Restauração do velho Palácio do Itamaraty no Rio de Janeiro - Instituto Pedra

 https://youtu.be/VQVh1RYDqQQ?si=7MaP2jol7FZFgH5L

O complexo do Palácio Itamaraty, no Rio de Janeiro, é um dos maiores tesouros da história cultural e diplomática do Brasil. O local foi a sede do Ministério das Relações Exteriores entre 1899 e 1970, antes da sua mudança para Brasília, e é composto por cinco edifícios: o palácio – que abriga o Museu Histórico e Diplomático –, o edifício da biblioteca, mapoteca e arquivo, o Ererio – onde está o escritório de representação diplomática e serviços consulares –, o edifício das cavalariças e, por fim, o edifício Niterói, que atualmente se encontra desocupado. Os prédios estão organizados em torno de um lago, formando uma praça interna.

O Instituto Pedra coordena os trabalhos de restauração e readequação do espaço e museologia do acervo, além da implantação de um plano de gestão. O projeto é viabilizado por meio da Lei Rouanet e convênios com Itaipu Binacional, além de apoio de BNDES, Instituto Cultural Vale, Emendas Parlamentares e Prefeitura Municipal do Rio de Janeiro. A realização é do Ministério das Relações Exteriores, por meio do Escritório de Representação do Ministério das Relações Exteriores do Rio de Janeiro, e do Ministério da Cultura.

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O 8 de janeiro e a questão militar - Hamilton Garcia de Lima

O 8 de janeiro e a questão militar

Hamilton Garcia de Lima

 sábado, 1 de fevereiro de 2025

 

A jovem democracia brasileira segue seu curso, em seu ciclo mais extenso e profundo sob a República, sem se animar a sanar os graves problemas que a acometem desde 1985 (vide A crise e suas raízes). Seguindo assim, continuaremos suscetíveis a ameaças políticas como a representada pelo bolsonarismo.

A bem da verdade, o malogro do golpismo bolsonarista se deveu mais à inconsistência de seus estrategos (vide A viagem redonda – de volta à política de vetos) do que a qualquer propalada fortaleza institucional. Quem conhece nossa história republicana sabe que intervenções militares exitosas só se produzem quando em conexão com amplos movimentos sociais extra-caserna. A tentativa de Bolsonaro de se manter no poder passou longe disso.

Forjado no âmbito do centrão como líder corporativo (militar), sem ter estudado a história, Bolsonaro imaginou que a mera mobilização do “soldado-cidadão”, à moda da República da Espada (Governo Deodoro-Floriano, 1889-1894), junto com o toma-lá dá cá da Nova República, seria suficiente para pavimentar seu projeto autoritário. Não foi.

Um breve olhar sobre a Questão Militar do século retrasado nos ajuda a entender tanto o apelo anti-sistema do militarismo em pleno s.XXI, como também sua impotência política. A Questão Militar emerge em 1886 ecoando a consciência de si adquirida pelos militares depois de cinco anos de encarniçada luta do exército regular e dos corpos de voluntários na Guerra do Paraguai (1864-1870). Na ocasião, a governança aristocrática sobre o Exército e a Marinha foi posta à prova, sobretudo no primeiro caso, em função das péssimas condições das forças, desprovidas de materiais e recursos humanos apropriados, além de uma estrutura de apoio capaz de sustentar um conflito daquela magnitude. Em consequência, os militares passaram a perseguir, nos anos seguintes, tanto o reaparelhamento como o adequado treinamento das Forças, além do reconhecimento político e social de sua importância para o país.

Nenhum desses objetivos foi encampado pelo regime imperial, que passou a temer a consciência recém-assumida em combate pelos militares como prenúncio de contestações violentas à ordem escravista vigente. Ao contrário, operaram de modo rápido e descompromissado a desmobilização/fragmentação das unidades combatentes, o que foi percebido pelos oficiais como um menosprezo aos valores e méritos militares.

Desde então, uma série de crises foram colocando lenha no descontentamento do setor, como a da contribuição militar ao montepio (1883), da adesão pública à causa abolicionista (1884) e da autonomia administrativa para inspeção/punição militar (1885), esta última desencadeando uma série de artigos na imprensa que culminou com a proibição de manifestação pública dos militares e punições disciplinares em série (1886) que dariam ensejo à movimentação cívico-militar que culminaria com a fundação do Clube Militar no Rio de Janeiro (1887).

A dimensão da crise militar ficou plasmada nas metas do Clube, que previam não só estreitar os laços de união e solidariedade entre os oficiais do Exército e da Marinha, e defender seus interesses e direitos, como incentivar manifestações cívicas e patrióticas em prol da honra nacional e da dignidade militar. Ato contínuo, o Clube reitera a posição anti-escravista dos militares enviando à Princesa Isabel uma petição contra o engajamento de soldados em operações de captura de escravos. O documento defendia, em tom eloquente, que a liberdade era um valor supremo para os militares e tal designação era incompatível com a missão do Exército e a dignidade do Império.

