This series of five newspaper columns by Olavo de Carvalho was collected in this order in the book “The Minimum You Need To Know So As Not To Be An Idiot”.
“From Bobbio to Bernanos” highlights how the 20th century began with a rejection of democracies, moved through dictatorships with millions of casualties, and eventually embraced democracy as the preferred system. However, the concept of “more democracy” lacks a clear definition, with different interpretations based on political ideologies. Moreover, expanding democracy to various aspects of life, such as culture and economics, can lead to unintended consequences and potential conflicts, challenging the essence of democracy itself.
“The Democratic Metonymy” delves into the metonymic use of the term “democracy” outside the political sphere. It emphasizes that democracy only applies to the state, and actions of individuals or groups do not equate to democracy. Attempting to apply democracy to various fields, such as culture and economics, may lead to a dangerous expansion of government control and limit the scope of individual freedom.
“Normal and Pathological Democracy — I” discusses the concepts of normal and pathological democracy. It emphasizes that to identify a political illness in democracy, one must understand its normal functioning. Normal democracies, represented by countries like England, the USA, and several others, feature effective and orderly competition between left and right ideologies, each representing the best interests of the population. Olavo highlights the characteristics of the extreme left and extreme right, explaining how their ideologies differ from the mainstream left and right. He argues that a “right-wing international” is impossible due to the inherent contradiction between free market principles and state control, whereas the left can form alliances transcending borders.
“Normal and Pathological Democracy — II” applies concepts from the previous article to analyze democracy in Brazil, asserting that formal democratic institutions coexist with an ideological monopoly. It argues that this unhealthy environment has been fostered by the ruling left, which invents opposition to mask its own hegemonic control. It further claims that this constructed scenario creates a fear within individuals to express right-leaning ideas, which are increasingly criminalized as extremist, thereby leaving no legitimate right-wing opposition. This, in turn, creates a societal illusion of conflict where there is none. The piece ends by suggesting that this climate of deception and suppression pushes people away from reality, instilling a deep-seated fear in those who dare to see and express the true state of affairs.
“Extremism and Shame”, a part of "Two Notes", reflects on the double standards between the left and right in politics, questioning whether right-wing politicians would want to destroy the left completely, as the left has done with the right. Olavo criticizes the right for distancing themselves from “extremism” while the left embraces it with little restraint. He highlights instances where left-wing leaders associated with extremists without shame, while right-wing individuals would rather die than be seen with someone more right-wing than themselves. The piece emphasizes the disparity in how moderation is perceived, with the left convincing others that no amount of leftism is excessive, while the right often feels the need to display moderation, even when their beliefs hold value in larger doses.
From Bobbio to Bernanos
Jornal da Tarde, January 7, 1999
This century began with the almost universal proclamation of the end of democracies and, after a succession of dictatorial experiences resulting in nearly 200 million deaths, it ends with the universal recognition that it is best for us to embrace democracy.
For the first time in the history of modern times, the speaking part of humanity seems to have reached an agreement. Although there are still dictatorships here and there, the idea of dictatorship has lost all intellectual respectability. With Platonic optimism, it is believed that what disappears from the realm of ideas should also disappear from this world sooner or later. While no one attributes perfection to current democracies, there is a general consensus that Norberto Bobbio summed up with a concise sentence: “The only solution to the ills of democracy is more democracy.”
But is this the formula for consensus or the formula for a problem?
First of all, what does “more democracy” mean? A liberal1 believes it is less state intervention in the economy, while a social democrat thinks it is more state protection for the poor and disadvantaged. Thus, the old confrontation between capitalism and socialism is not only rekindled under the name of democracy, but it leads to a dead-end. To achieve the first alternative, it is necessary to expand state control over private life (at least so that the State, freed from its economic burden, acquires new functions that legitimize its existence). To achieve the second alternative, taxes must be increased, and state bureaucracy inflated to the point of paralyzing the economy and leaving the poor even more unprotected.
