A rose in a Coke bottle in an ex-jail cell in memory of those who died
or were tortured during the Brazilian military dictatorship, 1964-1984.
The old headquarters of the political police in São Paulo, DOPS, is now a
museum dedicated to the preservation of the memory of the crimes
of authoritarian government.
This one is for my American friends and relatives who are bummed out by the far right's apparent win in this week's elections in the United States.
"Apesar de Você" is a samba that was written and originally interpretted by Brazilian singer/songwriter Chico Buarque de Hollanda in 1970, during the height of the Brazilian military dictatorship. The song was banned from airplay by then President General Médici for its rather explicit criticism of the Brazilian far right.
Chico Buarque #4, banned in Brazil in 1970
In March 1970, Chico returned to Brazil from exile in Italy, having heard from a friend that things "were getting better". They were not. In fact, the period from 1968 to roughly 1974 in Brazil is now known as the "years of lead", when the nascent revolutionary movements in the country were squashed through mass arrests and torture. Chico expressed his disgust with the situation by writing "Apesar de você" - In Spite of You - a full-throated critique of the military regime thinly veiled as quarrel between lovers. When he sent it in to the censors to be vetted, Chico never imagined it would get through - but it did and it sold 100,000 copies.
As soon as a word-of-mouth campaign had put the news out onto the streets about what the song's target really was, Chico was denounced and "Apesar" was banned from the airways. Government officials invaded the record factory and destroyed what copies remained of the song. The censor who approved it was canned and Chico was dragged into political police headquarters and asked at the point of a truncheon who the "you" in the song referred to.
"Oh, it refers to a very pushy and authoritarian woman," said Chico. But everyone in Brazil knew that it referred to the generals.
Because of "Apesar", Chico - who many consider to be Brazil's finest living poet - was marked out by the censors as an irredeemable smart-ass and his later records and poems were gone over with a fine-toothed comb and scissors. Because of this, Chico had to write and record under a pseudonym in order to get his material past the government.
At the same time Chico recorded "Apesar de Você", a 27 year old woman was rotting away in prison. A young socialist daughter of Bulgarian immigrants, Dilma Rousseff had joined the nascent revolutionary movement against the dictatorship and, together with her comrade Carlos Minc, had allegedly stolen a safety deposit box containing 2.5 million dollars belonging to the ex-governer of São Paulo, Ademar de Barros, reputably one of the most corrupt men in modern Brazilian history. Dilma was caught in an anti-guerrilla round-up in 1970 and was taken to the headquarters of Operation Bandeirante, the military government's political police facility. There she was tortured for 22 days. Her tormentors employed beatings, electric shocks and most likely sexual abuse.
Dilma Rousseff on occasion of her arrest and before she endured 22 days of torture.
In the very unlikely event that Dilma heard Chico's song while she was in jail, the future it proposed could have only seemed to be a very cruel dream, the kind of thing a drug-addled hippy would come up with, perhaps.
On Sunday, October 31st 2010, Dilma Rousseff was elected President of the Federal Republic of Brazil, on the Workers' Party ticket. She will be sworn in as our 36th president in early 2011, Brazil's first female president and, according to some, the most powerful woman in the world. Her old revolutionary comrade Carlos Minc, a leading light of the Brazilian Green Party, is currently our Minister of the Environment and likely to retain that position in Dilma's administration.
Dilma Rousseff, 36th President of Brasil.
So you see, there really is a future. In spite of them.
You can listen to "Apesar" here, complete with some extremely touching photos from the times.
Apesar de Você
Chico Buarque de Holanda (1970)
Today, it's you who rule
What you say goes
No talking back
Today, my people talk in low voices
With lowered heads
See?
You who invented this state
All this darkness
You invented sin
And forgot to invent forgiveness.
In spite of you
Tomorrow must be another day
I ask myself where are you going to hide
From the enormous euphoria?
How are you going to stop
The rooster who insists on crowing?
New water springing up
And us loving without stopping?
