United Fifth Column

There was an expectation that in 2018 we would have a wonderful carnival, but a time of darkness came and force, as the poet says, did to Brazil the evil that force always does. The hope for better days was imprisoned. Even so, they could not contain the approaching spring, because the sympathy of the majority of the Brazilian people for good and decency is inalienable and, as we know, sympathy is almost love. 

This year, unfortunately, will be just like the last one. I didn't joke around, and neither did you. On the contrary, we cried and grieved deeply over our losses. There's still no atmosphere for chasing after the parade floats, getting drunk on the sounds of Luxo da Aldeia, or losing ourselves in the Galo da Madrugada parade. We ourselves have become the men and women of midnight, walking alone through the alleys of our own sorrows. There's no mood for going down the Sé hill, dancing ciranda, coco de roda, maracatu, or caboclinho. 

Carnival shouldn't be now, even if many ignore the dangers and indulge in revelry without feeling any guilt for those who were killed. There is, one cannot disregard, a cathartic need, a plethora of joy and release pent-up for more than two years. Does it justify it? No. But, as an old saying goes: "to each their own," or as that Arab proverb tells us: "men resemble their time more than their fathers." And what a time it was, ladies and gentlemen!

These are times of division, of devastated land, of humanity in decline. The Leviathan lurks. The locust is heavy, and so heavy it can no longer fly. Cornered, all that remains are... fake news...the chaos, the authoritarianism, and the recurring threats of vilification against democracy. Amidst all this, the "United Fifth Column" bloc emerges, which has nothing to do with carnival. It's worth remembering that the expression "fifth column" historically comes from the four Francoist columns that advanced on the city of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. Thus, a group of Francisco Franco's sympathizers, infiltrated in the Madrid community and ready to betray it, was called the "fifth column." In other news: let's read the play... The fifth column, by Ernest Hemingway, and let's watch the movie. parallel mothersby Pedro Almodovar. 

Well then. In general terms, the expression "fifth column" refers to people who usually act through fake news and use all kinds of sabotage, with the cowardly intention of attacking and undermining an action, a candidacy, a (political?) project from the inside out. This practice has become a tactic and a method, and today, around the world, the use of the fifth column as a political strategy has become increasingly common. As Brazil is no exception to anything, the increase in members of the United Recreational Group of the Fifth Column is striking, which, as that little song says, "is growing more and more." Therefore, it is urgent to ask who benefits, for example, from attacking from the inside the only candidacy in the progressive field capable of defeating the current fascism? Who does this fifth column serve?

It certainly doesn't serve the "web communists," useful idiots sitting in their "gamers" chairs sipping a beer or enjoying a... joint...while they drown in the vomit of their nonsensical speeches. Which reminds us of that famous quote by David Foster Wallace, which says something like "these little fish don't even know that what surrounds them is water." Attacking the only progressive candidate capable of defeating the neo-fascist project responsible for the chaos that prevails in this country is indeed in the interest of those in power. It is in the interest of the very same people who yesterday, "repentant," are now already spewing their aporophobic venom on their television programs and in their petty "journalism." 

Trying to undermine a popular candidacy from within is to defend the death project that has been put into practice in Brazil. The fifth column is cornered. Therefore, more dangerous. The water is rising. The fifth column is showing its weapons. The newspaper articles and narrow-minded editorials are there to prove it. Life doesn't fit into one live,Because it is outside the bubble that reality imposes itself, face to face, hand to hand.