Secondly, there are good reasons to doubt that “more democracy” is still democracy. Democracy is not like a loaf of bread that grows without losing its homogeneity: as it expands, its nature changes until it becomes its opposite. The most characteristic example — though certainly not the only one — is what happens with the “democratization of culture.” In the first moment, democratizing culture means generously distributing so-called “cultural goods” to the masses, which were previously reserved for an elite. In the second moment, it is demanded that the masses also have the right to decide what is and what is not a cultural good. Then the situation reverses: offering elite goods to the masses is no longer practicing democracy; it is throwing a paternalistic insult in the face of the people. It is asserted that the popular layers have the right to “their own culture,” in which rap music may be preferred over Bach. Intellectuals then engage in all sorts of theories designed to prove that the superior goods once coveted by the masses are ultimately no more valuable than everything the masses possessed before acquiring them.2 And when finally the old distinction between elite culture and mass culture seems to be reestablished under the new and comforting pretext of relativity, intellectuals become even more outraged upon discovering that all goods, equalized by universal relativism, have turned into mere commodities without inherent value: Bach has become background music for underwear commercials, and rap, through record sales, has created a new elite of millionaires, as cynical and arrogant as the oldest elite could never have dared to be. This same process is repeated in the realms of education, morals, and even economics, where each new wave of progress beneficiaries clings to their new privileges with a greed and violence unknown to older elites: fascism arose among the new middle classes created by capitalist democracy, and the Soviet Nomenklatura, the most jealous ruling class ever to exist in this world, arose from the ascent of soldiers and workers in the party hierarchy.
Thirdly, comes perhaps the most serious danger: a consensus in favor of democracy is only promising in appearance because democracy, by definition, consists of dispensing with all consensus. Democracy is not harmony: it is an intelligent way of managing discord. And the universal clamor for “more democracy,” to the extent that it asserts itself as a consensus, already shows signs of being unable to tolerate any dissenting voice.
Thus, there are reasons to fear that if the 20th century began by calling for dictatorships and ended up demanding democracy, the new century may end up following precisely the opposite trajectory. After all, as Bernanos said, democracy is not the opposite of dictatorship: it is its cause.
The Democratic Metonymy
Jornal da Tarde, January 21, 1999
Perhaps I owe my readers an explanation regarding the previous article, which came out very concise. What I was saying there is as follows: contrary to what Bobbio claims (echoing Jefferson, as a friendly correspondent reminds me), more democracy is not the remedy for the ills of democracy; it is the beginning of dictatorship.
Let me explain.
So frequently and with such enthusiasm do fools and sharpies talk about “social democracy,” “cultural democracy,” and even “sexual democracy” that we end up forgetting that using the word “democracy” outside the strict political-legal domain is merely a figure of speech — which, taken literally, results in complete nonsense.
Democracy is the name of a political regime defined by the existence of certain rights. As such, the term only applies to the State, never to the citizen, civil society, or the economic system, because in all cases, the guardian of these rights is the State and only the State. Only the State practices — or violates — democracy. Civil society lives in it and benefits from its rights, but it can do nothing in favor of or against it except through the State. The man who oppresses his neighbor does not attack “democracy” but merely an individual right, which exists solely because the oppressed and the oppressor are both citizens of a democratic State. Democracy is the state’s prerequisite for this right, not its exercise by Mr. So-and-So or Mr. Such-and-Such. If the same right did not exist, that is, if the State did not recognize it, it would not be the individual oppressor who would be undemocratic but the State itself. When it is said that a citizen “practices democracy” because he respects certain rights, the use of the word is strictly metonymic: the individual action itself is not democratic, but the legal and political framework that authorizes or determines it.