When the time comes
You'll pay me back for all this suffering
I swear it
All this repressed love
These contained cries
This samba in the dark
You, who invented sadness
Have the courtesy to uninvent it
You're going to pay in double
For every tear I shed
In my pain
In spite of you
Tomorrow must be another day
I'm going to pay to see
The garden break out in flowers
Just like you didn't want
You're going to rue
Seeing the sun come up
Without asking your permission
And I'm going to die laughing
Because this day is coming
Sooner than you think.
In spite of you
Tomorrow must be another day
You're going to have to see
The morning be born
And spit out poetry
How are you going to explain yourself
When the skies suddenly clear
With impunity?
How are you going to muffle
Us singing in chorus right in front of you?
In spite of you
Tomorrow must be another day
You're going to come to a bad end
Etc. and so on
Lalalalala...
Posts
fuck this bullshit
ReplyDeletemother fuckers are wallowing in the a-5 era, all fucked up about torture and murder, and , its fucking happening 10 time more now than back then
less than 1000 people were killed by the military dictatorship, and less than 700 people were killed by the people who wanted a "armed revolution "
how does that compare with today?
aint that a bitch, back then, there actualy were people dumb enough to think communism by way of fidel and the soviet union was just fantastic
they trained how to use bombs, kidnap , rob banks and kill people , in places like cuba, beijing and moscow. and then wonder why they were cracked down on.
i say great that we are in an amnesty period , so , all people who made mistakes and errors are forgiven....on both sides
and people like dilma, could make some dumb mistakes back then, but, overcome her errors and end up president
they didnt beat the military dictatorship. when the threat of communism from the soviet union by way of fidel was destroyed, they relented their iron brutal grip and then democracy came in , so , the people who were ready to have a violent revolution , could end up elected in fair elections, not bloody violence
but, there are a lot of assholes who are going to try to rewrite history
Actually, there are a couple of major distortions of history here. Let's rattle them off...
ReplyDelete1) I am not aware of anyone being trained to kill or assassinate in Cuba before the military coup of 1964. The vast majority of the young people who got involved in revolutionary politics at that time did so because other forms of politics were blocked off by the military. If you can't vote, you do indeed have the right to pick up a gun.
2) Though less than 1000 people may have been DIRECTLY killed by the dictatorship (and the truth is that we don't know what the numbers on this actually are), there was quite a lot of extreme violence used by the military during this period. Torture of political prisoners was endemic, as was the imprisonment of people based upon their political beliefs.
3) "Less than 700 killed by the guerrilhas"? I`d like to know where you`re getting that number from. I`d say far less. And again, these killings started happening as a reaction to the military violence that had already been institutionalized. Again, when you are not allowed a vote, when your citizenship rights are abused, when you are jailed for your beliefs and tortured, one has the right to respond to violence with violence.
Finally, yes the Brazilian left did indeed beat the military. "Direitas Já" didn't just happen. It wasn't a gift from our benign military masters who lovingly returned democracy to Brazil, as planned. It was fought for, bled for, struggled for... In many cases by the same people you accuse of being "terrorists" today.
In short, the military inaugurated terror and got violence in return. This violence was not at all on a par with that produced by the military. How many military people are still "missing" in Brazil, one might ask, "dissappeared" by this suppossedly all-mighty guerrilha movement?
In your entire post, there`re two things that are correct:
1) Yes, believing that Soviet-style communism was a road to a decent future was a stupid idea. (But believing that suspending democracy and imprisoning the opposition would somehow "save" Brazil was even stupider) and...
2) Yes, assholes are trying to rewrite history. 46 years after the coup, a new generation of clueless youth are romanticizing uniformed torturers and killers as "salvadores da pátria". The goal of these assholes seems to be to recast the violence of the 1960s and '70s as some sort of level playing field, where the casualties were about even. Apparently, we're supposed to conveniently ignore the thousands - perhaps tens of thousands - who were raped, tortured and often murdered by the military dictatorship because, in reaction, some hundreds of soldiers were shot by an armed left. an armed left, note, that DIDN'T EXIST in Brazil until after the dictatorship was installed.
And, as far as I know, Dilma never went to Cuba, China or Moscow to receive training in revolutionary havoc.
