The results of the first round of the Brazilian elections demonstrate the urgent need to defeat the far-right lackeys of Donald Trump. We must say it loud and clear: No to Flávio Bolsonaro! Bolsonaro and Trump are part of a “reactionary international” that, in Latin America, relies on grotesque figures like Javier Milei and José Antonio Kast to continue handing over natural resources and wealth to imperialism and that supports wars and the genocide of the Palestinian people around the world.

Under his “Donroe Doctrine,” Trump has increasingly sought to transform Latin America into his backyard. His interference in Venezuela, including the kidnapping of Venezuealan president Nicolás Maduro, and the deepening of the embargo on Cuba, which has left the population without electricity amid a true humanitarian crisis, are clear expressions of this policy.

In Brazil, Trump has sought to interfere in politics with various measures that have demonstrated growing meddling in elections. From massive tariff increases, which primarily affect the working class, to the designation of criminal factions as terrorist organizations, along with threats and blackmail against embassies and consulates, Trump makes it clear that he wants to control Brazilian politics for the sake of strategic competition with China and with an eye toward our oil and rare earth resources.

To this end, he is using the Shield of the Americas. It is this policy of submission and servitude to the United States that we must defeat, which in our country is represented by the far-right Bolsonaro, in whom Trump relies to use Brazil as a key foothold to further advance against all the peoples of Latin America. Trump out of Latin America!

In this context, the results of the first round reflect the resounding strengthening of Bolsonarism, his party, the Liberal Party (PL), and its allies. In the Senate, the PL will now have 28 seats, almost doubling its previous representation. Thanks in part to the phenomenon of “anti-feminist” influencers garnering millions of votes, the Senate now includes such right-wing figures as Damares Alves (former minister of women and ultraconservative senator), Michelle Bolsonaro (former first lady and wife of Jair Bolsonaro), Bia Kicis (a leading Bolsonarist congresswoman), and Carlos Bolsonaro (councilman and son of Jair Bolsonaro).

In the Chamber of Deputies, the Liberal Party is the largest single-party parliamentary group since the end of the dictatorship, with 121 deputies. Voting records were broken by young Bolsonaro supporters like Nikolas Ferreira (a highly voted deputy and far-right influencer) and Lucas Pavanato (an ultraconservative councilman and influencer), who spread reactionary, transphobic, and racist content and advocate for the increased repression of youth.

The Liberal Party now governs the most states, including the entire southern region as well as states in the North. Furthermore, Tarcísio de Freitas in São Paulo, Cleitinho de Azevedo in Minas Gerais, and Otaviano Pivetta in Mato Grosso are some of the names from the Republicanos party, one of the PL’s main allies, among the 11 politicians friendly to Bolsonaro who have already been elected to state governments.

This Far Right relies on the influence of sectors such as agribusiness, the church hierarchy, the armed forces, and a significant portion of the business sector most interested in increasingly brutal working conditions: the main beneficiaries of the Labor Reform, as exemplified by Luciano Hang (owner of the Havan department stores and a fervent supporter of Bolsonaro), who, as a coercive measure, informed his employees that, with the end of the 6×1 work schedule (a work regime involving working six consecutive days and resting one), they would have to find other jobs.

Agribusiness, which promotes environmental devastation and is an enemy of Indigenous peoples, consolidated its representation in the Senate in these elections and managed to reelect 185 deputies and senators. The group known as Bible, Bullet, and Ox (the evangelical, pro-gun, and ruralist bloc in the Brazilian Congress) is gaining strength to orchestrate attacks against women, Black people, the LGBTQ+ community, Indigenous peoples, and workers, fueled by climate change denial, misogyny, transphobia, racism, and the dismantling of public services.

No to Flávio Bolsonaro!

We, the Revolutionary Workers’ Movement (MTR), have always been at the forefront of the struggle against this extreme right wing since its rise, facilitated by the 2016 institutional coup against Dilma Rousseff and the arbitrary imprisonment of Lula da Silva, orchestrated by the Supreme Federal Court (STF) and Operation Lava Jato, with the support of the armed forces. Once again, we call for independent, anti-imperialist mobilization to defeat it, and we are already agitating strongly: No to Flávio Bolsonaro!

We are putting Esquerda Diário, our networks, and resources at the service of a forceful campaign against him, exposing his lies and the capitalist interests he serves, for which he orchestrates even greater attacks against the working class, the poor, and the most oppressed sectors, as we have already been doing. At the same time, we must warn that, to effectively confront Flávio Bolsonaro and all of Donald Trump’s lackeys, we need to answer the question of how we got here and learn from this experience so that the same path is not repeated.

The first-round results show that the Far Right remains strong even with Jair Bolsonaro’s defeat in 2022, when he was disqualified and imprisoned; with countless proven links between the Far Right and the corruption network involving the imprisoned banker Daniel Vorcaro; and with Bolsonarism openly acting against one of the country’s most popular agendas, the end of the 6×1 workweek.

This is not a matter of “poor communication,” nor is it “the people’s fault.” Much less is it about “outsourcing” the fight against the Far Right to the institutions of this degraded regime, such as the Supreme Federal Court (STF), which has demonstrated once again, contrary to the illusions sown by much of the Left, that its judicial authoritarianism cannot be an ally of the workers. The deeper explanation, in fact, is that over the last four years the class conciliation of the Broad Front’ (the electoral and governing coalition led by Lula) has maintained and strengthened the social base of Bolsonarism in the country, paving the way for this outcome and committing to emptying the streets and containing our struggles. According to them, these struggles provoked the Far Right, but the truth is that the Broad Front and the PT (Workers’ Party) reconciled with Bolsonaro supporters of all stripes. The result was the strengthening of the Far Right.

