Editorial

More Political Violence, Two Distinct Reactions

The specter of political violence once again marred Brazilian society this week as the country sought to make sense of a murder that seemed to stem directly from the country’s far-right radicalization under President Jair Bolsonaro. On Saturday, Marcelo Arruda was celebrating his fiftieth birthday in the city of Foz do Iguaçu. Arruda was a committed member of the Workers’ Party (PT), having been a local candidate and party official. The theme of his party was Lula and the PT. During the party, witnesses say, a man drove through the parking lot shouting curses at partygoers, aggressively declaring support for Bolsonaro, and threatening to come back and kill everyone. Arruda,who was also part of local police forces, went to his car to get his gun in case the belligerent man came back. When he did, he shot Arruda once in the leg and then once in the back as Arruda fell to his knees. However, Arruda managed to fire five times at his assailant before perishing on the scene, likely saving the lives of other partygoers. It was initially reported that the attacker died as a result of his wounds as well, but this was later updated. He is currently in critical but stable condition.

The question of how to interpret this tragic event has consumed much of the political debate this week. It is clear that the killer had met with one of Bolsonaro’s sons and was an ardent supporter of the president. Former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressed solidarity with the families of both the victim and shooter. He called "for understanding and solidarity with the relatives of [the shooter], who lost a father and a husband to hate speech stimulated by an irresponsible president." Lula also called on his supporters to resist “provocations” and not embrace physical violence against opponents. For his part, Bolsonaro has sought to deny any connection with the incident whatsoever—as he did a few weeks ago, it should be noted, when the bodies of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were finally found in the Amazon after a lengthy search. On Tuesday, Bolsonaro spoke with members of Arruda’s family, asking them to come to Brasília to participate in a press conference to talk about “what actually happened.” One of Arruda’s brothers, a Bolsonaro supporter, said he does not want “the left” to use his brother’s murder for political gain. The incumbent told the family the shooter was clearly “unbalanced.”

It is impossible to consider Arruda’s murder apart from the national climate. Arruda was celebrating his birthday with friends and family, including his young children. According to witnesses, the shooter took umbrage at the PT imagery, which was part of the decorations of Arruda’s birthday celebration. Since 2018, Bolsonaro has made civilian gun ownership a pillar of political platform. Arguing that citizens should have the right to defend themselves with the kind of lethal force usually only deployed by police and criminal gangs, he has made it much easier for ordinary people to own guns. For a country grappling with the senseless violence of Arruda’s murder, the tragedy seems a direct result of Bolsonaro’s policy vision. The murderer who took Arruda’s life was a member of the police, but if Bolsonaro is reelected and it becomes easier for civilians to own guns, how many more people in towns and cities across Brazil could end up dead? This is why Lula has embraced the imagery of love conquering hate so far this campaign, arguing that Bolsonaro feeds the worst instincts of a society still riven by racism, sexism, and gross economic inequality. Bolsonaro, of course, did not order the death of Arruda. but to suggest that the killing took place outside of the violent sociopolitical context that the current president created is simply unconvincing to most voters. It is not surprising that many voters have turned against him according to recent polls.

Highlights

• U.S. LAWMAKERS AND THE BRAZILIAN MILITARY: Concerned about a possible military coup in Brazil this year, U.S. Democratic lawmakers inserted an amendment into H.R. 7900 - The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023. Amendment 893, entitled, “Neutrality of Brazilian Armed Forces During Presidential Elections,” makes the continuation of all military aid to Brazil in 2023 contingent on non-interference by the Brazilian military in this year’s presidential race. According to the amendment, within 30 days of the passing of the Act, which is still awaiting Congressional approval, the U.S. Secretary of State must deliver a report on the Brazilian armed force's involvement in the 2022 Presidential elections.

• FACHIN’s VISIT TO THE U.S: Edson Fachin, the President of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), participated in an international event at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C. on July 6. Fachin expressed his anxiety about the potential transfer of power in October, remarking, “We may have an even more aggressive episode here than January 6 on Capitol Hill.” He went on to say that “Brazilian society, on October 2, will hold up a mirror to itself. Whether it longs for the war of everyone against everyone, or it longs for democracy and, from there, make its choices in a free and conscious way.” His fears of a right-wing insurrectionist movement more disastrous than what occurred in the United States last January follow the latest polls that show Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party) trailing behind former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party).

• EXPLOSION DURING LULA’S CAMPAIGN EVENT: According to Rio’s Military Police, an “event infiltrator” caused an explosion using a homemade bomb at an event organized by presidential pre-candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party) and his supporters in Cinelândia, downtown Rio de Janeiro, on the night of July 7. The explosion occurred before Lula’s arrival, and no one was injured. The suspect, Andre Stefano Dimitriu Alves de Brito, confessed to the crime and was arrested shortly after the explosion. In response, pre-candidate Ciro Gomes (Democratic Labor Party) called for an investigation into the case, stating that there is a "feeling of hate that contaminates Brazilian society.” In addition to the bombing at Lula’s event, Ciro requested that two other similar situations that happened within hours of each other be examined: a sack of feces and eggs thrown at the judge's car who ordered the arrest of former education minister Milton Ribeiro, accused of corruption, and the shot fired outside of the headquarters of the Folha de São Paulo newspaper.

• REJECTION POLL: According to a poll released by the PoderData Institute on July 8, 52% of Brazilians will definitely not vote for the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party). Another 38% say they will not vote for Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva (Workers’ Party), who is currently leading in all polls. A total of 63% say they will not vote for Simone Tebet (Brazilian Democratic Movement), 50% for Ciro Gomes (Democratic Labor Party), and 43% for André Janones (Avante).

