By TARSUS GENUS*
Former President Lula is suffering an infamous campaign promoted by the “shepherds of money”
We are on the threshold of recovering the values of democracy and the Republic or on the threshold of electoral acceptance of its betrayal. I would bet, optimistically, on the first hypothesis, not without remembering – perhaps prompted by a poorly remembered reading of Jorge Luis Borges – that the traitor is a man of successive and opposing loyalties and a fascist, a fanatic, a sectarian, is a man who only he is loyal to himself, that is, (he is loyal) to a visceral hatred or a radical revulsion of everything human. Fascists and traitors to the 1988 Charter are on the same side, although not all are aware of the field where their hatred and lies take turns.
Time limits are times to remember our lives, mistakes, learnings and above all to remember how human we remain in a time when a President says he wants to kill, but is absolved – but beyond his accomplices – by the tolerance of those who form the opinion, as if omission wasn't complicity and tolerance could dress up as something other than cowardice.
In the early 1950s – more precisely in August 1952 – the journalist and writer Gondin da Fonseca (1899-1977), a columnist-reporter when he wanted to and a brilliant political pamphleteer at the right moments, gave an interview to his dear niece Regina Helena, at his Rio home in Tijuca.
Saying that he was going to abandon journalism, Gondin da Fonseca – also a sophisticated intellectual and defender of professional regulation of journalism – said he was “tired”: he wanted “shade and fresh water”. For him, that meant dedicating his time to writing a book about the Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco, whom he admired with the same intensity that he loved Eça de Queiroz. I remember this emblematic name of the press and the intelligentsia of that troubled time in the formation of modern Brazil, because at the beginning of this electoral campaign his name came to mind through the title of one of the first, if not the first, “political” book that I read from beginning to end. end.
In 1961, in the holy ignorance of my 14 years old, I read Lord God of the Wretched! and I learned lessons that have marked me to this day, far away – thanks to Mr. God of the wretches – of the “fast-food” culture of the neoliberal way of living and loving, marked by the rise of fascism around the world, whose indifference to the other naturalizes both the Bolsonaros of life as well as the murder of political opponents
The captivating title came to me without warning while I was reading an article on the networks about one of these shepherds of money, who travel from police stations to their not-so-discreet temples, where they present themselves to the poor of class society with their convenient vision of a God who is his heavenly political supporter, without ever presenting the sources of his earthly income. The confusion between politics and religion has never been so great in the country and it helps to radicalize the process of political dispute, as this subsumption of politics to religion (or vice versa) annuls the discourse of democratic reason, on both sides, and it allows for the substitution of faith for argument, which is only one step away from endless political violence.
It is possible to respect all religions and guarantee the fullness of their rights to religious preaching, without letting themselves be intimidated by the hatred that exudes from false preaching, aimed at destroying the secularity of the State and thus reserving the right to speak, exclusively to those who agree with the their fundamentalist convictions and teachings, with the opportunist discourse that aims only at the material ends of this life, for pastors in search of capital.
From religions can originate teachings that subdue people, instead of guiding them in the faith and also teachings that seek to extort a part of the small savings of the people of the people, instead of bringing them closer to the messages of generosity and solidarity contained in all religions. Because these two possibilities exist, the modern State is secular and prohibits its power apparatus and its resources from being occupied by governments, in the rule of law, to reward with attention and rights the “believers” of their group and exclude the others. , who do not accept their hate speeches and discrimination.
Former president Lula is suffering, at the moment I write this text, an infamous campaign certainly promoted by these money shepherds, defamers and crooks widely present in the police chronicle. This beginning of the campaign also reminded me of the book by Gondim da Fonseca, Lord God of the wretched”, to presume another type of creator: that of political miscreants coming from the dens of fundamentalism, whose doctrine refers to a “creator” who authorizes extortion for the faith and also encourages political combat without ideas to facilitate their enrichment without cause.
By ending the secularization of the State, the fundamentalist discourse, becoming State discourse, ends with “freedom of choice in the rule of law, which can only exist within limits determined by the fact that each one can claim equal freedom”, or that is, the religion – in fact the only one – that comes from the totalitarian religious power, suppresses the legitimacy of another religious discourse.
Thus, it segregates to the second class of citizenship those views of religion that are tolerant of the diversity of human beings, as well as the cultural differences that form each community of humankind. It is not for nothing that the vision of the “one way” in the economy is appropriated as “its thing”, by the majority of religions that preach the dogmas of fundamentalism and religious intolerance, which quickly converts into political intolerance in common life. It is also not strange that the extreme right-wing parties leaning towards fascism are prodigal in presenting themselves in the name of God, the Fatherland and the Family, to shore up their totalitarian identity.
These elections can turn into a war, not because politics has radically divided people spontaneously or because religions have led us to this situation, but rather because the fundamentalism of money religions and neoliberal fundamentalist discourse have found a common path, in the situation concrete history: the victory of class oppression, which comes from within the domination of ultraliberal rentism and “partial” world wars, are already radically averse to reason, freedom of spirit and the political freedoms of representative liberal democracy.
Dissimulation is no longer possible – within political democracy – which is why they naturalized fascism and began to worship death as a consensus and religious distortion as a weapon of hegemony. This calls us to life and will give us strength to win.
*Tarsus in law he was governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, mayor of Porto Alegre, Minister of Justice, Minister of Education and Minister of Institutional Relations in Brazil. Author, among other books, of possible utopia (Arts & Crafts).
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