World anti-American campaign is “punishment” for the campaign of Americans and English against the bloody Inquisition in Spain?

By Julio Severo

Despite living in the U.S. as a self-exiled Brazilian immigrant, Olavo de Carvalho does not give up on teasing the U.S. and cleaning up the image of bloodthirsty Spain.

In a comment on his Facebook page on February 17, 2021, Carvalho said:

“The worldwide anti-American campaign is disgusting, but it is only a late punishment for the much more enduring slanderous campaign that Americans and English have done against Spain for four centuries.”

Carvalho claims that for 4 centuries, Americans and English “defamed” Spain. Apparently, he would even be willing to live in Spain and be anti-American if he lived at that time. But it’s never too late.

As Carvalho is known as a defender of the Inquisition, he must be referring to the 16th, 17th, 17th and 19th centuries, when Spain kept the Inquisition in full swing.

According to Catholic historian Paul Johnson, in his book “A History Of Christianity” (published in the United Kingdom in 1976):

“The last official Spanish execution for heresy was in 1826, when a schoolmaster was hanged for substituting ‘Praise be to God’ in place of ‘Ave Maria’ in school prayers.”

Although a Catholic, Johnson has several other negative comments about the Inquisition.

In Carvalho’s extremist view, Johnson is nothing more than another “slanderer.” And if the American and English “slanderous” campaign stopped, what would happen? Even today, Spain would be hanging teachers for substituting “Praise be to God” in place of “Ave Maria” in school prayers.

The American campaign had three objectives: to protect Jews, to protect Protestants and to unmask the crimes of the Inquisition.

In the 4 centuries pointed out by Carvalho, the U.S., which was overwhelmingly Protestant, gave freedom to Catholics. In contrast, overwhelmingly Catholic Spain did not give Protestants any freedom.

Spain, like all Catholic countries, had an aversion to Americanism. Today, if you want to see an anti-American campaign, just talk to socialists. But in past centuries, the same anti-American vision came from the Vatican. In fact, in the 19th century the Vatican warned, even in papal bulls, against Americanism.

Yet, the crimes of Spain are not limited to the Inquisition.

Pro-Inquisition Spain Was the Mother of Concentration Camps

According to American historian Bill Federer, in just three years, between 1896 and 1897, Spain’s ultra-Catholic government detained more than a third of Cuba’s population in concentration camps. More than 225,000 Cubans died of hunger, yellow fever and constant exposure to cold, sun, rain, in the open air at night, etc., without shelters. Incredibly, this radical Spain, once the absolute champion of the Catholic Inquisition, managed to be worse than Fidel Castro’s communism.

Federer also said that the Spanish government “rounded up hundreds of thousands of Cuban civilians from their rural farms and marched them into crowded camps – an example that Hitler and Stalin followed.”

That is, the horrible concentration camps used in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were directly inspired not by Karl Marx’s mind, but by the treatment that a rigidly Catholic and right-wing Spain was giving to the Cuban people.

Spain slaughtered the First Protestant Colony in North America

However, the United States has equally bitter experiences of Spain’s “religious freedom” on American soil itself. With prayer and thanksgiving, on June 30, 1564, hundreds of French Huguenots (Calvinists) founded Fort Caroline, Florida. But the following year, Spain sent its troops, who tortured and killed all the Protestants who did not renounce their faith in Christ. Hundreds of them were sacrificed.

After the carnage, Spain removed the name Caroline and placed the name “Matanzas” (which means “killings” in Spanish) in what was the first Protestant colony in North America.

For a Nazi, any attempt to expose the suffering of victims of Nazism is “slander.”

For a communist, any attempt to expose the suffering of the victims of communism is “slander.”

For Olavo de Carvalho, any attempt to expose the suffering of Spain’s victims is “slander.”

In the case of Spain, which was strictly Catholic and right-wing (but not in the economy), the persecutions and killings included the first Protestant colony in North America, the thousands of murders (not to mention torture) of Jews and Protestants under the Inquisition and the suffering of Cuban Catholics while Cuba was a Spanish colony.