Thaddeus, I've just read the post on Abagond that seems to be devoted to you (though Abagond's being coy about it), and thus discovered that you've been banned. So now I have to come here and read heavy stuff about the real world if I want to enjoy the spark of intelligence and realism you brought to that self-absorbed set of armchair activists.
ReplyDeleteHere, instead of adolescent concerns couched in pompous pseudo-academese, I get a gentle, festive-sounding tune that turns out to be about a murderous dictatorship, and I find myself struggling to learn a little Brazilian Portuguese. This is much harder than watching you deflate arguments and egos at Agabond!
Yeah. I think abagond banned you because you made him look stupid quite a few times, you writing is intelligent, fact based and still interesting. Abagond picks alot of issue baiting topics although he too can be on point(at times). Oh well. It seems weird that he banned you but he didn't ban The Obsidian Files and Menelik for all their of topic posts and ad homiums.
ReplyDeleteI once considered a career in forensic anthropology. My major is chemistry and I like history but I'll probably end up working in medicine as I am also in the service. Still your writing and what you share about your life makes me wish my circumstances were a little bit different to pursue a career of my choice and not one of my needs
ReplyDeleteDear Katerina,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words. I've since posted my views on my recent ban from Abagond.
I'm very happy that you enjoy the post. It was the first thing that sprung into my mind after I heard of the far right's victory in the U.S.
Dear Student of the World,
ReplyDeleteI think Abagond won't ban MC or OF because, deep down, he basically agress with them. He's got enough gender consciousness to know that it's SHAMEFUL that he agrees with him, but the recent unpleasantness with his ex-wife (who by all accounts is a very disagreeable person) has left him a bit browned off at women in general and at a certain kind of black woman in particular. Note that his "beautiful black women" are all entertainment celebrities or models. When it comes to women these days, Abagond seems to be seriously into the packaging and not the content.
Again, as a guy who once wnet through a divorce, this is totally understandable. Society allows - and even to a certain degree validates - women's rage against men but if you're a man raging against women, you really have nowhere to put those irrational and frankly stupid feelings unless you are willing to be a public misogynist like Menelik Charles.
So I think Abagond's relative acceptance of MC and OF has to do with the fact that he gets a certain indirect catharsis from them.
At least that's my reading.
As for your career... Dude, I'm 43 and living on 36k dollars a year. About half of that gets plowed straight back into my profession. This is likely to be the peak of my career. I'm happy with what I do, but if you want enough money to raise a family in approximately a middle-class lifestyle, I'd suggest medicine and not anthropology. ;D
Yeah. I feel you on the Abagond thing. He lets them slide on a lot of stuff he doesn't tolerate out of other people. Like he made a post I almost certainly feel was directed at Obsidian/Menlik called last man standing especially with his style of debate leading him to violate copyright of a certain online female journalist that he harassed. His blog was taken down because of this, as he warned about it several times beforehand. He also posted her city of residence on his site too after being told to take that down. He blames angry black women for his supposed persecution. I've also seen him defend overtly misogynistic and racist viewpoints and then back down and change his viewpoint when it suits him. Ad homium everyone on a thread, derail an entire thread, him and his friend Chuck. And the only reason he's even at Abagond is to harass Natasha and Jasmin. He'll answer questions that they direct at other commentators and Abagond says nothing. When I brought this up on the thread he said, that's way off topic but ther commentators introduce off topic posts and it's not a problem . So I put it in the context of the thread just to fuck with Obsidian. Still I was bothered by the fact that Abagond sees this as a copyright problem and not a "sociopathic behavior, deep seated anger at agression towards women that he might act upon" Since this was true, even Obsidian himself didn't deny it, it seems to really fit into the context of the argument. Abagond ignored it. He deleted several of my comments until I explained why I was posting them. That seems really biased. It's his blog but don't give others a pass and then condemn someone else. I'm thinking about just not going there anymore. Except to kill time and fuck with Obsidian. He's too easy. Jasmin and others noted that abagonds comment section seems to be a venue for misogyny more and more lately and I agree with them.