Similarly, if a company decides to level the differences in salaries between its employees in identical positions, it is not “practicing democracy” but merely implementing a right that exists because the democratic State ensures it. And if it does the same outside of a democratic State, it is not implementing a democracy either, simply because it acts by isolated initiative, incapable in itself of establishing rights. Democratic or undemocratic is the State and only the State; citizens and social groups are merely obedient or disobedient to the democratic order. Democracy is nothing more than the political and legal order in which certain actions are possible — and to say that these actions are “democratic” is to take the conditioned for the condition that makes it possible: it is metonymy.
However, the error made by those who take expressions such as “economic democracy” or “social democracy” literally goes much deeper than a mere semantic slip. For the transposition of the democratic idea to other fields beyond the political-legal domain, instead of extending to these domains the benefits that democracy ensures in its own domain, only results in expanding the political-legal domain: everything becomes a matter of law, everything falls within the reach of authority. But democracy, by its essence, precisely consists of limiting the scope of the ruler: to extend it is to destroy it.
Hence, the global victory of the democratic idea brings with it the suicidal temptation to democratize everything, which ultimately means politicizing everything, giving the one who holds political power unlimited power over all other domains and spheres of life. Only through verbal illusion can one imagine “sexual democracy,” for example, as a libertarian paradise: the submission of sexual life to democratic criteria is the universal invasion of privacy — and this high priest of unlimited democracy, which is Mr. Bill Clinton,3 is finally feeling in his own flesh the effects of his own witchcraft.
The remedy for the ills of democracy does not lie in more democracy: it lies in recognizing that democracy is not the remedy for all ills.
Normal and Pathological Democracy — I
Diário do Comércio, October 5, 2011
Pathology depends on physiology. It is not possible to know if an organ is diseased when there is no idea of how it should function normally. The same principle applies to political analysis. One cannot speak of a political disease of democracy when there is no clear idea of what a normal democracy is.
Fortunately for the scholar, normal democracies not only exist but are also the most visible and influential nations in the world. Despite the pathological forces that constantly assault them from within and without, and despite the incompetence with which they sometimes defend themselves, these democracies still display enviable vitality. England and the USA are the oldest. Some Scandinavian countries have solidified as normal democracies since the second half of the 19th century. Germany, Italy, and France, after several failed attempts, only managed to stabilize themselves in this condition after the end of World War II. Israeli democracy was born along with the State of Israel in 1947. The newest normal democracies are Spain, Portugal, and some Eastern European countries freed from communist rule in the early 1990s. There is, therefore, no shortage of material for study and comparison. Only a cretin or someone interested in deliberately confusing things can ignore what democratic normality is or call something that is neither democracy nor even less normal by that name.
What is, in the historical period since the American Revolution, a normal political democracy in the West? If the generic concept of “democracy” can be defined by merely juridical-formal traits, such as the existence of a constitutional order, political parties, freedom of the press, etc., the mere presence of these traits is common to both healthy and sick democracies. The normality of the democratic system must be measured by substantive differences that mere formalism does not grasp.
Democratic normality is the effective, free, open, legal, and orderly competition of two ideologies that claim to represent the best interests of the population: on one side, the “left,” which favors state control of the economy and active government interference in all sectors of social life, putting the egalitarian ideal above other considerations of moral, cultural, patriotic, or religious order; on the other side, the “right,” which favors a free market, defends individual rights and social powers against state intervention, and places patriotism and traditional religious and cultural values above any projects of social reform. Represented by two or more parties and supported by their respective intellectual mentors and media outlets, these forces alternate in government depending on the results of free and periodic elections so that the successes and failures of each during their time in power are mutually compensated, and everything ultimately contributes to the benefit of the population. Between the left and the right lies an entire area of indecision with blends and compromises, which can take the form of independent minor parties or consolidate as a permanent policy of mutual concessions between the two major factions. This is the “center,” which is precisely defined by being nothing other than the very general form of the system improperly transmuted sometimes into a facsimile of a political faction, as if, in a football match, the instruction manual pretended to be a third team on the field.
