By ALFREDO ATTIÉ
An Israeli far right seems like a contradiction in terms and demands a strong reaction from international society, to which this Israeli regime arrogantly turns its back.
“The world goes round, round the world, Camará”
1.
The world takes many turns and destiny has many surprises in store for humanity. Who would have imagined, however, that barely a century after the rise of fascism in Europe, the same totalitarian wave would once again hit the shores of the Continents, now involved in the global order?
These regimes were defeated in the course of a bloody conflict, which required an alliance of countries willing to resist and rescue the old principles of political liberalism, tempered with the strength of the principles of socialism – both so criticized at the time – to ward off the evils of the totalitarian tide and establish a new international order, under the tutelage of international organizations focused on maintaining peace and safeguarding the stability of an economic system that would, yes, preserve capitalism but ensure that welfare mechanisms would remove the fertile ground for the temptation to succumb to the seductive capacity of the easy and false discourse of far-right leaders.
However, once the safeguards of the Welfare State were over, due to the strong influence of the neoliberal order, which succeeded in destroying all structures of protection for work and social life, the totalitarian discourse resumed its course, bringing into fashion the dangerous ideas of the social struggle for survival, of unbridled competition, of the disintegration of society, which led to the astonishing enrichment of new national and international oligarchies, which enjoy a fertile field for their work of destroying the bases of education and culture of the people, to impose bellicose standards of conduct, deceptive models of communication, through the new realm of information of the private media, paradoxically called “social”, when, in truth, their task is antisocial, in essence.
In the midst of this hostile environment for the survival of nature and humanity, something that, at first, would seem absolutely impractical, happened. It concerns the change in the configuration of precisely the characters who, approximately one hundred years ago, were, one, a victim of the atrocious violence of totalitarianism, and, the other, a lifebuoy in the shipwreck of humanity.
On the one hand, the State of Israel, on the other, the United States of America. One, at the time, without a state identity, represented by a persecuted and violated people, to such an extent that the mere memory of what was perpetrated by the forces of National Socialism still causes deep indignation and revolt. The other, which, having barely become the leading economic power at the end of the 19th century, used all its power to, alongside the power of the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, counterbalance the balance of European forces and Japanese Asian supremacy, rescuing Europe from Nazi rule and enabling the end of military imperialism in Asia.
2.
The State of Israel was precisely the symbol created, thanks to the commitment of international society, with the leading role of the various allied countries, responsible for the defeat of fascism and Nazism, of the new international order, in which peace began to prevail, which was set as the main objective, and international and regional declarations of rights, as the means of preserving a free and supportive humanity.
In the course of this new order, political colonialism would end – an objective added to the foundations of the post-war period, thanks to the commitment and struggle of the peoples of the Global South, who imposed defeats on European imperialism and demanded that an international society be forged that effectively respected the free determination of peoples and their national and international sovereignty.
Of course, this world has not become perfect, and it has not even managed to root the rights – set out in various Declarations, which influenced countless national Constitutions and regional treaties with clauses respecting democracy and fundamental rights – in international culture, even if there was hope for the full implementation of this order of rights while the ideal and practice of the welfare state.
The Cold War acted as a countercurrent to this desired order of rights, well-being and democracy. International powers made a point of maintaining their ascendancy over their areas of influence, or rather, of domination, allowing, encouraging and even being protagonists in the implementation of dictatorial regimes and the violation of these same principles, values and ideals.
Returning, however, to the main argument of this article, the States that represented, at least in the imagination woven by the media and propaganda of the new international order, the symbol of the rescue of rights and respect for human dignity, victim and protagonist of the salvation of humanity from totalitarianism, have themselves become, today, the antipodes of this representation.
If not, how can we accept the image of an extreme right in Israel? This state, which owes so much to the efforts of international society, has now become a defendant in a lawsuit before the International Court of Justice – the judicial pillar of the new international order of rights – for committing crimes against humanity and genocide. Crimes whose conception came about precisely after humanity became aware of the atrocities committed by extreme right-wing regimes a hundred years ago, and of which the peoples were victims, notably the Jewish people.
