How the Radical Left Conquered Almost Everything for a Time

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It is not my habit to recommend readings, much less those written by people who confess to having been radicalized and consider themselves activists, as is the case with Christopher Rufo. My recommendation to read his recently published book about the dominance of wokeness and its critical race theory in academia and in the American institutions from which it assaulted the rest of the free world (yes, most of the world is not free), is only because, as the following review says, «the research is meticulous, and the details are forensic».

«(...) Many previous intellectual biographies of thinkers like Bell, a Harvard law professor who fathered the discipline of CRT, and Freire, a Brazilian education scholar who developed his influential “pedagogy of the oppressed”, are written by smitten disciples and seemed more like religious apologia than rigorous history. Mr Rufo’s methodical recounting of their radical ideas—pushing to deconstruct the concept of merit, abolish prisons, dismantle capitalism and develop “revolutionary consciousness” in schoolchildren—is refreshingly sceptical. It is also difficult to dispute, given that the most incendiary points are usually delivered by quoting the thinkers directly.

The mostly restrained accounting, given Mr Rufo’s reputation for stoking controversy, gives the entire work a cerebral feel. “The elements of critical race theory are, in fact, a near-perfect transposition of race onto the basic structures of Marxist theory,” he writes. Through the recounted history, some worrying trends in American life make more sense. Universities are hiring based on applicants proffering the right answers to “diversity statements”, and Californian pupils will be required from 2025 to take ethnic-studies courses that will help, in the state’s words, “challenge racist, bigoted, discriminatory, and imperialist/colonial beliefs” and “connect ourselves to past and contemporary movements that struggle for social justice”.

However, Mr Rufo’s analysis, for all its merits, falters in two ways. The first is that it often skips over the most interesting phase of the process—the actual mutation of these ideas within the academy into something more virulent—in favour of minute details in the lives of his four appointed prophets. This is not a critical flaw.

But the second one is more serious. Mr Rufo often cannot help but portray the left’s revolution as on the cusp of total victory, if not already there. “The corporation no longer exists to maximise profit, but to manage ‘diversity and inclusion’. The state no longer exists to secure natural rights, but to achieve ‘social justice’,” he writes.e takeover is hardly so complete. Companies are still plainly motivated by profit, and some are laying off the staff they had hired to oversee diversity-and-inclusion initiatives. Many Republican states are resisting the mandate of social justice and doing so in consultation with Mr Rufo himself. The fatalistic accounting of the takeover of the federal government - “the state, it turned out, was an easy capture…there was barely any resistance at all”—rests on a few questionable anti-racism trainings. It is hardly compelling. Much of the zealotry that ran wild after the murder of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, by police in 2020 has faded. Today Democrats pretend that some other party called for the defunding of the police.

The counter-revolution to America’s cultural revolution that Mr Rufo explicitly calls for is already happening—and has been under way for years. He should know that, because he is, to appropriate the Leninist terminology, in the vanguard.»

How the Radical Left Conquered Almost Everything for a Time (XI)

(Continued from I, II, III, IV, V, VI , VII, VIII, IX e X)

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With these examples of neo-Marxism in institutions extracted from Christopher Rufo's book, I end this series of posts.

«And the leading actors are well compensated. After their summer of revolution, Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Cullors signed an entertainment deal with Warner Bros. and spent $3.2 million on four high-end homes across the country. The other cofounders, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, signed entertainment deals with marquee Hollywood talent agencies and the group secretly bought a $6 million mansion in Southern California. Meanwhile, their organization descended into outright graft: one leader allegedly stole $10 million in donations. Others transferred millions to family members through shadowy consulting firms and nonprofit entities. Massive sums of money went missing altogether. 

