How American leftists, including Mamdanis team, are being trained by Brazilian revolutionaries

Last week, Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, scored an upset victory over right-wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro—son of jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro—in a presidential runoff.“Lula,” as he is known, is among Latin America’s most far-left presidents, with close ties to China and Iran.Among the groups celebrating the win were members of the Landless Workers Movement — the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST — a left-wing social and agrarian-reform movement that had extensively mobilized on Lula’s behalf.For American leftists, MST’s organizing prowess is more than an object of distant admiration.

This past July, MST hosted delegations of some of America’s most energetic and influential activists in hopes of giving them an inside look at the methods that have helped make MST Latin America’s largest progressive mass movement.Those methods, however, are militant, including invasions and mass destruction of private farmland, illegal occupations of government buildings, and violent clashes with political opponents.The American participants hope to adapt these methods — many of which may qualify as civil terrorism — for use in the United States.The July delegation in Brazil included members of 13 youth organizations from the US and Puerto Rico, along with activists from across Europe.

All attended a three-week intensive program with MST combining organizational immersion with rigorous political indoctrination.Activists learned about revolutionary solidarity, collective discipline, and how to build a multigenerational Marxist-Leninist movement made up of “active learners and militants.”During a “report back” with the Friends of the MST last month, the Americans described their eagerness to apply MST’s methods domestically.

MST representatives welcomed this response, explaining that winning recruits from across the United States was part of a deliberate plan to cultivate a coordinated sta...