The
Global South is growing unintelligible from the European South amid
harsh austerity measures and other maneuverings that suit the rich
and powerful at the expense of the poor and working class.
by
Michael Nevradakis
Part
3 - An uprising from below or from above?
2013
could be seen as a hallmark year for Brazil, one in which the tide
began to turn against the ruling PT. The “Brazilian Spring” —
following in the footsteps of the protests seen in Turkey that year,
the Arab Spring, protests of the “indignants” in Spain and
Greece, and the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 — emerged out
of protests against public transportation fare increases and
perceived government corruption. These protests could be seen as
having served as a “dress rehearsal” of sorts for those which
followed in 2015 and 2016, when fed-up Brazilians took to the streets
en masse, including an estimated 7 million citizens during a March
2016 protest, to rally against worsening economic conditions and
continued government corruption.
Or
did they?
It
has been pointed out that the protests of 2015-2016, leading up to
the impeachment of Rousseff were not led by the impoverished or the
working class, but by such groups as the Free Brazil Movement (MBL)
and Students of Liberty (EPL).
Who
are these groups?
Largely
consisting of well-to-do, white academic circles, it has been
revealed that they were financed by the decidedly right-wing Atlas
Economic Research Foundation, itself funded by the notorious Koch
brothers. Pepe Escobar has described the events of 2015-2016 as a
“white coup,” fueled by the country’s major media outlets, who
were “salivating” for regime change.
This
scenario closely mirrors the protests seen recently in Venezuela
against the increasingly embattled Maduro regime. Venezuela, like
Brazil, has been battered by falling commodities prices —
especially the sharp decline in the price of oil. This has brought to
the forefront protests, led by right-wing elements seeking regime
change and sensing an opportunity to make it happen.
Such
protests are also not confined to Latin America. Greece, itself
embattled by years of economic depression and austerity, has begun to
see occasional (but, for the time being, relatively small-scale)
protests led by supporters of the center-right parties such as New
Democracy.
Prior
to the country’s July 2015 referendum on approving or rejecting an
austerity package demanded by Greece’s European “partners,”
these elements organized fairly large protests in favor of “yes”
(accepting austerity in order to “remain in the European Union”).
In turn, smaller protests in 2016, organized with such social media
hashtags as ftanei pia (“enough already”) ironically protested
the austerity measures imposed by the purportedly left-wing
Syriza-led government whilst supporting closer EU ties and the New
Democracy party.
Similar
to Brazil, Greece’s major media groups — all owned by oligarchic
interests with a huge stake in the country’s major economic sectors
— have vehemently supported austerity and supported the “yes”
vote in the 2015 referendum.
Speaking
to MintPress, Guilherme Giuliano, at Ph.D. candidate in Political
Science at the University of São Paulo and member of the “Catso”
social workers’ autonomous collective, described the 2016 protests
as not having been solely against Rousseff or her government.
Nevertheless, the protests were co-opted by certain parties and
movements and used as a catalyst for the coup against Rousseff.
Kat
Moreno described the MBL as one of the movements which freely took to
the streets, while other protest movements not organized by formal
actors and representing poorer strata of society were met with police
repression.
Petras
classifies the capitulation and eventual fall of the PT governments,
led by da Silva and Rousseff, as another in a long string of failures
of the left. These “failures” have also been evident in countries
such as Greece, where Syriza was, in January 2015, elected on
promises to “tear up” Greece’s memorandum agreements with its
lenders and to put an end to austerity but has instead faithfully
continued enforcing such policies and signed further austerity
agreements with the country’s lenders, implementing further cuts
and reneging on all of its pre-election pledges.
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