Todas estas tensões, como sabemos, desaguaram no golpe contra a monarquia (1889) liderado pelo Marechal Deodoro, sob influência do Coronel Benjamin Constant, com o apoio de republicanos civis como Rui Barbosa, Aristides Lobo e Quintino Bocaiúva. Tinha início o ciclo de intervenções cívico-militares que marcariam todo o s.XX.

Refletindo sobre a necessidade da arbitragem militar para a proclamação da República, o monarquista Joaquim Nabuco afirmou de maneira premonitória:

“A República precisa do militarismo como o corpo humano precisa de calor; a questão é tê-lo no grau fisiológico (…). Ter o Exército como força ativa é tê-lo demais, tirar ao Exército todo o caráter político, é tê-lo de menos; a temperatura exata, seria tê-lo como força política de reserva – o que é (…) uma espécie de quadratura de círculo”^[i].

A percepção liberal oitocentista de Nabuco foi reiterada, meio século depois, pela novecentista de Raymundo Faoro, que sustentava que, “para a propaganda reacionária, o Brasil (…) seria o prisioneiro (…) (d)os ‘bacharéis de espada’”. A tese expressa por Faoro, em 1958, era que “o afastamento total do Exército da política equivaleria a consagrar o imobilismo oligárquico do regime (…) com a fachada política dos governadores”, concluindo que “a força armada será, por muitos anos, o elo último de intermediação entre o país submisso e a ordem universal em movimento”.

Àquela altura, Faoro constatava que o intervencionismo militar, que trazia vários inconvenientes, como a politização da caserna – que implicava, no limite, no direito de insubordinação militar contra seus superiores – e a militarização da política, estava limitado pela incapacidade militar de governar como ditadura sem o apoio da sociedade e dos partidos regionais (de fato, embora não de direito) – hoje poderíamos sustentar a mesma tese substituindo os partidos pelas lideranças majoritárias no Congresso Nacional.

Foi precisamente esta limitação do poder militar que a Doutrina Góis Monteiro, a partir de 1930, trouxe à baila, determinando todas as intervenções posteriores em termos de suas chances de sucesso ou de fracasso. E foi a ignorância desta lei de bronze do intervencionismo militar que fez com que os linha-dura da caserna fossem reiteradamente derrotados até 1964. Mau aluno que é de História, Bolsonaro ignorou a lição e apostou todas suas fichas na agitação de ruas e estradas, sob o “ideário” de uma hipótese (adulteração das urnas eletrônicas), e na cooptação do oficialato, ignorando que a forte presença militar nos governos dos primeiros anos republicanos (1889-1891) não bastou para a manutenção do poder, e que, mesmo nesse período, o protagonismo dos chefes militares estava baseado não em ambições pessoais, mas nos “interesses nacionais e patrióticos”.

Tivemos sorte que a liderança autoritária tinha esse perfil. Mas, devemos colocar nossas barbas de molho, pois, sem as reformas que precisamos para dar maior solidez à democracia – inclusive a reforma moral-intelectual (de todos) –, continuaremos a contar com sorte.

 

*Hamilton Garcia de Lima (Cientista Político, UENF/DR^[ii])

^[i] Citado por Raimundo Faoro, Os Donos do Poder: formação do patronato político brasileiro (vol.2); ed. Publifolha/SP-2000.

^[ii] Universidade Estadual do Norte-Fluminense/Darcy Ribeiro.

 

Christian Lynch: Fundações do Pensamento Político Brasileiro: a construção intelectual do Estado no Brasil - Felipe Freller (FSP)

 Resenha de Felipe Freller (FSP):

Hu Yaobang e o começo das reformas na China: Book: Robert Suettinger, The Conscience of the Party: Hu Yaobang, China’s Communist Reformer - Chen Jian (Foreign Affairs)

 Review Essay

The Man Who Almost Changed China

Hu Yaobang and the Unfinished Business of Reform and Opening

Chen Jian

Foreign Affairs - January/February 2025

 

CHEN JIAN is Director of the Center on Global History, Economy, and Culture at New York University–Shanghai and East China Normal University and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the author of Zhou Enlai: A Life.

 

One of the most consequential events of the twentieth century was China’s historic turn, in the years after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, toward a sweeping program of reform. By relaxing the state’s grip on the economy and its control over society in this period, Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader from 1978 to 1989, helped put in motion the forces that would in mere decades pull hundreds of millions of people out of absolute poverty, transform China into the workshop of the world, and set it up as a great power in the twenty-first century—the only plausible rival to the United States. Although Deng led this process, he was aided at the time by the advice and work of a less heralded leader, Hu Yaobang.

Hu does not enjoy the broad name recognition of Mao, Deng, and the leading Mao-era statesman Zhou Enlai. Even in China, many people who came of age after 1989 know little about him. But as the international relations scholar Robert Suettinger shows in The Conscience of the Party: Hu Yaobang, China’s Communist Reformer, Hu was an essential figure in the grand process of “reform and opening.” Leading up to and during his tenure as chairman (and then general secretary) of the Chinese Communist Party from 1981 to 1987, he worked to shatter the ideological hold that Maoism had over Chinese politics, restoring the rights of millions of people purged during the Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976, and striving to ensure that the imperatives of reform prevailed in Chinese policymaking. Hu’s commitment to political reform, however, led to his downfall, after a rift with Deng forced him out as CCP general secretary in January 1987. But he was still regarded by ordinary Chinese—as well as intellectuals and young students—as the champion of China’s political democratization.

