Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement, by Don Hamerquist & J. Sakai, Anti-Racist Action Chicago and Mark Salotte, (AK Press, 2017) and Alerta! Alerta! Snapshots of Europe’s Antifascist Struggle, by Patrick O. Strickland, (AK Press, 2019)
(translated from Portuguese)
In the opening essay of Confronting Fascism, “Fascism & Antifascism,” Don Hamerquist assumes that the term “fascism,” as utilized in colloquial language, causes a misunderstanding among regular Americans who are uninvolved in revolutionary processes. To that end, Hamerquist affirms that the intent of the book is to dialogue with Leftist and antifascist fighters, and that they are the true validation for what he is saying, not confining himself to strictly theoretical arguments.
Fascism is not just a term that says something is terrible, but above all refers to a particular form of capitalism, making its genocidal, imperialist, racist, reactionary, and repressive character clear. However, Hamerquist does not limit his definition of fascism to a kind of end stage capitalism, but stresses that it occurs also in anti-capitalist mass movements, urging those of us confronting fascism to analyze the phenomenon with all the seriousness it requires and not just accept that it comes only from above and is simply a product of capitalism. Fascism comes from below. The danger posed by fascism is imminent. In fact, I dare say that it is not just knocking, it has already broken through the windows and lives among us. Hamerquist fears that fascism will spread and consolidate amongst vast groups in society. Concerning this fear, a dialogue with the phrase “social fascism,” coined by Boaventura Sousa Santos, is helpful.
Historically, as pointed out by Buenaventura Durruti, fascism is the means utilized by capitalists when they are losing power. For Durruti, fascism’s genesis is linked to the perpetuation of power at the hands of the bourgeoisie. But the development of fascism in Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany in the 1920s shows the possibility of fascism developing amongst the masses, not necessarily generated from above by the capitalist class. This view of fascism as an insurgent force from below can help explain, for example, the alliance between the United States – the greatest symbol of modern imperialism and capitalism – and the Soviet Union – the leading country of the socialist block at the time – against fascism.
Historically, democratic projects such as social democracy stand as a counterpoint to fascism, but these are not the only ones. In the current moment, anarchists and other leftists around the world have come together around the antifascist agenda. Social democracy, even as it stands as a counterpoint to fascism, is not, in fact, a revolutionary movement. Social democracy as an ideology does not question the capitalist status quo or the forms of oppression necessary to sustain it, and instead advocates for democratic capitalism. In other words, it does not fight for the end to all oppression. Hamerquist points out that, eventually, social democrats would move to ally with fascists as a way to combat against communism.
At first, the growth of fascism tends to be ignored because its seeds start in groups that do not seem as if they could become a great threat. For instance, President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil once did not seem capable of gathering great power, appearing instead as an exaggerated caricature of right-wing hysteria. However, expansion of social networks, the creation of companies capable of spreading and reaching millions with fake news, and ignorance or apathy regarding effective popular organizing have allowed figures like this, once only worthy of ridicule, to reach great positions of power. More than that, they can easily mobilize a fascist agenda, and this does not always ensure greater capitalist development. Mobilization of hatred in these governments is far more evident than any effort to promote a capitalist economic agenda.
Hamerquist sees the construction of a true left-wing bloc as necessary in confronting fascism, with the political Left working for its popularization and development. A mobilization of the masses around an antifa mindset is the antidote to the sentiments already developing to turn everyday people toward fascism. Hamerquist highlights, however, that because fascists are often also anti-capitalists, it is not always clear who the fascists necessarily are. There are also people calling themselves liberals who associate with movements preaching white supremacy, for example.
Black communities (and other non-white groups) are confronted with the contradiction and domination of their realities by white supremacy. But the existence of ethnic and racial minorities, or people of the so-called Third World, is not an automatic assurance that an elaborate antifascist belief and tactics will be developed. Many of these groups suffer from the influence of religious extremists and those who strive to preserve their traditions and ancestries. Others face the hardships of being immigrants. Evidently, fascism weighs its hand over these people as well. Within these communities, true antifascist fronts are formed, both in culture and in direct confrontations, but the fact is the people caught up in this daily oppression do not become antifascist militants automatically: popular and political organization is necessary.
