Patriots!
Come with me!
Against communists
and traitors to the homeland!
Let's rescue our country!
Our flag!
None shall pass!
What?!
None shall pass!
So be it!
Now stand aside, worthy adversary.
T'is but a scratch.
A scratch?!
Your arm's off!
No it isn't
Well what's that then?
ORDER AND PROGRESS!
Victory is mine.
We thank you, oh lord, for your---
Come on then
What?!
Oh. Hello.
Welcome to System Fail,
the show that believes in using the right tool for the job.
♫ Break it down.
The violent attack by a stranger inside Nancy Pelosi's home
Good lord.
Video shows shattered glass doors in the fashionable Pacific heights
neighbourhood of San Francisco.
We should mention that Nancy Pelosi's home is very well-known
very accessible.
Rich, poor, old, young, it doesn't matter.
You can be a victim.
Good lord.
♫ Stop. Hammer time.
82 year old Paul Pelosi was struck on the head and torso
with a hammer.
Paul Pelosi was violently assaulted...
Good lord.
...with a hammer.
With a hammer.
A hammer.
Good lord.
I am your host, Dee Dos.
And with the US midterm elections rapidly approaching,
God Dammit!
the American media is once again focused
on the strange bi-annual ritual,
where humans with clean criminal records
choose their political representatives
from a pre-selected list of actors, liars, psychopaths, and hacks.
The midterms... ksshh ksshh pew.
Can you believe it?
It s finally happening -- or it's closer to happening
I feel like we've done this every week.
You used to say an election night. I call it election week.
Now it could be election month.
Yeah could be.
The illustrious war criminal, Sir Winston Churchill,
once described democracy as the worst form of government...
except for all the others.
We are the chosen few.
I can’t remember it.
Alright, carry on.
I've got one of the best memories that you can have.
- I know sir, but that's quite alright. - You put me off.
Quite alright. Don't worry. Look at the camera and start again, sir.
Incidentally, his own government killed Alan Turing,
whose contributions to the development of artificial intelligence
have fundamentally transformed democracy
into something Churchill would have scarcely recognized.
Their targeting tool used to be export controlled
[by] the British government.
So that would mean weapons-grade communication tactics.
...and sewn the seeds of its inevitable replacement
by algorithmic governance and cybernetic terror.
But I digress.
From the perspective of the ruling class,
democracy is the least worst system of government
because of the flexibility and sense of stability
that it provides to the ultimate arbiter
of capitalist property relations: the state.
Under a democratic framework, popular anger that might otherwise
develop into riots, expropriations, and armed attacks on state institutions,
is instead stripped of its revolutionary potential
and directed back into established political channels,
through a process known as recuperation.
The ruling ideology sees to it that subversive discoveries
are trivialized and sterilized.
After which, they can be safely spectacularized
Not only does this system regularly demobilize social movements,
but it isolates those who refuse to be recuperated,
leaving them more vulnerable to state repression.
Although it remains a shockingly resilient tool for social control,
democracy has seen diminishing returns in recent years.
Voters see democracy in peril, but saving it isn't a priority.
After decades of broken promises,
flagrant corruption
and blatant hypocrisy,
most humans have become thoroughly disillusioned
with the entire political class.
About one quarter of Americans trust government,
a whopping 73% do not.
To fight this growing skepticism,
and to distract from their own personal failings,
politicians from all political stripes
have doubled down on so-called culture wars,
pouring gasoline onto the flames of polarization
in a desperate effort to inject a sense of urgency back into electoral politics,
This is the most important election of our lifetime.
This is the most important election of all our lifetimes.
This is the most important election of our time.
Politicians say every time this is the most important election...
This is the most important election.
...this one's really that important
and to mobilize their shrinking bases of support.
The left has decided to try to destroy our culture
The MAGA republicans represent an extremism
that threatens the very foundations of our republic.
Nowhere has this been more intense than in the territories
ruled by the Brazilian state.
On October 30th, the country's residents
went to the polls.
Despite widespread reports of fraud, vote buying
and voter suppression by police,
More than 1,100 reports of electoral harassment.
If Bolsonaro wins you'll get extra salary.
...we will give you a 600 pound ox.
...each one of you will get R$200.
Highway police just stopped this bus
in an attempt to delay those people
and stop them from getting to their voting sections.
far-right president Jair Bolsonaro
was defeated by former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva,
better known as Lula.
Bolsonaro's supporters took it particularly hard.
You're going to ask us for help.
She's possessed
The rain has started.
Can you hear it though the window?
It s God, crying
for our choices.
God!
Do not forsake this country, Lord!
In Minas Gerais,
a drunk Bolsonaro supporter
went on a shooting rampage,
killing a man named Pedro Henrique Dias,
as he was celebrating Lula's victory,
and a 12 year old girl named Luana Rafaela Oliveira Barcelos.
As the election results were announced,
people took to the streets across the country,
calling on the army to intervene and, quote,
save the country from communism.
Brazilian Army, we beg you!
It's no use walking around town!
It's no use shedding our tears
under this rain!
Look for our children,
not for this old man!
Over the next 24 hours,
Bolsonaro's allies in the agribusiness and trucking sectors
brought the country to a stand-still,
blockading more than 200 roads and highways
in 21 of the country's 26 states.
Sao Paulo Guarulhos Airport was blocked,
causing the cancellations of dozens of flights.