BLM activists were never a threat to capitalism - they were its beneficiaries. The wave of chaos they unleashed was never a viable path to liberation; it was an accelerant for destruction. »

________________

I have used the term neo-Marxism to characterize the ideological hodgepodge that supports critical race theory and the other woke bullshit. Which is obviously debatable. Christopher Rufo, the author of the book, in a recent debate published in The Free Press addressed the characterization of these movements in the following terms:

«I personally don’t use the term cultural Marxist that Yascha has done. I don’t do so in the book, although I think that the basic concept, if we leave the moniker aside, is that Marxism—the basic categorical distinctions—moved away from a purely orthodox materialist science or material determinism toward entities of culture, family, law, in a kind of Gramscian direction. [Herbert] Marcuse was a Marxist, and he was the most influential philosophical figure of the New Left, which is the prototype of the radical left we see today.

His doctoral student, Angela Davis, was a member of the Communist Party, is a devoted Marxist, and really took the Marxist tradition and applied it to racial categories. Then within academia, most notably her long career at UC–Santa Barbara, and then her mentees, the third generation, were the founders of Black Lives Matter. They said themselves, “we are trained Marxists.” If you read a law review article written by one of the BLM founders, if you listen to their interviews and speeches, and then if you listen to their interviews with Angela Davis, they make very clear: “we are mobilizing along racial lines. We think that that’s the best rhetorical approach to score political victories. But the ultimate goal is the abolition of capitalism.” And you see this absolutely everywhere: in training programs and academic work, and even critical race theory.»

How the Radical Left Conquered Almost Everything for a Time (IV)

(Continued from I, II and III)

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As I concluded in the first post, to combat critical racial theory and all the neo-Marxist nonsense that, contrary to classical Marxism, intend to parasitize the “capitalist” State and not replace it with a “socialist” State, it would be essential to show examples of neo-Marxism in institutions controlled by the clique of believers as case studies to show their unforeseen, unintended and disastrous consequences. This one and the following posts contain some examples picked up from those described by Christopher Rufo.

 «The pedagogy of blackness quickly becomes naked political activism, which is often smuggled under the label of "anti-racism."

 ln the School District of Philadelphia, for instance, administrators, unions, and teachers have all converged on racial politics as the new Noith Star. Following the George Floyd riots, the district superintendent released an Antiracism Declaration promising to dismantle "systems of racial inequity" and circulated a memo recommending racially segregated training programs for white and black educators. Meanwhile, the local teachers' union produced a video denouncing the United States as a "settler colony built on white supremacy and capitalism" that has created a "system that lifts up white people over everyone else." The solution, according to the union, is to overthrow the "racist structure of capitalism," provide "reparations for Black and Indigenous people," and "uproot white supremacy and plant the seeds for a new world”.

At Philadelphia’s William D, Kelley elementary school, which is 94 per cent black and100 poor, administrator have overhauled the school's programming to focus on political activism. As part of the social studies curriculum, for example, the school's fifth -grade teacher created a unit celebrating Angela Davis, praising the "black communist" for her fight against "injustice and inequality." At the end of the lesson, the teacher led the ten- and eleven-year-old students into the school auditorium to "simulate" a Black Power rally to "free Angela Davis" from prison, where she had once been held while awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy, kidnapping, and murder. 

The students marched on the stage, holding signs that read "Black Power," "Jail Trump," "Free Angela," and "Black Power Matters." They chanted about Africa, appealed to their tribal ancestors, then shouted "Free Angela! Free Angela!" as they stood at the front of the stage. Even the school's public artwork illustrates this shift: administrators painted over a mural of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Barack Obama and replaced it with the iconography of Davis and Huey P. Newton. »

(To be continued)

How the Radical Left Conquered Almost Everything for a Time (IX)

(Continued from I, II, III, IV, V, VI , VII, VIII)

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More examples picked up from those described by Christopher Rufo of neo-Marxism in institutions controlled by the clique of believers.

«The third commandment of the new abolitionists is to "abolish the courts." In simple terms, the modem revolutionaries want to destroy the existing conception of "justice" and replace it with a new regime of "social justice." 

ln the historical imagination of the radical Left, American courts are not the impartial and public forum described in the Sixth Amendment, but an extension of a brutal, racist, and punitive state apparatus. ln Seattle, activists have long sought to limit the scope and authority of the municipal courts.  (…) 

However, with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement providing an even more favorable political ground, the activist coalition mobilized even more favorable political ground, the activist coalition mobilized behind a much more ambitious agenda: abolishing the municipal court altogether and transferring authority to a shadow court system administered by ideological aligned nonprofit organizations such as Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion or LEAD, which provides “crisis response, immediate psychological assessment, and long term wrap- around   services including substance use disorder treatment and housing” – that is, an effort to replace the punitive state with a therapeutic process. (…)

This vacuum of legitimate authority, how-ever, did not last. 

