Thread by @BigBigBLessing

Lots of speculation that yesterday's massacre in Rio was a deliberate effort help police-linked milícias take over Jacarezinho by softening the Comando Vermelho's long-standing hold on the community.

Plausible, chilling, but not most important. THREAD👇

https://twitter.com/renagalo2/status/1390722600243015685

First, regardless of whether it was deliberate, this police action DOES benefit milicias by weakening the CV directly. If Jacarezinho ends up being taken over by milicias, you can be sure that this operation will have played a part.

It is part of a larger pattern, documented by the top-notch team at @geni_uff: police conduct 4x more operations in areas held by the CV and other prison/drug gangs than in milicia areas.

And therein lies a 2nd, critical benefit, often overlooked...
www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/2021…

Milícias charge residents for "protection" from drug gangs. Partly that's just euphemism for extortion; drug trafficking still goes on. But residents of milicia-controlled neighborhoods really are protected from a terrifying form of violence: police operations.

The fact that the police rarely invade milícia territory, and frequently invade CV territory, gives the milícias a very real advantage, one that--anecdotally anyway--residents of milícia areas recognize.

Deliberately or not, this favors milícia expansion.

And the milícias *have* been expanding, now dominating a larger population than the drug gangs and an unbelievable 57% of the city's area (they commonly operate in the vast and sparse areas of the city's West Zone).

g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-jane…

Reasonable to suspect and investigate state-milícia collusion, partly bc it may go high up: Bolsonaro, a milícia defender, came to Rio & met w acting governor just 12 hours B4 yesterday's massacre. Author says "no mere coincidence", tho hard to prove.
jornalistaslivres.org/operacao-matou…

But we shouldn't get distracted from what we DO know.
Just as debate rages over whether Colombia's Alvaro Uribe was literally a paramilitar, it rages over whether Bolsonaro is a miliciano.
But we know for sure that he leads a political movement that empowers and fuels milicias.

We don't need proof of active collusion to know that when Bolsonaro's VP says, with no evidence, that yesterday's victims were "all bandits", justifiably killed since "it's the same as if we were fighting an enemy country", it helps milicias.
oglobo.globo.com/rio/tudo-bandi…

As anti-milícia activist Marcelo Freixo puts it, Mourão's comment distills and legitimizes the milícia ideology. "Milicia isn't just an article in the criminal code, it is a social project that puts violence and terror above the law."

https://twitter.com/MarceloFreixo/status/1390705629606682632

Milicias, I predict, will spread from Rio to take over urban peripheries throughout Brazil, just as CV and PCC-like "factions" did in the 2000s. Call it #milicianization.

And as we learned w Trump & the alt-right, top-down legitimation can play a key role in the spread.

The only chance against #milicianization is early detection and treatment, neutralizing forces that strengthen milicias. That is why it is so important to understand how violent policing favors milicias---even without deliberate or formal collusion.
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