“The military would probably be obliged, in order to make up for the lack of other support, to unleash an unprecedented pattern of violence, dubious sustainability and effectiveness, with overwhelming isolation inside and outside the country,” he said.
According to him, Bolsonaro tested the limits of that possibility in 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, rehearsing steps that resembled those of Peruvian Alberto Fujimori, in 1994, when he resorted to self-coup to impose a dictatorship that implemented an aggressive neoliberal agenda and massacred the guerrilla opposition.
Bolsonarismo sought forces for the self-coup between April and June 2020, but its leader did not have enough social base, the bourgeoisie avoided giving him power of attorney, the Armed Forces did not issue a green light and the isolation of the far right deepened.
From then on, according to Altman, neo-fascism formed itself into the so-called “centrão”, seeking channels of appeasement in the Supreme Court and reconfigured itself as the most reactionary fraction of liberal democracy, abandoning the pretense of appearing as its frontal enemy.
“One cannot neglect the possibility of adventures, in the image of Donald Trump, with riots and skirmishes, to keep their own bases with raised fists and combat morale, particularly in case of defeat. […] Much less should one underestimate the possibilities of Bolsonarism resorting to violence before, during and after the electoral process. But coup is another story,” he said.
From there, he evaluated the functionality of Bolsonaro’s coup bluff to impose the narrative arc that is supposedly more favorable to him, that of political, legal, religious and moral opposition against the “system”, preventing as much as possible the rights economic and social interests of the population occupy the center of the dispute.
For Altman, the fights against neo-fascism and neoliberalism must go hand in hand so that a “President Lula” movement can effectively defeat the 2016 coup and resume the thread of history.
“Of course, authoritarianism and the undemocratic actions of Bolsonarism must be denounced, but the agenda that can move the people is hunger, unemployment, inflation, falling wages, the dismantling of public health and education services, the dismantling of the State, in the loss of national sovereignty”, he defended.