• SHARING RODRIGO GARCIA: Right-leaning União Brazil formalized its support for Governor Rodrigo Garcia (Brazilian Social Democracy Party, PSDB) for the governor of São Paulo on July 7. “After a long period of talks, União Brasil and PSDB reached an agreement for state elections,” the party said in a statement. The agreement established that Garcia will support Luciano Bivar, the presidential pre-candidate of União Brazil,. Nationally, the PSDB has allied with the MDB's pre-candidate, Simone Tebet. On a visit to the Liberdade neighborhood of São Paulo on July 10, Senator Simone Tebet said that Governor Rodrigo Garcia will “also” support Deputy Luciano Bivar (União Brasil) in the race to the presidential palace. Bivar previously offered exclusive support for Garcia, but then he signaled that he accepts “sharing” his backing of Garcia with that for Tebet.

• LULA AND BOLSONARO TIED IN RIO: Former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers' Party) grew four percentage points in the state of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest electoral college in the country, according to a Genial/Quaest poll released on July 14. As a result, Lula and Bolsonaro (Liberal Party) are now technically tied in the electoral race for the Planalto in the state of Rio: Lula has 39% of voting intentions, while Bolsonaro has 34%. In the 2018 elections, Bolsonaro won in Rio in the second round with 66,35% votes against PT candidate Fernando Haddad with 33,65%.

Feature Article

Academic Freedom and Brazilian Public Universities: Upholding Science and Knowledge in the Face of Right-Wing Extremism

By Sidney Chalhoub

The rise of authoritarian rulers and regimes has been a global phenomenon in the recent past. However diverse the leaders and their respective countries and political cultures, authoritarians share a vocabulary of intolerance and threats. They defend patriarchy, resisting the equality of women, reproductive rights, and the transgression of conventional heterosexual norms. They embrace racist mystifications, disrespecting the basic human rights of migrants and other minorities. They deploy the language of citizenship and illegal immigration to mask prejudice and discrimination against vulnerable social groups. They attack the professional media, universities, and other institutions of knowledge and learning, fostering climate-change skepticism, vaccination fearmongering, and historical revisionism. Authoritarian rulers share an antidemocratic repertoire, consisting of a rhetorical condemnation of traditional politics, the weakening of the public sphere for the benefit of personal allegiances, the attack on workers’ rights, the dismantling of public policies targeting social inequality or just to ameliorate the suffering resulting from abject poverty. Although some authoritarian rulers have reached power through democratic elections – however tarnished these elections may have been by foul play in social media, schemes to suppress some minorities’ voting rights, lawfare against progressive candidates, and other forms of corruption-- ours is also an age of constitutional coups and other forms of supposedly “legal” maneuvers to grab power and concentrate it in the hands of strongmen, thus compromising democratic checks and balances.

In this context, it is to be expected that universities and scholars in general have been suffering vicious attacks –in the US under Trump, in Erdogan’s Turkey, Orbán’s Hungary, Modi’s India, and, of course, in Brazil under the current government. A main strategy deployed by authoritarian ideologues and politicians is to muddle issues of freedom of speech and academic freedom. Freedom of speech is required for academic freedom to exist, but the two concepts are distinct. Academic freedom concerns the autonomy of an educational and research institution to produce and transmit knowledge unfettered by governmental and other external pressures. It is a democratic imperative and an ideal to be pursued. Academic freedom means rigorous interpretation, presented with the support of theoretical and empirical discourses of proof, constantly under critique by peer researchers, and always subject to revision. Freedom of speech is a more general concept, not equivalent to academic freedom in learning and research institutions. Thus, nobody is entitled to learn creationism in a biology class because there is no scientific evidence for such a claim. Students should not expect teachers to say that there is “scientific controversy” regarding global warming because no actual scientific controversy exists about the subject. The recently-deceased favorite astrologist of the current Brazilian government was not qualified to obtain a teaching position in one of the country’s philosophy departments because he lacked the credentials required by rigorous and well-established norms in place at public research universities.

One of the main features of authoritarian ideologies is their attacks on historical knowledge while at the same time soliciting history to support their agenda. Recently-inaugurated, the current Brazilian administration assaulted historical knowledge in March 2019, on the occasion of the twentieth-fifth anniversary of the coup d’ État that brought the military to power in 1964. The right-wing extremist and recently elected president instructed government officials to celebrate the event, arguing that the coup had not been a coup, but just a necessary movement to prevent the country from falling into the hands of communists. As he praised torturers and other criminals associated with the regime, victims of the dictatorship and their families protested, inviting journalists and historians to retell the facts of the coup and the regime that followed. The president argued that history departments and Brazilian universities in general are controlled by “cultural Marxists,” and suggested that the government could mandate changes in the content of standard exams, school curricula, and textbooks, so as to ban references to the military dictatorship and other undesirable subjects, such as “gender ideology.”

Almost four years later, it is important to recognize that the current government failed to tame and control the country’s remarkable public university system. Although it is true that financial restrictions have been compromising several areas of research and have made it more difficult for poor and minority students to proceed with their studies, Brazilian universities held on. Professors and students took to the streets in the first months of the right-wing administration. Constitutional provisions protected the jobs of professors and staff and guaranteed autonomy in regard to research and teaching. In sum, academic freedom prevailed over the demagoguery associated with freedom of speech. Last but not least, affirmative action policies continue to allow for members of underprivileged sectors of Brazilian society to be admitted to public universities, rooting these institutions firmly as belonging to the people and ready to be expanded and further strengthened beginning in 2023.

Sidney Chalhoub is David and Peggy Rockefeller Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He is also affiliated with the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

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Feature articles express the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or WBO.