Hu died suddenly of a heart attack in April 1989, and his passing would spur the fateful occupation of Tiananmen Square in Beijing by pro-democracy protesters and similar demonstrations across the country. After seven weeks, Deng had the protests quashed ruthlessly, in the process foreclosing the political democratization that Hu had hoped for. Hu’s key insight was that economic growth was not enough to power the Chinese state; without the legitimacy afforded by political reform and democratization, China would experience turbulence in its modernization and development. Chinese leaders may believe they have found a way to break that connection, but there is good reason to think that Hu will be proved right—and that ultimately, as they deal with a faltering economy and mounting discontent, they will have no choice but to confront Hu’s warning.

THE IDEALIST

Suettinger’s biography is a pathbreaking account of Hu, prodigiously and thoughtfully exploring what kind of person he was and how he emerged as a leader with reformist aspirations in a world of apparatchiks. It is the first full-dress biography of Hu in English. But Suettinger, a former national intelligence officer in the Clinton administration and a longtime scholar of China, isn’t the first American academic to have attempted such a work. The social scientist Ezra Vogel died, in 2020, before he had finished his own biography of Hu, a volume he intended as a sequel of sorts to Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, his much-acclaimed 2011 biography of Deng. The two leaders are something of a pair; their fortunes rose and fell together during the tumultuous decades of Mao’s rule before they both came to power after Mao’s death. Hu’s legacy would be defined in large part by his eventual rift with Deng, one that embodied their different visions of reform.

To draw a full picture of Hu’s life is no easy task. The most apparent and seemingly insurmountable barrier to any biographer is lack of access to archival and other primary sources, which in Hu’s case remain largely inaccessible to both Chinese and Western researchers. Suettinger spent nearly a decade finding sources and interviewing contemporaries, and in so doing managed to dig deeply into Hu’s life in ways no Western scholar has done before. The result is a remarkably nuanced work that not only depicts Hu as a courageous and thoughtful reformist leader but also illuminates an important turning point in China’s recent history.

Hu was an idealist, an honest, sincere, and candid man, as described by many who knew him and worked with him. He was born in 1915 into a poor but educated peasant family in Hunan Province. With the support of his parents, he received a good early education, albeit in tough circumstances; for several years, he had to walk 12 miles of rugged mountainous trails every day to school. At the age of 14, he joined the Communist Youth League, the youth wing of the CCP, and joined the fight. The fact that he was educated, combined with his dedication to the revolution and enthusiasm for work, helped him rise quickly through the ranks of the Red Army (which would later become the People’s Liberation Army) and the CCP. He survived the harrowing and legendary Long March—the Red Army’s retreat between 1934 and 1935 to the interior of the country—that would only further bolster his Communist credentials. By the time the CCP took over China in 1949, Hu had become the youngest army corps political commissar in the military.

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. In 1932, as part of a campaign to suppress supposed “reactionaries” in their midst, Mao’s agents accused him of being an enemy agent without any evidence; he escaped the death penalty only through the last-minute intervention of two Youth League inspectors who knew him to be a loyal comrade. In the early 1940s, during a campaign launched by Mao to consolidate his dominance over the party, Hu and other CCP members had to go through the mental torture of endless self-criticism. Such ordeals, as Suettinger points out, sowed in Hu the seed of doubt about Maoism and its propensity for brutally trying to control how people think and behave.

Hu’s key insight was that economic growth was not enough to power China.

Hu nevertheless remained deeply loyal to the CCP after the Communists drove the Nationalists to Taiwan and founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949. He soon had the opportunity to work with Deng. From 1950 to 1952, Hu was the local CCP secretary in northern Sichuan Province, reporting directly to Deng, who was then the CCP’s head in Sichuan. Hu flushed out the remnants of the Nationalist forces in the area, restored order in the wake of the civil war, carried out land reform, and promoted agricultural and industrial production. His outstanding track record and devotion to work won him Deng’s admiration. Their accomplishments also earned them the attention of the grandees in Beijing.

By 1953, together with Deng, Hu was elevated to the national stage and transferred to Beijing to take up the position of secretary and then first secretary of the Communist Youth League. But in that post, Hu was involved in a series of disastrous Maoist endeavors, including the Anti-Rightist Movement, a political campaign that sought to purge alleged dissidents among the ranks of intellectuals; the Great Leap Forward, the economic and social drive beginning in 1958 that resulted in a devastating famine; and the Socialist Education Movement, a campaign of deepening ideological indoctrination in the early to mid-1960s.

Hu tried very hard to engage himself in these movements by following and implementing all orders from Beijing as faithfully as he could. But he was alarmed by the way many of his comrades and subordinates were groundlessly labeled “rightists” and by the suffering of everyday people during the Great Leap Forward. Those experiences cultivated in him a deeper suspicion of Mao’s utopian program of “continuous revolution.” At a CCP Central Committee plenum in Lushan in 1959, he was reluctant to follow the general push to criticize Peng Dehuai, the former defense minister whom Mao had identified as the head of an “anti-party clique” for making critical comments about the Great Leap Forward. Not surprisingly, when the Cultural Revolution began, in 1966, Mao singled out Hu and other leaders of the Communist Youth League for severe attack. Hu himself was repeatedly brought to denunciation rallies, where Red Guards would inveigh against him and seek to humiliate him in public. Deng also suffered during the Cultural Revolution, twice purged by Mao and his allies.