Furthermore, this investigation of extremely serious responsibility is doubled in the process and in the arrest warrant against the leader of the State of Israel – who has exercised power as Prime Minister for almost two decades, as a result, surprisingly, of elections that claim and reaffirm themselves as democratic – issued by the International Criminal Court.
This same State of Israel that, at the opening of its defense before the International Court of Justice, stated that it would represent Western values in the Middle East, exclusively. It is up to all of us to ask what values the defendant's defense attorneys were referring to.
3.
The old principles of liberal democracies – vilified by totalitarianism –, enriched with the values and criticism brought by the socialist movement and by New Deal?Or, as stated in the serious accusations against which it is defended, the anti-values and atrocities perpetrated by these same totalitarianisms, which sought to make eugenics prevail, which gave them a sinister foundation, and to consecrate a practice of discrimination and violence, destructive of humanity and of peoples considered inferior and of an undesirable presence in their territories, if not in the world?
These are very serious accusations and they turn the world upside down. Especially if we consider the tolerance and even the fundamentalist and virulent defense they receive from certain bodies in the international community, which should play a critical role and remain silent or condone the serious situation that we witness in perplexity.
An Israeli far right seems like a contradiction in terms and demands a strong reaction from international society, to which this Israeli regime arrogantly turns its back.
However, the United States, which, according to the prevailing historical narrative, we owe the world's salvation from the totalitarian wave, adopts, in relation to the peoples of the world, the same far-right discourse that underpinned the rise of totalitarian regimes. A discourse of superiority, prejudice and threats of violence, of disrespect for the order of rights of a society that was built against war and genocidal and criminal atrocities, precisely on the basis of these rights. This is done through a discourse that violates international principles and a practice that seeks to eliminate these principles and the order that they underpin and justify.
This radical change – which transformed victims of oppression and domination and protagonists of liberation into executioners of the international order, a change that aims to establish a new order, based precisely on everything that the current order seeks to combat – must be brought to an end by international society.
4.
Yes, through mechanisms and structures created by international treaties, such as the UN itself and its agencies, such as the International Courts created to defend and give effect to international rights and duties that are coherent and do not deviate from the values of peace, equality, freedom and solidarity. These mechanisms need to be defended and strengthened.
Through a well-informed, well-formed public opinion, removing the harm that the corporate press has caused, forgetting to give voice to those who are truly committed to civilization, composed of nature and humanity, and allowing totalitarian and misleading discourses to take over, representing interests that clash with the order of democracy and rights.
Formed and informed public opinion that also results, as it should, from the control or supervision of anti-social media, which, because of the private interests of their owners and financiers, have taken the pure and simple path of preaching and financing oppression, exploitation, domination and human and environmental destruction.
A union of countries that still preserve and defend democracy, through attention to rights and duties and the implementation of public policies consistent with international declarations and their Constitutions, would be essential.
Latin America could set an example of this unity around the values that defeated totalitarianism, of their uncompromising defense in the face of current threats. Countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil, now governed by democratic coalitions, can and should take the lead in defending the recovery of democracy and its improvement. These countries, like the American peoples, are heirs to the inter-American pioneering spirit in the search for structures of integration and the valorization of the rights to autonomy and territorial integrity, as prepared in documents forged at the time of their independence, especially in the Panama Charters, and, without a doubt, in the Declaration of Rights that preceded and influenced the Universal Declaration.
The peoples who are oppressed today by these States – which I have mentioned here as extreme examples of the disorder that threatens the world today – which seek to deny their own history, can look to this new international alliance for peace, democracy, human and natural rights, equality, freedom and solidarity, with hope and the desire to join it in a movement of new resistance, for their liberation and that of all humanity from the totalitarian storm.
All the peoples of the world, finally, new allies no longer as just countries, but as subjects of the history of humanity. United by an ideal that can represent their right to live and share material and immaterial goods, in the search for happiness.
We will be able to get through this storm and survive it if we know how to intelligently and actively employ our capacity for living together and sharing the best characters and geniuses of our existence.
*Alfredo Attié is a judge in the São Paulo courts. Author of, among other books, Constitutional law and comparative constitutional rights (Tirant Brazil). [https://amzn.to/4bisQTW]
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