Brazil and Turkey

[LionofTepelenë]

Here we have two large and growing powers ruled by a particularly revolting governments. One being Rousseff's Brazil, who has only a 10% approval rating and has been charged several times with charges of corruption and other crimes. She has squandered huge amounts of capital on the FIFA games in 2014, only leading to a bunch of useless empty stadiums.

People are finally having enough, and now just like in 2014, they are protesting again. However, I must not be turning to this as something necessarily ''good'' for Brazil. Brazil has faced a major recession in recent years, and with an unconscious populous, it will mean elections will turn right-wing. I predict the next election will result in a landslide for right-wing parties, just like how I predict for France.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/16/americas/brazil-protests/

Turkey's situation however is quite interesting, as it is against an interesting figure known as Fethullah Gulen. He is a leader of a liberal-Islamic religious movement known as the ''gulenist'' movement. However he is exiled and lives in the US, and is currently on Turkey's most wanted terrorist list.

Protesters were protecting the Zaman newspaper building, which was under siege by the Turkish police.

Now keep in mind this Gulen is basically a neoliberal, and is compatible with the geopolitical and cultural ambitions of the US and EU. And that is precisely why he is in exile in the US, which Turkey wants to stop.

http://www.odt.co.nz/news/world/375419/protests-turkish-newspaper-seized

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fethullah_G%C3%BClen

[Guardia Rossa]

This is what I as Brazilian think of it (It combines my personal analysis and the analysis of some commie parties):

Dilma has 7%* approval not only because of the crisis or the corruption: All big and small bourgeois parties are to an extent involved in corruption. This includes the PT ("Worker's" Party - De jure center-left, De facto Center-right), the PSDB ("Social"-Democrat Brazilian Party - Center-right to right), the PMDB (Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement - big tent party - from center-left to right) and all the smaller more radical bourgois and petit-bourgeois parties.

What is happening is that part of the bourgeoisie wishes to change the government - I don't doubt they are stupid enough to actually believe in their own propaganda - that the PT is responsible for the crisis (Which is here seen as a "national crisis" and not the actual worldwide crisis that it is) and it's removal would magically fix capitalism.

Until recently their tactic was to slowly bleed them to the elections. This apparently has changed in this week as the Right applies more and more pressure on the government, as they push for a peaceful government transition - through either a renounce or an impeachment of the President Dilma. There IS, however, a little section that pushes for "military intervention" or something in the like. The haute-bourgeoisie, however, still majoritarily supports the PT government - undoubtedly thanks to it's center-right politics and it's meaning to the worker classes (The PT does a great job in fucking up the proletariat in it's movements and strikes - just like the SDP did.).

There is no worker's side in this struggle, but an early removal of the PT through either an renounce or an impeachment would result in an PMDB government, with the same policies of the PT. Most parts of the bourgeoisie will probably calm the fuck down, however, the far-right would probably continue "crusading" against the "communist" government. Perhaps this would give the room required to re-constitute a worker's party and a worker's front, which could give room to the left to redirect the discontent before the 2018 presidential elections. A slow bleeding will only further demoralize and weaken the proletarian institutions.

Get her out, that's what I would say. Not because she's corrupt, but because she's impeding the organization of the left - which until recently was still mostly divided on whether support the PT or not.

[Antiochus]

Well Silva got arrested, lol. I think the so-called 'pink-tide' is as good as dead. As solemn and morbid reminder of both the futility of parliamentarian politics and the fact that these so-called left parties (and believe me, there are plenty of "famous" leftists like Tariq Ali that gush at them) are really just part of the entire bourg-structure. The most radical was the Venezuelan socialist party, and even there it is totally lacking.

[Luís Henrique]

Here we have two large and growing powers ruled by a particularly revolting governments. One being Rousseff's Brazil, who has only a 10% approval rating and has been charged several times with charges of corruption and other crimes. She has squandered huge amounts of capital on the FIFA games in 2014, only leading to a bunch of useless empty stadiums.

"Particularly revolting" is this kind of "analysis".

The structure of the Brazilian State is corrupt, which should be no surprise, given that it is a bourgeois State. Under Dilma's government, as under Lula's before it, however, the State structures that are charged with investigating and repressing corruption have been freed from governmental controls that previously made effective results impossible. Namely, up to Fernando Henrique's government, the Brazilian President would politically nominate the Attorney General (Procurador Geral da República) in order to gag and tie the Federal Attorneyship so that it would not investigate and prosecute political corruption in higher levels. Brazilians would humorously call Geraldo Brindeiro, Fernando Henrique's Attorney General, "Engavetador Geral da República" or "Escondedor Geral da República" (the Portuguese word for attorney, "procurador", also translates as "seeker"; "escondedor" means "hidder", a person who hides, instead of seeking, and "engavetador" means a person who puts things in drawers (ie, who stalls administrative or criminal processes by "forgetting" them in drawers.

The Brazilian right operates within the myth that Brazil has no history, and was invented in 2003. The many problems inherited by the "popular" governments since are attributed to incompetence or malice of the ruling party; apparently there was no difference between Brazil and Sweden up to 2002...


People are finally having enough, and now just like in 2014, they are protesting again.

The Brazilian "protests" are anything but "the people" having it enough. They are right wing demonstrations, which aim not corruption, but the gains made by the poorer layers of Braziian society in the last decade. Their "indignation" is aimed at federal programs that target extreme poverty, and at federal general policies that have resulted in "absurds" such as scarcity of cleaning ladies and house maids, and in an expansion of markets that has allowed the working and lower middle class to frequent public spaces previously deemed "exclusive", such as airports and planes and shopping centers.


However, I must not be turning to this as something necessarily ''good'' for Brazil. Brazil has faced a major recession in recent years, and with an unconscious populous, it will mean elections will turn right-wing. I predict the next election will result in a landslide for right-wing parties, just like how I predict for France.

This isn't because of an "unconscious populous", it is because the right is winning the political dispute. Brazil is facing a major recession, which isn't a consequence of misguided policies, but of a general and international crisis of capital. The right has been able to politically indict the government for it, though, and this is, in part, a result of the government's own inability to understand the crisis (which they cannot see as a general crisis of capital, because they lack the theoretical instruments for such, and consequently think they could stave off if only they could find the correct financial/monetary/fiscal/budgetary policies).

The problem with the right, which is also a problem for the right, is that it has absolutely no idea of what to do in order to confront the crisis, except, a) reconcentrating wealth and income through unchecked recession in order to tame the upper middle class discontent, and b) politically repressing any movements by workers, peasants or the lower middle class in order to possibilitate a). Which is to say, they would not be able to provide a stable governmental alternative, which in turn is the reason that they want Dilma's government to implement the recession by itself, so that it can then be blamed for the resulting impoverishment.

I do not know enough about the political situation in Turkey to have an informed opinion on it. But if the quality of your analysis of the Turkish situation is as good as your analysis of the Brazilian situation, then, sorry, but it is utter gibberish.

Luís Henrique