Hamerquist stresses that fighting right-wing authoritarianism with left-wing authoritarianism does not generate a society free of fascism. More than that, he points out, it generates disengagement by the general populace instead of alignment with leftist thinking. It should not be a surprise that Stalinist or even Maoist practices, for instance, would cause horror to all those who desire a world of freedom.
Militarism is another relevant aspect discussed by Hamerquist. He notes that some groups believe that they must create military apparatus for antifascist groups, citing Britain’s Red Action. These leftist armed organizations with military formation are not new. The Brazilian guerrillas against the dictatorship had armed groups; the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) are organized around paramilitary tactics; the current Kurdish fighters and the Black Panther Party had armed wings and forces. However, Hamerquist does not believe that militarism is really necessary for the antifascist Left. He believes, coming from a Gramscian perspective, that militarism relies on the premise of attack, while antifascism is essentially a defensive movement. He therefore advocates creativity in the forms of action as vital for the triumph of groups opposing fascism.
Finally, Hamerquist suggests that to create a false conflict between organized and spontaneous groups generates unnecessary fragmentation of the Left. In addition, it is fundamental to create and diffuse revolutionary culture in daily life, so we do not lose ourselves in the idea that antifascism or anti-capitalism are merely unreachable utopias.
The second part of the book, by J. Sakai, further discusses the common sense concept of fascism, reminding us that it is a term we all have heard, but that we easily identify as something from the past, forgotten in World War II. But we also forget about the term when faced, for example, by the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.
The author draws attention to the three characteristics Hamerquist defines as essential to understanding his concept of fascism. The characteristics, as cited by Sakai, are:
1) Fascism is arising not from simple poverty or economic depression, but from the spreading zone of today’s protracted capitalist crisis beyond either reform or normal repression;
2) As fascism is moving from the margins to the populist mainstream, it still has a defined class character as an “extraordinary” revolutionary movement of men from the lower middle classes and the declassed;
3) The critical turning point now for fascism is not just Europe. With the failure of state socialism and national liberation movements in the capitalist periphery in the Third World, the far right, including fascists, are trying to align with the leadership of anti-colonialism. (1)
Sakai also describes the presence of fascist discourse in musical groups and debates the relationship between religious fundamentalism and fascism, claiming that it is possible to look at groups such as Al Qaeda and see not only the influence of extreme religious ideology, (2) but also the use of fascist tactics, through the extermination of the Other.
It is important to point out that, like Hamerquist, Sakai asserts and demonstrates that fascism is not just a tool of capitalists. Fascism as a political phenomenon has its own contours, and can happen within officially non-capitalist contexts, marked by authoritarianism, implicit or explicit, and to the Left or to the Right in its political ideology. This is despite the fact that fascism often serves the purposes of maintenance and perpetuation of capitalism when it faces crisis. Sakai sums up this perspective well:
“While usual classes are engaged in economic production and distribution, fascism to support its heightened parasitism is driven to develop a lumpen-capitalist economy more focused on criminality, war, looting and enslavement. In its highest development, as in Nazi Germany, fascism eliminates the dangerous class contradiction of the old working class by socially dispersing and wiping it out as a class, replacing its labor with a new unfree proletariat of women, colonial prisoners and slaves. The ‘extraordinary’ culture of the developed fascist State is like a nightmare vision of extreme capitalism, but the big bourgeoisie themselves do not have it under control. That is its unique characteristic.” (3)
A third essay in the book, “Revolutionary Anti-Fascism: Some Strategic Questions,” by Mark Salotte, brings us closer to contemporary antifascist fights, starting with a discussion of N30 in Seattle – the 1999 shutdown of the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks – which marked a new period in leftist struggle, and the events of September 11, 2001 in New York City and Washington, DC.
Seattle’s N30 WTO shutdown was a series of direct actions that mobilized up to 100,000 people, including ecologists, students, anarchists, labor unions, and others. These actions were not organized by institutional partisan groups and represented the strength of widespread popular indignation against the advancement of neoliberal capitalism. The events of September 11 were an action by Al Qaeda, which led to the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings and part of the Pentagon in Washington, symbols of capitalist and state power in the US. This second event differentiates itself from the first by being an act coordinated by Al Qaeda, a centralized, authoritarian and hierarchical group.
It is evident that both events/actions were planned for months prior, and their impacts in political reorganization – for both the Right and Left – share some similarities. However, both situations can be interpreted as milestones in the growth of fascism in the twenty-first century, underscoring that fascism is not confined to the history books, but has broken through the gates and is found in our midst.