ReplyDeleteI didn't see you slinging any ad homioms at anyone, that I know of. Some clever verbal digs but only something that someone would get upset about if they were upset about the fact that you were obviously right and they were wrong. Your posts made the discussion much more lively and interesting. Oh well I guess I'm just bored with Abagond now. I guess I'll just be coming here more often.
Career-
Yeah. I know. I'm not of the means to have a job where I make less than 40k just to break even on what I currently owe on my schooling. I don't have kids but I do have a lil bro with autism and ADHD another lil bro who is not special needs but could use some of the guidance and financial help that I currently lack, and a mother with Lupus who's health situation makes me worry about my lil bros in the near future. It's not necessarily about the money, I can live on that salary fine but i don't just have me to worry about. Life comes with trade offs.
Dear folks,
ReplyDeleteYesterday there were some 14 comments here. Today there are only 7. I have no idea where the other comments went. I did not delet them.
This is not the first time something like this has happened here and I'm going to send a message complaing to blogspot.
My appologies to those of you who were thoughtful enough to write something only to now see it wiped out. This pisses me off and I'm going to get to the bottom of this situation.
so ill try again
ReplyDeletethinking anyone wasnt trained in cuba or russia or china before 64 is naive
what about prestes?
i saw an interveiw on a casual tv show with an ex kgb general who said they had agents in the brazilian military, the media, the universities and the congress.
brazil has had russian spies inside back in the 30'a (olga) and a commuist revolt back then that was brutaly put down and the offenders were tortured.
no , dilmas crowd did not defeat the dictatorship, the dictatorship relented their grip after they knew the threat of a communist revolution by way of the soviet union through castro was over. shortly after that, you had democracies all over south america, where cuba still is a dictatorship , and the flawed soviet union that many of these idiots idolised, colaplsed...why the fuck did people actualy think that was hunky dory, to follow marxism and the soviet union ?...idiocy..all this violence for fucking nothing..they could have worked through the system
dilma and her crowds armed revolution was almost as pathetic as those sds chumps at nyak new york, in a pathetic failed bank robbery attemt, that was the death knowl of armed revolution in america, and paved the way for republican concervatives to take horrible control
luckily , she was able to get past that and end up as president of brazil now...good for her
so this comunist connection goes well before 64, and , since the numbers of deaths was so low, i mean less than a thousand in how many years ? 15? they didnt defeat anything, they were crushed and not supported by the majority of people at all. that death toll is so much lower than deaths now in brazil from police killing people...however justified...thta to think they defeated the military dictatorship , is hilarious brain washing
ReplyDeleteits just that torture and killing are more prevalent than ever , yet, these people can only see this one era and blame the usa and just wallow in this froth ad infinitim.
people need to really look at the cold war for the truth it was: you have to blame all four sides involved, the usa, the soviet union and the two oposing sides fighting each other, that invited both those super powers in for their aid , support and training to fight each other
just after this election, to hear that they want to go after torturers after amnesty for all was granted, is the wrong thing to do.people need to have focus on today and what the real problems of brazil are, not this brainwashed past of rewriting histroy of the cold war...its ridiculas
Dear Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, for someone who's adamant about what constitutes honesty and courage, you're strangely adverse to identifying yourself.
Secondly, the claim that significant numbers of people were going to China, Russia, or Cuba before 1964 in order to learn guerrilla tactics needs to be supported with something more than a cheap ad hominem attack. You mention Luis Carlos Prestes. Surely you relaize that Prestes was trained in mayhem by the Brazilian Army, not the Comintern?
Finally, I find it odd that you seemingly argue that the communists in Brazil were a clear and present revolutionary threat (thus justifying a military dictatorship and the suspension of habeas corpus in order to get rid of them) while simultaneously portraying Dilma and crew as a bunch of inept wanna-be revolutionaries (probably more true to life).
So which is it, Anon? Seems to me that you want to have your cake and eat it to. You want us to believe that communism posed a true threat to Brazil while at the same time casting said communists as fools.
so , you deny there wasnt a communist rebelion in the 30's in brazil , that was put down and torture was used against the communists ?