Within days of the People's Assembly, the most heavily armed and aggressive factions in the CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone created by groups or armed men associated with Antifa) started to exert dominance over the neighborhood and became the de facto police power. (…) 

Then the killings began. The first homicide victim was killed in an outburst of gang violence. The second, who was reportedly unarmed and joyriding in a stolen car, was gunned down by CHAZ paramilitary forces. ln the autonomous zone's brief history of independence, there were two murders, four additional shootings, and an overall homicide rate that turned out to be nearly fifty times greater than the city of Chicago's. ln a cruel irony, all of the identified victims were black men - precisely the demographic for whom Black Lives Matter and the leaders of the CHAZ had claimed to offer protection.» 

(To be continued)

How the Radical Left Conquered Almost Everything for a Time (X)

(Continued from I, II, III, IV, V, VI , VII, VIII, IX)

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More examples picked up from those described by Christopher Rufo of neo-Marxism in institutions controlled by the clique of believers.

«The method of critical pedagogy is now mandatory statewide. After releasing the model curriculum, the California state legislature quickly passed a bill making ethnic studies a graduation requirement for all high school students, which will make the "pedagogy of the oppressed" the official ideology in every school district in the state. (…)

The critical pedagogists foreground ideology, but there is another, deeper force at play: the cold and calculated expansion of the public school bureaucracy. Implicit in every step in the process of "decolonization" is a transfer of power from parents, families, and citizens to the bureaucratic class: administrators, counselors, consultants, specialists, advisors, and paper-pushers.

Following the model of the universities, the largest schools districts have all begun to entrench the critical pedagogies into the bureaucracy under a variety of names, such as "Diversity and Inclusion," "Racial Equity," and "Culturally Responsive Programs." These departments fulfil a dual purpose. First, they serve as a mechanism for ideological enforcement, Second, they serve as a jobs program for college graduates with degrees in the critical theories. Contrary to many skeptics who have argued that students in the fields of race, gender, and identity would have difficulty finding employment, these ideologically trained graduates have found rapidly expanding opportunities in the educational bureaucracy.

The statistics reveal the extent of this shift in power. Between 1970 and 010, the number of students in American public schools increased by 9 percent, while the number of administrators increased by 130 percent. In all, half of all public schools employees area nonteaching administrators, bureaucrats, and support workers.  According to the US Department of Labor, there are now hundreds of thousands of public school manager, making an average wage of $100,000 per year, which is significantly more than classroom teachers and the median American household.

This fifty-year experiment has yielded virtually no improvement in academic outcomes -  the test scores for American high school students have flatlined since the federal government began collecting data in 1971 - yet the expansion of the bureaucracy continues, with recent growth driven by "diversity and inclusion" divisions in the largest scho5l1 districts. As the Heritage Foundation discovered, 79 percent of school districts with more than 100,000 students have hired a "chief diversity officer" and implemented, university-style "diversity, equity, and inclusion" programming.»

(To be continued)

How the Radical Left Conquered Almost Everything for a Time (VI)

(Continued from I, II, III, IV e V)

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More examples picked up from those described by Christopher Rufo of neo-Marxism in institutions controlled by the clique of believers.

«In 2020, however, many families had been keeping closer tabs on their children’s education because of the corona virus lockdowns and remote learning requirements. The curriculum, they discovered revealed its radicalism in the details.