In 1969, Mao’s agents at the Youth League Center banished Hu to a farm in Henan Province for “reeducation.” He was forced to perform heavy manual labor almost every day and he suffered greatly in this period. After the death in 1971 of Lin Biao, one of Mao’s key lieutenants, Hu was allowed to return to Beijing but was not fully rehabilitated into the ranks of the party elite. In this period, he read voraciously—including classic Marxist works, Chinese history, books of philosophy and ethics, and even the translated plays of Shakespeare. He became increasingly critical of Maoism in both its theory and practice. When Mao died, in September 1976, and the old order seemed in jeopardy, Hu was ready to advance the radical cause of reform in China.

OPENING THE DOOR

Mao’s death led to a period of uncertainty in which various factions vied for power. Hu aligned himself with Deng, who was emerging from his second period of exile during the Cultural Revolution. Whereas Deng’s principal adversaries, including Mao’s chosen successor and the party chairman Hua Guofeng, claimed to adhere to “the two whatevers”—the slogan that “we will absolutely uphold whatever decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave”—Hu sought a different path. In May 1978, the Guangming Daily, a party ideological organ, published an essay, written by a group of teachers at the Central Party School (Hu was then its executive vice president and reviewed the essay before publication), titled “Practice Is the Sole Criteria to Judge Truth.” They argued that the truth must be tested and proved by practice—an implicit rebuke of the implacability of Maoist dogma and its claims to truth. The essay sent shock waves through the system; it effectively eroded the legitimacy of Hua (as his position as China’s top leader entirely relied on Mao’s designation) and rejected the restrictions that Mao and his ideology had imposed on China. This ideological salvo greatly enhanced Deng’s position in the intraparty struggle with Hua’s faction and helped lead to Deng’s eventually becoming China’s paramount leader in 1978.

As Deng rose, so did Hu, who became the head of the CCP’s Central Organizational Department in December 1977. In this role, Hu sought to correct the injustices of the Cultural Revolution and other Maoist political campaigns. Under Hu’s direction, tens of thousands of CCP cadres, including hundreds of high-ranking ones, were rehabilitated and assigned to official positions. Hu also helped end the ostracization of tens of millions of ordinary citizens who had suffered during Mao’s destructive initiatives and let them live normal lives. These efforts to redress the excesses of the Mao era won Hu much support from within the party and among the wider public. In 1981, Hu replaced Hua as chairman of the CCP Central Committee (the next year, the title of the position would change to general secretary), allowing him to effectively function as Deng’s right-hand man in the launch and promotion of reforms.

Between 1978 and 1982, Deng and Hu advanced a series of policies intended to open China’s economy. These included abandoning the rigid centrally planned economic system borrowed from the Soviet Union, decollectivizing agriculture, embracing some market mechanisms, allowing foreign investment into the country, seeking greater trade with Western countries, and sending Chinese students to study abroad. As a result of these changes, the overall economy ballooned—with annual growth rates of around ten percent throughout the decade—as did productivity. Before the reforms, China’s share of global GDP based on purchasing power parity hovered around two percent; today, it’s around 20 percent.

Curiously, Suettinger focuses on Hu’s domestic contributions in this period, altogether missing how he helped transform China’s orientation to the outside world. During the Mao years, China styled itself as a revolutionary country, bent on challenging the existing international system and its institutions dominated by the United States and other Western capitalist countries. Hu was among the first Chinese leaders to see the need for a less instinctively confrontational, more cooperative, and forward-looking foreign policy. In the early 1980s, he played a central role in a CCP grand strategy review that led to the party’s jettisoning the Maoist notion that another world war was inevitable and reaching the consensus that it was in China’s long-term and fundamental interest to strive for a peaceful external environment. Good relations with the outside world would allow the country to concentrate on economic development and the pursuit of socialist modernity. Hu shaped the trajectory of the change, understanding that opening to the world could speed reforms at home. He was a firm supporter of the normalization of ties with the United States in 1979, championing a friendly relationship between the two countries; he endorsed and even got personally involved in China’s improving cooperative relations with its erstwhile foe Japan (in 1983, for instance, he invited 3,000 Japanese students to visit China); he strove to improve Beijing’s relations with London by visiting the United Kingdom and receiving Queen Elizabeth II during her state visit to Beijing in 1986, which helped make more credible Deng’s promise that China would not alter the special status of Hong Kong until 2047.

