Besides these 5 criteria that we analyzed, comrade Lenin also underlined another characteristic of the imperialism - the fostering of political reactionarism and violence:
"(...) politically, imperialism is, (...), a striving towards violence and reaction.
(...) the specific political features of imperialism are reaction everywhere and increased national oppression due to the oppression of the financial oligarchy and the elimination of free competition (...).
Imperialism is the epoch of finance capital and of monopolies, which introduce everywhere the striving for domination, not for freedom. Whatever the political system, the result of these tendencies is everywhere reaction and an extreme intensification of antagonisms in this field." (Lenin, Imperialism, highest stage of capitalism, Selected Works, Volume I, pages 667-766, January-June of 1916, edition in English)
And indeed, in Brazil, despite the fake "democratic" appearance of the bourgeois institutions, the truth is that the Brazilian proletariat is systematically subjected to the harshest fascist violence exercised by the Brazilian police and "security forces" at the service of the capitalist exploitative tyranny. Imperialist Brazil is still not a military power at the international scale; nonetheless, in what respects to the country's internal situation, we can affirm that Brazilian imperialist-bourgeois society is among the most militarized in the world.
Brazilian police is considered to be among the most bloodthirsty and corrupt polices, being much criticized even by bourgeois-liberal organizations like the Amnesty International. Of course that the Amnesty International, as the pro-capitalist organization that it is, it is not the least worried about the well being and freedom of the Brazilian working classes which everyday suffer the savage attacks that the "security" forces launch upon them. The Amnesty International is just worried about the fact that the fascist methods applied by the Brazilian police can cause the Brazilian oppressed and exploited proletarians to acquire a truly revolutionary and communist consciousness through acknowledgement of the fact that the Brazilian police is nothing more than an instrument used by the Brazilian imperialist state with the purpose of perpetuating wage slavery and of preventing the outcome of the socialist revolution in Brazil and all over the world.
The poor quarters of the Brazilian mega-cities – where great numbers of destitute Brazilian proletarians live - are permanently kept under surveillance by units of the Brazilian fascist army. Under the pretext of the "struggle against drug trafficking", those units ruthlessly attack the quarters' poor inhabitants, implacably killing thousands of them per year. Most of these inhabitants have absolutely nothing to do with drug dealing; indeed, the great masters of drug trafficking in Brazil are not to be found in the impoverished houses of the miserable suburbs, but in the opulent palaces located in the wealthiest zones where they occupy high ranking posts in the imperialist corporations and in the bourgeois government. The Brazilian fascist officers know this very well, even because many of them are also engaged in drug trafficking; they try to depict Brazilian poor quarters as being the epicenters of drug dealing in order to deviate the attention from themselves and their capitalist bosses.
Actually, the entire imperialist state apparatus in Brazil is intended to protect the moneyed interests of the dominant classes while brutally repressing the working exploited masses. Brazilian prisons are a veritable hell. All sorts of violence, discrimination and slaughtering happen there. Within Brazilian prisons, the "security personnel" at the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie possesses life and death power over each inmate, because Brazil is one of the countries where, despite the fact that the death penalty is officially abolished, it is still practiced within prisons by the fascist guards.
The majority of Brazilian inmates is of African or mixed descent. This is easy to explain because Brazilian black proletarians are the ones who are more exploited and oppressed, they are the ones who suffer the greatest violence and discriminations. Many of them are in prison because they stole to live. And in many cases, they didn't do that because they were unemployed (although unemployment affects Brazilian black workers very much). Indeed, many of them dedicate their free time to stealing activities due to the fact that their salaries are not able to guarantee the survival of themselves and their families. After all, Brazilian black workers - the descendants of former slaves – usually occupy the less qualified jobs where the levels of exploitation are higher, what leads them into the most abject poverty.
