Murilo Oliveira
Brazil, September 10, 2023.
Interestingly, in Brazil, it is very common for Portugal to be a bit surprised about the literal and, why not, authentic use of the Portuguese language. What does that mean? This means that although in the Brazilian Portuguese language it is common to still preserve the double negative, which to some seems like nonsense, suffers a lot in a more incautious translation, in the Portuguese language of Portugal in the eyes of Brazilians there is another kind of nonsense, so to speak, including your statements. When using a redundant statement, for example, what we apparently have for Brazilians is someone saying the perfect opposite.
How does this affect, for example, my activities and daily life in Brazil? Sometimes perhaps as we have this kind of hellish confusion in international and national politics!
I’m going to start by talking about the one that worries me the most today, and then talk about the ones that I’ve seen historically in the recent period. I understand, for example, that in international politics the Vatican is situated precisely in the understanding that what I agreed to call NATO today, or better expressed, the defense of the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine understood as a country offended by the invader is clear. What in prominent letters I call the defense of the West. And why would you see a hypothetical perfect opposite here? Because in some sense, when adopting a more left-wing policy in Brazil, which is the largest Catholic country in the world, the current Federal Government may be faced with a policy more aligned with China. In fact, it is not a perfect opposite, nor a complete contradiction, if they are not absolute truths, but circumstances of imperfect coherence. But I’m getting to the point!
At some point during the Bolsonaro Government, it became clear here, including in the United States of America, some degree of Russian interference in the internal affairs of these countries. Associated with the figure of their Presidents at the time. In an apparently quite nebulous way, some perfect opposite, or Portuguese from Portugal, I am called to highlight here. What is it? For example, when Bolsonaro intends to go to Russia at lights out, at that moment we have, for example, hypothesized massive military purchases to be made from Russia on the table, which generally attracts a lot of attention. The so-called “FX” tender for fighters for the Brazilian Air Force was so long, really very long, going through several governments, having moments of almost completion that were undone at the last minute, and generating a huge national discussion in all specialized circles, which In a way, we have preserved this sense that it is more than a simple purchase, it is almost a long-term friendship agreement.
So we have the first perfect opposite, in the West we had very recently, in Brazil and the United States of America, governments possibly aligned with Russia without this being so apparent, but full of episodes and messes until the end, which accounted for an attempt to implode these National States from within.
The second perfect opposite that I want to highlight is: at some point it was believed that Brazil was reaching out to different Evangelical denominations, you see, I make the same self-criticism as Catholics today in some dimension, but it was believed that it was reaching that much of the history of the country of the Bolsonaro Government together with some Evangelical denominations, with a greater proximity to what among them is conventionally called the “Chosen People”, or precisely Judaism and the State of Israel. A peaceful point that will largely align with this right internally, as well as Evangelical denominations, and will appear on the saddest Brazilian Independence Holiday in that government waving Israeli flags, when calling for the country’s democratic discontinuity.
What is the issue? Still in the Bolsonaro Government, and among the President’s hitherto very faithful allies, we will see the emergence of, for example, the proposal to create a Nazi party in Brazil, and we will see a huge growth in neo-Nazi movements in the country, not without warnings, including mine, that there is no right to speak out in the public houses in Brazil in a racist, anti-Semitic or homophobic manner. Parliamentary freedom of opinion in no way harbors such absurdity. Yet invariably this takes a course of anti-Semitic things that are not contained here.
This last perfect opposite, of the shelter under supposed Judaizing exaltation of a growing anti-Semitism, and the previous one, an alignment with Russia already in the Bolsonaro Government, result in what I call a “circumstance of imperfect coherence” of the present day, with this type of latent issue , and not negligible. A left-wing Catholic government will raise, and it cannot be forgotten or ignored, the fundamental question of whether it is vigilant about the reality that both anti-Semitism, and alignment with Russia and China in an almost automatic way, is what we want all or not. In both cases of what I call “perfect opposite” there is evidence that everyone was mistaken, but in the current case of “circumstance of imperfect coherence” it is clear that, for example, the Catholic Church has already manifested itself in higher spheres, not only opposed to arming the population, but fundamentally resolutely concerned with maintaining Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty.
In clear terms, there is clarity to a certain extent in the defense of the West, without in any way displacing what is the largest Catholic country in the world, still very poor in terms of the income of its citizens, and it is known that it was throughout history that so much President Lula, like Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin, maintained good relations with the Catholic Church throughout their lives. What I want to draw your attention to is that the circumstance is quite intricate, and certainly requires us all to be vigilant. The so-called simple man perfectly understands right and left, often tends to the right, and even the best of intentions in the depths of his faith, but he is unaware of the threads that tie one thing to another in the highest spheres of power. And for this reason, it can be taken away from the perfect meaning of what affects them or made into a joke. When, for example, many intentionally go in the opposite direction to what appears to them on the surface of everyday facts. And this, even if momentarily hindered, still has repercussions in the present time, which are still very negative.
@CoexistenceLaw
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