One family, which had moved to Beaverton int part for the city’s highly rated public schools, collected a folder of lesson being taught to their third-grade child. (…) 

The final modules presented the solution: students must embrace the principles of "revolution," "resistance," and "liberation." The teacher introduced these principles through a series of photographs of child activists, the Black Power fist, and Black Lives Matter demonstrations, (…)  In the final lesson, the curriculum instructed third graders to "do the inner work to figure out a way to acknowledge how you participate in oppressive systems," (…) 

Families who leamed about the curriculum were outraged. 

One mother, who originally emigrated from Iran to the United States, said the lessons were "absolutely unacceptable" and reminiscent of the political indoctrination in the Islamic Republic. "I moved here because this is America, because of the rights and the opportunities that we have. And this is not where I want my country togo," she explained. When asked about her own childhood in Iran, she broke down in tears. "I remember when we would line up in the morning in an assembly. We had to chant 'Death to America.' I remember being in elementary school and thinking, 'I don't want to chant this. I have aunts and uncles in America. I don’t want them to die.” (...)

The mother pointed out that many Iranians initially supported the Islamic Revolution in 1979 in order to depose the shah and usher in a better world, only to be bitterly disappointed. (…)

And, she believed, it could happen in America: "I'm fighting this at the school and even at my work, because I see this country going that way." Unfortunately, the kind of teaching in Beaverton is no longer the exception in the state of Oregon-it is fast becoming the rule. ln 2017, Oregon state legislators passed a bill that overhauled the state curriculum and installed a mandatory "ethnic studies" program that reflects the emergent racial orthodoxy, which, in the language of the Critical! Ethnic Studies Association, promises to deconstruct, dismantle, abolish, eradicate, resist, and interrupt the component parts of the liberal order.»

(To be continued)

How the Radical Left Conquered Almost Everything for a Time (VII)

(Continued from I, II, III, IV, V and VI)

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More examples picked up from those described by Christopher Rufo of neo-Marxism in institutions controlled by the clique of believers.

«If the cities of Tigard and Beaverton represent the categories of theory and praxis, the city of Portland represents their conclusion: power.

 

In recent years, Portland has emerged as the leading hub of America left-wing radical movements. The city's loose network of Marxist, anarchist, and anti-fascist groups has turned the street riot into an art form. After the death of George Floyd, Portland's radicals attacked police officers and laid siege to federal buildings for more than one hundred consecutive nights; they armed themselves with rocks, bottles, shields, knives, guns, bricks, lasers, boards, explosives, gasoline, barricades, spike strips, brass knuckles, and Molotov cocktails. Following the chaos, many downtown businesses closed their doors and insurance companies began to raise premiums or refuse to issue policies because of the risk of ongoing property destruction.

The same philosophy that animates the street radicals also animates the bureaucrats at Portland Public Schools, who have institutionalized the philosophy of social justice and incorporated political activism into every aspect of the education system. In recent years, administrators have pledged to make "antiracism" the district's "north star," promising to build "'an education system that intentionally disrupts - and builds leaders to disrupt systems of oppression. '' (…)

At one anti-racism session, this teacher was required to participate in a line of oppression" exercise. The trainers lined up a group of educators and shouted out various injustices -racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. - then asked the teachers who would suffer from these harms to step forward. The room was then divided into the oppressors and the oppressed, with straight white men and women forced to reckon with their identity as oppressors. The objective, according to the teacher, was to consolidate ideological power and intimidate white teachers into submission through collective guilt and fear of being labelled racists. 

The anti-racism program "was the battering ram," but the ultimate goal, according to the teacher, is the “dismantling of Western culture” and the ushering in a new left-wing utopia”. “I have no doubt that that’s exactly what they want” the teacher said. “And dismantling means just picking it apart until there’s nothing to hold it up anymore and then they can replace it.”

Today, the ideology of “anti-racism” has permeated every department in the district. »

 

(To be continued)

How the Radical Left Conquered Almost Everything for a Time (III)

(Continued from I and II)

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As I concluded in the first post, to combat critical racial theory and all the neo-Marxist nonsense that, contrary to classical Marxism, intend to parasitize the “capitalist” State and not replace it with a “socialist” State, it would be essential to show examples of neo-Marxism in institutions controlled by the clique of believers as case studies to show their unforeseen, unintended and disastrous consequences. This one and the following posts contain some examples picked up from those described by Christopher Rufo.