ReplyDeleteyou deny that prestes was married to a kgb spy and didnt learn anything at all in the soviet union ?
you think that kgb general was lying about kgb spies in brazil military, universities , the media and congress ?
yeah, communists were dumb and stupid, and were responsible for over one hundred million deaths in the world. people were dumb to flock to its flawed bullshit , and in south america , people were stupid to be mesmorised by che and fidel and think they would just become a satalite to the soviet union, a flawed concept that caved into itself. yeah, all those people were dumb...
as dumb as the sds armed revolutionaries who marked a pitiful death knoll for armed revolution in the usa at their failed bank robbery attempts in nyak new york
No, I don't deny that there was a communist rebellion in Brazil in the 1930s. I deny that Prestes received significant military training in Moscow. The military phase of his revolt for which he is most renowned occured in the 1920s, not the 1930s.
ReplyDeleteI'm also curious as to why you think a quickly crushed revolt in 1935 (which no serious historian believes ever had a chance of victory) explains why the military needed to suspend habeas corpus and democracy 29 years later.
As for the KGB, it didn't even exist until 1954. Olga Benario was, at most, a revolutionary agent of the Comintern, not the KGB and as far as I know, this hasn't been proven. She was assigned to accompany Prestes back to Brazil as his bodyguard and was certainly no eeeeeeevil commie mastermind.
As for KGB spies in later years, yes, I'm sure they existed in Brazil. They also existed every where else in the western world. You'll note that their existence is no excuse for the suspension of democracy and habeas corpus, nor was Brazil ever seriously threatened with widespread communist insurrection.
You're cluthcing at straws, son. You point to the existence of a handful of spies and then make the entirely spurious claim that their existence somehow represented such a clear and present danger that the military needed to overthrow the president, close down congress and jail and torture tens of thousands of Brazilians.
Sorry: bullshit.
As for communists being responsible for over 100 million deaths in the world, capitalists have been responsible for as many. Stalin was as much of a "communist" as Geisel was a "democrat".
"Dumb" and "stupid" is the belief that communism was some sort of highly articulated, meticulously coordinated, cohesive movement which got its marching orders from some single point in Moscow or wherever else. Both China and Russia - where most of those 100 million deaths you cite occurred - have had long histories of totalitarian and authoritarian bloody-minded behavior. That wasn't caused by communism, nor has the death of communism made those countries measureably more democratic.
And again, I think you're shooting yourself in the foot here.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to want people to believe two contradictory things, Anon:
1) That there was a huge and militant communist movement in Brazil prior to 1964 that represented a real threat to the country, necessitating torture and dictatorship to save the motherland.
2) And yet that these self-same communists were stupid, inept, incompetent and unable to make any headway at all against the military government.
Like I said before, you can't have it both ways.
Here's a suggestion: instead of "communists", why don't you just say "evil satanic devil worshippers"? I mean, as long as you're going to ask people to believe in ghosts, you might as well rear back and fire away.
man, fuck you, my posts just keep getting erased
ReplyDeletewhat is the use of trying to dialougue with you about this
kgb spies ? just read spies for the soviet union and they were there in the 30's, and, sure it wasnt all co ordinated in moscow, bitch che and fucked fidel were doing their part...
the shit just gets erased, what the fuck is the use of trying to say anything intelligent or in depth if it just gets erased
go wallow in your anti american froth and warped version of the cold war
here is a suggestion, go take a shit and spare me the diarea of the mouth
Again, if you're posts are being erased, it's not due to anything I'm doing. My posts have also occasionally been erased. If you page up, you'll see that I've already bitched about this in this very "comments" list. I have a complaint into Blogspot about this problem.
ReplyDeleteUntil then, suck it up and do what I do: COPY your comments and check and see if they've been posted. If not, post them again.
I assure you that I am not doing any censoring.
I am a historian and finer points of history are important to me. The history of the Soviet Union is not one big monolithic block from the 1930s to the 1990s: there were changes and factions and what not. Stalin was not the same sort of man as Lenin, or Trotsky, or Kruschev. They were not little cookie-cutter monsters following some master plan laid down in 1917 and faitfully discharged over the years.