EARLY RETIREMENT

With Deng as paramount leader and Hu as general secretary, it seemed that China was on the path to ever-widening reform through much of the 1980s. But it was not to be. By around 1984, Deng, Hu, and several other CCP elders began to have critical disagreements on the way forward. The main point of contention was whether to create more checks and balances in the CCP system, which is what Hu wanted. At first, it seemed that Deng also favored this approach. As he consolidated his own power, however, Deng became increasingly worried that such reforms would result in the embrace of Western-style democracy, threatening the CCP’s one-party domination of the country. Although he was willing to promote economic reforms and open up the economy, he repeatedly called on the party and the country to fight “bourgeois liberalization” and maintain the “four cardinal principles,” adhering to the “socialist road,” proletarian dictatorship, the leadership of the CCP, and Marxist-Leninist and Maoist ideological beliefs.

Hu, by contrast, wanted to go further in the direction of political democratization. A fissure opened between the two men. When Deng persistently emphasized the need to resist “bourgeois liberalization,” Hu spoke openly about the need for more democracy, more freedom of speech, and more public participation in politics. Deng grew disappointed with Hu’s forthrightness and began to lose trust in his longtime ally.

 

Hu at the National People’s Congress in Beijing, March 1987Gene Del Bianco / Reuters

 

Events came to a head with Hu’s public call in 1985 for the “youthification” of the aging CCP leadership. He began with himself, stating, “I’m almost 70 years old, and I’m about to retire . . . . Those veteran comrades over the age of 80 even more should step down.” Deng never rejected this suggestion, and even indicated that he might be willing to retire. But that was merely rhetoric. When Hu naively suggested that Deng would set a good example by “taking the lead in retiring,” it was a step too far for the paramount leader. In January 1987, at a “democratic life meeting” attended by top party leaders and presided over by Deng and other elders, Hu was compelled to resign as general secretary. Hu calmly accepted almost all the charges against him as he saw, in Suettinger’s telling, “the need to preserve stability and unity within the leadership.”

But this defenestration was not the end of Hu’s story. Although he was pulled from China’s political stage, he continued to haunt it. Many people in the country referred to him as “the conscience of the party”—the metaphor was not just praise but also implied that the CCP had lost its way without him. In the years following Hu’s resignation, the gap between rapid economic and social change, on the one hand, and political stagnation, on the other, continually produced tensions between the state and the citizenry, as well as within Chinese society. Discontent and anxiety about the sclerotic pace of political reform spread far and wide.

When Hu died, in April 1989, students in Beijing—and then citizens from all walks of life—quickly turned the mourning of him into a powerful public demonstration of their frustration and anger at the lack of political reform and widespread corruption. Protesters flooded Tiananmen Square in Beijing. What followed became a defining moment in China’s history. On June 4, Deng and other CCP elders ordered troops to crack down on students and other demonstrators, resulting in the bloody tragedy that shocked the world.

HU’S WARNING

More than four decades after the launch of the reform and opening-up project, China is now at another inflection point. Its economic growth during the reform era was extraordinary, and by 2010 it had become the second-largest economy in the world. That success has many causes, but one of the most important factors is that China in the era of reform and opening enjoyed a long peace; guided by the likes of Hu, it strove to craft amicable relations with the outside world and avoid confrontation, particularly with the United States.

But the other vision of political reform—Hu’s vision—is decidedly unfulfilled. The CCP remains entrenched in Beijing. The prospect of a political system with greater checks and balances seems distant. From Deng’s rule onward, the CCP leadership has taken full advantage of China’s continuous and rapid economic growth to boost its legitimacy and has taken credit for all of China’s economic successes. Legitimacy so defined, however, depends on continued strong performance; China’s rapid economic growth must last forever if the government is to enjoy the legitimacy that accompanies that economic record. The current slowing of the Chinese economy is much more than an economic issue. It represents a serious challenge to the Chinese state. In his time, Hu understood this problem, which is why he wanted China to embrace greater political reform and put mechanisms in place that would satisfy the demands and social, moral, and cultural aspirations of the Chinese people.

Those needs remain unaddressed, a deficit that has periodically inflamed tensions between the Chinese state and society, as well as between China and other countries. Hu saw this coming. Even as he sought to remake China in the world, he understood that the biggest challenges facing China come not from without but from within.

A destruição dos EUA por Trump e sua tropa - Timothy Snyder

The Logic of Destruction

And how to resist it

TIMOTHY SNYDER FEB 2

What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. America exists because its people elect those who make and execute laws. The assumption of a democracy is that individuals have dignity and rights that they realize and protect by acting together.

The people who now dominate the executive branch of the government deny all of this, and are acting, quite deliberately, to destroy the nation. For them, only a few people, the very wealthy with a certain worldview, have rights, and the first among these is to dominate. 

For them, there is no such thing as an America, or Americans, or democracy, or citizens, and they act accordingly. Now that the oligarchs and their clients are inside the federal government, they are moving, illegally and unconstitutionally, to take over its institutions.

The parts of the government that work to implement laws have been maligned for decades. Americans have been told that the people who provide them with services are conspirators within a “deep state.” We have been instructed that the billionaires are the heroes.

All of this work was preparatory to the coup that is going on now. The federal government has immense capacity and control over trillions of dollars. That power was a cocreation of the American people. It belongs to them. The oligarchs around Trump are working now to take it for themselves.