Salotte presents a more optimistic perspective than Hamerquist or Sakai, picturing ways for the Left to grow. But he recognizes that the State attempts to contain revolt, and there are different ways that the State can do that: by containment, repression, or seeking to control political organizations. Therefore, Salotte points to contemporary anarchists as the example for antifascist groups. He argues that anarchists organize in a way meant clearly to deny State intrusion and control, which is one of the greatest obstacles posed to popular, widespread resistance to fascism.
Contributing to the discussion, Alerta! Alerta!: Snapshots of Europe’s Antifascist Struggle takes a historical snapshot of fascist actions occurring in Europe in previous moments, reporting on situations in Germany, Greece, Slovakia, Italy and Croatia, up into the twenty-first century. Comparing the earlier Confronting Fascism with this work offers us the opportunity to see how fascism is already part of daily life, in its institutional spaces as well as in its imaginary and action.
Alerta! Alerta! author, journalist Patrick Strickland, begins with the narrative of each of these countries in weaving his considerations of fascism. Concerning Germany, he writes of the memories of Irmela Mensah-Scharmm, an anti-fascist fighter convicted of vandalism. One of her forms of resistance was to erase and modify graffiti with fascist content. Through her memories, the author tells us the history of Nazism in Germany, under the motto of “Germany for the Germans.” This woman’s narrative tells us about her confrontations with alt-right protests, including one in which she saw a young man alluding to US President Donald Trump, a symbol of how fascism is a global phenomenon. In the authors’ conversations, themes such as the rejection of immigrants – particularly Muslims – are frequent in Europe, a situation also discussed by the authors of Confronting Fascism. Just like in Hitler’s time, current fascists believe that today’s immigrants, much like the Jews before, are a threat to national identity. Strickland seeks out resistance in German history, including anarcho-syndicalist groups at the beginning of the twentieth century, up until the more recent events.
In a chapter about Greece, Strickland begins by recounting the confrontation with the alt-right in March, 2017:
“… a group of seven black-masked anarchists approached the headquarters of the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party near the Greek capital’s Larissa Station, a central train stop in the densely populated working-class borough of Kolonos. Armed with sledgehammers, sticks, and road flares, many of them donned motorcycle helmets in anticipation of a fight with the far-right Golden Dawn members. But on this morning, they met no resistance. The anti-fascists quickly smashed the windows and threw flares into the office. Messages lambasting the Golden Dawn were spray-painted on the door. According to some accounts, those inside the office, unprepared for a confrontation, quickly fled. Security camera footage of the incident emerged in the local media within hours and went viral on social media.” (4)
This action led to the imprisonment of several activists later that day, and the repercussions of the act continued in the following weeks and can be observed even today. In a relatively recurring way, Greece always reports news of direct radical action by anarchist and antifascist groups, beyond the successful example of Exarchia, an important community where anarchists of different tendencies coexist.
Popular mobilization in Greece depends on the participation of students, immigrants, workers, and others. Given the geographical location of Greece and the ease of entry via sea, the country has a strong presence of refugees and immigrants, with highlights to the Notara Center and the Solidarity in Exarchia, and so antifa groups perform significant protective and welcoming actions to these people, while the right persecutes them.
In a chapter about Slovakia, the author starts by telling the story of a Ján Benčík, whose son created his own Facebook account, and the retired man realized from there the possibilities of fighting against the far-right, using the platform to expose politicians and personalities engaged with the far-right in the country. One of the targets of the activist’s exposition was Our People’s Slovakia Party (LSNS), once considered a group of little relevance. However, in 2016, the group obtained a significant number of votes in the ballot, showing growth in the far-right and how it was reconfiguring the political map, a situation that repeated itself along the decade in several countries across the globe. This growth of the group in institutional politics led to a popular reaction, and people then went out to the streets to show their discontent.
Obviously, the activist and many of his followers started to suffer backlash and persecution, and a xenophobic tone was common. With the hate groups repeating the old formula of protecting the national identity, the Romani groups were one of the main targets of hate. Tension between the Romani in this region of Europe is latent, and their traditions are always threatened by the far-right.
