Trump, Bolsonaro, the fascist danger

This 20 March 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

Trump & Bolsonaro Join Forces to Back Regime Change in Venezuela & to Attack Media as “Fake News”

Brazil’s far-right president and former Army captain Jair Bolsonaro visited President Trump at the White House for the first time on Tuesday. During the visit, Trump announced he would designate Brazil a major non-NATO ally, opening the door for Brazil to receive more U.S. military aid.

Trump also suggested Brazil could even become a member of NATO.

Both leaders criticized what they called the “fake news” and discussed increasing efforts to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office. We speak with Maria Luísa Mendonça, director of the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil. She is a visiting scholar at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

This 20 March 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

Brazilian President Bolsonaro’s climate change stance threatens indigenous communities

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is “going to cancel all land rights of indigenous people” by allowing mining exploitation and expanding soy monocropping in the Amazon, says Maria Luísa Mendonça, director of the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil.

By Patrick Martin in the USA:

Trump, Bolsonaro and the danger of fascism

20 March 2019

The three-day visit to Washington by the president of Brazil brought together two of the most right-wing figures in the world: Jair Bolsonaro, a former military officer and fervent admirer of the blood-soaked military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985, and Donald Trump, who has become the pole of attraction for authoritarians and fascists the world over, including the gunman who slaughtered 50 Muslims at two New Zealand mosques last week.

During their joint press conference at the White House Tuesday afternoon, Trump repeated his declaration, delivered to an audience of right-wing Cuban and Venezuelan exiles in Florida, that “The twilight hour of socialism has arrived in our hemisphere”. He emphasized, as he did in his State of the Union speech, that this also involved putting an end to the threat of socialism within the United States itself.

Both Trump and Bolsonaro have made the extirpation of socialism—the political core of fascist movements—the central goal of their governments. At their joint press conference, they railed against socialism only days after the massacre in New Zealand, carried out by Brenton Tarrant. Tarrant posted a manifesto hailing Trump as a “symbol of renewed white identity” and declaring his desire to put his boot on the neck of every “Marxist”.

The mutual embrace of Trump and Bolsonaro at the White House is symbolic of the elevation of far-right parties and cultivation of fascistic forces by capitalist governments and established bourgeois parties all over the world. It underscores the fact that the growth of fascism in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the US is the result not of a groundswell of mass support from below, but rather the sponsorship and encouragement of so-called “democratic” governments that are, in fact, controlled top to bottom by corporate oligarchs.

The global promotion of extreme right politics was embodied by the presence of right-wing ideologue Steve Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs vice president and Navy officer, as a guest of honor at a dinner with Jair Bolsonaro Monday night. Bannon has close ties with Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, who is a member of the Brazilian Parliament and a Latin American representative of the political consortium set up by Bannon, known as the Movement, whose aim is to promote extreme right-wing political parties throughout the world. “Some of the Bolsonaro team on the right see themselves as disciples of the Bannon movement and representatives of Bannon for Brazil and Latin America,” one former Trump administration official told McClatchy.

At the press conference, both Jair Bolsonaro and Trump pledged their support to a fascistic litany of “god, family and nation”, as Trump put it.

Similar to ‘Travail, Famille, Patrie’ [Work, Family, Fatherland] , the slogan of French fascist dictator Field Marshall Pétain, collaborator with Hitler.

Bolsonaro declared, “Brazil and the United States stand side-by-side in their efforts to share liberties and respect to traditional and family lifestyles, respect to God, our creator, against the gender ideology of the politically correct attitudes, and fake news.”

Both presidents threatened the use of military force against Venezuela, demonizing President Nicolas Maduro as a socialist dictator. …

This 20 March 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

Brazilian activist says war in Venezuela will bring “catastrophic” consequences to Latin America

Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro visited President Trump at the White House for the first time on Tuesday where the leaders discussed efforts to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office. Brazilian activist Maria Luísa Mendonça says “Venezuela is being used as an external enemy in Latin American countries as a way to elect far-right political leaders.”

The Patrick Martin aricle continues:

Trump reiterated the mantra that “all options are on the table” against Venezuela. Bolsonaro was asked if he would permit US soldiers to use Brazilian soil as a base for military operations against Venezuela. Rather than dismissing that prospect as a violation of both Brazilian and Venezuelan sovereignty, he declined to answer, citing the need for maintaining operational secrecy and the element of surprise.

One of the bilateral agreements that Trump and Bolsonaro signed would allow the United States to use Brazil’s Alcantara Aerospace Launch Base for its satellites. Brazil also announced an end to visa requirements for US visitors. Both actions provide avenues for the integration of Brazil into Pentagon operations, particularly drone-missile warfare and the deployment of special operations forces.

Before visiting the White House, Bolsonaro made an unannounced visit to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, an extraordinary move for the president of a country that was subjected to 21 years of unrestrained torture and murder by a military dictatorship installed in a CIA-backed coup.

The dire implications for the working class of the global rise of the far right are indicated by Bolsonaro’s glorification of the Brazilian military dictatorship. Trump hailed the “shared values” between his government and that of a former military officer who praises a regime that jailed, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of workers and students. Twenty years ago, Bolsonaro told an interviewer that the Brazilian Congress should be shut down and that the country could be changed only by a civil war that completed “the job that the military regime didn’t do, killing 30,000 people.”

The capitalist ruling classes are turning once again to dictatorship and fascism in response to the intensification of the world economic crisis, the disintegration of the postwar international order and growth of trade war and geostrategic conflicts, and, above all, the resurgence of the class struggle on a world scale. Petrified by the prospect of mass working-class opposition and the growth of anti-capitalist and socialist sentiment, they are reviving all of the ideological and political filth of the 20th century, including racism, anti-Semitism and the politics of “blood and soil.” They are actively recruiting fascists and racists and integrating them into the military/police agencies of the state, to be unleashed against an insurgent working class.

These developments show that the alternatives are not socialism or reformism, but socialism or barbarism—that is, the descent into fascism and world war.

It would be politically criminal to underestimate the danger to the working class represented by the growth of far-right and fascist movements and the elevation of far-right parties and politicians into government—as is already the case in Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Brazil and other countries. To defeat this danger, it is above all necessary to learn the lessons of history.

This 19 March 2019 video from the uSA says about itself:

Raging Trump Supporter Wants Trump To Be Dictator

A woman at a Steve Bannon event admitted what we already knew, Trump supporters long for a dictatorship. John Iadarola breaks it down on The Damage Report.

“Showtime’s “The Circus” takes audiences behind the scenes of the most incredible moments in U.S. politics. They covered the 2016 campaign and viewers felt like they were looking behind the curtain to see the true nature of American politics and some moves made by politicians away from the public gaze.

However, the latest episode has some Americans terrified about the fate of the country. A woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.

“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.”

There is so much to unpack in that comment and, understandably, people who have seen this clip are startled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump single-handedly running the nation. While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our democracy, the audience’s response is the most telling.”