Brazil: the Murder of the Spirit

"Wenn ich Kultur höre... entsichere ich meinen Browning! Hanns Johst

Universities appeared before the modern State and brought together people who freed themselves from the ecclesiastical or noble servitude that prevailed in feudalism. The campus welcomes intellects in search of the true, the good, the beautiful and the just. The nascent states seek technicians in the medical arts, engineering, law and compete for students or teachers, promising better salaries and scholarships. Such a search leads Francis Bacon to the famous saying: knowledge and power meet in one. Bacon states, based on the Raison d' État, that there is only effective power and not just the use of force, if state policy and scientific knowledge form a bloc. Modern state powers install universities as a base of power. Innovative forms of law, accounting, archives, libraries, laboratories, architecture, engineering and others emerge. Governments that value their universities grow in the concert of Nations. Baconian-type ethics reaches religious layers that innovate politics. The English Puritans dethrone the king, establish the republic in faith and scientific thought. Defeated, they head to the American Colonies where they open teaching and research centers. Its teachers practice mathematics, physics, Latin, Greek, history and literature. From Europe, techniques and sciences reach a planetary scope. Industry and commerce provide reliable technological products on the international market.

Collaboration between States and universities suffered shocks in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the conservative Counter-Revolution that followed the Napoleonic empire, the denunciation of scientific thought emerged, its relativization in favor of doctrines that accentuate emotional faith and discipline. Universities are seen as a threat to traditional values. We are in the germs of movements that, radicalized, define “sciences” and techniques in the service of ethnocentric doctrines. The most serious threats to international university life began in nationalist movements. When these formations come to power – Nazism and fascism among them – they implode the academic order and appoint their followers on campuses. Those who would prevent such practices are expelled.

Once the fires of books are lit, the shovel work is completed. The Nazis apply funds only to sectors that serve their purposes, reducing higher education to propaganda or censorship. Scientists leave Germany because they do not accept the regime. Seven Nobel Prize winners left the campuses from 1933 onwards. Anna-Maria Sigmund summarizes the German situation, almost the same as the Brazilian one today: “The abandonment by the Nazi State of economic and intellectual potential (...) as well as the attitude The IIIrd Reich's retrograde approach to research and science led to tremendous consequences in an astonishingly short period of time. While the Nazis in power were obstructing the work of serious scientists (...) nurturing enthusiasm for obscure theories (...) the physicists they expelled were preparing atomic war.” In the USA, obscurantism exploded in the Cold War. Based on beliefs, pursuers of science, techniques and arts settle in Congress. McCarthyist intimidation hurts the research institution. Defeated in appearance, the wave against knowledge remains in newspapers, radio and television, financed by political-religious leaders. Numerous sects wage war on science in that country.

Let's talk about Brazil. I mention Minister Celso de Mello and the Nazi danger. Brazilian soil is irrigated by totalitarian waters. Integralism brings together followers who generate heirs. Two dictatorships deploy repressive physical force that threatens institutions, from the press to campuses. To corroborate what Mello states, the first sign of the horror introduced by Nazism is the erosion of ethical and scientific authority in the cult of the Leader. By dissolving the core activities of the campuses, the totalitarian project undermines its administrative authority. Deans and Councils lose direction and take over groups linked to ministries. Resource allocations, teacher choices, scholarships for students now have alignment with the government as a condition sine qua non. The choice of leaders requires adherence to the Palaces.

During the Brazilian dictatorship of 1964, Rector Calmon was famous for saying to a soldier: “Son, you can only enter here through the entrance exam”. It was an external assault on the institution. Now the assault comes in the form of cutting funds, excluding areas, etc. The MEC takes resources from the human sciences but an astrologer is decorated. In Nazi Germany, everything was done to adapt the academic form to that of the government, to nationalize it in the worst sense. To this end, the financial weakness of universities after 1929 and hyperinflation are used. Resources are a whip and caress in a crisis. In Brazil, everything is done to reduce government responsibility for public university education.