Talking about Italy’s history, the author discusses a conversation with Fabrizio Torva, a graduate student resident in Quarticciolo, a poor area of the city, marked by urban occupations, criminality, and drug trafficking. These things are characteristic of many working-class Italian neighborhoods, which are home to precarious sectors of the population. The student was one of the founders of Palestra Popolare Quarticciolo, the neighborhood’s antifascist academy, one of the countless initiatives in Italy that are a form of resistance by people not willing to not let the terror of Mussolini ravage the country again.
The young man believes that the contradictions of his neighborhood are a reflex of contemporary Italy, where the difficulties of survival are everywhere. From this young man’s narrative, other resistances and tensions in the country appear and are presented throughout the book.
The commitment of anti-fascist resistance to solidarity with immigrants permeates Alerta! Alerta! The migration situation in Europe has been one of the most important political debates, reflecting geopolitical and diplomatic problems of great dimensions such as the Brexit situation in the United Kingdom, with a movement in England to leave the European Union.
The author traces a conversation with Croatian Lovro Krnić, an antifa activist, who has a strong presence on the internet, with his website Anti-Fascist Courier (Antifašistički Vjesnik), as well as in social networks such as Facebook. One of the main missions of the site is to challenge the hegemonic historic revisionism in Croatia, in which the far-right spreads lies denying the country’s role in the Holocaust, the genocide that occurred in the country, and the persecution of the Serbian people. The young man, Serbian and Croatian in origin, seeks to recount with historical fidelity the trajectory of his people, and exalts the role of the partisans, made up of Serbians, Jews, Romani, and other antifascists during World War II. However, the persecution to these groups still exists and demands resistance efforts. Another symbol of resistance in the country is the destruction of monuments and symbols that signify this history of persecution. This type of direct action occurs in both greater and smaller scales in the rest of the world as well, as exemplified in the United States and Brazil when statues commemorating colonizers are vandalized or destroyed.
From these histories, and the conclusion in the chapter “In Search of a Safe Place,” the author seeks to demonstrate that we are not safe from fascism, and that we have yet to turn this page in our history. On the contrary, fascism is stronger than ever, and is showing expressive numbers in ballots, for example.
But, like fascism, anti-fascism is also alive and spreading across the world. With an almost poetic narrative of various life stories, the five countries reported on here, both in their past and in contemporary times, shows us the importance of recognizing fascism among us and fighting back.
Reading Alerta! Alerta! and Confronting Fascism, it is possible to expand our debate and comprehension of fascism and antifascism. Both books give us the critical tools necessary to help us to comprehend current events across the world, in Europe, United States, and Brazil.
I think it is important to add to the discussion the term “social fascism,” coined by sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos, and further develop some reflections about some themes that are not explicitly shown in these books, but which supply elements of analysis for the discussion and debate, inviting both a global and a decentralized connection in the fight against fascism.
The term social fascism describes, for fascist societies (and governments) to be established, society itself needs to be in such a state of social apathy and amnesia that it will reproduce fascism, with daily microaggressions of symbolic, and later physical, elimination of minority groups. An example of this is the invisibility of street residents, culminating in acts such as the one that occurred in the Brazilian capital city, when Índio Galdino, a native leader, was burned alive in 1997, “mistaken” as a beggar by high class youth. (6) The result of this social fascism is observed in the ballot boxes across several countries, such as with the election of Donald Trump in the US and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.
The first level of this process involves so-called post-truth, or spreading fake news for the purpose of delegitimizing the credibility of one’s adversaries. This disinformation is disseminated through social networks, like Whatsapp and Twitter. Although lacking reliable sources, they are spread by people whom others trust. This creates smokescreens, leaving the actual candidates’ purposes and principles out of the public discourse, and often stirs up strong emotions in the population, such as the fear of the end of the family, traditions, and customs.
In the case of the US, we can point to the rumor that was widely spread during the 2016 Presidential election, that Hillary Clinton had a clone of herself. In Brazil, the main fake news was the rumor that candidate Fernando Haddad (from the social-democratic Worker’s Party) distributed gay-kits in school, including a penis-simulating bottle to teach pre-school children how to be gay. Although they are both unbelievable rumors, the public was bombarded by orchestrated attacks, using language and images capable of mobilizing a great part of the population through fear and horror. It was not a coincidence that Steve Bannon was a consultant for both campaigns.
