Black Blocs and the National Security Law

Black Blocs? The name alone is unsettling, as it's yet another imported product without our seal of quality...

I have seen many, even individuals skilled in the art of discernment, defending the actions of these so-called "Black Blocs".

I've been lamenting the fact that support for urban disorder and senseless vandalism has become fashionable, even among the more discerning. An ideological movement? Please, perhaps an ideology of chaos and destruction. Ten minutes of a good conversation with a "Bloc" member is enough to realize that they do indeed carry the ideology of "nothing turned towards nothing." "We fight, but we still don't know exactly what for..."

Is it the same old story that it "looks good" for the "intellectual elite" to support anything that seeks to disrupt the established order, regardless of the means used? In truth, I'd say it looks very bad, unless I have a better opinion...

Never will destroying public property and private assets be the appropriate means to achieve a desired end. Finding "ideologies" in masked criminals incapable of going much beyond signing their own names with their fingerprints is far too little for a participatory "intellectual elite," lest the very definition of "intellectual" be summarily compromised.

If the system is corrupt and must be annihilated because its methods are incompatible with the public interest, let us use the ideal means capable of promoting the desired change.

It is unacceptable that the means chosen by this elite is to support the political parties they should be fighting against and the criminals who should be confined to the prison system (Black Blocs), who are in fact criminals mixed with foolish boys in the style of rebels without a cause. Supporting violent anarchic attitudes is, indeed, a lamentable and outdated intellectual poverty.

There are several legitimate means. Street protests, up until the arrival of "Black ideology" which proposed vandalism as a "revolutionary" idea, were a legitimate means and, if maintained within the framework of the rule of law, would be achieving practical results.

There was a lack of leadership with the knowledge and maturity to start and continue the movement. There was no focus, and without focus there was no change.

The government and the federal legislature managed to stay out of the line of fire, and the demonstrations ended up diminishing in the interest of society in relation to the member states. The main moral changes that should have occurred within the legislature were forgotten on the agenda, "everything as before in the Abrantes barracks." The National Congress is now "working" without the pressure that once prevailed...

There are other ways to bring about change, the traditional ones, such as knowing how to vote, interacting with the political system to separate the wheat from the chaff, organizing and proposing Popular Actions against immoral acts of the Public Administration in the various entities of the Federation.

In short, we must seek ways to take direct action to combat the functional deviations of our representatives in a legitimate manner within a democracy, since the law promotes norms precisely so that we can live well together in a gregarious state, and therefore these norms must be respected, under penalty of aimless disorder.

These individuals, mostly unqualified to produce thought beneficial to themselves, cannot become heroes of a movement for change for all, which began well, pure, and became distorted along the way. Violent movements may even be legitimate in totalitarian states, but not when one lives in a democratic state governed by the rule of law.

Law 7.170/83, known as the National Security Law, was enacted by the military regime in 1983, with the justification of defining crimes against national security and political and social order. Therefore, it is a legal text created under a regime of exception, with the main objective of protecting the dictatorship that was established in the country. This law, however, was received by the 88 constitutional order and has not been revoked by any subsequent legislation, remaining fully in force. Analyzing its content in the light of a democratic rule of law, it certainly constitutes an authoritarian excrement that remains moribund, although capable of being revived.

And that is precisely what is happening in response to the violent and unqualified excesses in the demonstrations by the segment of society that has been referred to so far.

Remember that democracy and anarchy are not the same thing; in the former, society is offered freedom with responsibilities, while in the latter, there is no state capable of assigning responsibilities.

Damaging public property, looting stores, setting buses on fire, destroying police vehicles—these are acts of vandalism that must be rigorously punished. Our archaic Penal Code is not sufficiently capable of efficiently and effectively holding people accountable for these excesses. And, if there are no other legal provisions that impose such rigor, the application of Law 7.170 is considered legitimate, even if there is no explicit threat to national security, but which directly affects the law-abiding and peaceful population, threatens public and institutional order, and seriously endangers the Democratic Rule of Law.

It is worth remembering that provisions of the National Security Law criminalize the practice of sabotage against means of transport, the use of violence against public order, looting, vandalism and the use of explosives, and incitement to subvert national order.

Therefore, if our ailing Penal Code lacks specific and sufficiently rigorous instruments to combat and punish this trend of urban terrorism without a defined cause, then what is stipulated in Law 7.170 applies, even if it stems from an infamous remnant of a less than fondly remembered period of exception.

What is intolerable is the perpetuation of the trivialization of public order and the right to social peace by individuals who fight outside legal boundaries for a cause they don't yet fully understand.

In truth, our legislators, after years of expert studies on the subject of "criminal organizations," seem to have been moved by the country's situation, not because of the "mensalão" scandal, but because of the outbursts of a disorganized society taking to the streets. This law, clearly political in nature, is included in the category of crimes against public peace.

The association of more than four people to commit crimes is now criminalized, with some technical improprieties typical of a hasty action that ends up compromising years of study on this topic. There are undoubtedly countless terms that lack precision, which will certainly hinder the application of the penal code.

Our legislators ended up limiting the definition of a crime when they assigned a specific purpose to the concept of "criminal organizations," the objective of obtaining an advantage. What advantage? Economic? Any advantage?

When discussing the possibility of criminalizing without the objective of "gaining an advantage," an analogy is sought with terrorist organizations, without defining what that would entail, revealing a gap for effective subsumption. In fact, the closest equivalent is found in the National Security Law, article 20.

In short, it is not the purpose of this article to delve into the discussion of "criminal organizations," a topic so recent and improperly legislated that it has not yet generated much discussion in specialized legal scholarship. I will only offer this advance warning that the law, in its approved form, will make its application extremely difficult. Indictments will be filed by the Public Prosecutor's Office, but the Public Prosecutor's Office will have to work incredibly hard to obtain a conviction.

The most effective approach, incredibly enough, to criminalize vandalism that targets not only public and private property, but also public peace and democracy itself, appears to be the antiquated National Security Law.

Yet another isolated incident involving our legislators who either seem to be poorly advised or are legislating out of desperation in a political system that is becoming more rotten every day.