ReplyDeleteThe revolutionaries who flocked to the SU in the 1920s and '30s were not the same sort of people who were manning the KGB in the 1950s. Comintern was not the same thing as the Politburo back in those days. In fact, most Soviet historians have talked at length precisely about how Stalin stabbed the Comintern in the back in order to gain peace with the West.
This is very much what happened in the case of Olga Benari. So to see her as some sort of Soviet agent dedicated to the glory of Mother Russia, or a cynical 1950s style "Boris-and-Natasha" KGB spy is simply ludicrous.
"historian", "finer points"...bullshit
ReplyDeletethe one thing all those people have in common is they hated the usa and hated capatilism and they were trying to pull as much of the world into communism as posible .and , it is the basic flawed bullshit you hear all the time , even up until now, that these fucked up assholes keep running on the world , still using the flawed soviet union propaganda page with fidels snot all over it , now being handed over to the muslim fundimenatlist terrorist assholes as well as flaunted by idiots like hugo chavez
olga was part of a spy ring of various spies for the soviet union in brazil back then, you call yourself a "historian"?
those later leaders were the ones who were dealing with castro. if you cant acknowledge the effect of bitch che and fucked fidel on south america and how much they depended on the soviet union to implement their communist revolutions around the world (of course che didnt have support in bolivia where he got what he fucking deserved), your cry for "finer points" and that you are a "historian " are ludicriss
you wallow in anarchistic bullshit rewrites of history to suit your agenda, its pathetic
if you cant look back and blame all four sides for what happened in the cold war, and let go of the pathetic way "historians" in rio want to see how it went down, then go wipe the diarea stain dribbling down your cheek
I think "hate" is too strong a word for what early 20th century Marxists felt and, in any case, their main focus wasn't the U.S. until well after the Second World War.
ReplyDeleteGoing on what these people actually said and wrote, it seemed to be more of an issue of faith to them - faith that capitalism was on its last decadent legs and that with a slight push, something better could be put in its place. Much like what happened during the French Revolution, which was these activists' model. "Hate" simply didn't play into it: it was a holy crusade.
By the time the 1950s rolled around, there were very few of these sort of people left. Stalin had purged or killed the idealists and had exiled the foreign revolutionaries. The KGB was made up of people whose one goal in life was to protect and expand the power of Stalin's state.
Those are two entirely different sets of people with two entirely different goals. What you're saying, taken in another context, is that Napoleon Bonaparte was really a Jacobin. Sorry, he wasn't. And Olga Benario, for better or worse, was no two-dimensional KGB agent straight out of a James Bond film.
Now, did Olga spy while she was in Brazil? Almost certainly. Was it for the USSR? She herself thought she was fighting for the Communist INTERNATIONAL, not for a nation state. That's what she would of told you and what she did indeed reveal in the few of her writings we still have. And in that capacity, she was stabbed in the back by Josef Stalin, as were all the internationals. Stalin decided to betray the dream of a worldwide revolution in order to concentrate his own power within one nation state.
So it's supremely ironic, to me (a historian), that you see Olga as some sort of agent of the Soviet State, the state that sold her out and was ultiamtely responsible (along with the Nazis) for her death.
Yes, this is called history: trying to parse out what historical actors really thought they were doing instead of ahistorically attributing motives to them which come from OUR times and OUR ideologies. Everything indicates that Olga would have been appalled if she knew what Stalin was doing. Most international revolutionaries were, as soon as they found out.
Read John Dos Passos "The God That Failed" and enlighten yourself. There are better sources out there than wikipedia, yopu know.
the soviet union was the hub of any movement of communism at that time. prestes went to live in the soviet union for a period. in some way or other, olga, and her team of communist spies , had some kind of support and ties with the soviet union.
