Son
of Brazilian President Is Interviewed by Breitbart, But U.S. Readers Are Unable
to Understand His Advocacy of a Strange Brazilian History of Anti-Protestantism
and Anti-Semitism and the Real Nature of His Conservative Ideas
By Julio Severo
Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the Brazilian President
Jair Bolsonaro, was interviewed by Breitbart on February 2020. The interview,
titled “Globalists
Are Trying to Delete Our History,” pointed how he thinks that it is
important for Brazil to restore its history.
 |
| Eduardo Bolsonaro |
The Breitbart said,
Bolsonaro applauded Americans for being
aware of their history, lamenting that he could not say the same for many of
his compatriots.
“In Brazil, if you go to the streets,
asking people, ‘who are the Brazilian founding fathers?’ I can guarantee for
you, 90 percent of the people won’t know how to answer this question,” he
predicted. “So this is something that we have to rescue and the conservative
movement that is getting strong and stronger in Brazil, we are trying to improve,
trying to rescue, because a people without memory is a country without
culture.”
Because the U.S. public is completely
unable to understand Brazilian history, Bolsonaro tried to use comparison, as
if U.S. history and Brazilian history had the same parallels. Yet, is his
comparison real?
Even being a Brazilian, I would love to
see America returning to her roots and history. Yet, would it be good to see
Brazil returning to its roots and history?
In the time of the U.S. Founders, there
was tolerance. I am holding in my hand the book “The Worthy Company: The
Dramatic Story of the Men Who Founded Our Country,” by M.E. Bradford (CrossWay
Books, 1988). I read it as soon as it was published, and I carry it in all my
trips.
CrossWay Books is a major evangelical
publisher.
The Worthy Company records 55 Framers of
the U.S. Constitution. Two of them were Catholic, and the other Framers were
Protestant. For an American reader, there is no surprise that in a U.S.
population 98 percent Protestant, tolerance allowed two Catholics to
participate in the making of their constitution.
The
Worthy Company contains the biographical sketch of each framer, their theology
and faith in God.
The generosity of U.S. conservative
evangelicals is striking. When I explained to CrossWay Books in 1988 I could
not afford their books, they sent me a box of them. Totally conservative and
evangelical. Free of charge.
If
my conservative articles are a blessing to Brazilian evangelical readers today
is because U.S. conservative evangelicals were and have been a big blessing to
me.
I have also read “America’s God and
Country Encyclopedia of Quotations,” by William Federer, on how faith in God is
inseparable from true U.S. patriotism. I read all this encyclopedia in 1996.
In
Brazil, no major evangelical publisher could publish a history book titled “The
Worthy Company” because Brazilian history is riddled with persecution against
Jews and Protestants. Jews were persecuted by the Inquisition, which operated
also in Brazil.
So
Brazilian evangelical readers, like me, found hope only on translations from
U.S. books, including Halley’s Bible Handbook,
which in its earlier issues showed that faith in God is inseparable from true
U.S. patriotism. It showed the faith of George Washington and other U.S.
presidents. This handbook also explained what the Inquisition was. I read all
this handbook in 1986.
What
good is it for Brazilian evangelicals to read Brazilian history? Protestants
were the heretics who should be exterminated. In fact, the first Protestants
who came to Brazil in the 1500s were exterminated by Jesuits. So it is no
surprise that the “Brazilian Founding Fathers” whom Eduardo Bolsonaro intends
to rescue had no tolerance for Protestants.
A
significant example was Northeast Brazil, colonized in the early 1600s by Dutch
Calvinists, who established a society with tolerance for Protestants, Jews and
Catholics. This was the first society in Brazil with real religious tolerance,
and it had a real parallel with the U.S. In fact, under such Dutch Reformed
administration, Jews built a synagogue in Recife, Brazil, the first synagogue
in the Americas. Such synagogue would have been impossible in Catholic Brazil,
but not in the Dutch Reformed colony in Northeast Brazil.
Eventually,
the Dutch Calvinists were expelled. And the Jews who lived in their free
society chose to follow them to New York to escape the Brazilian Catholic
Inquisition. These were the first Jews in New York, and they founded the first
financial system in America.
The Dutch Calvinists left to Brazil
massive bridges, museums, theaters and other buildings that stand beautiful
even today. This is real history.