«(…) This movement to connect black nationalist ideology with administrative power in the universities spread rapidly from the campus of San Francisco State. 

By the mid-1970s, there were upwards of five hundred black studies programs in universities across the country. Activists had established the technique and replicated it everywhere. (…)

These departments, however, were not models of academic rigor. According to the black scholar Shelby Steele, who had once worked in the movement to establish black studies departments, the programs were filled were "crooks" and "hustlers" who were more interested in obtaining lucrative sinecures than in doing meaningful academic work. Steele describes a vivid cast of characters that populated the new departments: a street hustler driving to campus in a brand-new Mercedes-Benz; a program administrator who was functionally illiterate but could play the manipulation game; a virulently racist department director who slandered whites as cold, sadistic "ice people." (…)

Today, the discipline of black studies has been universalized: 91 percent of public universities have black studies programs and 42 percent have solidified them into full-time academic departments.39 The black liberation n19vement may have disintegrated, but over time its ideology has been softened, adapted, and absorbed into the academic bureaucracy. »

(To be continued)

How the Radical Left Conquered Almost Everything for a Time (VIII)

(Continued from I, II, III, IV, V, VI and  VII)

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More examples picked up from those described by Christopher Rufo of neo-Marxism in institutions controlled by the clique of believers.

«Over the past decade the entire range of federal agencies, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has adopted critical race theory as an in-house ideology. In quick succession, these department created new programming that condemned the United States as “systematically racist”, interrogated employees for their “whiteness” and demanded loyalty to government by “anti-racism”, or, more accurately, government by the principles of critical race theory.  (…) 

 

Even federal defense contractors have submitted to the new ideology. 

Lockheed Martin, the nation's largest defense firm, sent white male executives on a mission to deconstruct their "white male privilege." The instructors told the men that "white male culture" and the values of "rugged individualism," "hard work," and "striving towards success" were "devastating" to minorities.

Raytheon, the second-largest defense firm, followed suit. The company launched an "anti-racism" program, teaching the principles of "intersectionality" and instructing employees to recognize "interlocking systems of oppression" and "break down power into privilege and marginalization." Whites, according to Raytheon's diversity consultant, "have the privilege of individuality" and must silence themselves in front of minorities. Finally, following the logic of critical race theory to its conclusion, the firm told employees to reject the principle of equality outright. The colorblind standard of "equal treatment and access to opportunities" is not enough; the company must instead strive for "equity," which "focuses on the equality of the outcome. "»

(To be continued)

How the Radical Left Conquered Almost Everything for a Time (II)

(Continued from I)

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Two months ago I recommended reading this book by Christopher Rufo, which I read in the meantime so that you wouldn't point the finger at me for not taking the medications I prescribe. I confirm that “the investigation is meticulous and the details are forensic”. 

After more than 300 dense pages, I was persuaded that critical race theory and all the neo-Marxist paraphernalia are so embedded in the American academy from which they started to infect society that it will take decades to reverse the current situation of dominance by intellectual elites who play the role of priests of this new secular religion.

Interestingly, in my opinion, the main difference between the strategies of domination of neo-Marxism (let's call it that for simplicity) and those of classical Marxism in its Leninist, Stalinist and Maoist versions is that while the latter sought the destruction of the "capitalist" State and its replacement by the "socialist" State controlled by the Party, the organized "vanguard" of the "oppressed", neo-Marxism seeks to control the "capitalist" State from within using the institutions occupied by its elites converted to critical race theory and all that stuff.

This difference has several consequences and, in my opinion, one of the most important is that, unlike classical Marxism, whose failure became clear with the decadence and fall of "socialist" states or their conversion into state capitalism controlled by the single party, as in the case of China, this proof of failure and unfeasibility does not seem possible in the case of neo-Marxism because the State continues to be the "capitalist" State.

Therefore, in addition to political-philosophical theoretical approaches and discussions, it is increasingly important to use examples of neo-Marxism in the institutions it controls as case studies to show its unforeseen, unintended and disastrous consequences. In future posts in this series I will do this using some cases reported by Christopher Rufo.

