Lula government assembles league of right-wing enemies to fight “hate speech”

By Leonardo Desideri

The Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship (MDHC) of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government announced on Wednesday (22) the creation of a working group with the alleged goal of fighting “hate speech and extremism.”

The team will be headed by former federal congresswoman Manuela d’Ávila (PCdoB-RS) and will have the participation of youtuber Felipe Neto.

The group will be able to conduct studies and propose human rights public policies “to combat hate speech and extremism”, according to the ordinance that established it.

It will be composed of five representatives from the MDHC and 24 people representing civil society.

Besides Neto and Manuela, several of those assigned to the task are figures who have been notable for their radical discourse against ideas associated with the right in recent years.

Silvio Almeida, Minister of Human Rights and Citizenship, said Wednesday that the group is “composed of professionals and scholars from various fields who are dedicated to thinking about the formation of a culture of peace.

Anthropologist Débora Diniz, who is among the names, is one of the country’s leading pro-abortion activists and founder of the abortion NGO Anis.

She recently made attacks on Twitter against Cardinal Odilo Scherer and Catholicism, insinuating that Catholics should stay away from public debate in the discussion about the lives of unborn babies.

“Abortion is about care and prevention. A religion that preaches forgiveness should distance itself from punishment that kills and sickens women. The Catholic Church can have its particular beliefs. It just can’t pretend to turn them into a rule of good living for everyone,” she said in response to a tweet from the cardinal.

Feminist activist Lola Aronovich, who is also on the list, is a radical feminist and in 2020 made a post on her blog titled “F****** bad stabbing,” in reference to the attack from which former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) was a victim in 2018.

Lola has questioned the veracity of the attack several times.

Summoned to the working group to combat extremism, she recently classified Senators Rogério Marinho (PL) and Eduardo Girão (Novo) as representatives of the extreme right.

Sociologist Michel Gherman, another member of the new working group, said via Twitter in 2021 that it was necessary to stop treating supporters of the Bolsonaro government as “Bolsonarists” and just call them “Nazis” or “Fascists.”

In a recent lecture at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), he said that Brazil is facing an “epidemic of Nazism”.

Another name on the list is that of sociologist Esther Solano, who in an article for Carta Capital magazine made an explicit defense of the strategy of enticing evangelicals with a disingenuous discourse to get votes turned over in the 2022 elections.

“I make an appeal here to the entire PT militancy, to all sympathizers, but especially to the figures who have a public profile. Please, let’s think before speaking publicly about the faithful and the evangelical churches.”

“Let’s learn the communicational subtleties of what to say, how to say it, with whom to say it, the clever lexicon to use, the lexicon that is not.”

“After the elections, from the comfort of our recovered seat in Brasilia, we will speak as you wish, but not before, before, please, we have to win these elections and our victory is not guaranteed,” she said.

GROUP ON HATE SPEECH MAY JOIN “MINISTRY OF TRUTH” IN ATTEMPT TO CONTROL NETWORKS

The working group, which will start working on March 1, is expected to produce a report 180 days after the beginning of its activities to be sent to Minister Silvio Almeida for evaluation.

In its first meeting, the group will establish a meeting schedule, its mode of operation, and a work plan.

In the announcement of the group’s launch, Almeida signaled the intention to curb certain types of speech on social networks.

He said that hate speech “is being naturalized in the public environment, especially in the so-called social networks, where certain groups feel absolutely free to distill hate and reinforce prejudices.

“These speeches that preach hate, fascist speeches, inspired by historical experiences of destruction, such as Nazism, are not within what we call democracy and freedom of expression. They have to be strongly fought, they cannot reach people’s hearts”, he observed.

The functioning of the new working group is similar to that of the councils that combine the participation of members of civil society with representatives of the Executive branch, and that were crucial in the state reorganization promoted by PT administrations in the past.

Although it is not a council, the group has the same kind of collegiate functioning and advisory power.

The creation of a body to combat “hate speech” is another initiative of the Lula administration that appeals to the censorship character and that has been gaining strength in the left in recent years, especially in issues related to the control of freedom of expression on the networks.

Within the Office of the Attorney General of the Union (AGU), the National Attorney General of the Union for the Defense of Democracy was created; in the Secretariat of Social Communication (Secom) of the Presidency of the Republic, the Department of Promotion of Freedom of Expression was established.

These bodies have been dubbed the “Ministry of Truth”.

With information from Gazeta do Povo