Brazilian Dictatorship & Two Parties

written by Brian Mier from Brasil Wire

A story about the Squad, #ForceTheVote and Brazilian politics:

During the cold war, the US-backed military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985) was encouraged to maintain two political parties so that it could appear to be a free democracy as opposed to "totalitarian" Cuba.

The neofascist government party was called ARENA. The opposition party was called MDB. Many socialists went into exile (Paulo Freire, Oscar Niemeyer, etc) or joined the armed resistance (Dilma Rousseff/Jose Genoino) but some joined MDB and worked for incremental reform.

Although there are a few local level success stories in terms of progressive policy implementation (ex. Social Interest Economic Zones by MDB Mayor in Recife), for the most part MDB worked to validate the neofascist/capitalist system.

When democracy returned, ARENA changed its name to PFL (now called DEM) and MDB became PMDB (now called MDB again). Many of the top ARENA politicians, like Jose Sarney, switched to PMDB and vice versa. It was almost the same thing.

Conclusion: We can't expect much from the squad in the current US system. The Democratic Party is one of 2 "official" parties tolerated by the totalitarian, neoliberal police state. There's no need to ban smaller parties like Brazil did because they are stifled by the system