Noblat: Young people have left Facebook.
A columnist for Globo states that the difference between the current demonstrations and those of the time when he himself took to the streets is that before, they lived under a dictatorship and that today's youth have come from Facebook; "Never have so many manifestos been produced as in the last ten years," he writes; but he assesses that, "however legitimate it may be, power exists to be challenged."
247 - In his column this Monday, the 17th, journalist Ricardo Noblat, who has also taken to the streets to protest, compares today's demonstrations with those of his time. He concludes that there are practically no differences, except that before, they lived under a military dictatorship. The journalist cites the lack of leadership and the lack of focus on the demands, but believes that "only experience teaches" and that today's young people, who have left Facebook, will learn. Read below:
And they left Facebook.
What distinguishes the time when I was running from mounted police officers in the central streets of Recife from this time, when I write about the young victims of police violence in São Paulo, is that 45 years ago we lived under the heel of the military dictatorship that began in March 1964 and only formally ended in March 1985. Otherwise, now as before, what young people are trying to do is simply politics. And nothing more.
Those forced to live under the dictatorship were labeled subversives, communists, and later, terrorists by the authorities. They were also portrayed in the same way by the mainstream press.
They resisted repression with sticks and stones and knocked down cavalrymen with marbles. Until December 1968, they were only beaten and imprisoned for short periods. From then on, they were tortured and killed.
MANY WERE "orphans of living parents - who knows... Dead, perhaps... Orphans of maybe and who knows." Or "widows of husbands who are living, perhaps; or dead, who knows? Widows of who knows and maybe," as denounced by Alencar Furtado, leader of the PMDB in the Chamber of Deputies, in a speech that cost him his mandate, revoked in June 1977 by President-General Ernesto Geisel.
One goal unified the diverse trends and organizations that attracted young people: the fight for freedom.
When the dictatorship took off its mask and displayed its hideous grimace, young people were divided between two ways of fighting it: through the legal means of prudent daily political engagement, and through armed struggle. When the dictatorship came to an end, those who were still young went on to finish their studies and take care of their lives.
The student environment, the remaining youth organizations, and the parties that began to operate freely after the country's redemocratization were unable to seduce the generations that succeeded those sacrificed or brutalized by the 64 dictatorship. It was the consumer society, with all its formidable inventions, that took on this task.
Young people only dared to take to the streets to oust Collor and elect Lula.
Social networks began to function as their meeting point and their platform. The electronic manifesto took the place of the old petitions.
Never before have so many manifestos been produced as in the last ten years. Just paste the previously typed name there and head out to the club. It's still like that.
Perhaps it will remain this way for a long time. Perhaps it's ceasing to be so. It's too early to know.
And yet...
In just one week, several thousand young people marched through the streets of a dozen cities protesting against the increase in bus fares, the millions of dollars spent by the public on the World Cup, and the Statute of the Unborn Child. The epicenter of the protests was the city of São Paulo.
There, tonight promises new clashes between the new and the old, the apprentice and the know-it-all.
It matters little that young people fire off their demands in all directions without prioritizing any, that they lack leaders with whom they can dialogue, and that they welcome into their midst a minority of troublemakers and vandals. Since when has it been different in the past? Only experience teaches.
And there's no reason to imagine that young people today won't learn.
However legitimate it may be, power exists to be challenged. Otherwise, it can turn into tyranny. The nature of power is conservative. The nature of rebellion is destructive. Social and humanistic progress is the offspring of the confrontation between rebellion and power.