Brazil's Elections and current political situation

Meerov, are you even aware of what is happening in Brazil? Otherwise you would not be making idiotic comments like that.

In what sense is Bolsonaro a "fascist"?

Bolsonaro is not a fascist, he is a democrat, a product of this disgusting thing called democracy and the victor of free and fair elections.

He is certainly a right-populist, misogynist, homophobic, and all-round reactionary with authoritarian tendencies, but he's also pro-free market and anti-gun control, whereas fascism is about total control of society by the state.

What does applying "fascist" to any right-wing politician you dislike achieve? It turns "fascist" into trivial insult, and instead serves to defend the honour of democracy by treating the result as illegitimate.

lol. When your description of fascism is so restrictive it excludes Germany under the Nazis you should take a deep breath and get a bit less outraged about people using a broader one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany#Privatization_and_...

I am not sure that fascism necessarily means state control over society. For example, in Hitler's Germany, despite widespread nationalization, there were private enterprises, large and small, and the leadership of the SS consisted of supporters of market economy and liberalism. For example, one of the SS intellectuals and their leaders Otto Ohlendorf was a supporter of the free market and criticized the forced monopoly in the politics of the Reich.

The fascist Franco regime used, like the anti-fascist Spanish Republic, broad state control over the economy, but Franco from a certain moment began the process of economic liberalization and privatization.

Bolsonaro is a "fascist" If we call "fascism" the system of domination of large state and private monopolies, which is based on the ideas of nationalism and xenophobia, terrorist methods, dictatorship, and attempts to mass mobilization of the population through nationalist propaganda. If so then Bolsonaro is under the definition of fascism. He speaks of the need to eliminate parliamentary democracy, if it interferes with him, he glorifies military dictatorship and terror against dissenters.

But I agree with you to some extent. The line between fascism and democracy, or between fascism and anti-fascism, is much thinner than many leftists try to imagine.

Actually millions of Brazilians, voting for the opponent of democracy, or simply refusing to come to the polls (30 million), showed that they are not interested in protecting democracy and in anti-fascism.

admin - we've unpublished several off-topic posts from meerov on this thread (and some of the responses to them), if we have to keep doing this it'll be a temp ban

Bolsonaro IS a fascist. Fascism is all about counteract the inner ''a-social'' nature of capitalism by means of fictitious community as a mass movement identified with the nation-state. the commoditized socialization leads a weakening in the social bonds which brings about the emptying of the individuals. the capitalism crisis undermine further the atomization of individuals that fuels the demand for a ''true community' founded upon a neurotic nationalism. that's the core concept of fascism that pass through by different political archetype from statist corporatism to the neoliberal corporatism.

Brasil is in a deep crisis that threats the social unity. Fascism is a brutal political way of put together the fundamental elements of capitalism reproduction in unity. capitalism is unity in separation. When separation tends to exacerbate, the authoritarianism comes to claim the unity upon the separation. In the particular case of Brasil the only way to reach this unity, and maintain the capital social reproduction, is by the neoliberal program which means savage privatizations and further exploitation of natural resources. Ironically that will creates a lot exclusion -exclusion of blacks, indigenous people, poor etc-, which will further the separation, but the ''social unity'' will confine in the withe upper-middle class situated in the industrial south and south east. It’s a very restrictive nationalism. The social reproduction of capital in Brazil needs to ‘‘expurgate’’ the ''superfluous'' people that not will be more useful to the capital accumulation, and this will be reached by mass incarceration and bloodbath.

Here's a good text about Brazil, though I disagree with the last paragraph.
https://www.paperrevolution.org/the-proletariat-of-brazil-was-defeated-b...

I agree that this Bolsonaro piece of shit is a fascist. But an interesting question is raised. If nationalism is the essence of fascism, at what point does nationalism become fascism?

Most people are nationalists, though it gets called patriotism, and from an extremely young age we are fed a steady-diet of seemingly "benign" nationalism, like standing for the national anthem everyday in school, big celebrations with fireworks for Independence Day or whatever equivalent national-celebration day a country might have, being taught to take pride in your country, and so on. Of course none of this is benign, and it's the foundation on which bigotry is built.

At what point is the line crossed from nationalism to fascism?

Not read enough of it to have a super-clear idea of their perspective and how far I'd endorse it, but this site has a lot of Brazilian coverage: https://newmilitant.com

Podcast:
https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/battleground-brazil-jair-bolso...

Most of the bolded are unique to USA no? Nationalism is obviously a feature of nation states but it tends to be a lot more subtle. USA is extreme.

There's a fair bit in the UK masquerading as ww2 related stuff. I imagine, could be wrong, that it wouldn't work half as well if was straight up nationalism without the ww2 pretext.

It would be interesting to hear about how nationalism/patriotism is inculcated into people in the UK (other than WW2 stuff).

News from Brazil..a political member from bolsonaro family was target by an investigation that found solid evidences of money laundering involving him and his car driver. Some analysts suggests that the move against Bolsonaro family is a way to remove Bolsonaro from power and replace them for a high ranked office military that have the capacity and political strength to organize the government in order to implement complex and problematic reforms like the neoliberal restructuring of pension system. Bolsonaro is too immature and unstable for this task, and could severely damage the political viability of the neoliberal agenda, and his party is even worse with a lot internal conflicts lead by egocentric and bigotry politicians.