By MARIA LUCIA CACCIOLA*
The Devil Always Quotes Scripture in His Own Name
This text is a brief commentary on the article by jurist Miguel Reale Jr. that came out in the edition of Saturday, February 06th, in Jornal The state of Sao Paulo, entitled: “History repeats itself as a farce”.
It is a fair defense of press freedom in Brazil today, mentioning well-known journalists, including Helio Schwartsmann and Ruy Castro. In this defense, the author recalls the facts of the dictatorship and the decree law establishing censorship by Minister Alfredo Buzaid, a jurist and professor at the USP Faculty of Law, who also edited AI-5, which definitively imposes censorship in the media.
He recalls that “in 2018 he already warned of the danger of dictatorship with Bolsonaro”, saying that “the current Minister of Justice revives Armando Falcão, by applying the National Security law”, still in force, to journalists. This is how he talks about current excesses against the press, recalling precisely the characters of the dictatorship, Buzaid and Falcão.
But the jurist author of the article, even though he was full of reason, seems to have forgotten that he was one of those responsible as articulator and editor back in 2015, 2016 along with Janaina Pascoal and Helio Bicudo, for the impeachment of the then President Dilma who, presumably took it for granted. And, whose election, as a leader of his party says, was not legitimate. Legitimate yes, according to a statement in the media, it was for FHC that of Bolsonaro who, therefore, would not be deserving of an impeachment.
Using the consequentialist ethics as an instrument, cited by journalist Hélio Schwartzmann, and mentioned by the columnist, we could say that Mr. Reale, was also partly responsible for having a dwarf Napoleon in power, “a king of the Lupensinate”, as Karl Marx, the author quoted by Reale himself, in the book The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
In fact, history repeats itself, as Hegel said, but he, according to Marx, forgot to add that if the first time is like tragedy, the second time is like farce. But the evidence is enough, without any recourse to consequentialist ethics, that the fact of, resorting to Marx, bringing Buzaid and Falcão to the fore to explain the present, demonstrates the lack of knowledge of oneself and of the positions taken by those who cite the valiant reconstitution Marx's historical account of the dangers and realization of totalitarianism in France, after a period of elective democracy.
Marx does not dwell on the poor figure of Napoleon III and his puppet ministers, but examines the entire party structure of the moment. Something that is not even remembered by the columnist who overlooks the role of his party, which even reminds us of the so-called party of Order, supporting little Napoleon. The party of Order that played an important role in the French Assembly but, due to its missteps, ended up causing the implosion of the Assembly itself, a kind of self-dissolution, and the definitive reign of Napoleon III with the coup of December 2, 1852. The farce will continue for here? Is the simulacrum of dictatorship mounted?
*Maria Lucia Cacciola is a retired and senior professor at the Department of Philosophy at USP. Author, among other books, of Schopenhauer and the question of dogmatism (Edusp).
