A profession of faith against Dilma and the PT has become a social safe-conduct.

Although originally intended as a public declaration of religious convictions, the "profession of faith" has, throughout history, served to affirm political and ideological convictions in order to protect the author.

From Hitler to Stalin, authoritarian regimes have always demanded that people profess their faith in mandatory political and ideological dogmas, under penalty of purge or even death if they were suspected of thinking differently from the official majority.

One of the most telling aspects of the ongoing rise of fascism in Brazil is the need that people and institutions have been demonstrating to profess their faith in criticizing Dilma Rousseff and the PT (Workers' Party).

From one extreme of the political spectrum to the other, many feel compelled to criticize the president and her party. In this process, both the left and the right end up professing the same criticisms.

For example: it has become obligatory to say that Dilma Rousseff mismanaged the economy and that this is why unemployment and inflation have been rising. Think back and you'll find that this criticism can be seen from the PSDB to the PSOL, and even within sectors of the PT.

For those who follow Brazilian politics with a discerning eye, however, this is one of the most unfair criticisms the President of the Republic receives.

There is no parallel in the country's recent history of governments that have suffered as much sabotage as those of Lula and Dilma.

While the two Fernando Henrique Cardoso administrations collapsed despite the extreme support and collaboration of the press, the Judiciary, the Federal Police, Congress, and the Attorney General's Office, the PT governments found themselves the target of a relentless campaign to discredit everything they had done over the past 12 years.

The Growth Acceleration Program, for example, despite the immeasurable number of achievements and the strong boost it provided to the country's economic activity, has always been treated as a mere marketing ploy.

Successful programs like Minha Casa, Minha Vida are also included, despite the fact that the program, created in 2009, had already delivered (as of March) 2,1 million units and had more than 1,6 million houses and apartments contracted for construction.

The Mais Médicos program, which has benefited 63 million Brazilians – many of whom had never consulted a doctor in their lives – is discussed in the mainstream press only from the perspective of the working conditions of some of the doctors it employs, the Cubans. And to hell with the benefit to poor Brazilians.

Even left-wing critics lack the courage to acknowledge that the country's political and economic situation stems from endless acts of sabotage perpetrated against the PT governments since 2005, and which, as predicted so many times on this page, have ultimately had their effect.

Last Thursday, the PT's semi-annual election program outlined the reason why fiscal adjustment is necessary, drawing identical criticisms from both the left and the right, namely, that it constitutes "electoral fraud."

The program listed the number of tax cuts that Dilma's first government made:

— 38 billion reais in taxes were cut from companies' payrolls.

— 17 billion reais in taxes were cut from the basic food basket.

— 19 billion reais in taxes were cut from small businesses

— The reduction in IPI (tax on industrialized products) was 32 billion reais.

Over the past few years, the Brazilian government has waived 106 billion reais in taxes to stimulate economic activity. Meanwhile, it has implemented costly programs to keep the economy running, such as the PAC (Growth Acceleration Program).

In 2013, the government reduced the cost of electricity by 20% to 30%. The contracts with the power generation companies had expired, and the new price authorized by the government had to exclude the amortization rate of investments that these contracts included, since the costs incurred by these companies in building the power plants had already been amortized.

The electricity price increases that have been occurring are due exclusively to the drought that has taken hold in the country, and today we are paying practically the same as we paid before the government reduced prices for consumers, but nobody remembers when those prices went down, only when they went up.

In 2012, Dilma Rousseff had public banks lead the decline in consumer interest rates. This policy, along with the reduction in energy prices, was considered "too leftist" by the market and the media, while the leftist opposition accused the government of being "right-wing."

Until the beginning of 2013, Brazil was doing well. Despite the substantial expenses to keep the economy running and to protect jobs and income, private investment compensated. Brazil attracted investments from all over the world and from domestic investors.

For twenty cents, however, in June of that year the country would plunge into a political crisis that is now destroying the economy.

The images of the crazed masses in the streets, fires, destruction, those pitched battles unleashed to reduce bus fares by a few cents in São Paulo, deprived the country of the instrument that was allowing the government to finance counter-cyclical policies. The investor took his foot off the gas pedal, pulled over to the side of the road, and never moved again.

Without private investment, government resources were insufficient to finance those countercyclical policies, and public finances began to falter.

In 2014, protests against the World Cup robbed the country of a huge opportunity to attract tourism revenue. Brazilians from both the left and the right began producing online campaigns, in well-made videos, urging foreigners not to come to the country because they would even risk death due to the political situation.