ReplyDeleteim not making markers to the depth of prestes military training. he may have got his military training from the brazilian army, but, he choose to be with the flawed ideaologies that the soviet union was , before the 40's, the hub of that.and its not just about the soviet union, its all the asswipes that boil everything down to the fault of capatalism and now the usa.they all toot the same whistle and you can see it even now and its fucked up and tired and pathetic.
your trying to shift the degrees of who was more what in what epic is typical of you hiding truth and being intellectualy dishonest..its fucking obvious the soviet union didnt lock horns with the usa before the 40's, like the 50's, but, all the ingrediants that morphed into that later, were setting in place.
what the fuck if its capatalism before the 40's and the usa after the 50's? the ideaology of fighting a violent revolution as a normal means to deal with capatalism is flawed on both counts and has failed miserably over and over...and it was ridiculas of people to side with that flawed ideaology.
as with dilma, she was associated with a marxist group at the time. i made no indication that she directly made bombs, but, she certainly , knowingly colaborated and teamed up with people who were trained in either china, cuba, or the soviet union. she didnt just come to her desician by an over night event by the military. that would be really naive on your part to think she didnt know some of these people and for sure their ideas.
person after person that i have seen interveiwed on shows trying to look back at the military dictatorship and the torture, all said they were with the communist party in brazil (and for gods sake im not saying everyone who was tortured was with the communist party, im noting that it is no uncommon), and trained over in either china, cuba or the soviet union.
these were the people that dilma was associating with. they have a well documented history in brazil.
for you not to address the bitch che and fucked fidel influence on what is going on is just another example of your slip sliding over obvious truths , and , just shows you have your petty little agenda that only the "historical facts" you find help your point of veiw count.
you are anarchisticly intellectualy dishonest, i dont trust what you have to say on anything
kiss my fucking ass
Sure. But "communism" and the "Soviet Union" were not synonymous in that age. Communism was seen as an international movement and the USSR was seen as simply the first country to successfully implement it.
ReplyDelete"Marxist" is no more monolithic than "capitalist". There were and are plenty of factions within it. You make a simplistic and ahistorical argument that anyone who was a Marxist needs must have been a Stalinist. Like I said before, that's as stupid as calling Napoleon a Jacobin, simply because he spouted the rhetoric of the French Revolution.
Furthermore, there were SEVERAL, mutually antagonistic communist organizations in Brazil during the dictatorship. The PCB and the PCdoB were not the same organizations and did not have the same ideology. Saying that they were both "communist" is like saying that Dilma and George W. Bush believe the same things because both are "capitalist". And that's just talking about the two main groups - it doesn't even take into consideration all ther tiny little splinter groups.
So if everyone you've heard on talk shows "claims to have been a member of the communist party", then you're not listening to what they said. And really: what kind of fool tries to understand history by watching T.V. talk shows anyhow?
Also, here's the deal regarding censorship on this blog...
I have no problems with people swearing or even with people calling each other "fools", "idiots" and what not. I don't even have problems with people who call other people "fucking idiots", as long as they connect their insult to a reasonable argument.
But if you can't restrain yourself from acting like an 11 year old boy on the playground and needs must tell your interlocutors to "kiss your ass" and "fuck off" and the like simply because you're getting pwned in an argument, then you WILL be censored.
O Mangue is not a space for frustrated neo-conservative boys to express their Tourette's Syndrome.
bitch boy, censor me, you fucking self centered pompus ass
ReplyDeleteyou arnt pawning shit (not tv talk shows, asshole, you are one fucked up bullshitter), you are a miserable bafoon with your arguments, intellectualy dishonest and full of vomit crap
go wallow in your miserable twisted fuck yourself in the ass point of veiw, you think im a neo conservative ? you fuckhead, you ruin the cause, assholes like you ruin the cause
censor me you fuckhead...fuck you
my fucking god, of course there are differances in communist parties, there was even a split in the communist party in brazil about who was going to join the violent revolution and who wasnt...who the fuck said all marxists are stalinists ? you really take the cake on twisting shit...
