Total control (Olavo de Carvalho)

Total control
Some government opponents see the decline in the president’s popularity as an auspicious sign that the electorate is freeing itself from the leftist illusion. But that is the real illusion. The strength of a political current is not measured by the prestige of one of its members, but by the sum of its means of action, compared to those of its opponent. The most decisive factor is the public’s predisposition to accept the discourse of one side. Nowadays, the a priori credibility of leftist speech is so hegemonic that any opposing argument—let alone being accepted—must be translated into its terms just to be understood, draining it of all its own energy. The Left holds a monopoly over the national ideology, the language of public debate, and the criteria for judging good and evil. In politics, this is equivalent to controlling the airspace in military strategy. The enemy may create limited and isolated pockets of resistance, but the whole, the general framework, is under control. As the evangelicals would say: everything is under control.
One of the clearest signs is the acquired right of any leftist to always be interpreted in the most benevolent way, while every word spoken by the Right is inevitably heard with suspicion.
Imagine what would happen if a landowners’ leader, referring to MST militants, said: “Let’s get organized and finish them all off.” Who in the media or political class would hesitate to see this as a call to genocide? But when Mr. Stedile announces his intent to gather an army of 23 million militants to “finish off all the landowners,” Dr. Márcio Thomaz Bastos, with the blankest expression in the world, pontificates that the movement led by this man “is not a police matter.” The president of the Workers’ Party, José Genoíno, more soothing than a sedative straight into the vein, philosophizes that the seizure of properties by force “is just part of life.” And Bishop Casaldáliga, taking his simian caricature of Christian faith to its final consequences, condemns resistance to the invasions as “satanism.”
Do you remember what the media did to former governor Maluf when, in an unfortunate phrase, he said: “Rape, but don’t kill”? Of course. A rightist—or anyone thus labeled—doesn’t even have the right to a lapsus linguae, no matter how obvious or silly. But when Mr. Stedile counts the heads of his opponents and promises to cut them all off, it is the Minister of Justice himself who rushes to dilute the meaning of his words, so they don’t tarnish the reputation of a “social movement,” something innocent and pure by definition.
How do you “finish off” 27,000 citizens except by killing or terrorizing them? If that threat is not a police matter, I confess I’d be reluctant to call for police help if some enemy of mine, rallying a thousand armed partners with sickles, machetes, revolvers, and rifles, promised to “finish me off.” A thousand against one used to be called cowardice, a massacre. Today it’s called a “social movement.” And honni soit qui mal y pense—shame on him who thinks ill of it. After all, didn’t Holocaust revisionists also claim that Hitler never threatened to “kill” the Jews, only to “get rid of” them? It was those perfidious Zionists who retroactively attributed bad intentions to that sweet fellow.
This is what linguistic hegemony looks like: just change the name of a crime, and it ceases to be a crime. It becomes a “part of life,” if not the expression of divine will—which only “satanists” would dare to oppose.
But weren’t the peasant masses under Mao Zedong a “social movement”? Weren’t the hordes of ragged men marching through Berlin under Nazi banners, demanding to “get rid of” the rich and the communists, “social movements”? Aren’t the invading troops in Zimbabwe, who’ve already “gotten rid of” over a thousand farmers, a “social movement”? Isn’t the Colombian narco-guerrilla, which provides employment to thousands of poor farmers, a “social movement”? According to our government, the FARC is as respectable an organization as the Colombian government. So if, with the best social intentions, they inject two hundred tons of cocaine into the national market each year—is that or is that not a police matter? Is it a crime or a “part of life”? Ask the Minister of Justice. Ask José Genoíno. Ask Dom Pedro Casaldáliga. The Portuguese language of Brazil, debased by institutionalized semantic abuse, no longer serves to explain anything; it serves only to parrot leftist clichés.
That’s why landowners are tragically mistaken in thinking that, with armed guards, they can resist the invasions. You cannot defeat hegemonic force with bullets—the hypnotic power of verbal seduction that, over decades of “cultural revolution,” has bewitched the soul of society. You cannot defeat, with local and sporadic resistance, a broad and complex strategy that, long before it took over the State, had already conquered all consciousness.
And that’s also why those who, scandalized by the rising tide of invasions and violence in general, demand that the government “take action,” “fulfill its role,” are mistaken. The government has already taken action, is already fulfilling its role. Every revolutionary party that, through voting, rises to power in a constitutional democracy can only play one of two roles: either it assumes leadership of the revolutionary process, as Allende and João Goulart did—risking ending up like them—or it stays in the rear, calming international investors, anesthetizing public opinion, and assembling a simulation of normalcy while leaving it to militant organizations, with its discreet support, to take the lead and seize all means of action, isolating and paralyzing the opponent. This latter alternative is complex and delicate, but painless: the only weapons a government needs to succeed in it are anesthetics, sedatives, tranquilizers, euphemisms, evasions, and misdirection. And in wielding this arsenal, the Lula government is remarkably proficient.