Legendary ‘Watchmen’ creator Alan Moore speaks out on Brazil’s election

This Friday afternoon (28), the Avengers gathered to launch an appeal to Brazilians: vote in the presidential election this Sunday (2). While the majority maintained neutrality, some sent indirect messages indicating one’s political preference, usually driven by the environmental cause, many of whom are internationally recognized activists. These protests are part of a campaign called #NemTodoHeróiUsaCapa. And they have mobilized millions of fans on social networks.

• Discover the main Avengers Tweets on the Brazilian election

On the DC side, which could not fail to speak out, it was precisely Alan Moore, the legend of the graphic novel, creator of some of the most cult and politicized works in history, such as Watchmen and V for Vendetta.

Known for his firm and incisive positions, Moore had already caused controversy twenty days ago, when he gave an interview to the British newspaper The Guardian, in which he claimed to have retired from comics because he thought that the industry turned this type of text into children’s and “unbearable” works.

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He also linked the rise of the far right and fascism in world politics to the infantilization of society caused by the popularization of works of superheroes, bringing a Manichean view of the world, which reinforced polarization and violence. political extremism by adults interpreting works made for children as if they were a living manual for the real world.

“Hundreds of thousands of adults are lining up to see characters and situations that were created to entertain 12-year-olds – and they were still boys – from 50 years ago. I really didn’t think not that superheroes were grown-up stuff. I think it was a misunderstanding born out of what happened in the 1980s – for which I have to blame a considerable, albeit unintended, part when things like Watchmen appeared for the first time. […] I said around 2011 that I thought it would have serious and ominous implications for the future if millions of adults lined up to see the Batman movies. Because that kind of infantilization — that desire for simpler times, simpler realities — can often be a precursor to fascism,” Alan Moore told the newspaper.

Photo credit: Kevin Nixon/SFX Magazine/Future via Getty Images

On Friday afternoon, as the Avengers were campaigning for the votes, Alan Moore took to his Facebook to post a political thought piece, drawing attention to the importance of the Brazilian elections not just for Brazil, but for the world as a whole. .

In the letter, Moore points out that the world is going through transformations and that the choices we make now will directly influence the future of future generations. Your children and grandchildren. Unlike other celebrities in the comics world, the British author didn’t dare to take a stand and in one of the rare times he showed his support for a political figure, Alan Moore spoke out clearly. in Sunday’s election. Check the translation of the letter.

“Dear Brazil,
We are quickly running out of last chances to save the planet and its people. Our world is changing, faster than ever, and forcing us to adapt faster if we want to survive. From hunters and gatherers of food to agriculture, from agriculture to industry, from industry to all that is now taking shape – this new condition for which we do not yet have a name – humanity has experienced this kind of monumental change before, but not so often. These transitions are not caused by political forces, but by the unstoppable tidal movements of history and technology, which is a tide that we can harness our ships or get carried away. The world turns, necessarily turns into a new place, and we can only turn with it, otherwise we will lose the biosphere that sustains us forever. Most people, I believe, know it in their hearts and feel it in their stomachs.

And yet, over the past five years, we have seen across the world a fierce resurgence of political and economic ideals that have brought us to this clearly dire situation. The undisguised aggressiveness of this far-right advance seems to me so strong, and at the same time so disconnected from all reality, that it can only be born of despair; the hysterical fear felt by those most entrenched in the power structures of the old world, who know that the new world may ultimately have no place for them. Fearing for their very existence, for the existence of the worldview they enjoy, they have filled the world stage over the past half-decade with increasingly loud, over-the-top and capricious pantomime characters, for which no course of action is too corrupt or inhumane. And no line of reasoning so patently absurd.

Shamelessly monstrous, these persecuted racial and religious minorities, or their indigenous peoples, or the poor, or women, or people of different sexualities, or all of the above. During the ongoing pandemic, they have put their political stance and financial doctrines ahead of the safety of their populations, presiding over hundreds of thousands of potentially unnecessary deaths; hundreds of thousands of devastated families, devastated communities. With their nations on fire, flooded or parched by drought, they insisted that climate change was a left-wing hoax to annoy industry and branded environmental or social protesters as terrorists.

Adopting the fascist circus style of Italian Silvio Berlusconi, we had the dangerous insurrectionary theatrics of Donald Trump in North America and the ruinous indignities of Boris Johnson and his replacements in the UK (currently). And, of course, Brazil had Jair Bolsonaro.

While we in the northern hemisphere obviously contribute far more than our fair share of horrible political figures to the fate of the world, I don’t know anyone with an ounce of conscience and compassion who isn’t shocked by what Bolsonaro, coming into power with Trump, did. Influencing what he did to his huge, beautiful country, as well as what he continues to do to our relatively small and somehow still beautiful planet. We watched with despair as, singing in the same anthem as his American inspiration, Bolsonaro criticized Brazil’s indigenous peoples, its gay men and their women’s rights to safe abortions, stoking an unchecked fire of hatred as a distraction for their social and economic agendas. , while simultaneously flooding their culture with guns. We’ve seen him try to navigate his way through the pandemic, spouting his anti-vaccination idiocy, and we’ve seen the area of ​​hastily prepared cemeteries grow in Brazil; those lockers in the gray floor with dead flowers here and there or painted markers with a splash of color.

We have also seen it react to the prospect of new international environmental laws, simply accelerating its suicidal destruction of the rainforest, smothering our atmosphere with the burning jungle, displacing or sending people who have lived in these areas for generations, and apparently conspiring or turning a blind eye to the murder of journalists investigating this brutal ethnic cleansing.

A respected British science magazine to which I subscribe, New Scientist, recently described the looming elections in Brazil as a potential tipping point in our species’ life-and-death battle against the climate catastrophe we ourselves have wrought. Simply put, Jair Bolsonaro can continue to please the corporate interests that support him, or our grandchildren can eat and breathe. It’s one or the other.

As an anarchist, there are very few political leaders I could totally tolerate, let alone endorse, but from everything I’ve heard or read about him, Luiz da Silva, Lula, seems to be the one of those rare individuals. His politics appear to be fair, humane and practical, and from what I understand he has promised to reverse many of Bolsonaro’s most disastrous decisions. Repairing the damage of the past five years would certainly not be easy or free, and Lula would inherit a very disfigured political scenario. At the very least, however, from this distance, he at least has the look of a candidate who recognizes that humanity is undergoing one of its rare seismic transformations and realizes that we must change the way we live if we want to live .

He looks like a politician committed to the future, with his hard work and his just and wonderful possibilities, rather than the destructive and destructive agony of an unsustainable past. The upcoming elections in Brazil are, I am told, hanging on a knife edge and, as we saw above, the whole world is betting on it. If you have ever liked any of my work or felt sympathy for its humanitarian tendencies, please vote for a future fit for human beings, for a world that is more than the golden latrines of your corporations. their puppets.

Let’s leave behind the iniquities of the last five or maybe five hundred years.

With love and trust,
Your friend,
Alan Moore”

Alan Moore became popular for his strong political position, both in the personal sphere and in his works. The author is responsible for some of the greatest comic book classics, such as Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Batman: The Killing Joke, Superman: For the Man Who Has Everything and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

The Brazilian presidential elections are causing global unrest, mainly because of the Amazon issue. Faced with the very high number of fires and increasing deforestation, the international community is concerned about the climate future, which has great hopes in the forest of the northern region of Brazil.

The elections take place this Sunday (30) across Brazil.

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