Should all this be seen as “slander”?

Carvalho said:

“I repeat: there was never an entity called ‘the Inquisition’ and much less ‘Holy Inquisition.’”

For centuries Americans actually were the biggest promoters of a propaganda exposing the Inquisition in its bloody nature. The opposite side of the issue is that the Vatican, with its vast political, financial and religious power for centuries, was the biggest promoter of a propaganda of a benevolent and humanitarian Inquisition. While the Vatican’s propaganda benefited just the Vatican, the U.S. propaganda benefited Protestants and Jews, who were the biggest victims of the Inquisition.

Carvalho, the Jews and the Inquisition

Different from the Vatican, the U.S. has a long history of friendship and partnership with the Jews. While the U.S. was one of the first countries to recognize the modern state of Israel, the Vatican was one of the last ones.

The Jews never made accusations against the American Protestant propaganda of a bloody Inquisition, because they knew and know that it is not propaganda. It is truth. But even today they have many accusations against the Catholic propaganda of a benevolent and humanitarian Inquisition.

Different from the Jews, who for centuries accuse and condemn the Inquisition, Carvalho has for years accused and condemned people who accuse and condemn the Inquisition, calling the Inquisition a “black legend,” “myth,” “campaign of slander and defamation” and “fabrication.”

Carvalho: U.S. Evangelicals Are Worse Than Communists

While addressing the Inquisition in 2016, Carvalho publicly said that people opposing the Inquisition, whom he called “paladins of faith,” are much worse than communists. He said,

“I have never seen a communist, when using the fiercest and most slanderous revolutionary verbiage, descending the depths of malice and perversity enjoyed, in this nation, by the paladins of faith.”

Because Carvalho lives in the U.S., “in this nation” probably means the U.S.

If anti-Inquisition evangelicals (and also Jews) are worse than communists, what is Carvalho doing by living as an immigrant in the largest Protestant country in the world? Why does not he move to the communist Cuba, considering that the Protestant America is worse?

Carvalho said,

“Without the black legend of the Inquisition, the Protestant churches would never have achieved the success they did. Who does not want to flee from the torturers’ bloody hands to the arms of Our Lord? Legend is an integral component of the Protestant prestige and, if the legend falls, the Protestant prestige falls together.”

What Carvalho means is that the U.S. would never have achieved the success of becoming the greatest Protestant power in the world if it were not the predominant U.S. role in the denunciation against the Inquisition. Carvalho also said,

“The myth of the Inquisition was the vastest and lasting campaign of slander and defamation of all time, until today, with multi-million dollar funding, and it seems that it is going never to run out. This myth was not concocted by Illuminists and communists. It was concocted by Protestants, who continue promoting it until now, and their irradiant center are U.S. churches.”

“Five centuries of fierce and constant (even today) anti-Catholic lies make Protestants the ultimate champions of character assassination — much above, in this respect, to Illuminists and communists.”

This is one of the most ridiculously pompous conspiracy theories I have heard of. So Carvalho sees evangelicals generally and U.S. evangelicals particularly as worse than communists. If it were so, the largest Protestant nation in the world would be a real Soviet Union. It is not. The largest Protestant nation in the world is the U.S. and Carvalho loves to live as an immigrant there.

Carvalho treats U.S. evangelicals as liars who concocted an Inquisition that never existed, as if multitudes of Jews had never been victims of what Carvalho insists in calling legend and myth. But what he calls lying propaganda of U.S. evangelicals against the Inquisition the Jews call truth.

In fact, even the Brazilian history exposes a brutal and bloody Inquisition against the Jews. Many Brazilian Jews were tortured and killed by the Inquisition. And the first Jewish colonists in New York were Brazilian Jews who had fled the Inquisition in Brazil. The first Jewish cemetery in New York has Brazilian names. Those Brazilian Jews found refuge and peace among American Protestants! In Brazil, they faced constantly threats of loot, torture and death. So the Brazilian history itself opposes Carvalho’s obsession.