On the edges of the legitimate framework, flourishing in border zones between politics and crime, there are “extremisms” on both sides: the extreme left preaches the total submission of society to a revolutionary ideology personified in a party-state, the complete extinction of traditional moral and religious values, and forced egalitarianism through fiscal, judicial, and police intervention. The extreme right proposes the criminalization of the entire left, the imposition of moral and religious uniformity under the banner of traditional values, and the transformation of the entire society into an obedient and disciplined patriotic militancy. It is not the appeal to violence that overtly and in the first instance defines the two extremisms: both admit alternating violent and peaceful means of struggle depending on the demands of the moment, submitting the cold considerations of mere opportunity, with remarkable amorality and not without a touch of Machiavellian pride, to the choice between slaughter and seduction. This allows them to forge alliances, alternatingly or at the same time, with gangs of criminals and legitimate parties, sometimes enjoying a kind of right to crime. It is not a coincidence that, when they rise to power or appropriate part of it, both equally favor a statist interventionist economy. This is not due to the slogan “the extremes meet,” but to the simple reason that no policy of forced transformation of society can be achieved without state control of economic activity, regardless of whether it is imposed in the name of egalitarianism or nationalism, utopian futurism, or the most stubborn traditionalism. For this reason, both extremisms are always enemies of the right, but only occasionally of the left. The extreme left is distinguished from the left only by a matter of degree (or relative haste), as both ultimately aim for the same goal. On the other hand, the extreme right and the right, even when their discourses converge on the topic of moral values or programmatic anti-leftism, always end up being incompatible in essence: it is materially impossible to practice both a free market and state control of the economy, the preservation of individual rights and the militarization of society. This is a permanent advantage in favor of the left: transnational alliances of the left with the extreme left have always existed, such as the Communist International, the Popular Front of France, and today, the São Paulo Forum.4 A “right-wing international” is a pure and simple impossibility. This disadvantage of the right is partially compensated in the economic field by the intrinsic unfeasibility of integral statism, which forces the left to make periodic concessions to capitalism.
Although these notions are obvious and easily verifiable by observing the world, you cannot acquire them in any Brazilian university or through reading usual political comments, as virtually everyone who opens their mouth to talk about politics in this country, with as few exceptions as they are unheard of, is a party interested in and beneficiary of general confusion, starting with university professors and media commentators.
In the next article, I will apply the concepts summarized here to the analysis of Brazilian democracy.
Normal and Pathological Democracy — II
Diário do Comércio, October 10, 2011
It is not necessary to say that special situations can induce either of the two larger factions to invert their usual policy, in light of conveniences and opportunities. The Workers' Party government, adopting orthodox monetary controls to escape an economic crisis, and the Bush administration, creating a near-socialist internal surveillance system after September 11, are notorious examples. Facts like these suffice to demonstrate that healthy democracy is the successful administration of an insoluble conflict, meant to perpetuate itself between crises and not to produce the definitive victory of one of the factions. From the start, democracy has found in the unstable balance the ultimate rule for its good operation.
Understanding these notions makes it immediately clear that Brazilian democracy is a patient in an almost terminal state. The normal left and right game, which allows the continuation of the democratic process and keeps the extremes under a short rein, has been replaced by a monopolistic control system not only of state power but also of culture and public mentality; a control so efficient that it is no longer perceived as such, so that the more pathological the situation, the more comfortably everyone settles into it, firmly believing they live in the purest democratic normality.
The faction that dominates the government also controls the education system, universities and cultural institutions, the editorial and artistic milieu, and the vast majority of media organs. The slightest flaw in this control, the lightest sign of discontent, even if partial and apolitical, awakens or alarms the government hosts, who then rush to mobilize their militants to combat “coup threats” that are perfectly nonexistent.
