Through social networks and the deep web, considered the underworld of the internet, extremist groups articulate and recruit more militants; and Nazi cells have sprung up around the world. In Brazil, neo-Nazi attacks on schools and universities are increasing: from graffitied symbols on the wall, as at USP and Unifesp this week, to the use of the swastika by the gunman who killed three teachers and a student in two schools in Aracruz (ES). ) last week.
According to the United Nations (UN), neo-Nazi groups have already become a “transnational threat” and have taken advantage of the pandemic to expand their networks. According to anthropologist Adriana Dias, who monitors these movements, last year there were 530 neo-Nazi cells in Brazil and, this year, 1,117. For specialists, the attacks on the school environment are a reflection of this growth, in general, but also due to the fact that educational institutions have historically been spaces for disputes between ideologies.
Education administrators report that it is difficult to predict the extent to which scribbled messages can escalate into larger-scale violence, but they know they are a warning sign. Therefore, they call police authorities and try to raise awareness in the academic community, improve reporting channels and provide reception.
From July 1st to November 30th, the Jewish Observatory for Human Rights counts 150 mentions in the press of violent events of this type in educational establishments – not necessarily 150 cases, as the entity points out that it is necessary to deepen the check to filter out eventualities. repeated occurrences. O Estadão listed at least ten such attacks in educational institutions between the last week of October and the 1st in four states: Santa Catarina, São Paulo, Minas and Espírito Santo.
In Contagem (MG), a public school was vandalized and the walls were spray-painted with swastikas and references to Adolf Hitler. An exhibition about Black Consciousness Month was also destroyed. Witnesses reported to the police that the director was threatened, potted plants were smashed and chairs were thrown into the courtyard. The Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC) found messages on the walls and was the target of an apocryphal letter with threats. In Brazil, apology for Nazism is a crime provided for in the Racism Law (7.716/1989). The rule provides for imprisonment of one to three years and a fine.
Experts point out the need for an anti-Nazi education effort, with critical training. But schools cannot stand alone. The solution also includes identifying and repressing offenders, as well as actions to curb discriminatory content on social networks.
There is diversity of ideologies and differences between neo-Nazi groups. “They have exclusionary and supremacist ideologies, and that target certain groups that make up Brazilian society, which can be Jews, but also blacks, women, political groups from a certain side or spectrum”, describes Daniel Douek, social scientist and director of the Institute Brazil-Israel.
“They organize themselves in different ways. In particular, they use social networks to defend their ideas and, for about ten years, the deep web”, comments Adriana. “In this last election, due to the fierce escalation of hatred, many groups that were silent emerged”, highlights the anthropologist, who also sees impunity and the growth of misogyny as factors that explain the scenario.
“Research shows they don’t even know each other very well. They are only articulated via the network”, complements Lia Vainer Schucman, professor of Psychology at UFSC. And her work shows that this problem didn’t start recently. In her master’s degree, in 2003, she had identified ten cells within the institution itself.
For Douek, the use of Nazi references by public figures also exacerbates the problem. “The most emblematic case was perhaps that of the (national) Secretary of Culture who was exonerated and gave a speech with the same words as the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels”, he quotes, alluding to Roberto Alvim’s resignation in January 2020. The former secretary reproduced the aesthetics used by Hitler’s government between the 1930s and 1940s in Germany in a video.
dispute space
The choice of educational institutions for attacks is symbolic, explains Lia Vainer Schucman. According to her, this is because the school has always been a space of “cultural dispute of ideologies”. At the same time, she sees a reprisal movement. “The biggest field of resistance to the extreme right is the university.”
The high prevalence of attacks in schools can also be associated with the repercussion of the cases, which gain attention from the media and social networks. American studies already show that shootings in schools can have an effect of “contagious violence”.
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Youth and insecurity
Among the perpetrators of recent attacks, young white men appear. “Youth is the time when people look for groups to feel they belong”, explains Lia. She believes that the search for neo-Nazi groups is often based on resentment when seeing that, little by little, social minorities gain space. According to her, a large part of this movement “comes from the idea that the white man is losing place in the world, which is not true.”
Silvia Colello, a professor at the Faculty of Education at USP, also sees the impact of the pandemic. “With young people staying at home, this intensified the self-centered position a little, the intolerance; at the same time they stayed away from a school socialization intervention”, she adds.
