The new coordinator of the ENEM exam is accused of plagiarizing an American author.

247 - Law student Douglas Donin compared the thesis of Murilo Resende Ferreira, the new coordinator of the National High School Exam (Enem) during the Bolsonaro government, and identified plagiarism of an article by American author Michael Minnicino, published in 1992. Ferreira also has in his biography the expulsion from the MBL of Goiás, which accused him of being "completely crazy".

He will head the Directorate of Basic Education Assessment (Daeb) at Inep, the body that coordinates the exam, and is expected to begin interfering in the tests, which have been heavily criticized by the Bolsonaro family. Over the weekend, President Jair Bolsonaro praised the economist, which, according to him, will attack what he calls "virtue signaling" and "indoctrination" in Brazilian schools.

Read some excerpts from the report published in Facebook by Douglas Donin, selected by DCMRegarding plagiarism:

I was informed by some people that the fabulous conspiracy theory "The Frankfurt School: Satanism, Ugliness, and Revolution," published in the magazine "Estudos Nacionais" and a proud high point, the crown jewel of the intellectual production of the new head of the ENEM exam, Murilo Resende Ferreira, is a plagiarism of an article, "The New Dark Ages: The Frankfurt School and 'Political Correctness'," published in 1992 by Michael Minnicino in the magazine "Fidelio," from the Schiller Institute. They claim the Brazilian author simply collected paragraphs from the original text, translated them, and changed the names of personalities mentioned, such as Benny Goodman, who became Caetano Veloso, adapted the introduction to the present day, and so on. In Murilo Resende's Lattes CV, he presents himself as the original author, not as a translator. He simply cites the original article – which is far more complete and cultured, incidentally – as the "source."

I decided to check it out, MythBusters style. Result: well, I'd rather you guys decide.

This is the original text:

https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/fi…/921_frankfurt.html

This is an article written by the new head of ENEM, inspired by Minnicino's original work:

http://estudosnacionais.com/…/escola-de-franfkurt-satanism…/

These are paragraphs from the new text – some fragmented – with paragraphs and excerpts from the original inserted immediately after each translated paragraph. See for yourselves whether it constitutes new intellectual work or a parrot-like imposture:

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One of the great paradoxes of modern civilization is the coexistence of unprecedented material prosperity alongside increasing social ugliness and brutality. Ancient forms of social interaction have been completely devastated and replaced by frenzied entertainment where laboratory-manufactured music hypnotizes and brutalizes participants. In calmer moments, the ancient art of conversation, music, and poetry is absent: all we see are zombies glued to their TVs and cell phones. Many consider this a natural cultural evolution, even something desirable and "progressive." But from a broader historical perspective, this tyranny of ugliness proves completely unjustified. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, humanity perhaps went through one of its greatest creative periods, with magnificent developments in classical music, literature, philosophy, and various other fields, and, at least until World War II, these developments had wide repercussions in popular culture. How did such a rapid decline occur? How did we arrive at a world where everything is culture, where university students want to ban the great classics of literature because they don't fit the dictates of political correctness? The center from which this veritable conspiracy radiated was the Institute for Social Research, popularly known as the Frankfurt School.

(The people of North America and Western Europe now accept a level of ugliness in their daily lives which is almost without precedent in the history of Western civilization. Most of us have become so inured, that the death of millions from starvation and disease draws from us no more than a sigh, or a murmur of protest. Our own city streets, home to legions of the homeless, are ruled by Dope, Inc., the largest industry in the world, and on those streets Americans now murder each other at a rate not seen since the Dark Ages. At the same time, a thousand smaller horrors are so commonplace as to go unnoticed. Our children spend as much time sitting in front of television sets as they do in school, watching with glee, scenes of torture and death which might have shocked an audience in the Roman Coliseum. Our plastic arts are ugly, our architecture is ugly, our clothes. are ugly. certainly been periods in history where mankind has lived through similar types of brutality, but our time is crucially different. Our post-World War II era is the first in history in which these horrors are completely avoidable. Our time is the first to have the technology and resources to feed, house, educate, and humanely employ every person on earth, no matter what the growth of population. Yet, when shown the ideas and proven technologies that can solve the most horrendous problems, most people retreat into relentless passivity. We have become not only ugly, but impotent. Nonetheless, there is no reason why our current moral-cultural situation had to lawfully or naturally turn out as it has; and there is no reason why this tyranny of ugliness should continue one instant longer.(..) The single, most important organizational component of this conspiracy was a Communist thinktank called the Institute for Social Research (ISR), but popularly known as the Frankfurt School.)

Following the Communist Revolution in Russia in 1917, the general belief within international communism was that the revolution would spread like wildfire throughout the world. Since this did not happen, the Communist International initiated a series of efforts to understand the reasons. One of these was led by Georg Lukács, a Hungarian aristocrat and son of one of the largest bankers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As cultural commissioner for the short-lived communist regime in Budapest in 1919, he discovered an interesting phenomenon related to ideological indoctrination. One of his projects involved the Marxist indoctrination of children and teenagers in the poorest neighborhoods of Budapest.

(In the heady days immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, it was widely believed that proletarian revolution would momentarily sweep out of the Urals into Europe and, ultimately, North America. It did not; the only two attempts at workers' government in the West—in Munich and Budapest—lasted only months. The Communist International (Comintern) therefore began several operations to determine why this was so. One such was headed by Georg Lukacs, a Hungarian aristocrat, son of one of the Hapsburg Empire's leading bankers. Trained in Germany and already an important literary theorist, Lukacs became a Communist during World War I, writing as he joined the party, “Who will save us from Western civilization?” sex education in the schools, easy access to contraception, and the loosening of divorce laws—all of which revulsed Hungary's Roman Catholic population.)

(...)