No Political Support for Lula’s Broad Front!

The Broad Front is responsible for preserving each of the anti-worker reforms passed under Michel Temer (president after Rousseff’s impeachment) and Bolsonaro, which deepened the contingent of precarious, disenfranchised, and indebted workers who suffer the effects of the capitalist crisis and are coveted by far-right ideology, which feeds on the frustration of those who continue to pay the price for maintaining large profits.

We are talking about attacks such as the Labor Reform, the Pension Reform, and the Unlimited Subcontracting Law. The Broad Front also succeeded in allowing the most deeply rooted working-class agenda in the last 40 years — challenging the workday — to be constantly postponed through agreements with the right wing and the Centrão (the center-right parliamentary bloc that trades votes for positions and budget allocations), allowing Bolsonaro supporters and business interests to organize against the end of the 6×1 workweek.

They did so by boosting agribusiness with the largest financing ever granted through the Plan Safra program (a government program of subsidized credit for the agricultural sector) or by supporting now-reelected governors with financing for their privatizations in the states through the BNDES (National Bank for Economic and Social Development), as was the case with Tarcísio de Freitas (governor of São Paulo and an ally of Bolsonaro) of the Republicanos party, who obtained a ministerial position in Lula’s government.

Regarding Trump, Lula relied on speeches and diplomacy, repeatedly praising his “love at first sight” and his “chemistry” with Trump, thus avoiding opposition to his aggressive policies against Venezuela and Cuba. He also advocated for the privatization of rivers by U.S. companies, is holding new oil auctions, and did not veto the sale of the rare earth mine in Serra Verde (a mining complex in the state of Goiás) to a U.S. company with the Pentagon as a shareholder. In practice, this approach proved to be the opposite of truly confronting imperialism with action. That is why, just as we wholeheartedly oppose voting for Flávio Bolsonaro, while standing shoulder to shoulder with the young people and workers who want to support Lula, we offer no political support to Lula’s Broad Front.

For Independent, Anti-imperialist Mobilization Rooted in Class Struggle!

The path forward must be one of independent, anti-imperialist mobilization, with the main unions and student organizations taking the initiative to defeat the far-right project, opposing any capitulation to Trump, and demanding the immediate end of the 6×1 workweek. This struggle, currently being debated in the Senate, can alter the balance of power and put the Far Right on the defensive, revealing that Flávio Bolsonaro’s discourse of freedom, which advocates for hourly pay, is more akin to slavery.

Therefore, it is essential to demand that the major labor and student organizations ensure that our class and youth enter the national stage using the methods that have already proven most effective in immediately ending the 6×1 workweek and attacking the interests of those who support Flávio Bolsonaro: work stoppages, strikes, and demonstrations. To achieve this, we need to transform demoralization and skepticism into organization and struggle to build a program for our class. This is what has been lacking in recent years, allowing the Far Right to strengthen.

We call on all those who, at this moment, wish to prevent the advance of the extreme Right to join in organizing the necessary struggle in every workplace and school. We need this to confront any situation that may arise in the coming weeks. We need an organized struggle against the National Congress, the elected governors, and the increasingly degraded regime that seeks to undermine our living and working conditions while kneeling before imperialism.

To this end, we draw inspiration from the workers who have risen up in Latin America in recent years, such as in Bolivia against Paz, in Peru against Dina Boluarte, as well as from a generation that organized internationally against the Palestinian genocide and from the workers who defeated ICE and its fascist policies in Minneapolis against Trump. In Brazil, we support the powerful struggle of the Indigenous peoples of the Lower Tapajós (an Amazonian region in the state of Pará), who prevented the privatization of the rivers, as well as a generation of young people and LGBTQ+ people who challenge gender limitations and refuse to bow to transphobes, racists, and anti-feminists.

We stand in solidarity with every student who, in recent days, as in Rio de Janeiro, took to the streets to confront Flávio Bolsonaro, and with all sectors that have joined the strike in recent months, such as bank employees, postal workers, and federal technicians. Right now, we see young Europeans in France and Spain confronting imperialism by occupying schools, holding demonstrations, and demanding a general strike alongside the working class. We must echo this example.

But it is also necessary, through struggle, to build a political alternative that transcends class conciliation from the Left. The phenomenon of support for Myriam Bregman of the PTS in Argentina, as a representative of a socialist policy that confronts Milei without class conciliation and strengthens struggles, and that never yields to attacks or alliances with the Right, demonstrates that this is possible.

We believe that these weeks are defining the political situation for the coming years, opening a new political cycle in which we must act decisively to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Moderation and conciliation have shown where they lead. The PT’s policy of managing this corrupt capitalist system is doomed to failure. We need a new path to confront this extreme Right and this capitalist system. That is why we also consider it essential to open a debate within the Left about the need to build a new organization, based on all these discussions, that can contribute to the historic task of the Brazilian working class: to overcome the PT’s strategy of class conciliation from the Left.

We call on everyone not to resign themselves at this moment and to prepare for a strong struggle against our enemies with the strength of the working class, the youth, and all the oppressed populations, using the methods of struggle that make the extreme Right and the capitalists tremble: organization and mobilization.

Let’s defeat Flávio Bolsonaro! Trump out of Latin America! Let’s not vote for the far right! Let’s build an anti-imperialist movement!

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