The PT governments suffered 12 years of uninterrupted sabotage. However, the social welfare they provided until 2014 was enough to keep the people on Lula's side and, later, on Dilma's.

However, as was absolutely predictable – and this has been said here dozens and dozens of times since 2005, when this page was created – it only took the international economic crisis to produce internal effects and the government to no longer be able to distribute welfare for the right-wing and left-wing opposition – and, especially, the media opposition – to achieve their goal of discrediting the PT government and the PT itself.

Of course there were cases of corruption in the PT governments, just as there were in previous governments since the Discovery of Brazil. The difference is that Lula and Dilma innovated, compared to their predecessors, and never impeded investigations.

Not even the fact that one of the main opponents of the Workers' Party governments in the international media publicly acknowledged that President Dilma is responsible for the enormous fight against corruption seen in the country today seems to sway critics – both on the left and the right.

The British newspaper Financial Times recently stated in an editorial that Dilma "has taken an unwavering stance" in the fight against corruption and that this is "a very welcome break from the relaxed attitude towards corruption of previous Brazilian governments."

The newspaper's only mistake was failing to recognize that this stance from Dilma's government began during Lula's government.

But how is it possible that the government that fought corruption the most – and in this respect, Dilma's government surpasses Lula's – is accused of precisely what it fought against?

Cynics say that Dilma didn't fight anything, that the Federal Police, the Public Prosecutor's Office, the Comptroller General of the Union, and so many other control bodies are "state bodies" that act independently of the government's will, and that, therefore, the government has nothing to do with the intense fight against corruption, never before seen in the country's history.

These cynics simply fail to explain why the Federal Police, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office, the Judiciary, etc., never acted with the same forcefulness in the past.

Some intellectual criminals even claim it's because there wasn't "so much corruption" in the past, when the truth is quite the opposite, since in the past the risk of a Lava Jato operation was minimal.

Lula and Dilma could have done as FHC did, for example, placing his vice-president's cousin in the Attorney General's Office and a party colleague in the Federal Police, but they always acted under the conviction that it was necessary to give freedom to any and all investigations of their governments.

How many governments would have withstood the level of sabotage that the Lula and Dilma governments faced? Without this sabotage, the country wouldn't know what a crisis is today.

In fact, if the current political crisis didn't exist, the country could already be growing again, and the hardships that this people are facing – and will face even more if we don't put an end to this madness – wouldn't even exist.

The most pathetic thing is that, everywhere, even those who know all that is written above are already making their professions of faith in criticizing Dilma and the PT – at least on the left, Lula is still preserved.

Collective hysteria has become so acute that people who don't conform to the majority are already facing problems in their social circles and even in their professional lives.

Cases are piling up of people who have had problems at their jobs because of their political positions. Many who see the facts have to resort to self-censorship to avoid being fired for political reasons.

The number of people using fake profiles online simply to say what they think is growing. And many don't even do that for fear of being discovered.

It's nothing new in this country for people to be afraid to express their points of view. Brazil has already faced many periods in which there was no freedom of thought or expression.

What is painful is to see that many go even further and, therefore, are not content with silence. To protect themselves from political patrols on the internet or in the physical world, they try to profess some level of anti-PT sentiment, anti-Dilma sentiment, and, to a lesser extent, anti-Lula sentiment.

The pressure is so intense that even within the PT (Workers' Party) you can see this kind of thing. PT members forget about interest rate reductions, energy price cuts, the state's leading role as an investor, social programs, and instead try to join the anti-PT left-wing mob that accuses Dilma's government of adopting the opponents' program, as if she hadn't said during last year's campaign that fiscal adjustments would be necessary, but that they would be less stringent than what Aécio Neves or Marina Silva would do.

Dilma is not attempting to implement the same adjustments her opponents from the last election would have made. Has anyone seen her propose the independence of the Central Bank, a halt to real increases in the minimum wage, or even the sale of public banks, as her opponents proposed?

What's most disheartening is that, in addition to those who fear social and professional repercussions, there are those who simply believe that if the majority criticizes, they too must criticize.

Pathetic, isn't it?

The PT governments did everything they could. What is happening in the country's economy is a result of sabotage. Furthermore, Lula and Dilma fought corruption like no one else. That's the truth, whether people like it or not.

Whenever we abandon our convictions for fear of what others think, we become slaves. Every time you criticize Dilma or the PT so as not to be "too pro-government," you relinquish your individual freedom.