Theirs is a logic of destruction. It is very hard to create a large, legitimate, functioning government. The oligarchs have no plan to govern. They will take what they can, and disable the rest. The destruction is the point. They don’t want to control the existing order. They want disorder in which their relative power will grow. 

Think of the federal government as a car. You might have thought that the election was like getting the car serviced. Instead, when you come into the shop, the mechanics, who somehow don’t look like mechanics, tell you that they have taken the parts of your car that work and sold them and kept the money. And that this was the most efficient thing to do. And that you should thank them.

The gap between the oligarchs’ wealth and everyone else’s will grow. Knowing what they themselves will do and when, they will have bet against the stock market in advance of Trump’s deliberately destructive tariffs, and will be ready to tell everyone to buy the crypto they already own. But that is just tomorrow and the day after.

In general, the economic collapse they plan is more like a reverse flood from the Book of Genesis, in which the righteous will all be submerged while the very worst ride Satan’s ark. The self-chosen few will ride out the forty days and forty night. When the waters subside, they will be alone to dominate. 

Trump’s tariffs (which are also likely illegal) are there to make us poor. Trump’s attacks on America’s closest friends, countries such as Canada and Denmark, are there to make enemies of countries where constitutionalism works and people are prosperous. As their country is destroyed, Americans must be denied the idea that anything else is possible.

Deportations are a spectacle to turn Americans against one another, to make us afraid, and to get us to see pain and camps as normal. They also create busy-work for law enforcement, locating the “criminals” in workplaces across the country, as the crime of the century takes place at the very center of power. 

The best people in American federal law enforcement, national security, and national intelligence are being fired. The reasons given for this are DEI and trumpwashing the past. Of course, if you fire everyone who was concerned in some way with the investigations of January 6th or of Russia, that will be much or even most of the FBI. Those are bad reasons, but the reality is worse: the aim is lawlessness: to get the police and the patriots out of the way.

In the logic of destruction, there is no need to rebuild afterwards. In this chaos, the oligarchs will tell us that there is no choice but to have a strong man in charge. It can be a befuddled Trump signing ever larger pieces of paper for the cameras, or a conniving Vance who, unlike Trump, has always known the plot. Or someone else.

After we are all poor and isolated, the logic goes, we will be consoled by the thought that there is at least a human being to whom we can appeal. We will settle for a kind of anthropological minimum, wishful contact with the strong man. As in Russia, pathetic video selfies sent to the Leader will be the extent of politics.

For the men currently pillaging the federal government, the data from those video selfies is more important than the people who will make them. The new world they imagine is not just anti-American but anti-human. The people are just data, means to the end of accumulating wealth.

They see themselves as the servants of the freedom of the chosen few, but in fact they are possessed, like millennia of tyrants before them, of fantastic dreams: they will live forever, they will go to Mars. None of that will happen; they will die here on Earth, with the rest of us, their only legacy, if we let it happen, one of ruins. They are god-level brainrotted.

The attempt by the oligarchs to destroy our government is illegal, unconstitutional, and more than a little mad. The people in charge, though, are very intelligent politically, and have a plan. I describe it not because it must succeed but because it must be described so that we can make it fail. This will require clarity, and speed, and coalitions. I try to capture the mood in my little book On Tyranny. Here are a few ideas.

If you voted Republican, and you care about your country, please act rather than rationalize. Unless you cast your ballot so that South African oligarchs could steal your data, your money, your country, and your future, make it known to your elected officials that you wanted something else. And get ready to protest with people with whom you otherwise disagree.

Almost everything that has happened during this attempted takeover is illegal. Lawsuits can be filed and courts can order that executive orders be halted. This is crucial work.

Much of what is happening, though, involves private individuals whose names are not even known, and who have no legal authority, wandering through government offices and issuing orders beyond even the questionable authority of executive orders. Their idea is that they will be immunized by their boldness. This must be proven wrong.

Some of this will reach the Supreme Court quickly. I am under no illusion that the majority of justices care about the rule of law. They know, however, that our belief in it makes their office something other than the undignified handmaiden of oligarchy. If they legalize the coup, they are irrelevant forever.

Individual Democrats in the Senate and House have legal and institutional tools to slow down the attempted oligarchical takeover. There should also be legislation. It might take a moment, but even Republican leaders might recognize that the Senate and House will no longer matter in a post-American oligarchy without citizens.

Trump should obviously be impeached. Either he has lost control, or he is using his power to do obviously illegal things. If Republicans have a sense of where this is going, there could be the votes for an impeachment and prosecution. 

Those considering impeachment should also include Vance. He is closer to the relevant oligarchs than Trump, and more likely to be aware of the logic of destruction than he. The oligarchs have likely factored in, or perhaps even want, the impeachment and prosecution of Trump. Unlike Vance, Trump has charisma and followers, and could theoretically resist them. He won’t; but he poses a hypothetical risk to the oligarchs that Vance does not.

Democrats who serve in state office as governors have a chance to profile themselves, or more importantly to profile an America that still works. Attorneys general in states have a chance to enforce state laws, which will no doubt have been broken.

The Democratic Party has a talented new chair. Democrats will need instruments of active opposition, such as a People’s Cabinet, in which prominent Democrats take responsibility for following government departments. It would be really helpful to have someone who can report to the press and the people what is happening inside Justice, Defense, Transportation, and the Treasury, and all the others, starting this week.