The other level of the discourse is the construction of hate speech to attack minority and oppressed groups. Just like fear, hate is an emotion easily used to manipulate. Trump incited the population against immigrants, claiming that they would steal American jobs or that they would lead the country to bankruptcy because they would rely on social programs like food stamps. Meanwhile, in Brazil, Bolsonaro created a narrative that he was the only one who could protect the population from the communists, who wanted to invade people’s houses and pervert their children.
During the Brazilian elections, Bolsonaro said he would “exterminate petistas.” (7) The main symbol of his campaign was a gesture with hands simulating a gun. None of this, despite the clear violent symbols, caused any indignation in the population. Trump, despite the unscrupulous similarities with the Nazi ghettos, promised to build a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico. This resembles Hitler’s discourse about the risk of erasure of the Aryan race, generating in the German population (also replicated in other fascist countries like Italy and Spain) a sense of self-preservation that led them to accept any atrocity, driven by fear, a sense of horror, and hatred.
For governments to preach intolerance and persecution of minority groups, such as the Trump administration, this social acceptance is required. Nowadays, with the existence of social networks and false news, it spreads with alarming speed. This leads to a general feeling of naturalization and acceptance of barbarism, such as genocide of Black populations by the police, separation of undocumented immigrant families, construction of the now infamous wall, denial of the existence of trans people, and on and on.
The highlight of Confronting Fascism is its preservation of documents that predate the N30 WTO shutdown in Seattle, allowing us to understand not only how fascist ideology has spread across the country, but especially how the resistance has organized and reorganized. There generally exists some knowledge, even if not completely accurate on the part of mainstream media, of black bloc tactics. But antifa resistance goes beyond tactics. There is also constant situational analysis and convergence of ideas in developing tactics and strategies that address various moments, respecting specific cultural and historical characteristics. The Seattle protests of November ’99 demonstrated the will, urgency and determination to destroy the capitalist machine and create a different world. Those protests were merely the first step toward all sorts of demonstrations of dissatisfaction with the system across the country.
Some groups and organizations question the importance of keeping the antifa fight centered around revolutionary efforts. These two works analyzed in this essay are fundamental to demonstrating not only the efficiency of these tactics, but also their urgency in this particular moment. The antifa fight, at its core, is a broad and unrestricted fight to end capitalism, and with it, end of all related structural oppressions, such as gender oppression, white supremacy, xenophobia, and others. Ideally, the antifa fight connects ecologists, anarchists, workers, immigrants, refugees, women, trans people, people of color, and everyday people, independent of organizations. It is a cross-sectional fight that can unite us and drive us toward the construction of a new world. Fascism is, quintessentially, the enemy of humanity, and opposing it is an act of revolutionary courage, extremely necessary for the deliverance of every individual from material and symbolic oppressions.
Confronting Fascism was first published as a pamphlet in 2002 as a collaboration between Kersplebedeb, Anti-Racist Action (ARA) Chicago, and the Chicago-based anarchist magazine Arsenal. The authors themselves come from the Marxist tradition. They bring a deep analysis of the political aspects of fascism, as well as the organization of resistance movements. Xtn, who wrote the work’s introduction, soberly points out that there is a deficiency in Marxism to a serious critical approach, while recognizing the limits and faults of Marxism in taking the Left towards the type of radicalism necessary to definitively defeat the fascists Nazis, alt-right ,and white supremacists from the streets and society. Xtn invites the Left as a whole, including anarchists, to consider where we are going, and most importantly how and why, while also criticizing a lack of analysis on the roles of women in antifa. (8)
Yet these problems do not undermine the quality of the work (9). No book, essay, or pamphlet can exhaust a subject, especially one still unfolding. This makes reading these two works (10) even richer, since they dialogue with one another, showing the potential explored by distinct groups and situations, complementing each other and allowing us to have a broader outlook. Even with the deficiencies of Confronting Fascism, it is a courageous work that deserves to be read by anyone who is committed to ending fascism, not only in the United States, but on a global level.
