Bolsonaro and some leftists meet in their opinion on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In this matter, what unites them is stupidity and arrogance, writes Philipp Lichterbeck. Brazil – that is, a party aimed at the assassination of political opponents, ethnic minorities and the disabled, in addition to legitimizing concentration camps and offensive wars –, I considered this to be another symptom of a dynamic that I have been observing for a long time. Especially on the internet, but also in traditional media and in Brazilian politics, we are being faced with a new generation of ignorant, arrogant and stupid people.
They are usually people who, due to a projection achieved by dubious paths, feel empowered to say the greatest imbecilities, without shame or moderation. They consider themselves brave for saying things that are supposedly provocative or taboo, or that simply sound good to their ears.
In reality, they only have a mouth this big, but no information. They make noise, but they’ve never read a book. They consider themselves smart, but their reasoning has a chilling simplicity. They know the price of everything but the value of nothing. They are people who do not qualify to express their ideas to the general public. They make a lot of fuss, but behind there’s nothing but warm air. It is those fellow citizens about whom the British philosopher Bertrand Russell once warned: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are overconfident, and the intelligent are full of doubts.”
You can see this phenomenon everywhere, whether on YouTube, radio or television. But it is also in politics where they flaunt their opinions, based less on knowledge than, above all, on an arrogant belief in their own convictions.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of examples of this. Whether the president of Fundação Palmares, Sérgio Camargo, affirms that slavery was “beneficial” for the slaves; or Mário Frias, the special secretary for Culture, described by his cousin, the historian Raul Milliet, as “uneducated”, “slacker” and “toady” – a judgment that Frias does everything possible to confirm.
Or former Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, according to whom Jair Bolsonaro avoided the Third World War and deserved the Nobel Peace Prize because the visit of the Brazilian president to the Russian dictator made him “retreat” from the invasion of Ukraine. Shortly afterward, Putin was marching on the neighboring country.
The allure of displaying one’s ignorance
And so we come to the topic: the Russian offensive against Ukraine, on which the most diverse opinions and theories circulate in Brazil. What terrifies me the most is how much resonance Russian propaganda on the Internet finds among certain Brazilian leftists.
Driven by an anti-imperialist reflex, they believe and share every opinion that the United States, NATO and the European Union are declared true culprits for all the evil in the world. They justify Putin’s assault by repeating the dictator’s argument that there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine who even define the country’s policy (although the Ukrainian president himself is Jewish). With the argument of the existence of neo-Nazis, almost any country in the world could be invaded and bombed, including Germany and Brazil.
Especially peculiar is also the admiration of staunch anti-communist Jair Bolsonaro for former KGB agent Vladimir Putin. By declaring Brazil’s neutrality in the war in Ukraine, Bolsonaro aligns the country with the socialist dictatorships of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Belarus, China and North Korea. And so, for once, the president and the stubbornly anti-imperialist Brazilian left are in agreement.
A proof of the intellectual and hormonal disturbances that the war in Ukraine unleashes in Brazil, both among Bolsonarists and among leftists, is the reaction of state deputy and pre-candidate for the government of São Paulo, Arthur do Val (Podemos-SP), who is en route to the Ukraine-Slovak border, together with the national coordinator of the MBL, Renan Santos. According to him, the pair traveled to report what is happening in the region.
I’m very curious about what the two will report. I wonder if any of them speak Ukrainian or Russian, Slovak or Polish? What is your prior knowledge of the region, what experts have you spoken with, what books have you read? It seems to me an undertaking whose goal is not really to discover and report something about the war, but to put itself on the scene, to take advantage of the war as a stage.
Just as Monark, to make himself important, used a terrifying event in Europe, which he understood nothing and with which he had no relationship, the two young politicians intend to turn Russia’s military assault on Ukraine into a springboard for their own careers.
Wars, genocide, crimes in Europe seem to exert a special fascination on some Brazilians, which inspires them less to reflect than to exhibit, with great fanfare, their own ignorance.
—
Philipp Lichterbeck wanted to open a new chapter in his life when he moved from Berlin to Rio, in 2012. Since then, he has collaborated with reports about Brazil and other Latin American countries for newspapers in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. He frequently travels between Germany, Brazil and other countries on the American continent. Follow him on Twitter at @Lichterbeck_Rio.
The text reflects the opinion of the author, not necessarily that of DW.
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