By Quantum Bird for the Saker Blog

Recently, in his widely praised article “Revisiting Russia’s 5th and, especially, 6th columns” (available in English and Portuguese ), Andrei Raevsky, from The Saker Blog, has revisited his – quite original – 6th-column concept, focusing on the Russian political landscape and geopolitical conjuncture.

In this short article, I intend to apply the concepts exposed by Raevsky to Brazil, and as much as possible, identify, at least indirectly, the main members and factions that make up the Brazilian 6th column.

Before analyzing the 6th column itself, it is worth of recalling that the types that make up the 5th column in Brazil are basically members of the local elites and middle class buyers or, more concisely, “comprador elites” – to use another concept common to Saker’s Community. These people – politicians, military, business people, academics, artists or intellectuals – are notorious for their overt, vulgar, and unabashedly servile anti-nationalism. Devoid of any trace of national or civilizing pride, they came to be referred to as mongrels or mutt dogs in the local popular culture.

Typical Brazilian “comprador elite” member.

Brazilian 5th columnists like to present themselves as neo-liberals or neo-conservatives, but, in fact, they are devoid of any real ideology. They are just a remnant of Brazil’s colonial and slave-holding past; always ready to serve the dominant foreign metropolis at the time, against national interests. More specifically, we are talking about supporters of the Washington consensus – with many holding a degree on economics from universities like Chicago, Harvard and similar places in the USA and Europe. They are explicit or implicit supporters of the Monroe Doctrine and serial violators of human rights at home.

Historically, these people coalesce politically around local right-wing parties and a certain local television network. And this is an important aspect, because throughout Latin America, and Brazil is no exception, the main leftist agendas are social justice, anti-imperialism and nationalism, in the sense of achieving and maintaining full sovereignty. More on this later.

What is the Brazilian 6th column?

The last paragraph of the previous section already contains the answer. Concisely, the members of the Brazilian 6th column appear to act as anti-imperialists, nationalists and defenders of human rights etc., but their actions consistently promote the same interests pursued by the 5th columnists, just more indirectly. This apparent contradiction between ends, means and, above all, consequences, provides the members of the 6th column with the necessary cover to carry out complex psychological operations and infect important sectors of society, always promoting the imperial agenda.

Tropical wokeism or “the Borg ultimatum”

The woke movement has been widely discussed in the corporate and alternative media, and there are good articles about it, so I don’t intend to delve too deeply into the definition of wokeism itself. Instead, I chose this excerpt from The Menticide Manual: Wokeness, which, in my opinion, is enough to understand the concept:

“Wokeness is euphoria about gender and race.
Euphoria in psychology is the mental state of aggravated happiness.
[ … ]
The woke are extremely euphoric about their discovery of all the races and genders. To them getting woke is the most important thing in the world.
It is caused by excess release of neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin in their brains, leading to feelings of extreme felicity. The woke people engage in the stimulation of their pleasure system by indulging in unremitting sexism and racism.”

That’s it. Wokeism is a radical identitarian doctrine, augmented with a series of very intrusive, divisive and disturbing mechanisms that try to dictate how people should act and think. The ultimate goal of the wokes is to replace the real diversity of the world with a fake and simplified version of it, restricted to superficial racial issues and artificial gender definitions.

In Brazil, the wokes are part of the sixth column because at first glance their causes may sound honest, and in fact dialogue with legitimate causes such as claims for racial justice, women’s rights, indigenous peoples rights, etc.

However, it soon becomes evident that wokeism is not about the objective social conditions, but about the diffusion of wokeism itself, which, in last instance, promotes social unrest, societal fragmentation and anomie in the host population. The resulting weakening of social structures and the loss of focus on political debate – impossible to be followed by individuals now confused about their own race and gender – creates a favorable environment for the infiltration of imperial structures and agendas.

Image: David Klein

The violent character of the woke agenda is manifested quite explicitly through the phenomenon popularly known as cancellation, or cancel culture, applied by the woke collective against those resisting its dictates and indoctrination.

The behavior of the wokes towards those who do not adhere to their causes is very similar to the behavior of the Borg, issuing their famous ultimatum,

In fact, the Memory Alpha website, maintained by Star Trek fans, documents:

The Borg are a pseudo-species of cybernetic organisms shown in the fictional universe of the Star Trek franchise.
[…] the Borg use cybernetic enhanced enhancements as a means of achieving what they believe to be perfection
[…]
The Borg have become a symbol in popular culture for any steamroller against whom “resistance is futile”.
[…] The pursuit of perfection is the only motivation of the Borg, a mechanical and emotionless perfection. This is achieved through forced assimilation, a process that transforms individuals and technology into Borg, enhancing them – simultaneously controlling them – through synthetic implants.