Carvalho: To Defend the Inquisition Is Infinitely More Important Than Defeating Communism

His obsession to sanitize and rehabilitate the Inquisition is so big that in July 2016 he said that “to remove from the popular conscience myths as the Inquisition” is infinitely more important than removing socialist President Dilma Rousseff from the Brazilian government. Many Brazilians and Americans thought that his priority and goal were Rousseff, but he confessed himself that it is the Inquisition’s rehabilitation. He said,

“Whoever has studied the Soviet cultural offensive and the posterior Gramscian strategy understands something that seems still totally ignored by 100 percent of liberals and conservatives in this nation: to remove from the popular conscience myths as the ‘Inquisition’… is infinitely more important than removing socialist President Dilma Rousseff from the Brazilian government.’”

In the 1980s and 1990s, I was actively involved in the Brazilian pro-life movement and I had never heard Carvalho’s name. But from 2000 he appeared with a pro-life, pro-family, pro-homeschooling, anti-vaccine and anti-communist discourse. This discourse drew pro-family leaders like me. But later, with a fame already established, he made it clear, according to his words, that to remove an alleged myth of the Inquisition is infinitely more important than defeating communism.

In the past, whoever wanted to defeat communism would have to overthrow the Soviet Union, the most prominent propagandist of communism. Ronald Reagan did it. Whoever wants to defeat the propaganda against the Inquisition should overthrow the U.S., the most prominent propagandist for centuries of the Inquisition’s evils?

Will it be a task for Carvalho, who sees himself charged with a mission more important than Reagan’s mission?

The Inquisition was not the only goal in the U.S. propaganda. The U.S. also was the biggest propagandist against Soviet Marxism and today (at least its conservative population) it is the biggest propagandist against abortion.

Before the U.S. focus on communism as an enemy, the biggest focus of the U.S. society was the Vatican and its Inquisition. In fact, the Inquisition’s past was what most made difficult in the U.S.-Vatican relations. It was especially the Inquisition issue that made the U.S. sever diplomatic relations with the Vatican in the 1860s, because for the U.S., the Vatican and the Inquisition were one and the same thing. The U.S. only resumed relations with the Vatican in the 1980s, in the administration of Ronald Reagan, who had as focus the fight against communism. Communism made the U.S. forget the root of its old hostility against the Vatican.

However, for Carvalho, the U.S. of the past was much worse than the U.S. of today. In fact, he indicated that today’s anti-Americanism is “punishment” because Americans “slandered” bloodthirsty Spain.

And the Vatican’s anti-Americanism of past centuries, was “punishment” for what?

Whereas in the past, Americans were champions in denunciations against the Inquisition, today those who lead these denunciations are the Jews themselves.

Today, one of the most important and extensive books against the Inquisition is the 1,400-page “The Origins of the Inquisition,” written by the father of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He mentions thousands and thousands of Jewish victims of the Inquisition. Is it necessary to add that there were also non-Jewish victims? Or will Carvalho say that it is all slander of Netanyahu’s father?

If Netanyahu’s father and Jewish and Protestant historians are not the real slanderers, then who is? A self-exiled Brazilian in the U.S. who thinks he is the greatest philosopher and historian in the universe.

Portuguese version of this article: Campanha antiamericana mundial é “castigo” pela campanha de americanos e ingleses contra a sanguinária Inquisição na Espanha?

Source: Last Days Watchman

Recommended Reading about the Inquisition:

The Evil Spirit of the Inquisition and Its Backlashes

Abortion, the Inquisition and Revisionism in the Encyclopedia Britannica

Using Trump As a Platform to Glorify The Inquisition?

The Holocaust and the Misdirected Criticism of a Brazilian Jew against Conservatives in Europe and America

Halley’s Bible Handbook and the Inquisition

Conservapedia and the Inquisition

Brazilian State Legislature of Pernambuco Establishes Memorial Day of Jewish Victims of the Inquisition

Olavo de Carvalho and the Inquisition

Bible Ignorance, Clergy Corruption and the Inquisition in England before the Reformation