By LUIS FELIPE MIGUEL*
Faced with identity sealing, the left always gives in
I'm not a fan of the national anthem. I don't like the music, the lyrics, and even less the idea of "sacred" national symbols, which smacks of a musty, conservative patriotism.
Sometimes I say that if we must have an anthem, it should be “Carinhoso”, “Tico-tico no fubá” or “Penas do tiê”. At least it would show the best that Brazil was capable of producing.
But the point is: I don't think the issue is even worth raising at all.
We have many other priorities on the agenda – or does anyone doubt that?
But Boulos' rally with Lula in São Paulo had the anthem sung in “neutral language”.
You know: “children” of this land, that kind of thing. I didn’t check if “kind mother” became “person who gestates kindly”. I imagine not, because of the metric.
The net result was to cause a stir on right-wing networks, mobilizing their activists against the “desecration” of the anthem.
The right, as we know, is ready to submit the country to external interests, to hand over our wealth on a silver platter, to disgrace the people. But it is “nationalist” because it wears a CBF shirt, hangs a flag in the window and sings or pretends to sing the anthem correctly.
(And also because it does not accept the protection of the Amazon, but that is another conversation.)
Boulos' campaign took the video down and said it knew nothing about it, that it was the interpreter's initiative. If that's the case, it shows amateurism.
In any case, the case is illustrative.
It seems that the Brazilian left is ready to back down on everything, afraid of confrontation. No anti-capitalist discourse, barely any mention of imperialism, class struggle has disappeared, “entrepreneurship” and “innovation” have taken over the vocabulary, abortion rights are taboo, and so on.
Only exception: identity sealing.
Faced with identity sealing, the left always gives in.
It is worth explaining: by “identitarianism”, I do not mean the emancipatory demands of dominated groups, but a certain way of expressing them that lends itself more to individual gratification than to challenging the social structures of oppression.
By “lacração”, the search for this self-indulgent satisfaction, unconcerned about the consequences.
At universities, it's a disgrace. What's the point of a seminar entitled "Educating with the ass", like at UFBA? Or holding a reception for freshmen with the veterans completely naked, like at FURG?
The question is rhetorical. It serves, on the one hand, to feed the moral panic that fuels right-wing agitation. On the other, it serves to make a handful of activists feel very “transgressive” and to delight in the controversy they have created.
But it doesn't stay at the university. In many left-wing candidacies, it seems that the rule is this: at the heart of the campaign, Faria Lima. On the margins, the academic center.
And what about the transformation of the world? Ah, that will be for when the “correlation of forces” improves. By miracle, of course, because nothing is being done to influence it.
(With my apologies to all CAs, throughout Brazil, who still resist all of this.)
* 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]
Originally posted on the author's social media.
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