The purpose of this text is to contribute to the collective exercise undertaken by the Study Group on Neoliberalism and Alternatives (GENA) to discuss and try to better understand the current crisis of democracy and neoliberalism, from the perspective of its new forms and some of the recent aspects and events of the Brazilian situation. First of all, I will highlight State violence and the militarization of politics as the starting points that will guide this article. State violence is not only an ever-present and historically constitutive element in Brazil - the way it is expressed today is now one of the most obvious threats to the possibility of resistance - and even the existence - of social movements. To sum up, the ever-latent limit to the possibility of resistance by social movements fighting for the defence of fundamental rights in Brazil today is the constant threat of being killed - violently - by the state police, by armed criminal groups or even by militias and paramilitary groups, which have recently become stronger.