Generals defend dictatorship instead of engaging in self-criticism.

By Alex Solnik, from Journalists for Democracy

If the generals who are in power alongside the captain were truly democrats through and through, as some civilians who have lived or live with them claim, the Minister of Defense, General Fernando Azevedo, would not have praised the 64 coup in the order of the day relating to March 31 – which actually occurred on April 1 – defining it as a democratic achievement.

No general disputed it, hence the conclusion that there is no disagreement on the subject within the barracks.

If the generals who are in power alongside the captain were truly democrats, they should engage in self-criticism of that totalitarian period and apologize to the nation for all the evil their predecessors committed – revoking mandates, closing Congress, destroying education, censoring the press, muzzling culture, devastating the economy, prohibiting elections, ending the right to come and go, kidnapping, imprisoning, torturing and killing – and promise that they will never allow it to happen again.

What the agenda showed was the opposite: an alignment with Bolsonaro's thinking, no aversion to torture, no condemnation of the dictatorship, no mea culpa, which suggests that they will not oppose it if it happens again.

No government in any democratic country celebrates past dictatorships.

Germany does not celebrate Hitler's rise to power; Portugal does not praise the Salazar dictatorship; Spain does not revere Franco, and Italy does not celebrate the beginning of the Mussolini era.

No country that has gone through a dictatorship wanted a second one; they learned that dictatorships destroy the soul and the economy of a country. Dictators do not bring prosperity, but misery, in every sense, whether moral, ethical, or economic.

Here in Brazil we've already had two dictatorships – the Estado Novo and the 64 dictatorship – and we're not immune to a third.  

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