The global extreme right and the control of bodies

The revocation of the right to abortion and the reduction of the power of the Environmental Protection Agency by the Supreme Court of the United States point to the same objective: the control of bodies.

But not just any bodies.

In the case of abortion, those of women.

In the case of the climate, those of the poorest —blacks and indigenous people, those most affected by global overheating— and, mainly, the body-planet.

The offensive of the Republicans who dominate the court today is to control the insurgent bodies: both those of the protagonists of the feminist movement

like those of those who toppled statues of white American heroes, slavers and colonialists.

And of nature, which rises up transfiguring the climate after the systematic attack of modernity powered by fossil fuels.

The decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, the largest emitter of carbon along with China, indicate that the change of president is far from guaranteeing that rights are recovered and progress is made on crucial issues such as global overheating.

Donald Trump's attempted coup, with the invasion of the Capitol, offered the right wing an example of what to do when he loses the election.

The first year and a half of the Government of Joe Biden shows that it is not enough to assert the results of the polls.

Even if there is a democratic president, what brought the extreme right to power is still active and corrodes democracy, not only within the institutions, but also by insufflating the helplessness of the popular classes with the accelerated deterioration of a life that no longer has future promises.

Countries with fragile institutions, such as Brazil, will find it much more difficult to face the post-far-right times.

No one has made the relationship between the body of women and the body of the jungle more explicit than Jair Bolsonaro, saying in his first year in office that the Amazon was "the virgin that all perverts from outside want."

Both the female body and nature can be objectified, plundered and emptied.

It is the colonial and patriarchal logic that the extreme right fights to maintain and that has led the planet to climate catastrophe.

The most significant thing in the Brazilian electoral pre-campaign is not so much the successes of the parties, but the “moral” attacks.

In recent weeks, a judge prevented an 11-year-old girl who had become pregnant after being raped from aborting, and a journalist exposed that an actress had given a baby up for adoption as a result of rape.

This is the pre-campaign of the grassroots, with which the country will have to deal well beyond the elections.

It is no coincidence that the US Supreme Court has staged a third setback in the same period, authorizing civilians to carry weapons in public.

It is no coincidence that in Brazil the registration of weapons has increased by 473% during the Bolsonaro government.

If the "legal" setbacks are not enough to control the insurgent bodies, the weapons serve to destroy them.

This is demonstrated by the execution of defenders of nature in the Amazon, day after day.

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