The return to classrooms after covid, as Estadão showed in August, was marked by students with more aggressive behavior or social problems. According to a June survey by Instituto Península with public and private schools, more than 70% of teachers report “difficulties in relationships” with children and adolescents.
What to do?
To what extent verbal or visual violence, with Nazi symbols on the nets and threats on the walls, can become lethal is difficult to say. “If there is an initiative to address it through writing or symbolic language, to move on to action, the limit is tenuous”, warns Silvia.
The first step, experts say, is to involve security officials. At the same time, it is necessary to offer psychosocial care and spaces for conversation about the fact. The reception of victims (which can be a person targeted by threat or those from a certain group or identity to which an attack is made) and their family members is also essential.
In cases where the author is identified, Silvia Colello makes reservations about expelling the student when it comes to basic education. “School is a training space. I find it problematic when dealing only with coercion. You have to call the subject to discuss, call the families and everything else. But, at the university level, I am in favor of a more directive policy. It justifies expulsion, because we are talking about adults.”
Specialists also defend investing in anti-Nazi education, with critical training on the subject, as well as national campaigns that seek to combat the glorification of Nazism made by these groups. But they point out that education alone will not be able to solve such a complex problem.
Lia Vainer Schucman points out that it takes effort from authorities to identify violators and apply sanctions, in addition to dismantling cells. Companies responsible for social networks and apps also need to remove content of this type quickly. “Denazification is complex in these new means of communication, even more so when they work through algorithms”, she ponders.
UFSC encourages reporting and approves policy to combat racism
The last few months have been marked by tensions at UFSC, narrates vice-rector Joana Passos. In September, he says, a quilombola student and a black student were victims of racist graffiti at the Education Center.
In October, Fantástico, from TV Globo, revealed a police operation that arrested five suspects linked to neo-Nazi activities, including students at the institution. The next day, anti-Semitic scribbles were found in the Legal Science Center bathroom, and there were two more similar cases in the same month. Afterwards, an apocryphal letter with Nazi threats was found on the walls of the Florianópolis campus.
Joana points out that in all cases the administration did not treat them as isolated cases and made a formal complaint to the authorities. “We cannot neglect these demonstrations, thinking they are just graffiti in the bathroom”, she says.
At the same time, the institution started an anti-racist and anti-Nazi campaign on campus, with advertising pieces and videos, in addition to encouraging the reporting of any incident, by disclosing reporting streams that students, teachers and employees can follow, on bulletin boards and social networks.
The institution also approved the Policy to Combat Institutional Racism – which includes Nazism as one of the forms of discrimination to be fought. Joana explains that the document, in addition to facilitating the identification of discriminatory acts and providing guidance on reporting and accepting victims, aims at structural changes at the university. One of the fronts is to improve the methodology of quotas for black employees and professors. “We want to train anti-racist engineers, anti-racist doctors, not just anti-racist human and social sciences. We need an anti-racist society ”, she stresses.
The case of Aracruz
To Estadão, the Secretary of Education of Espírito Santo, Vitor de Angelo, points out that there is still no way to confirm the relationship between the teenager and a Nazi cell. What is known, he says, is that he had a sticker with the swastika symbol on both arms. “What that means we still don’t know. Whether it is admiration, sympathy, organic connection, source of inspiration or whatever, only the police investigation will determine.”
On Wednesday, the 30th, the government presented emergency actions that each department must take after the attack. De Angelo considers that it is still “premature” to point out the need for specific work to combat Nazism in the school environment, but the team is currently focusing on thinking about how to work with violence and intolerance in the 2023 school year.
“This discussion seems more pertinent to me, because when we talk about Nazism, we are talking about a concrete historical experience marked in time, which is now renewed in the form of neo-Nazism. But when we think of neo-Nazism as a form of intolerance and violence, we encompass something much bigger, which seems to me to be what we are dealing with: hate crime”, he explains.
When contacting that the violations are a reflection of the “contradictions of society itself”, he emphasizes that the solution of the problem cannot be left solely under the responsibility of education, but needs the involvement of other institutions, such as the family and public security. “Violence and intolerance do not begin at school, and will not end there,” she warns. The information is from the newspaper The State of S. Paulo.
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