Manipulation of the past
The "due" commemoration of the 1964 civil-military coup on "March 31st," ordered by Bolsonaro, has shamed the country and seeks to contaminate the truth with a frivolous version. Bolsonaro is at the head of a government adrift in several areas, but which seeks to amplify a narrative from the time of the "Cold War."
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. (George Orwell, 1984)
The commemoration of the 1964 civil-military coup on "March 31st," ordered by Bolsonaro, has shamed the country and seeks to contaminate the truth with a frivolous version.
What is there to celebrate? The institutional breakdown? The closure of the National Congress and the Supreme Court? The imprisonment and death of young people? Torture?
There is nothing to celebrate, but there is a version that has been spread by the horde of imbeciles, fanatics, and careerists who populate the Esplanade, the Planalto Palace, and the Alvorada Palace, through social media; a version that presents a narrative denying the existence of twenty-one years of dictatorship and the crimes committed by the coup plotters and dictators.
It might seem like mere imbecility, a government composed of imbeciles, reminiscent of the novel "1984" by British writer George Orwell, but it's not; it's a calculated and planned movement. Bolsonaro and his followers are in fact seeking to promote historical revisionism, without any commitment to the truth.
But let's return to Orwell's novel, a dystopia written in 1949 that projects what life would be like in the distant future of 1984.
Totalitarianism is the theme that drives the narrative set in London in 1984.
In the fictional world created by Orwell, countless televisions monitor and control the population, and no citizen has any right to privacy anymore.
George Orwell's novel tells the story of Winston Smith, a member of the "Outer Party," an employee of the "Ministry of Truth." Winston's job is to rewrite and alter data according to the Party's interests; in other words, he is one of the employees responsible for propaganda and rewriting the past.
In other words, the character's role is to rewrite old newspapers and documents in order to support the ruling party. What cannot be rewritten is destroyed; this is how the State maintains its power.
Orwell's book presents us with a Winston who questions the oppression that the Party exerted over citizens, because if someone thought differently they committed "thoughtcrime" (crime of thought in Newspeak) and were inevitably captured by the "Thought Police," being vaporized. They disappeared. Inspired by the oppression of the totalitarian regimes of the 1930s and 1940s.
The book is a fundamental critique of totalitarian governments, as well as of the leveling of society, the reduction of the individual to a "piece" that must serve the State or the market, through total control, including thought and the suppression of language. Anything inconvenient to the government is considered criminal by the "thought police," therefore, everything inconvenient must be rewritten, in a "necessary" reformulation of the past to control the present.
The Bolsonaro government seeks to rewrite history. It tries to make people believe that there was no military dictatorship and that the army saved the country from the risk of communism.
Soon they will try to convince us that the "National Constituent Assembly" did not exist with the objective of definitively burying the authoritarian and dictatorial remnants of the previous period.
They will try to convince us that it was not the constituent assembly that established a democratic state, intended to ensure the exercise of social and individual rights, freedom, security, well-being, development, equality, and justice as supreme values of a fraternal, pluralistic, and unprejudiced society, founded on social harmony and committed, in the internal and international order, to the peaceful resolution of controversies.
Bolsonaro is leading a government that is adrift in several areas, but which seeks to amplify a narrative from the time of the "Cold War".
We have an authoritarian-leaning government that maintains an active "ministry of truth" and a well-funded "thought police."
Bolsonaro's decision drew criticism from more than 50 organizations that denounced the "attempt at relativization and historical revision proposed by the president."
Among the organizations are the Alana Institute, the Sou da Paz Institute, the Acredito Movement, and the Livres Movement, among others.
The truth is that March 31st serves to remind us of what we don't want to repeat and to allow us to look ahead, imagine, and build a democracy that promotes freedoms, is more pluralistic, and less unequal.
* This is an opinion article, the responsibility of the author, and does not reflect the opinion of Brasil 247.