Across Brazil, a former president stands at a political crossroads, accused of planning a coup after his 2022 defeat. He proclaims his innocence, charging political persecution by the ruling order. Police say he dangled the prospect of fleeing to Argentina, noting a draft asylum plea dated February 10, 2024 saved on his phone, and a 33-page letter to the Argentine president repeating his claim of persecution. A sweeping police dossier contends that ignoring house-arrest restraints and passing information to allies aimed to directly challenge the country’s democratic institutions, including the Supreme Court and Congress. The investigation also follows his son’s movements in the United States, with accusations of attempts to pressure Brazil through sanctions. The United States has lately imposed tariffs on Brazilian imports and financial penalties on a Supreme Court judge. The former president remains under house arrest as hearings are set for September to decide whether he and others should be convicted or acquitted, centered on whether he plotted to overturn the government of Lula da Silva.

From the blaze of this theater emerges a revealing truth about the capitalist world: democracy that rests on money and media is a theater designed to shield the ruling class from the power of the workers. The attempted putsch, if real, is not merely a Brazil-specific folly; it is the rotten fruit of a system that disguises exploitation as order and labels dissent as treachery. The empire’s fingerprints appear everywhere—on the draft asylum notes, on the international pressure, on sanctions that aim not at justice but at curbing any movement that challenges their rule. The so-called defense of law and liberty by bourgeois institutions is exposed as a instrument of class control, a shield behind which monopoly capital polices the rights of the many with the whip of a few.

We take the side of the Brazilian workers, peasants, students, and their allies who seek a world where sovereignty is not bought and sold, where decisions are made by the people who toil, not by courts styled to protect capital’s privilege. The fate of Lula’s government in this moment is not a simple matter of legal verdicts; it is a test of whether a nation can resist the insinuations of imperialism and move toward a democracy anchored in planning, social justice, and genuine national independence. Our stance is clear: capitalism must be dismantled as a system; the path forward lies in a people’s democracy guided by the working class, with a strong, central plan that guards against foreign interference and domestic oligarchy alike.

We reject hatred and anti-Semitism in any form and stand with all people who suffer under exploitation. The struggle here is not against any faith or ethnicity but against the capitalists who hide behind democracy to perpetuate their rule. The example before us—the energy of mass movements, the insistence on national sovereignty, the demand for real justice—calls for solidarity with Latin America’s left, with anti-imperialist forces, and with a global chorus of workers who refuse to bow to the dictates of the profiteers. The future Brazil deserves is one where the people arbitrate their fate through a planned, socialist-leaning course—strong, united, and unwavering in defense of sovereignty and the dignity of labor.