(To be continued)

How the Radical Left Conquered Almost Everything for a Time (V)

(Continued from I, II, III and IV)

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As I concluded in the first post, to combat critical racial theory and all the neo-Marxist nonsense that, contrary to classical Marxism, intend to parasitize the “capitalist” State and not replace it with a “socialist” State, it would be essential to show examples of neo-Marxism in institutions controlled by the clique of believers as case studies to show their unforeseen, unintended and disastrous consequences. This one and the following posts contain some examples picked up from those described by Christopher Rufo.

 «The pedagogy of liberation in America functions about as well as Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed in Guinea-Bissau - that is to say, not much at all. Buffalo Public Schools and the School District of Philadelphia have annual budgets of more than $30.000 per child, significantly higher than the average educational expenditure of every nation on earth, including rich countries such as Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Yet the results are dismal. ln Buffalo, only 18 percent of black students reach basic proficiency in English and 13 percent reach basic proficiency in math.  ln Philadelphia, only 27 percent of black students reach basic proficiency in English and 11 percent reach basic proficiency in math. ln other words, the majority of these children enter the modem world functionally illiterate and innumerate. 

They are condemned: not by "Western nuclear family dynamics" and "heteronormative thinking," but by the heartbreaking pathologies in their communities and the immense failures of the institutions that are supposed to serve them. The gap between rhetoric and reality is almost beyond comprehension. The ten- and eleven-year-olds at William D. Kelley march for the utopia of "black communism," but they are unable to read and write. School officials promise to transform society, but they can barely teach rudimentary skills. »

(To be continued)

E se os eleitores americanos enviassem os incumbentes actual e anterior para a reforma? (2) As primárias republicanas de Iowa

 Continuação de (1)

WSJ

Sem surpresa, Donald Trump ganhou folgadamente as primárias do Partido Republicano no Iowa. Alguns dados complementares para contextualizar os resultados: só 15% dos republicanos registados votaram (devido ao frio extremo); os 56 mil eleitores republicanos que votaram Trump representam menos de 6% dos 898 mil que votaram em Trump nas eleições presidenciais de 2020; de acordo com as projecções de MSNBC, Trump teve 65% dos votos dos eleitores sem formação universitária e apenas 35% dos com formação, contra 33% de Haley e 23% de DeSantis; no mesmo sentido, a vantagem de Trump foi muito menor nos círculos eleitorais urbanos.

O grande trunfo de Trump (trocadilho acidental) são as classes operária e rural abandonadas pelo Partido Democrata e irritadas com o bullshit esquerdista radical (ver a série de posts «How the Radical Left Conquered Almost Everything for a Time») a que os democratas e Biden deram colo. Ruy Teixeira, um cientista político de origem portuguesa, dizia recentemente num debate publicado por The Free Press:

«Na verdade, era muito claro que, em muitos estados-chave, não haveria forma de os Democratas sustentarem o que na altura chamávamos “a coligação centrista progressista”, a menos que fossem capazes de manter a lealdade destes eleitores. Em 2016, com a vitória de Trump apoiada nas costas dos eleitores brancos da classe trabalhadora, especialmente no Centro-Oeste, ficou muito claro que os Democratas não foram capazes de manter o tipo de parcela do voto da classe trabalhadora branca de que necessitavam para tornar a situação política mais favorável. a aritmética de uma América em mudança funciona a seu favor. Mas, como vimos depois de 2016, os Democratas resumiram a sua perda como sendo relacionada com as partes reaccionárias da América – os racistas, os xenófobos, os deixados para trás – e não parecia ter muito a ver, na sua opinião, com questões de economia. Era tudo uma questão de como eles não estavam alinhados com aa América multicultural e multirracial que está surgindo, e isso é tudo. Então, eles pensaram, por que se preocupar com essas pessoas? São “deploráveis”, como disse Hillary Clinton.» 

Foi o que se viu em 2020 e vamos ver o que se verá em 2024.