And so are the wokes.

The red toucans

The Red-breasted Toucan (Ramphastos dicolorus) is found throughout central and southern Brazil and southern northern Argentina and is one of the most commonly seen species. Not to be confused with the species discussed below.

Toucans are a family of birds that live in the tropical forests of Central and South America. As everyone knows, a toucan with feathers in the colors of the Brazilian flag is also the mascot of the PSDB, the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, notorious for its far-right politics, radical privatizing and predatory economic neo-liberalism, which ruined Brazil in the 90’s, during the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso – another similarity with Russia, which suffered from the similar evil at the same period. All this makes yellow-green toucans organic members of the 5th column. So far, nothing new.

It turns out that the yellow-green toucans are not the only members of the Ramphastida family in the Brazilian political landscape. There are also the exotic red toucans. I am referring to political cadres who, in practice, share the same ideology of the yellow-green toucans, but infest left-wing parties. The exact number of these elements is difficult to estimate, as most of the time these characters play the role of leftists quite well, avoiding exposing their true ideological affiliation by simply not addressing themes such as sovereignty, anti-imperialism, combating and effective eradication of poverty, nationalization of the strategic sectors of the economy, etc.

However, the red plumage of these toucans falls inexorably once they wield power and start taking decisions. Of course, it’s usually too late, as they’ve already been elected and, in fact, that’s where a lot of the damage they do comes from. When they are not betraying the people by legislating or implementing laws and acts that amplify the penetration of imperialism in the country, the red toucans spend their time sabotaging or dismantling popular organizations. This is done by promoting divisive, alienating and demobilizing agendas. Many of today’s red toucans are also wokes. Others, more subtle, but no less dangerous, pose as intellectuals and produce content that distorts national and international history and culture, promoting myths that are clearly counter-productive to the agenda of consolidation of sovereignty.

Three examples, before moving on to the next category:

  1. The former presidential candidate for the Workers’ Party (PT), who as minister of education in the Lula government promoted a significant increase in financing, and consequent indebtedness, of Brazilian students by prioritizing the expansion of the private sector of higher education in the country, all while posturing as a builder of public universities. Currently, the same character dedicates its time to torpedo any and all advances in the anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America, attacking initiatives from Venezuela to Nicaragua. He recently felt that he should also attack Russia, for promoting multipolarism and showing respect to Brazil, re-establishing and re-energizing the diplomatic contacts and cooperation with the current government.
  2. The leaders of the Landless Workers’ Movement/Movimento dos Sem Terra [MST], who spit on the organization’s history and involved it with predatory global financier turbo-capitalism. The MST today has titles on the stock exchange and participates in organizations based in Washington DC, in partnership with entities representing the sharks of global predatory capitalism.
  3. The network of digital influencers and woke youtubers, who sell themselves as leftists, but are nothing more than intellectual imposters willingly accepting, if not competing for, donations from the foundations of central capitalism imperialists, to buy packages of “likes” and “views” for their contents in social networks, in order to promote their activities that disrupt social cohesion.

The 3th sector

Some popular NGOs in Brazil.

In Brazil, the obscure and entangled complex of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) is, for equally cryptic reasons, called the third sector.

Cryptic because NGOs are full of civil servants and ex-officials and typically interact with government organizations via a classic revolving door scheme, usually followed by ascending escalators.

NGOs provide the perfect environment for distributing the agendas and funding of imperialist entities, under the guise of providing useful services to the public, which is why I classify them as part of the 6th column. As a local proverb says,

The money is injected at the top of the system, via thematic public funding calls and donations by the usual suspects, and then it is redistributed in a capillarized way that it is not very easy to follow. In fact, it is not uncommon to find people who donating money to NGOs without realizing that they are collaborating with the promotion of hybrid warfare and psychological operations, for example. The absence of specific legislation to label these entities as foreign agents and more closely regulate their activities has turned Brazil into a paradise for NGOs.

Conclusions

The concept of the 5th, and especially, 5th columns are very useful to understand the Brazilian political scene, uninterruptedly agitated by psychological operations and enormous ideological confusion. There are thousands of other examples and covering them would require a book, probably a voluminous one. Fortunately, it is not necessary to cover every case to identify the 6th columnists. In fact, it is enough to apply the criterion already indicated by Andrei Raevsky: “cui bono ?”
That is, who gains or is strengthened by the operations of suspicious, but apparently good willing, agents? The answer will point the way.

*Quantum Bird is a computer scientist and experimental particle physicist.

Notes:

1) The article in Portuguese is available at:
https://telegra.ph/As-quinta-e-sexta-colunas-brasileiras-02-20

and will be available soon at:

https://resistir.info

http://sakerlatam.es

2) English version kindly revised by Lady Bharani.