In the pandemic, the attack by power on scientific authority is clear. As Hanna Arendt explains, the means of eliding totalitarianism lies in ethical, scientific and political authority. It is for a similar reason that fascists undermine the authority of campuses. The mockery of ministers when they talk about science is a weapon against knowledge. The person responsible for Education does not just act as a circus character. He despises millennia of human knowledge. The masses who deny the sphericity of the Earth are hordes that will soon break into laboratories and libraries. If the president classifies a tragic illness as “simple flu” and denies scientific knowledge by imposing pharmaceuticals, we are at the dawn of fascism. At last April's ministerial meeting, the greatest separation between government and knowledge occurred in the teaching given to a general by the Minister of Economy. “I read eight books about every case of reconstruction in Europe.” In our universities, a student who showed such a display of intellectual laziness, a microscopic knowledge, would be prevented from taking the master's qualification exam, due to insufficient research.

The erosion of academic authority and public resources in research and teaching worsens the brain drain. The brain drain was combated by university authorities and research funding agencies. In today's federal government it is a painful exodus of scientists. It causes suffering to read news from Brazilians who lead cutting-edge research in the world. Here, the academic desert announces itself. The practice of our ministries, especially those dedicated to Education, also generates the deaths of millions. We suffer the kidnapping of knowledge for the benefit of powers that do not support the State in a strong society. The government generates asthenia. Among the first palace acts is the dismissal of a respected scientist. The usual thing in the Ministry of Education is a perennial attack on knowledge. Everything is reminiscent of the histrionic speeches and acts of Nazi power in the face of science: for its defenders, the Theory of Relativity would be just a “Jewish conspiracy to reduce the Germans to slavery”. Here, science is seen as a conspiracy against Brazil. I quote the speech of the Minister of Human Rights (!): “The evangelical church lost space in history, we lost space in science when we let the theory of evolution enter schools, when we didn't question it (...) and then scientists took over of this area.”

A pandemic is called “little flu”. Anyone in respectable research institutes who denounces the corrosion of nature is fired and slandered by the highest authority in the country. The medical crisis illuminates sad social misery: 60% of municipalities do not have water and sewage worthy of the name. Even Rio de Janeiro receives water from sewage. There is no Plan for educating the Brazilian masses for cutting-edge technical work. The business community does not invest resources in technological innovation, preferring, according to the newspaper Valor Econômico, to use official loans in North American government bonds. The warnings from experts in Science, Technology and Innovation seem illusory. In a technical note on research and development, prepared for Ipea in January 2020, Priscila Koeller suspects that expenditure on Brazilian Politics and Development could be reduced to levels below those of the year 2000.  

In health, cuts to the SUS leave an exceptional system almost inert. Two health ministers leave for not accepting healing “recipes” provided through political means, quarantine boycott, war against mayors and governors. Everything is heading towards aggravating the fight against science and scientists. We will emerge from the pandemic with low C/T investment rates. Universities persecuted by the ministry that should protect them are left unable to pay researchers, teachers, employees: they will be ready to be privatized. In addition to official persecution, there are more challenges for those who administer universities. Even with the weak enthusiasm of our businesspeople to protect public services, until the pandemic, taxes went to the Executive's coffers, distributed painstakingly to the campuses. But what to do when the same taxes reach the lowest level? Let's listen to tax expert Claudia Roberta de Souza Inoue: “It is certain that the reduction in activities in the various sectors will also imply a drop in revenue, affecting public accounts. However, how will we reconcile the payment of taxes due in future competences that will coincide with the payments of postponed taxes if the crisis continues to affect everyone and if we have a projection of a 4,7% drop in GDP throughout 2020? The crisis is generating an almost unprecedented recession, with a high impact on the tax scenario, requiring the adoption of measures especially for the post-pandemic period”. Many Brazilian businesspeople, not minors, are reluctant to pay taxes. If the “normal” economy falls, taxes even fall. Without them, investment in R&D, S/T, universities and laboratories reaches a dramatic level. Little is left for technological innovation and competitive production in the national and international market. Less taxes and scarce resources in science and techniques: a vicious circle is an understatement to describe such a decline.