For a wider analysis of contemporary fascism, one also has to also look at the advancement of the far-right in the countries of the global South. As a Brazilian, I cannot emphasize enough the role that Latin American dictatorships have had in the creation and consolidating fascism, creating institutions such as the Brazilian Military Police. When attempting to connect the Left’s struggles with the larger population, we have to contend with a lot of government propaganda that would call us “terrorists.” For example, several resistance fighters under dictatorships, such as Marighella in Brazil, were treated by their governments as terrorists. (11) Today, this attempt to criminalize resistance movements is backed by the normality of the period. During widespread protests in Brazil in 2013, (12) the greatest persecution fell upon anarchists, with the famous twenty-three political prisoners at Rio de Janeiro, whom the government tried to characterize as terrorists and enemies of the nation. (13)
The idea of a “war on terror” easily wins the hearts and minds of common citizens, hiding intentions that are not protective of the population, such as the US offensive in the Middle East (and, seemingly, possibly in Venezuela and elsewhere). Meanwhile, clearly terrorist actions undertaken by alt-right and fascist groups are minimized by official narratives. A stark example is the Norwegian case, when a shooter killed over seventy young leftist people in 2011, but the narrative centered around questioning his mental sanity, an artifice to hide its true political motivation, seeking to individualize the case as something committed by a madman, without any connection to the climate of terror that the far-right is spreading around the world.
Both of these books focus on the recent history of fascism, but they also mention fascism’s genesis in the post-WWI period, with the emergence Hitler and Mussolini. However, the most important aspect of both works is to explain the history of fascism in the twenty-first century. This should be a permanent alert: believing the danger of fascism is in the past will condemn us to relive the horror. We must resist, organize and fight with all available weapons, with militant discipline and theoretical accuracy, as there is no room for error before the fascist enemy.
Both books invite us to recognize that our liberating potential is in the fall of all borders, including borders of thought. Even as every place is unique, the fascist threat is a threat to humanity as a whole, be it in the Balkans or in the streets of Brooklyn. The enemy is lurking all around and demands us to be vigilant. Capital and repression know no boundaries, and our resistance tactics must have none as well. Beyond the European and North American experiences of both works, the revolutionary creativity must flow and mirror the antifascist movements of Africa, the Americas, and Asia, for our liberty does not fit within borders.
Cíntia Melo is an anarchist lawyer and writer with a Master’s in Architecture and Urbanism. She is Brazilian, and is involved with fights for the right to housing, transport, and the city, as well as gender equality. She has been involved with political organizations and social movements, living and fighting in different countries, such as Brazil, Argentina, and the United States.
This review is from the Imaginations issue of Perspectives (n.31) and is available from Powell’s Books here! and AK Press here!
Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement is available from AK Press here.
Alerta! Alerta! Snapshots of Europe’s Antifascist Struggle is available from AK Press here.
Notes
(1) Don Hamerquist, J. Sakai, and Mark Salotte. 2017. Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement. Kersplebedeb.
(2) Attention to the fact that this is not a generalization regarding Muslims, or any religious groups, but a criticism to specific groups that enforce authoritarian and/or terror practices.
(3) Ibid., p. 149.
(4) Patrick Strickland. 2018. Alerta! Alerta! Snapshots of Europe’s Anti-Fascist Struggle. Edinburgh: AK Press.
(5) Boaventura de Sousa Santos. 2003. “Poderá o Direito Ser Emancipatório?” Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, no. 65 (May): 03-76. https://doi.org/10.4000/rccs.1180.
(Available in Portuguese).
(6) Cíntia Melo. 2018. “População de Rua: entre a exclusão e a justiça social. (Homelessness: from exclusion to social justice)”. Direitos Fundamentais Das Pessoas Em Situação de Rua. Edited by Ada Pellegrini Grinover. Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Universidade De Itaúna; D’Plácido.
(7) Petista is an expression that refers to the supporters of Brazil’s Workers Party (PT), but it is often used as a slur to refer to leftists in general, even without any connection with PT.
(8) Xtn of Chicago ARA
(9) Ibid.
(10) Ibid.
(11) Carlos Marighella (Salvador, December 5, 1911 – São Paulo, November 4, 1969) was a Brazilian Marxist-Leninist communist politician, writer and guerrillero. He was one of the main organizers of the armed groups that fought against the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985), Marighella was considered the most important enemy of the regime. He was the co-founder of Ação Libertadora Nacional, a revolutionary organization active in Brazil during the military dictatorship.
(12) A series of protests happened all over Brazil in June (2013), especially in the eleven cities chosen to host the World Cup (2014), those events were called Jornadas de Junho (June’s Journeys). Some of the protests lead more than one million people to the streets.
(13) Twenty-three anarchists were persecuted by the government in Rio de Janeiro accused of different crimes during the protest of June, 2013. They were convicted (each one faced different charges), and they are now appealing.