By LUIS FELIPE MIGUEL*
Brasil Paralelo is the largest promoter of political content on socio-digital platforms in Brazil. It has no shortage of money for its work of indoctrinating the public
1.
About two or three months ago, I received an email from an unknown person who introduced himself as a producer at Brasil Paralelo. He said, without giving any further details, that my name had come up in the context of an interview about “communist indoctrination” in universities and asked me to present a response.
Obviously, I didn’t even respond. I wasn’t going to fall for the far-right disinformation machine’s “hearing the other side” charade.
Now, the product they were manufacturing is coming to light. It is a “documentary” about the decline of university education, not only in Brazil but throughout the world, due to the domination of satanic leftists.
I haven't seen the material: it hasn't premiered yet and, besides, I don't subscribe to that garbage. But you can get a good idea from the advertising, which doesn't stop.[1] to appear – after all, Brasil Paralelo is the biggest promoter of political content on socio-digital platforms in Brazil. There is no shortage of money for its work of (and here the word really fits) indoctrinating the public.
Although the focus is certainly on Brazil, the advertising highlights North American universities. The ads star people like Jordan Peterson, the aggressive reactionary whom Brasil Paralelo tries with all its might to promote as a “great intellectual.”
They talk about the excesses of “political correctness”, the subjects of “anti-racist geometry”, the threats of expulsion for those who get a pronoun wrong.
I imagine that the production will go wild with Brazilian cases of mysticism (as long as it is not evangelical) mixed with research, of alleged epistemologies of anal fixation, etc.
2.
When I criticize this kind of thing, someone always comes along and says that we shouldn't be “intimidated” by the right-wing hubbub.
Perhaps – although if an activity is designed solely to cause a stir on the right, there is something out of place. And although avoiding unnecessary flanking at a time when we are under attack is a matter of simple common sense.
But all of this is secondary. We should criticize this kind of thing regardless of the right: because the university is a place for free debate, but not for anything goes, and anything that cannot be supported by criteria of scientific and academic relevance should be left outside.
I remember one time, years ago, when I had to give an opinion on a proposal for an extension course on “aura” measurement, to be offered at UnB. They should offer the course, but not at the university, which is a place for something else.
These aberrant cases serve to spice up the real problem of Brasil Paralelo and the right in general. The “leftist indoctrination” that they really want to combat is not in the outbursts of performative identity politics, but in the multiple serious reflections on the current patterns of social inequality and on the palpable consequences of capitalism – from climate collapse (of which, by the way, Jordan Peterson is a virulent denier) to gender violence, from the multiple forms of precarious work to racism.
In all this, the “predominance of the left” – which is far from being unequivocal, even in Social Sciences courses – has more to do with the explanatory capacity of critical models than with any conspiracy. Historical materialism and feminist theory, in their multiple developments, have shown themselves to be capable of unveiling social reality more deeply than their conservative competitors.
That doesn't mean they are absent.
3.
Next semester, I will be teaching a class on contemporary political theory. Authors such as Hayek, Nozick, and Almond & Verba are listed as required readings.
A former colleague, who would soon be convicted in an internal investigation for racial abuse and would later spend four years trying to get a job in the Bolsonaro government, gave a course on political theory from the 16th and 18th centuries and cut Rousseau from the program, claiming that he didn't like “communists”...
The campaign against universities is a permanent priority for the right. Several factors make it so central. There is the material interest, the desire to privatize public universities, which, in Brazil, are eloquent examples of how state-run institutions are capable of combining excellence and independence.
And that is what is also disturbing: independence. In universities, a critical spirit is fostered, which is hostile to those who want a society governed by limited, conservative and traditionalist mentalities.
In fact, the two things often go hand in hand. There are plenty of people who want to create their private college as a playground for bizarre and backward ideas.
The Brasil Paralelo “documentary” signals that a new stage of this campaign is coming. Let’s get ready.
* Luis Felipe Miguel He is a professor at the Institute of Political Science at UnB. Author, among other books, of Democracy in the capitalist periphery: impasses in Brazil (authentic). [https://amzn.to/45NRwS2].
Note
[1] This differential accent could not have disappeared.
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