Other supporters set up their own smaller blockades,
using whatever they had on hand.
They re all outraged.
This guy climbed on the truck
and said he won't get down.
Are you getting down?
No more being dumb!
No.
You're dumb man, that's crazy.
How dumb are you?
These blockades were tolerated and in several cases,
directly facilitated by members of the country's
notorious Federal Highway Police, the PRF.
The police already said they won't intervene.
The police are cutting the fence!
The Federal Highway Police
will never
create any conflict with you.
In fact, we re not doing our jobs.
It s the bourgeosie out there, sister.
If they were teachers, poor people...
They would chase them off.
If it was someone poor, they would've run over them.
Brazil's working class moved quickly and decisively
to smother this attempted coup in its initial stages.
Shipbuilders in Angra dos Reis
began dismantling barricades on Monday night.
Favela residents mobilized to do the same in cities
and neighbourhoods across the country.
It's done.
Let's take it all away.
Let s open it.
Look at those playboys there.
Bunch of assholes.
We are the fucking favela!
The MTST, or Homeless Workers Movement,
called on its militants to open up access routes.
Calls went up from anti-fascist groups
to take the streets and block fascist mobilizations.
Here are the antifascists!
Alerta! Alerta!
Antifascista!
And finally, swarms of football ultras
jumped into the mix,
motivated in some cases by class solidarity
and in others,
anger that Bolsonaro's supporters would dare
to try and shut down the country
during the national football championship.
We'll watch our team, no matter what!
Everybody can pass! Let's go!
Troop of the blockade-breakers, cunt!
Take it away!
Take this fuck away!
What s up?
Fuck off, cunts!
The people will not fucking retreat!
Run!
Although it now seems clear
that the attempted coup d'etat has failed,
I know you're upset
and sad.
I want to ask you something.
End the blockades.
He's asking for us to retreat?
Please! What does he want?
Can someone please tell me?
I want to see who's brave enough
to pull up and burn their own car!
But I'm a man!
I already tore up my voting document.
If this corrupt government stays
I'll sell my house and go over to Paraguay!
Bolsonaro has still not officially conceded the election,
and has another month in office
to weigh his options and plan a final show of defiance.
Over the past four years, he has proven himself
to be one of the most shameless politicians in the world.
And he still has millions of unhinged supporters to call upon,
should he choose to do so.
And while Lula has promised
to curb the deforestation of the Amazon,
and rein in attacks against the country's Indigenous groups,
he is also far from the communist boogieman
that Bolsonaro supporters have made him out to be.
Lula is a neoliberal centrist, who has made numerous alliances
with right-wing politicians, and whose previous terms in office
with right-wing politicians,
and whose previous terms in office
coincided with record bank profits,
the recuperation of many of the country's social movements,
the modernization and militarization of the country’s police forces,
and the violent, so-called favela pacification programs
carried out in the slums of Rio de Janeiro.
Both the Worker’s Party (PT) and the movements in thier orbit
are saying that it’s not yet the time to take to the streets
So this may be a harbinger of how the future will be.
If we had consensus around PT before 2013
where the left and all social movements
were brought into the institutions
to manage cultural and social programs...
and everybody who questioned this was treated like an enemy
-- we can expect something similar from now on.
From the first day of victory.
I think we’ll have to be much smarter
to show that radical change,
that any change will only come from movements
that are breaking with consensus.
Both the authoritarian takeover of the State
and the humanized management of neoliberalism
that the left proposes.
Meanwhile, in France, on October 30th,
7,000 protesters descended on Sainte-Soline
to disrupt the construction of a proposed mega-basin,
a large artificial water reservoir intended for industrial
mono-culture corn production.
Fearing the prospect of a new ZAD, or Zone A Defendre,
police attempted to ban the protest,
and dispatched 1,700 gendarmes
and six police helicopters to defend the site.
Turns out, this wasn't enough.
In the clashes that followed, 61 gendarmes were injured,
22 seriously, along with 30 protesters.
Militants succeeded in reaching the site,
and digging up a pipe that had been installed
to fill the reservoir.
A permanent camp has been established in a nearby field,
and 2000 eco-defenders remain on site to block future construction.
I fart in your general direction.
Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.
Is there someone else up there we could talk to?
No. Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time.
And finally, in Italy, anarchist prisoner Alfredo Cospito
launched a hunger strike on October 20th,
to protest his indefinite detention under the country's
brutal 41 bis regime,
an anti-terrorism designation characterized by
intense sensory deprivation and isolation.
On October 25th, Alfredo was joined
in his hunger strike by fellow anarchist prisoner,
Juan Sorroche, who is currently serving a 28 year sentence
for an explosive attack on the offices of Matteo Salvini's
far-right Lega party.
Since then, demonstrations have been held
outside of prisons across Italy,
and several small solidarity actions
have been carried out in Germany and Greece.
Comrades have vowed to escalate attacks,
and are calling for more international solidarity actions
to put pressure on the Italian state.
We have a few weeks to save Alfredo Cospito's life.
To prevent his assassination.
But most importantly to give a signal of counter attack
to what is happening.
The state is responsible for the life and health of our comrade.
Let's mobilize around the world.
Let's pressure the Italian state so that Alfredo can be released
from 41 bis.
We have now reached the end of this episode of System Fail.
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Godspeed, humans.