By THAIS KLEIN & ÉRICO ANDRADE*
What is at the heart of the attacks on Bolsonaro and Trump is not a coordinated setup by a fascist international, but violence as a way of dealing with differences
One of the characteristics of violence is that it is the power of the referee. Power to decide on the elimination of what opposes what we desire, what threatens fragile narcissism. In this sense, violence is marked by the attribution of power over life by reaffirming the ability to depose it.
Perhaps, therefore, violence can be a deadly impulse directed at others, but with a view to affirming oneself. Affirmation of the place of the one who is responsible for directing the violence without which it is not possible to recognize the other as the one who is weak and the object of violence. Violence affirms the place of the one who carries out violence.
The extreme right has violence as its way of operating, reproducing itself and establishing itself as a mass. This is notable in the support of weapons and fantasies of omnipotence – men who don't cheat. This construction stands as if all people were invincible and immune to the violence they themselves produce. As if the pact of brute force could remove from the field any possibility of it turning against those who promote it at the ideological level and in social praxis.
In fact, it seems that it is easier to believe in a conspiracy that the extreme right itself feeds on than in the understanding that violence is defined by its lack of control. It seems that we give even more power to the extreme right when we do not consider that, despite their talk of omnipotence, they are as human and vulnerable as we all are.
Taking the violence directed at far-right leaders as isolated cases or taking it as a great conspiracy is to go hand in hand with the discourse of omnipotence. It is not realizing that promoting violence is also being crossed by it. Supporting a discourse that preaches violence is promoting its effects throughout the world as if violence did not involve the participation of intentional agents.
The omnipotence of the extreme right constructs a discourse that removes it from any possibility of being responsible for the harmful effects of its violent acts, as it attempts to hide the vulnerability that also affects it. It is only in the position of victim that the extreme right can appropriate what it promotes, since it is in the position of victim that it justifies the use of force.
The logic is split, it produces a mistake: victimization as the only way to represent the agency of violence ends up serving as a motor for hate speech itself, which is always directed at others who do not make up the group. The paradox is that violence aims to destroy the other, but depends on the other to assert itself as an attribution of power over life and reaffirmation of the ability to depose them.
What is at the heart of the attacks on Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump is not a coordinated setup by a fascist international, but the realization that violence cannot be controlled when it is the propagated way to deal with difference. The extreme right not only proves its own poison but also reinforces the certainty that hate speech can produce martyrs and aggressors to hold society hostage to those who seek to destroy it.
*Thais Klein is a psychoanalyst and professor at the Department of Psychology at Universidade Federal Fluminens (UFF).
*Erico Andrade is a psychoanalyst and professor of philosophy at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE). Book author Blackness without identity (n-1 editions) [https://amzn.to/3SZWiYS].
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