Bolsonaro is back in Brazil and, if everything is fair, he will be investigated and tried on numerous fronts, from swag to genocide.
If there is ample justice, he will be judged by the countless times he made apology for the darkest period of our Republic: the dictatorship of 64, which turns 59 this March 31st.
At the risk of forgetting what he represents, it would be a good time to draw parallels between Bolsonarism and Nazi-fascism – because this is the perverse notion that can reach the real dimension of the horror we are in, and prevent us from going back to naturalizing savagery .
Let’s start with this idea that I took from the book “The Non-Jewish Jew”, by Professor Michel Gherman, put here in a brutal way: Bolsonarism is a form of Nazism.
It is important to remember that Nazism was not born with concentration camps: it was born many years before, with a goofy leader who promised to end corruption and protect the values of the traditional German family.
In his brilliant book, Gherman explains that Nazism is less an ideology and more a way of positioning oneself in the world.
It has to do with resentment, with hate, with anger, with language and with aesthetics. It has less to do with political agenda than with all these things.
Here, too, is the core of Bolsonarism.
Bolsonarismo dreamed, for example, of transforming the army and police into militias.
He worked hard for it and was close to achieving it.
If he had been re-elected he would certainly have gotten there.
There are those who argue – with some reason – that, in part, we already have a police in these terms.
But there’s so much more.
Let’s talk about grammar and aesthetics.
The grammar and aesthetics of Bolsonarismo are Nazi – and I learned that by reading Gherman’s book.
A small book, easy to read and with the ability to expand awareness and broaden visions immediately.
Here it would be good to explain who Michel Gherman is – and I will give the long version of the teacher’s background so that there is no doubt about the place he is speaking from.
Graduated in history from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, master’s degree in Sociology and Anthropology – Hebrew University of Jerusalem and PhD in Social History from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He is currently an adjunct professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, UFRJ, in the Department of Sociology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Nucleus of Jewish Studies-NIEJ of the Institute of History of-UFRJ. Coordinator of the Laboratory of Religion, Spirituality and Politics (LAREP) of the Department of Sociology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Associate Researcher at the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of São Paulo. Research Associate at the Vital Sasson Center for Antisemitic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Professor of the Graduate Program in Social History at UFRJ. Academic Director of the Brazil Israel Institute. He works mainly on: Genocide Studies, religious studies, anti-Semitism, nationalism, politics, holocaust, Middle East, Israeli Palestinian conflict, Judaism, Zionism and memory.
Gherman draws parallels between Nazism and Bolsonarism since 2017. Reading the book he released in 2022 is taking any shadow of doubt out of the way.
Another important thing would be, once and for all, to understand that Bolsonarism is Nazi-fascism because Bolsonaro communicates that it is – and not just because Michel Gherman and many others say it is.
This is not an opinion, we are talking about facts and history.
We know exactly what makes up Nazism and Fascism.
We know what articulates this aesthetic and this language.
We know what drives hatred towards certain groups and the authorization given – first between the lines and later more directly – to eliminate them.
We know that without the support of private capital there would have been neither Nazism nor Fascism.
We know that without the support of the ruling classes neither Hitler nor Mussolini would have done what they did.
In Nazi Germany more than half of doctors – to name just one category – were affiliated with the Nazi party.
Cut to present day Brazil.
In 2012, Bolsonaro said on the CQC humor program that Jews died of disease in concentration camps and not because they were murdered.
This is Holocaust denial, pure and simple.
It would be enough – back in 2012 – for it to be interdicted, right?
Nor would we need to witness Bolsonaro making apologies for rape, comparing black people to cattle, saying that it would be better to have a dead child than a gay child, saying that women are inferior or declaring love for torture and the torturer.
We naturalized and got where we are today.
But let’s go to materiality.
Bolsonaro has a photo with a Hitler look-alike.
Bolsonaro praised Hitler more than once. He did it from the pulpit of the national Congress, recalls Gherman.
Bolsonaro takes the idea of Brazil above all from Nazi communication.
Bolsonaro had a glass of milk during a live (this is a Nazi code), Bolsonaro’s advisor was caught making a supremacist gesture, Bolsonaro signed letters with the motto God, Fatherland, Family “, motto of Italian fascism.
The symbols are there.
Bolsonaro does not hide them. But there are those who hide from view.
Between 2018 and 2021, Brazil was the country where the number of neo-Nazi groups grew the most in the world, explains Gherman.
And it is also the country where anti-Semitic sentiment has grown the most in the world over the same period.
Here is the practical result of Bolsonarism in charge.
Now Bolsonaro is back.
Weakened, but still treated by some as an acceptable leader of a legitimate political movement.
No. A thousand times no.
Bolsonaro and all those who worked ardently to get him re-elected need to be thrown out of the democratic camp.
They don’t fit. They don’t fit. They cannot be legitimized.
Time to investigate, prosecute and punish.
No naturalizations. No trivializations. No restrictions. No relativizations. No amnesty.
Incidentally, the Amnesty Never Again movement, from the Collective Manifesto, meets on April 1st in São Paulo.
It is in the main hall of Largo São Francisco, when a petition will be delivered asking for the installation of a popular court to judge the Bolsonaro government.
Never forget again. Never let go again.
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