The Dutch Calvinists could have built
many, many other buildings, but they were killed and expelled. The expelled
Jews could have built in Northeast Brazil the successful financial system they
build in New York. But Brazilians chose intolerance, anti-Protestantism and
anti-Semitism as the foundation of the new Brazil. So it is no surprise that
Northeast Brazil has historically been a wasteland of poorness and disgrace.
U.S. history has no Inquisition against
the Jews. Brazilian history has the Inquisition against the Jews. How can be U.S.
history and Brazilian history parallels? It seems that even Eduardo Bolsonaro,
who has revealed his personal wish that he would like to live in the U.S., not
Brazil, does not know Brazilian history!
Catholic Brazil fought and exterminated
the only and first society with religious freedom and real parallel with the
U.S. society. Which side does Bolsonaro intend to rescue — the oppressors or
their victims?
When I was a boy studying in a Brazilian
school under the right-wing military rule, I was taught that Brazil’s fight
against Dutch Calvinists was “patriotism.” Even though Brazilian Catholics
celebrate such “patriotism,” I have never done it. In fact, in school
Protestantism in history was taught as a religion oppressing, persecuting and
killing Catholics. Such was the public-school system in Brazil under military rule.
School
history books called Dutch Calvinists “heretic” invaders. There was a Jewish
boy in the school and he was ostracized by other students, who used to say, “He
is a Jew!” as if being a Jew were equal to be some kind of repugnant individual.
I felt much pity of the boy because of the treatment he received from other
boys.
I
knew what the Jewish boy suffered because often I was mocked just because I was
an evangelical. Most boys were Catholics, so in a public school where
everything Catholic was celebrated, a Jewish boy and an evangelical boy were seen
and treated as abnormal, with all kinds of nicknames.
I
cannot imagine how much hatred Jews and Dutch evangelicals suffered in Brazil in
past centuries.
The
classes began with the teacher forcing students to pray the Catholic Rosary of
Hail Mary. As an evangelical, I was not happy to be forced to do it in a public
school and also to see my religion be disparaged in history books.
Is such history that Eduardo Bolsonaro
intends to rescue?
During the monarchical rule, Americans and
Europeans who visited Brazil said that laziness and corruption reigned in
Brazil. Is such “history” that Eduardo Bolsonaro intends to rescue?
During
the Brazilian monarchy death penalty was abolished and sodomy was legalized in
the 1800s. So Brazil was possibly the first nation in the Americas, under
Catholic monarchy, to legalize sodomy. Death penalty was abolished because the
rampant corruption affected everything, including the legal system.
It is true that the Brazilian monarch, Dom
Pedro 2, was so marveled, when he visited the United States in the 1860s, at
the progress of the U.S. society and at how American Protestants worked hard
that he invited the defeated confederates to move to Brazil. He was trying to
solve the Brazilian tradition of “laziness and corruption.” About 10,000
confederates moved to Brazil. All of them Protestant.
They had to live in separate towns built
by them. They had to build separate cemeteries, because they were not allowed
to bury their dead in public cemeteries. They had to live separate because even
in the 1800s the Catholic Brazil hated Protestants.
During the monarchy, Protestants were
banned from holding any public and government office. They were just second or
third-class citizens.
This is the Brazilian history. If Eduardo
Bolsonaro intends to rescue it, good for him and Catholics. But it is not good for
me as an evangelical. A history that persecuted Jews and Dutch Calvinists, a
history that ostracized American Protestants, a history that banned Protestants
from holding government posts does not represent me.
So is there a parallel between U.S. history
and Brazilian history as Bolsonaro tried to show? Only in his imagination.
Brazil has a sad history of laziness,
corruption and high taxes that began long before the birth of Karl Marx. So to
try to blame all the Brazilian problems on Marxism is just dishonest.
During the military rule, which was
right-wing in the Brazilian standard, phone lines were so expensive as a land
property. Brazilian cars, which were low quality in comparison to American
cars, had a massive tax of 50 percent! High taxes are a terrible tradition in
Brazil. Even today, under Bolsonaro, if you buy a car, which remains also in
low quality in comparison to American cars, you pay half of its value in taxes.
Bolsonaro cannot blame high taxes on
socialists, because they are a cursed tradition in the Brazilian history.
