Nassif: Freire was a microbe compared to the giant Raduan.
Journalist Luis Nassif states that Raduan Nassar, the writer awarded the Camões Prize this Friday, "is above good and evil," as are other icons of Brazilian culture, such as Ariano Suassuna and Gilberto Freire; "However, he aroused the petulance of an intellectual pygmy like (Roberto) Freire, who retorted with the only catchphrase he uses in his disputes: it's a PT thing."
By Luis Nassif, in GGN newspaper
Roberto Freire is doubly an intruder. First, as Minister of Culture in an illegitimate government. Second, as the official spokesperson at a cultural event, a crude politician venturing into waters he has never frequented.
Once, the Wando Journalism account – a humorous Twitter profile – sent a greeting to Roberto Freire:
The sensitive individual maintained the same low cultural level, but became Minister of Culture. It's the government of Macunaíma: the most truculent of politicians, José Serra, becomes the commander of diplomacy; the most discredited of Brazilian politicians, Freire, the Roberto, becomes Minister of Culture; Mendonça Neto, who never learned to decline the verb "haver" (to have), becomes Minister of Education, with the luxurious assistance of Alexandre Frota; and Dona Marcela's husband, the president.
The inability to understand, let alone irony, but rather blatant mockery, has always been a characteristic of Freire, Roberto.
His style has always been that of a political thug, of which his guru José Serra is the undisputed leader. He is a politician incapable of any more elaborate thought. In any discussion, he can only engage in combat by creating the hypothetical figure of the "enemy," in order to disqualify the opponent in advance, knowing that he will not have the level to refute anyone's arguments.
It's political primitivism, blind force, the politics of the Old Republic, the vengeful rancor of Exu, from the Pernambuco backlands, in the anteroom of civilization. The other day, an acquaintance was explaining the virulence of politicians to Pernambuco journalists as a cultural characteristic. I doubt it. It's a characteristic of those who never managed to stand out for the intelligence of their arguments. It afflicts Serra da Mooca and Freire from Pernambuco, Aloysio from São José do Rio Preto and Anibal from Amapá.
Among them all, none equals Roberto Freire in their primitivism. The others are capable of interspersing excessive brutality with some form of elaborate reasoning. Freire is a permanent sewer.
The writer Raduan Nasser expressed his opinion appropriately, even if he committed some improprieties. Like other icons of Brazilian culture, such as Suassuna, Freire himself, and Gilberto, Raduan is above good and evil.
However, it aroused the petulance of an intellectual pygmy like Freire, who retorted with the only catchphrase he uses in his disputes: it's a PT thing. He reduced Raduan's seminal work to a motto, PT ideology. That's the trick. In any discussion, invoke the only argument for which you have managed to develop answers. And Freire's only intellectual reference point, Roberto, is anti-PT sentiment.
People like him, who only managed to get a breath of political oxygen through the coup, have become experts at invoking their political past to prove themselves democrats. Freire escaped the dictatorship unscathed, but not unaffected: he inherited from those times the excessive truculence and the resentment of considering himself the owner of the State, to the point of demanding that Raduan return an award, as if it were a donation from Temer's clique.