Almost 50 years ago, when dealing with the collapse of democratic regimes, the remarkable Spanish political scientist Juan Linz (1926-2013) stated that they did not resist the existence of unfair oppositions. With this term, it designated those political forces that, even respecting the rules of the democratic game, were willing to destroy them for their own benefit. For the author, it was not disloyal to the shift government, but to institutions that guarantee the regime of freedoms.
The political dilemma that Brazil faces today is how to deal with the unfair opposition represented by the Bolsonaro clan and his followers. From its betrayal to democracy the evidence gives and left: first, the coup intent that culminated in the invasion of the three powers’ square by – who today refers to “20 foot of slipper breaking things”; Then, the alliance with Donald Trump that he does not lose occasion to brave, threatening the crash of the exorbitant tariff over Brazilian exports.
On its part, the judiciary fulfills its role, leading to the defendants’ bank of authoritarianism to the defendants. Similarly, the center-left in government and civil society are part. But it is anything but clear what the right will do with their most extreme faction.
Research shows the size of pure and hard pockets, as the diagnosis varies – and much – according to the criterion chosen. Anyway, it is a minority, but far from irrelevant. Different analysts have attributed this fact to the pajelança provided to the former president, now a defendant in house arrest, by some candidates on the right to next year’s presidential elections. If so, it would invite you to think better.
In the book “”, in Brazilian translation, Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde draws attention to a new reality: right-wing populism has moved from the periphery to the center of West’s democratic political systems, becoming a somewhat normal and lasting phenomenon-then it will not disappear overnight. The author distinguishes between a radical right, anti-liberal but integrated into the electoral game, and another, extreme and willing to destroy it.
Having in common proposals reactionary policies and the same aversion to the institutions of representative democracy – limitation of state powers, independence of cuts, autonomy of civil society, public freedoms – would be distinguished by the willingness to use violence when electoral results are unfavorable.
For Mudde, differences could suggest to Democrats various strategies in dealing with both right. In the first case, it would be a long dispute that would strengthen the institutions and attack the roots of social malaise that feeds and robbed the populist right. In the second, it would be necessary to politically insulate the extreme faction-to treat it as an interlocutor or, even less, a legitimate ally.
If, by electoral calculation, gratitude or programmatic affinity, the right to launch a buoy, democracy will remain tied to polarization between the elites and to pay the political cost of unfair oppositions.
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