Breitbart’s interview presented Eduardo
Bolsonaro as “the representative of the burgeoning conservative movement in his
country that brought his father to power last year after over a decade of
socialist rule.”
The Latin American pattern is where
evangelicals increase their numbers, conservatism reigns. Today, Guatemala is
50 percent evangelical and as soon as an
evangelical president was elected, the Guatemalan embassy in Israel was moved
to Jerusalem. Even though evangelicals massively voted for Bolsonaro, he is
delaying his promise to them of moving the Brazilian embassy to Jerusalem. If
Bolsonaro were an evangelical, he would be much more conservative and the
Brazilian embassy would have already been moved to Jerusalem in the first year
of his administration.
It is just a pity that Breitbart does not
understand anything about Brazilian history and politics. If it did, it could
present some relevant questions to Bolsonaro, including “why, while U.S.
history is marked by Protestant tolerance of Jews and Catholics, Brazilian
history is marked by Catholic intolerance against Protestants and Jews?”
He could also ask why Eduardo Bolsonaro
does not talk about how evangelicals were fundamental for the victory of his
father. “Fundamental” is the exact adjective Jair Bolsonaro used about
evangelicals when he was interviewed by CBN in 2019.
Sure, in comparison to Venezuela, Brazil
is a paradise. But in comparison to the U.S. and its history, what is Brazil?
If you are unhappy to pay about 10 percent in taxes when buying a high-quality
car in the U.S., come to Brazil to pay about 50 percent in taxes when buying a
low-quality car!
The whole interview showed that the
interviewer knows nothing about Brazil and its history, and it showed, for
watchful readers, how ridiculous Eduardo Bolsonaro was by trying to make U.S.
history and Brazilian history as a parallel worthy to be rescued by
conservatives.
As a conservative evangelical, I gladly
support efforts to rescue U.S. history and traditions. But I doubt that U.S.
evangelicals, who are the main political base of Trump, would be glad to
see the rescue of a Brazilian history where Protestants, including American
Protestants, and Jews were mistreated and persecuted.
If Breitbart does not understand anything
about Brazilian history, what does Bolsonaro really understand about
conservatism? In 2019, he
held a gay flag in the CPAC Brazil he funded with over 1 million of Brazilian
tax-money. Socialists use tax-money to fund their private ideological
events. But real conservatives never do it. One thing the U.S. conservative
public does not know about Brazil right-wingers is that they love tax-money as
much as socialists do.
For the opportunity he gave for CPAC to
hold — and for the massive tax-money he gave to fund — its event in Brazil,
they gave him a special time in CPAC 2020 in the U.S.
Tax-funded “conservatism” is not a
conservative idea.
Actually, he is riding the massive
conservative evangelical wave, but giving no credit to it. Instead, he has been
using this wave just as a platform to advance other groups and his own
ambitions.
For the sake of U.S. readers who do not
know the Brazilian reality, Breitbart should schedule a new interview with
Bolsonaro, with necessary and pointed questions. It could also take the
opportunity to teach him real Brazilian history.
The important lesson is: It is no
coincidence that the largest capitalist nation in the world — the United States
— is also the largest evangelical nation in the world. It is also no
coincidence that the explosive growth of conservatism in Brazil, which is the
largest Catholic nation in the world, follows the explosive growth of
evangelical churches in Brazil.
In fact, to counter the explosive growth
of socialist parties and movements in Latin America fueled by the Liberation
Theology promoted by the Catholic Church, the
CIA supported Pentecostalism in Latin America for its Prosperity Gospel
that is a conservative and natural enemy of Marxism.
How do Breitbart and Bolsonaro overlook
this so obvious reality?
The
Brazilian conservative Catholic movement that is politically capitalizing on
the growth of evangelicals is stridently pro-Inquisition.
Is
the explosive growth of conservatism in Brazil a result of monarchical and
colonial Brazil, where anti-Protestantism and anti-Semitism reigned, or a
result of the explosive growth of evangelicalism? Without bias, this is a
question very easy to answer.
Yet,
Breitbart never presented this question to Bolsonaro.
Recommended Reading on Eduardo Bolsonaro:
Recommended Reading on Jair Bolsonaro and
Evangelical Conservatism in Brazil:
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