The dominant faction is composed of an indissoluble alliance between the left and the far-left, the latter being legitimized as part of the normal left, worthy of the respect and consideration of voters. Such perfect hegemonic control this alliance exercises over society, that neither the left nor the far-left need to present themselves openly as such: voters have become like fish that, never having been out of water, are unaware of the existence of anything that is not water and, therefore, do not distinguish between water and the universe in general. Under these conditions, Antonio Gramsci’s ideal is perfectly achieved,5 in which the revolutionary party enjoys “the omnipresent invisible authority of a categorical imperative, of a divine commandment”. The situation is so paradoxical that the only ones who insist on displaying their leftist identity, taking great pride in this, are precisely the members of the “opposition”, caught between factions of the moderate left or between opportunists with no ideology whatsoever. Both have punctual disagreements with the government and, of course, a dispute over positions. Nothing more.
In this panorama, the ostensible political collaboration of the ruling party with terrorist organizations, in turn associated with local criminal gangs, is unable to provoke any scandal, simply because no financial aid from the criminals to the leftist politicians has been proven. That is, a criminal alliance is only conceived in the form of illegal financing, of “corruption” in the most generic and apolitical sense of the term. The articulation of legal parties with criminal organizations for the purpose of mutual political advantage is not, in itself, considered a crime or cause for alarm. The “right” to the conquest of absolute power by any possible and imaginable means is accepted as a normal democratic procedure, as long as it does not involve “corruption”.
In this scenario, the right, as such, no longer exists. The ideals that characterized it are increasingly criminalized as extremism,6 spreading among politicians the fear of embodying them in public for even an instant, lest they be labeled as coupists, racists, Nazis,7 the devil.
The abnormality of the situation is perceived by the dominant left itself which, in the absence of a right-wing opposition, has to invent one, all composed of fictions and figures of speech, to give the impression that it is fighting against something. This need is all the more pressing because the Brazilian left forged its reputation by exploiting the role of “persecuted minority” acquired during the time of the military, and feels the need to continue to play it in public when there is no longer anyone who pursues it and, on the contrary, only it has the means to pursue. The “right-wing threat” is then constructed through the following expedients:
To exploit, with obsessive persistence, the memory of the evil deeds of the military regime, amplified to madness, so that three hundred dead terrorists take on the proportions of a genocide wider than the killing of 100,000 Cubans, 2 million Cambodians, 40 million Soviet citizens and 70 million Chinese. The fact that these terrorists were, to a greater or lesser extent, all collaborators of the communist genocide is discounted as if it were nothing, and the characters are transfigured into heroes of democracy. The slightest attempt to put the facts back in their proper proportions is rejected, including in universities, as a threatening sign of impending coupism. If this is not psychosis, all the science of psychopathology is wrong.
As it is not possible, at the same time, to keep the population under the fear of an impending coup and continue to display as the only proof of this risk events from half a century ago, the left and far-left establishment has to constantly produce new indications of the existence and dangerousness of a right that it itself managed to completely eliminate. One of the resources used for this purpose is to give an air of fierce right-wing ideological opposition to any minor and minimal hostility that arises in the ranks of the moderate left, which constitutes almost the entire current opposition. When a social-democratic tucano points out a sign of administrative inefficiency or corruption in the government, some well-paid Paulo Henrique Amorim soon appears to denounce there the right-wing coup that, of course, is clearly being prepared. The only reaction of the accused, in general, is to display their certificate of good services rendered to the left, to eliminate suspicions.
