What makes me angriest and saddest about this coup in Brazil is not the outrageous hypocritical acts of those who took power and pretend everything is fine, neither is it that incredibly corporate-oriented and ungenerous policies are being implemented in order to destroy the social inclusion measures that took place in the last 12 years or so. What makes me more upset and depressed (and I suspect I'm not the only one) is rather the bullying. To be bullied involves to be humiliated by someone making clear that your sovereignty is limited, that you cannot do what you want - "we're watching you". The corporate right-wing who is taking power in this coup is certainly composed by cynical bullies, for sure. I feel I've been looked down as if someone was saying: your capacity to act is a concession, it is after all up to us.
The worst thing about being bullied is that you often don't know where the bullying comes from at first glance. It is often later that you realize that the attack came from somewhere else, different from where you thought, different from the faces that where staring at you. The bullies in this coup are continental; this makes the bullying more painful. They are the same agents behind Honduras 2009, Paraguay 2012, the attempted coup in Ecuador in 2010, the multiple attempts of coup in Venezuela and the ones who would do something about Argentina if Macri had lost last year. I don't know whether the bullies are the Koch brothers network (a huge one fine-tuned by the flux of capital) or the American government with the concourse of their Koch brothers - capital doesn't have a motherland, for sure, but motherlands have capital! We did, however, see Obama spend a 26th of March in Buenos Aires this year. We don't see the face of the bullies, but we feel the bullying - we know they are bullying the continent and since 2002 in Venezuela they sort of gave up military coups for subtler, softer but no less interventionist strategies. Bullying makes you feel overlooked, this is what makes it intrusive and suffocating.
This state of being bullied is what explains the general perplexity or depression in the country now. The general message, of course, is: "it doesn't matter what you do, you're not a real agent, the south of this continent carries on being overlooked, to be sure with a lot of help in the ground, but the overall direction on which you go is not up to you". So, people once again conform to the old slogan: either you comply or, you will comply later, or silenced, or unheard, or exiled, or dead. But of course too, some of us are brave.
PS: The text above appeared also copied from here in philpercs. What I would add is that the best thing I read about colonialism in the last month or so was Nick Land's "Kant, capital and the prohibition of incest"(compiled as the first essay in Fanged Noumena).
The worst thing about being bullied is that you often don't know where the bullying comes from at first glance. It is often later that you realize that the attack came from somewhere else, different from where you thought, different from the faces that where staring at you. The bullies in this coup are continental; this makes the bullying more painful. They are the same agents behind Honduras 2009, Paraguay 2012, the attempted coup in Ecuador in 2010, the multiple attempts of coup in Venezuela and the ones who would do something about Argentina if Macri had lost last year. I don't know whether the bullies are the Koch brothers network (a huge one fine-tuned by the flux of capital) or the American government with the concourse of their Koch brothers - capital doesn't have a motherland, for sure, but motherlands have capital! We did, however, see Obama spend a 26th of March in Buenos Aires this year. We don't see the face of the bullies, but we feel the bullying - we know they are bullying the continent and since 2002 in Venezuela they sort of gave up military coups for subtler, softer but no less interventionist strategies. Bullying makes you feel overlooked, this is what makes it intrusive and suffocating.
This state of being bullied is what explains the general perplexity or depression in the country now. The general message, of course, is: "it doesn't matter what you do, you're not a real agent, the south of this continent carries on being overlooked, to be sure with a lot of help in the ground, but the overall direction on which you go is not up to you". So, people once again conform to the old slogan: either you comply or, you will comply later, or silenced, or unheard, or exiled, or dead. But of course too, some of us are brave.
PS: The text above appeared also copied from here in philpercs. What I would add is that the best thing I read about colonialism in the last month or so was Nick Land's "Kant, capital and the prohibition of incest"(compiled as the first essay in Fanged Noumena).
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