Federal workers should stay in office, if they can, for as long as they can. This is not political, but existential, for them and for all of us. They will have a better chance of getting jobs afterwards if they are fired. And the logic of their firing is to make the whole government fail. The more this can be slowed down, the longer the rest of us have to get traction.

And companies? As every CEO knows, the workings of markets depend upon the government creating a fair playing field. The ongoing takeover will make life impossible for all but a few companies. Can American companies responsibly pay taxes to a US Treasury controlled by their private competitors? Tesla paid no federal tax at all in 2024. Should other companies pay taxes that, for all they know, will just enrich Tesla’s owner? 

Commentators should please stop using words such as “digital” and “progress” and “efficiency” and “vision” when describing this coup attempt. The plotting oligarchs have legacy money from an earlier era of software, which they are now seeking to leverage, using destructive political techniques, to destroy human institutions. That’s it. They are offering no future beyond acting out their midlife crises on the rest of us. It is demeaning to pretend that they represent something besides a logic of destruction.

As for the rest of us: Make sure you are talking to people and doing something. The logic of “move fast and break things,” like the logic of all coups, is to gain quick dramatic successes that deter and demoralize and create the impression of inevitability. Nothing is inevitable. Do not be alone and do not be dismayed. Find someone who is doing something you admire and join them. 

What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. Sometimes self-government just means elections. And sometimes it means recognizing the deeper dignity and meaning of what it means to be a people. That means speaking up, standing out, and protesting. We can only be free together.

Thinking about... is a reader-supported publication.

Políticos lançam manifesto que critica emendas e repudia alianças com direita radical nas eleições - Joelmir Tavares (FSP)

 *Ex-ministros de Lula, FHC e Dilma criticam Congresso e se mobilizam para 2026*

*Joelmir Tavares*

*Folha de S. Paulo*, 2/02/2025

*Políticos lançam manifesto que critica emendas e repudia alianças com direita radical nas eleições*

Ex-ministros de Lula (PT), Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB) e Dilma Rousseff (PT) iniciaram uma mobilização para convencer a classe política e eleitores a isolar a direita radical nas eleições de 2026 e interromper o que chamam de extorsão do Orçamento pelo Congresso, via emendas.

O grupo organizou o manifesto "Vamos em Frente", que até esta quarta-feira (15) contava com 83 assinaturas. Entre os signatários, estão os ex-ministros Tarso Genro, Cristovam Buarque (governo Lula), Aloysio Nunes Ferreira (FHC), José Eduardo Cardozo, Renato Janine Ribeiro (Dilma) e Nelson Jobim (que serviu aos três governos).

Os idealizadores dizem buscar amplitude ideológica. Articulado nos últimos quatro meses, o documento também foi endossado por representantes da sociedade civil, acadêmicos, empresários e advogados. O material ainda será aberto para adesões em um site, no intuito de aumentar seu alcance.

A principal crítica da carta é à influência no Congresso "de bancadas oligárquicas e fisiológicas, que se dedicam a extorquir, para proveito próprio, os orçamentos públicos".

As emendas parlamentares já consomem até 74% da verba de ministérios, como mostrou a Folha. A avaliação dos autores é que o descontrole nos gastos subverte a relação institucional entre os Poderes.

"Temos um objetivo muito concreto e específico, que é reconstruir a dignidade perdida do Congresso Nacional", diz Tarso Genro, um dos que capitaneiam o autointitulado movimento cívico.

A iniciativa passou pelo Instituto Novos Paradigmas, fundado pelo petista e ex-governador do Rio Grande do Sul. Para ele, não é justo generalizar a conduta dos parlamentares, mas aquilo que chama de "bloco político de extorsão orçamentária" tem prejudicado o Executivo e vai continuar emparedando o presidente, seja ele de qualquer coloração política, por "submetê-lo a um parlamentarismo perverso".

A carta ainda propõe ao campo democrático que assuma o compromisso de não firmar alianças com partidos ou representantes "da direita autoritária e da extrema direita". Também repudia a aproximação com "quaisquer organizações partidárias que proponham ditaduras de qualquer natureza".

Segundo Tarso Genro, o grupo descarta anunciar apoio a candidato à Presidência e busca estimular a união de esforços não só no plano nacional, mas também nos estados, para defender a democracia e os termos da Constituição de 1988. O eixo central, diz o petista, é "mudar a composição do Parlamento".

A carta não cita nomes, mas alude ao ex-presidente Jair Bolsonaro (PL) ao citar "a herança do governo anterior, com um déficit fiscal de R$ 782 bilhões, desmanche de instituições e políticas públicas, negação retrógrada da inteligência científica universal, propagação da violência miliciana e o culto da morte". Para os autores, esses "também são um legado perverso" do qual o país deve ser defendido.

O ponto de consenso no grupo é que fortalecer a democracia "só será possível com o suporte de um campo político unificado", que demarque diferenças entre democracia e ditadura e "entre frentes políticas eleitorais sem princípios e frentes eleitorais baseadas em princípios mínimos".