ReplyDeleteone thing for sure, underneath these various communist parties is the same flawed bullshit.
and you dont have the books written on what is happening right now with farc hooked up with fernando beira mar and the pcc and other huge drug dealing gangs in bahia , the amazonas and mato grosso de sul...you are perfect example of a person who is well read who is intellectualy dishonest about what is really happening and what did happen in the cold war in brazil.
because you know about these things, but, you twist the truth to fit into your petty agenda.
that makes you a bullshitter.
everyone hears about the military dictators and all their torture and represion and the big boogy man usa who ran the whole show, you cant tell me one fucking thing about that , that i havent heard already a million times
very few people down here can look back and find the blame on all sides and what the fuck were these assholes doing who thought they could just bring a violent revolution on . they are as much to blame as the military , they are as responsible for bringing on the represion as anyone.
i pity people who cant look at the truth of it and go on with their heads buried in the sand wallowing in lies and mistruths about what happened.
Your entire premise is based upon the idea that a Marxist is a Marxist is a Marxist, Anon. That's the only possible logic which would allow you to claim - as you repeatedly have - that Olga Benario was a spy for the KGB, an organization which was founded 20 years after her death.
ReplyDeleteYou quite obviously believe that "communist" is a totalizing term that means, in this instance, active agent for the Stalinist state.
You also seem to believe that China, Russia and Cuba all had pretty much the same foreign policy and the same views of the world (which you gloss as "America hating") and thus it's of no nevermind if we're talking Prestes going to Moscow in 1934 or Brazilians going to Cuba in 1974 - it's all the same damned communist conspiracy, being directed by a monolithic movement with a clear and united agenda.
The view you are espousing is a stupid, ignorant and politically correct view of history (I'm presuming that you know that "political correctness" is a disease which hits ideologues of all stripes and not just overly sincere leftists).
As for Fernandinho Beira Mar, FARC, the CCC and whatnot... honey, please. You've been spewing that same old accusation since 2004 (if you are the person I think you are), screaming "The sky is falling! The communists are coming!! LOOK AT THIS HUGE CONSPIRACY!!!"
Meanwhile, in spite of your cries, Fernandinho continues locked down in one of Brazil's most secure prisons, FARC doesn't know whether to shit or go blind and is losing whatever popular support they once had and the PCC has been fairly well taken apart (at least as an immanent threat) by the São Paulo security apparatus.
Time to update your rhetoric, son. Or at least change the tinfoil in your cap.
you are blatently mischaractorising what i am saying...you made up a charactor, that isnt what i said...that is really pathetic of you
ReplyDeleteyour take on beiramar, farc and the pcc is ridiculas, brazil is drowning in crack...beiramar relatives and key leiutenants were recently caught with dealing with farc , one caught dealer in the recent raid had beiramar tatood on his arm, authorities said they burried arms just like farc does , you are severly misinformed..you cant face the truth
there is no communist conspiricy, they all just spoon fuck each other. its pathetic all the mother fuckers that thought the cuban revolution was so romantic and lets have one like that, and like cuba wasnt supported by the new leaders of the soviet union ? are you that dumb ? or you are just so invested in your agenda you start to sound like a bullshitter ?
Brazil is "drowning in crack", is it?
ReplyDeleteLike I said, time to put more tinfoil in your cap, friend.
I don't waste my time arguing with paranoids. Please take your crap back on over to Brazzil.com, perhaps to find someone who gives a shit about conspiracy theories.
Thaddeus
ReplyDeleteÉ interessante que apesar de ter um democrata no poder, os liberais dos eua precisam abaixar a cabeça para os fascistas republicanos. Como pessoas como Jesse Kelly e outros que fazem apologia à violencia estao soltos por lá? Os liberais precisam contra-atacar com astúcia, como o Lula fez por aqui. Por que eles demonstram tanto medo? Não é este o caso do Obama?
Gostei deste seu post, gostei de lembrar da musica do Chico. Se puder escreva mais sobre os EUA
Vai que é tua, Dilma!
O problema é que liberalismo nos EUA simplesmente não tem uma ideologia... e os republicanos tem. Ser liberal nos States é ser acomodado.
ReplyDeleteVou escrever mais sobre os EUA no ano novo.
Abraços,
Tadeu