The most extreme of the expedients is to point out isolated individuals or minority groups of ridiculous dimensions as if they were threatening forces rising on the horizon, threatening to crush the left in elections or shoot all communists. Ridiculously small organizations, of thirty or forty members, without funding or any political support, are treated as multitudinous militancies, capable of haunting the nights of cornered rulers. Lonely voices, amputated from any possibility of political action not only by the complete lack of resources but also by the insurmountable differences that isolate them from each other, are treated as if they constituted a single and fearsome block, the “resurgent right”, ready, as in 1964, to stage a coup and maliciously annul all “popular achievements”. It goes without saying that, under these circumstances, ultra-minority far-right groups, like the National Resistance, inflated by the negative propaganda they receive from the left, begin to feel more important than they are and excitedly glimpse the most beautiful future opportunities, without realizing that they, as much as they themselves, only have the ghostly existence of the shadows of a delusion. As the existence of a right is a structural requirement of democratic normality, its suppression causes the pathological forms of rightism to feel called to the sacred mission of putting things back in their places, as if their own existence were not based on disorder. It is also not surprising that the self-feeding fear that thrives in the soul of the left leads it not to content itself with verbal combat but, in a paroxysm of paranoid fear, to take practical measures to defend itself from microscopic adversaries, taking rabbits for lions and thinking that depriving a Júlio Severo of the means to support his wife and children is a heroic deed, a spectacular victory against the revived reactionary threat. It is also not strange that the disasters committed in this fight against ghosts end up producing some real hostility against the government in the people, overflowing in sudden movements and without any substantive political-ideological content, like the March for Jesus or the March Against Corruption, and making the left believe it has found — at last! — proof of the reality of its worst nightmares, without realizing that it produced them itself by an excess of crazy caution.
The peaceful coexistence of formal democratic institutions with the total suppression of ideological competition that defines healthy democracies is precisely what characterizes the current Brazilian situation. It is a distinctly psychotic scenario, where everything is a lie, pretense, and pose. The existential farce with which the ruling left invents enemies to camouflage their hegemonic control has become the norm and standard for the entire country, invading consciences and pushing each thought away from reality. Whoever dares to see things as they are, in a moment of sanity, feels immediately terrified, eager to plunge back into the murky ocean of hallucinations that has taken on the name of “normality”.
Extremism and Shame
[in: Two notes] Diário do Comércio, January 8, 2013
If I were to bump into one of our so-called “right-wing” politicians on the street, I would ask them the following: “Do you want to destroy the left, destroy it politically, socially, culturally, so that it never rises again and being leftist becomes a shame that no one dares to confess publicly?”
I am certain that the wretched person’s response would be “no,” probably accompanied by the usual contorted expressions of feigned disgust with which the good boys on the right distance themselves from any “extremism.”
Well, the fact is that what the right does not want to do to the left is what the left has already done to the right.
After all, only those who are ashamed of their own opinion need to display moderation to the point of admitting, with their heads bowed and submissive, that it is only worth something when taken in moderate doses. In moderate doses, my dear, even strychnine is worth something. Only what is undeniably good, like intelligence, beauty, holiness, or health, is worth even more, the larger the dose. The left has managed to convince even right-wingers that no amount of leftism is excessive, to the point that Mr. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, portraying himself as moderate, had no qualms about presiding over the São Paulo Forum hand in hand with a notorious extremist, assassin, and drug trafficker, Mr. Manuel Marulanda,8 nor did he ever shy away from forming partnerships with Mr. Fidel Castro, who is the epitome of left-wing extremism.
As for the “right-wing” men - and I say “men” with a grain of salt - they would rather die than be seen alongside someone who appears to be more right-wing than they are.