A people weakened by health crimes and without a national plan for technical education will be unlikely to survive collective diseases, as new endemic diseases may occur soon. The Brazilian workforce reduced to an immense reserve army with no tomorrow in the technical world could see the deaths of millions. Even sectors that take foreign trade routes, such as agribusiness and repeat monoculture, for ideological reasons are threatened. To combat China, the government uses diplomacy borrowed from the USA and conspires under the leadership of an astrologer and the... Minister of Education. In an accounting maneuver, millions of reais were removed from Bolsa Família. After pressure, the funding returns (until when?) to its end. And in a desperate moment, there was no thought of applying such resources to health, education, universities. The makeup of the death toll from Covid is part of horror marketing.

“While the government disregards knowledge, Germany allocates 2,8% of its GDP (3,677 trillion dollars according to 2017 data) to research, and announces the application of 14,6 billion euros annually in technology over the next three years. . In 2018, the USA invested US$476,5 billion and China (...), US$370,6 billion in Research and Development (R&D). Meanwhile, the Brazilian government drastically cuts resources from the Ministries of Education and Science and Technology and Innovation (…). The MCT&I, in addition to cutting something like 40% of its budget, was punished with the reduction of scholarships from the CNPq and the development applications. Due to ideological prejudice and cognitive limitations, the government invests against free public universities, responsible for the best higher education, the best postgraduate studies and 90% of research”. (Roberto Amaral).

Rosy prophecies do not hide the appalling scenario to be experienced by 200 million human beings. The license for private individuals to import and use powerful weapons shows that a confrontation between militias and democrats is brewing. The government is far from culture, as it depends on guns, it erases knowledge. With promises of obscurantist dictatorship comes the threat of using the Armed Forces against citizens. How corrosive the government is in the university field can be seen in the Provisional Measure of 10/06/2020. It would allow the Minister of Education to choose rectors. All without consulting teachers, staff, students. Thus, the provisional owners of power would resume the policies of totalitarian regimes. The sadly historic inauguration speech given by rector Martin Heidegger, which embraces the Nazi principle of Führung, exemplifies the deleterious ideological intervention at the university level. Crises are opportunities to dissolve institutions, practice the murder of the spirit. Fascism manifests madness. But like Hamlet, in his delirium there is method. The attack and siege on university bases follows the logic of brute force.

Magnificent Rectors, you are representatives of scientists and teachers in the thousands and, for this reason, immediate targets. I wish everyone complete success in the tormenting task of honoring the ethical and academic authority of the campuses. The obscurantist project will be defeated. But we ask the cost in stocks and knowledge. Universities in links with institutions that defend science, democratic movements in addition to the press that has not yet been sold, will emerge fragile but legitimized in the fight for human life. The government will be a tiny footnote in the history of crimes. Analysts insist on laying the fig leaf on federal power. They talk about “populist” practices. Let's leave the camouflages. Let's talk about fascism because “a fascist is someone with a deep identification with a particular group or nation in whose name they are predisposed to speak, who doesn't give a damn about the rights of others and is willing to use any means necessary - including violence - to achieve your goals” (Madeleine Albright, Fascism, a warning, quoted by Ruy Samuel Espíndola in Marcelo Peregrino, from Party Democracy to Judicial Autocracy). The government doesn't give a damn about its citizens' right to life. Knowledge is denied by him in the violent spiral in which his hordes engulf themselves against all who do not bend the knee to the Leader and his accomplices. Last word: I remember the name of the Magnificent Rector Luiz Carlos Cancellier de Olivo. And to the Federal University of Minas Gerais, violated in its academic and ethical dignity, by those who have a duty to respect and protect it.