses, with strong support among white men, connected in general to the agribusiness sector, and to the leadership of the Christian fundamentalist churches (and at least half their supporters). He also has most of the support among business, especially small and medium-sized business owners. Bolsonaro also has strong support in sectors of the Armed Forces, the Police Forces, and the Milícias (paramilitary forces that control, by now, around 60 percent of Rio de Janeiro). In addition, he also has preached a broad armament of his civilian social base – there are now 1600 “shooting clubs” in the country, half of them created during Bolsonaro’s government.

To disregard these factors would be to celebrate victory before the struggle is over, which would be a mistake in a situation that tends to be turbulent and violent. This situation demands not only winning the popular vote, but also, as soon as possible, mobilizing the people to denounce the coup attempt and organize international solidarity.

The tactical tasks for the next few months are clear: to beat Bolsonaro in the elections, guarantee Lula’s inauguration, and defeat any coup attempt. Therefore, what we need is a massive, broad, democratic mobilization.

The Future of the Reorganization of the Left

Many of the possibilities for Brazil’s direction will be decided, or at least drawn with greater clarity, with the outcome of the elections and the potential social and political clashes around them. The struggle to defeat neofascism in Brazil, however, will not be over with the elections, even if the most positive scenario prevails (Lula’s electoral victory and the inauguration of a new government). This would be like thinking (although the countries are clearly different) that Trump’s electoral defeat would mean the end of Trumpism and the militarized far-right in the US. The struggle to defeat Brazilian neofascism and the presence of ultra-reactionary thought among sectors of society will be a long-term struggle.

This future will partly depend on the strengthening and growth of a new socialist, programmatic, and radical Left. We need a generational renewal to help reinvigorate social movements in Brazil because the contradictions in the hegemonic force of the Brazilian Left – Lula and the Workers’ Party (PT) – are far too big.

The program of Lula’s candidacy – and the kind of governance it envisions – are not a break from the previous period of PT governments. Obviously the PT is more progressive than the neofascism Brazil is facing, but the PT continues to be a project of class collaboration between the working class and the ruling class. It is not by chance that Lula has a vice-presidential running mate who is the former governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin, a historic and organic political leader of the neoliberal right wing and of the ruling classes of the richest state in the country, not to mention being connected to the Opus Dei, an ultraconservative order of the Catholic Church.

The social and economic development model proposed by the PT for the reconstruction of Brazil, after this period of Bolsonaro’s scorched earth policies, remains within the framework of capitalism. It does not propose a break with agribusiness, extractivism, nor the dominance of finance capital. The PT plans to reclaim a series of public and social rights and make some environmental reforms, but retains the old utopian, unrealizable logic of trying to serve two masters at the same time – capital and labor. It is no accident that Lula’s campaign program refuses to propose the repeal of the neoliberal pension and labor reforms of the Temer and Bolsonaro governments, just to name a few of the most glaring contradictions.

Lula´s election, alongside the shifts to the left in Chile, Columbia, and other Latin American countries, may consolidate a more general shift in the balance of forces on the subcontinent. Our struggle, then, will be to deepen this shift as far as possible, winning the structural reforms that were blocked in Brazil during the 2000s. If back then Brazil experienced the most limited progress in this regard, the challenge is to put the country on the frontline of a more radical, deeper process of social and political victories for the exploited and the oppressed.

Defeat Neofascism, but No Responsibility for a New PT Government

The place of the socialist Left, and of PSOL in particular, in Brazil is in Lula’s campaign, on the frontline of the struggle for his victory and to defeat neofascism.

PSOL resolved not to accept positions inside a Lula government and has advocated its own political program for the country.

But we believe that positioning ourselves on this side of the barricades must be combined with critical independence, defending a different project for the country – a strategic vision of rebuilding the country on anticapitalist and eco-socialist bases. This means a foundation for a break with class collaboration projects.

For this reason, PSOL resolved not to accept positions inside a Lula government and has also advocated its own political program for the country. We have preserved our autonomy for the building of a new strategic project, anchored in popular mobilization, and that, beyond the central task of defeating the far-right, seeks to shift the balance of forces in favor of the working class and its most exploited and oppressed sectors.