Tarso Genro afirma que uma das intenções é replicar a mobilização em outras regiões, influenciando uma frente nacional. "É um chamado ao amplo espectro das instituições que defendem a democracia em busca de uma saída consensual e negociada para a situação em que estamos", diz o ex-ministro.

Ele ressalva, contudo, que o grupo inicial do manifesto "não tem ambição de interferir nos partidos, mas, sim, no pensamento político dos eleitores".

O texto fala em "estabelecer uma comunicação entre as múltiplas visões democráticas —nos estados e na própria União— para buscar pontos de unidade em direção a novas frentes políticas, com suas especificidades regionais, já no primeiro turno ou, alternativamente, no segundo turno" de 2026.

O sociólogo José César Martins, o Zeca, coordenador do grupo Derrubando Muros, diz que assinou o manifesto porque ele se propõe a aglutinar "uma frente amplíssima" e por entender que é preciso "unificar os democratas" e abraçar as diferenças em torno de um valor que é inegociável.

"Mas democracia demanda entregas", afirma ele, mencionando desafios como transição climática, superação de desigualdades e as crises na educação e na segurança pública.

"Para isso, precisamos nos reinventar e dar um choque de mudanças e progresso, [sendo] firmes, sem 'dono da bola' e concessões à direita ou à esquerda, embora o problema mais grave agora venha da extrema direita", prossegue Zeca, completando que "ditadura é ditadura".

Leia abaixo a íntegra do manifesto

*CARTA EM DEFESA DA DEMOCRACIA E DA REPÚBLICA: JUNTOS EM FRENTE*

Esta carta é dirigida a todos os que professam a democracia e defendem a paz e a ordem republicana do Estado Social da Constituição de 1988. E é um manifesto em defesa do Brasil, como país soberano, do trabalho como valor fundamental, da construção da nação como comunidade de destino, do empreendedorismo inovador -

em todos os níveis- baseado na inteligência cientifica universal.

As guerras das grandes potencias militares com seus interesses estratégicos estão transformando o planeta inteiro num catastrófico teatro de ações políticas e operações militares, que já ameaçam as condições naturais mínimas para a sobrevivência dos humanos e a soberania das nações. As guerras, em geral, são propagadoras da

barbárie e alimentadoras do autoritarismo e das ditaduras.

Esta Carta propõe que aqui no Brasil, a partir da sociedade civil, propaguemos um amplo movimento cívico descentralizado, com iniciativas locais, regionais, nacional - idênticas ou análogas - para defender o futuro da democracia no país. A herança do governo anterior, com um déficit fiscal de 782 bilhões, desmanche de instituições e políticas públicas, negação retrógada da inteligência científica universal, propagação da violência miliciana e o culto da morte - erigidos como política de Segurança Pública - também são um legado perverso do qual devemos defender o país.

Afirmamos, primeiro, que a solução é mais democracia, não menos; e que isso só será possível com o suporte de um campo político unificado, capaz de mostrar diferenças: entre democracia e ditadura; entre frentes políticas eleitorais sem princípios e frentes eleitorais baseadas em princípios mínimos, tanto voltados para a restauração da

dignidade da política, como da preservação dos Poderes da República.

Esta Carta, portanto, propõe que é possível estabelecer uma comunicação entre as múltiplas visões democráticas - nos Estados e na própria União - para buscar pontos de unidade em direção a novas Frentes políticas, com suas especificidades regionais, já no 1º turno ou, alternativamente, no 2º turno das eleições de 2026, pautando-se pelos seguintes objetivos:

1. Bloquear a influência no Congresso Nacional, de bancadas oligárquicas e fisiológicas, que se dedicam a extorquir, para proveito próprio, os orçamentos públicos, assim subvertendo a relação institucional entre os poderes da União;

2. Defesa dos princípios do Estado de Direito da Constituição de 88 e da preservação dos seus poderes constitucionais;

3. Defesa de uma política interna e externa, que unifique o país na transição climática, para uma potente política de prevenção de catástrofes e de redução das desigualdades sociais e regionais;

4. Compromisso de não firmar alianças com setores de partidos ou partidos, da direita autoritária e da extrema direita, ou de quaisquer organizações partidárias que proponham ditaduras de qualquer natureza nos processos eleitorais em curso no ano vindouro.

Estas novas frentes denunciarão tentativas golpistas, defenderão a identidade laica do Estado, defenderão a profissionalização das Forças Armadas e seus proponentes envidarão esforços desde agora - autônomos, comuns ou associados em rede – para proporcionar múltiplas manifestações e novos manifestos pautados pelos objetivos ora concertados.

Info Ateliê: atividades do Ateliê de Humanidades de dezembro e janeiro e as novidades de fevereiro

 Acabou de sair a Info Ateliê, edição 25-6 (janeiro/fevereiro 2025), que oferece a sinopse das atividades do Ateliê de Humanidades de dezembro e janeiro e as novidades de fevereiro.

Vale dar uma conferida no que veio e vem aí. 

Tudo o que fazemos compilado facilmente na palma de sua mão.

Acesse a InfoAteliê neste link:

https://sh1.sendinblue.com/amis3apw1xpfe.html?t=1738441717065