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Editor’s Note: To understand what a liberal means according to Olavo de Carvalho, see “Por que não sou liberal” (“Why I am not a liberal”) in the chapter Libertação (“Liberation”).↩
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Editor’s Note: See, for example, items 1, 2, and 3 of the article “Da fantasia deprimente à realidade temível” (“From Depressing Fantasy to Fearsome Reality”) in the chapter Intelligentzia (“Intelligentsia”).↩
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Editor’s Note: The author refers to the sexual scandal that exposed the relationship between then-President of the United States, Bill Clinton, and intern Monica Lewinsky, which, in 1999, would be recounted in the book Monica’s Story.↩
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Editor’s Note: Founded in 1990 by Lula and Fidel Castro - by Lula’s own revelation in May 2011, see: http://youtu.be/y1456joMic4 - the “São Paulo Forum is the largest political organization that has ever existed in Latin America and undoubtedly one of the largest in the world. It includes all leftist rulers of the continent. But it is not an organization like any other leftist one. It brings together more than a hundred legal parties and several criminal organizations linked to drug trafficking and the kidnapping industry, such as the FARC and the Chilean MIR, all committed to a common strategic articulation and the pursuit of mutual advantages. Never before, on such a gigantic scale, has such an intimate, persistent, organized, and lasting coexistence between politics and crime been seen in the world.” Olavo de Carvalho, “The Biggest Criminal Plot of All Time,” Digesto Econômico, September/October/November/December 2007 - http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/semana/0709digestoeconomico.html. The Forum and its effects will be analyzed throughout this book, but Olavo de Carvalho’s complete work on the subject is available at the link: http://www.theinteramerican.org/blogs/law-and-government/410-what-is-the-sao-paulo-forum.html.↩
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Editor’s Note: Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was an Italian communist ideologue, “of whom most Brazilians have never heard, and who, moreover, has been dead for over half a century, but who, from the realm of shadows, secretly directs events in this part of the world. (...) Gramsci transformed the communist strategy, from a crude amalgam of rhetoric and brute force, into a delicate orchestration of subtle influences, penetrating like Neurolinguistic Programming and more dangerous, in the long run, than all the artillery of the Red Army. If Lenin was the theorist of the coup d’etat, he was the strategist of the psychological revolution that must precede and pave the way for the coup d’etat. (...) The Gramscian revolution is to the Leninist revolution as seduction is to rape. (...) To effect this turnaround, Gramsci established one of the most important distinctions between ‘power’ (or, as he prefers to call it, ‘control’) and ‘hegemony’. Power is dominion over the state apparatus, administration, army and police. Hegemony is psychological dominion over the crowd. The Leninist revolution took power to establish hegemony. Gramscism achieves hegemony to be led to power smoothly, imperceptibly. (...) The Leninist revolutionary government represses opposing ideas through violence. Gramscism expects to come to power when there are no longer any opposing ideas in the people’s mental repertoire” Olavo de Carvalho, The New Era and the Cultural Revolution, Liberal Arts Institute/Stella Caymmi Publisher, 1994; available at the link: http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/livros/negramsci.htm.↩
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Editor’s Note: See, in addition to the examples given throughout this book, the article “Exemplary Didactic”, by Olavo de Carvalho, published in the Diário do Comércio on October 7, 2009 and available at the link: http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/semana/091007dc.html.↩
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Editor’s Note: “The fraud acquires even greater destructive potential when reinforced by the assumption — absolutely false, as I have already demonstrated in previous articles — that catalogs German Nazism as right-wing, a revolutionary, socialist, statist, materialistic and anti-Christian ideology like Marxism, and which only distinguishes itself by systematically associating hatred for the bourgeoisie with hatred for the Jew” [Olavo de Carvalho, “Far right and extreme stupidity”, O Globo, December 8, 2001 — http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/semana/12082001globo.htm]. About the affiliation of Nazism to the revolutionary movement, see the article “USSR, the mother of Nazism”, published in the Diário do Comércio on December 11, 2008 and available at the link: http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/semana/081211dc.html; as well as the documentary film recommended in it, “The Soviet story”, by Edvins Snore, whose official website is http://www.sovietstory.com and can be found at various YouTube addresses, including subtitled, such as: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZHhrSo2yJo (part 1); and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-92UQqWOOs (part 2).↩
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Editor’s Note: Manuel Marulanda Vélez, the alias of Colombian Pedro Antonio Marín (1930-2008), also known as “Tirofijo” (“Sure Shot”), was the founder and commander of FARC, considered the number one leader of the terrorist group.↩
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