Just as the "ordinary citizen" of Iraq cannot be generalized as
a clone of Saddam, the Yankee "ordinary citizen" cannot be seen
as violent as Bush. We must be reminded that, in 1942, when the Nazis
sank Brazilian ships, mobs aroused by newspapers grabbed German citizens
living peacefully and legally in our country and lynched them to death.

Alberto Dines

Every Saturday for the past three weeks, people have been taking the streets of the world to rally against the war in Iraq. The war, however, started almost a week ago and it's getting bloodier and bloodier. Moreover, internal support for the belligerent governments increases every day.

Something is wrong with the preaching for peace. A theoretically unquestionable humanitarian cause is not reaching the expected results, in spite of intense mobilization.

** Hypothesis 1: Pacifists forgot to prioritize the pre-requisite of non-violence. Some rallies are extremely aggressive and confront basic principles of the anti-bellicose doctrine.

** Hypothesis 2: Pacifists have forgotten that pacifism requires absolute neutrality.

** Hypothesis 3: Marches have become narcissistic happenings. Once the march is over, participants go to the TV monitor to check the latest combat news.

No use blaming the press or looking for conspiracies. Part of the American media may be sporting combat uniforms but another part, maybe the most prestigious one, is not. Irrefutable proof are the large pacifist rallies in New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

The big British press, specially BBC, is providing competent and balanced coverage. Nonetheless, public opinion is steady in supporting the coalition with the U.S..

The case of Brazil is exemplary: the Brazilian press behaves in correct fashion, in spite of the habitual failings of a technical nature (fragmentation of the newscasts, for example). Coverage has been generous with all pacifist marches, but the ones taking place in Brazil are far from impressing in terms of numbers. The result is that the reaction from the Brazilian government to the Anglo-American attack was, at most, discreet.

The terrible truth is that the logic of war prevailed over the spirit of peace. The new information technologies (above all videophones and digital cameras) are bringing the fighting inside every home, live, in color, with every sound, scream and voice of command.

This logic of war makes the more sensitive pacifists, the ones concerned with the humanitarian issue, wish for a brief war. What they don't realize is that, by doing so, they are betting on the capitulation of Iraq and/or its devastation. The more politically engaged pacifists, on the other hand, hope that the Iraqi resistance (following the exhibition of imprisoned or dead soldiers) is able to demoralize the American commanding officers. They don't realize that they are betting on the exacerbation of the rage.

We need to constantly be reminded: pacifism is anti-triumphalist by nature. This is a commitment and a burden that not all pacifists realize.

The political schemes confronting each other in this war may have different institutional bases, but they are precisely the same in their conviction: both are totalitarian and fanaticized. The utter misfortune is that this perception escapes a great number of opinionists, most of all our domestic ones. And this is where one of the failures of pacifist preaching may be hiding: they appeal to violence. Verbal violence, for the time being; but it may soon feed the other violence, this one effective.

If the famous columnist from Folha de S. Paulo proclaims she will never drink Coca-Cola again, in retaliation to Bush's unilateralism, let's applaud her: our own guaraná, no doubt about it, tastes much better (Sunday, 3/23, Front Page headline). Cause for concern, though, is when a political analyst who has had a permanent seat for years in the opinion pages of the same newspaper writes the following:

"...The ordinary citizen of the United States has the specific culture of fighting, of violence. It is not by chance that the only film genre Americans have created is the western, the struggle between the good guy and the bad guy…" etc., etc. (Saturday, 3/22, page 2).

Taking aside his lack of motion picture history knowledge, what the writer, a member of the Academy of Letters, is saying is that the ordinary citizen of the U.S. is as violent as Bush. Just as the "ordinary citizen" of Iraq cannot be generalized and stigmatized as a clone of Saddam, the Yankee "ordinary citizen" eating a sandwich at the fast-food joint while watching on CNN the images of the bombing in Baghdad cannot be seen in such a totalitarian and unfair way.

Just like at every moment of great commotion, what is in force here is the marketing of indignation—through which all those with little to say, or too lazy to engage in reflection, appeal to simplistic and reductionist vociferation. The "Letters from Readers" section of the newspapers show that the Brazilian "ordinary citizen" is often more sophisticated than some of those who are paid to enlighten him or her.

As detestable as Bush's troupe may be, anti-Americanism is as reprehensible as anti-Frenchism, anti-Germanism, anti-Arabism or anti-Judaism. They are all manifestations of prejudice and racism (in its broad sense) which, in instances of paroxysm such as now, can produce extremely dangerous results. We must be reminded that, in spite of the much celebrated Brazilian cordiality, in 1942, when the Nazis sank Brazilian ships, mobs aroused by newspapers grabbed German citizens living peacefully and legally in our country and lynched them to death.

If the U.S. is no good and the American press is junk, then everything goes. This type of worn-out reasoning, quite frequent today in certain pockets of our domestic journalism, does nothing to stimulate the ability to reflect. A pacifism built with this type of ingredients is prone to be confused with bellicosity.

In these same pockets of the press we notice a visible complacency with the regime of Saddam Hussein. To the extent that the Iraqi dictator manages to embody anti-Americanism, his crimes are gradually emptied out and thrown under the carpet.

Elio Gaspari, last Sunday (3/23, Globo, Folha and Zero Hora) denounced a worrisome episode of the "whitening" of the dictator in the Brazilian Congress last week. When the Iraqi ambassador in Brasília came to the joint session of the Foreign Relations committees of both House and Senate, the representatives of the Brazilian people made clear that the Baghdad regime is legitimate, generous and decent. The gentleman was not asked a single question about human rights in his country. Besides their monumental ignorance in international affairs, our legislators unveiled something even more serious: this ignorance results from the publications they make in their own heads.

The notion of imminent catastrophe is built into the culture of peace. Pacifists may paint their faces, show their rear end, carry posters, chant songs and prayers. But they can't dispense with the major part of their spiritual equipment: their sense of tragedy. [Text completed on 3/25 at 10:00 a.m.]

Alberto Dines, the author, is a journalist, founder and researcher at LABJOR—Laboratório de Estudos Avançados em Jornalismo (Laboratory for Advanced Studies in Journalism) at UNICAMP (University of Campinas) and editor of the Observatório da Imprensa. He also writes a column on cultural issues for the Rio daily Jornal do Brasil. You can reach him by email at obsimp@ig.com.br

Translated by Tereza Braga, email: tbragaling@cs.com 

This article was originally published  in Observatório da Imprensa - www.observatoriodaimprensa.com.br

Discuss it in our Forum

Send your
comments to
Brazzil