1. A Radical and Obsessive Centrism Emerged at the End of the Second World War
According to the logic of the most radical doctrinaires of freedom of thought and speech, from the French and English Enlightenment of the 18th century to the intransigent democrats of our day, exercising these freedoms is the right of every citizen, whatever their ideological position. This is how it has always been understood in Brazil.[11]
Notwithstanding this inherent rule-of-law stance, which the New Republic also proclaimed as its own, a certain radical and extremist centrism is surreptitiously gaining ground in the nation’s spirit.
After World War II, as an explicable counterbalance to the totalitarian, despotic and cruel fanaticisms of the right and the left, public opinion in Brazil and many other Western countries adopted a centrism that can be unashamedly described as extreme and obsessive.
During World War II, the world suffered the dramatic effects of the more superficial than real antagonism between the Communist and Nazi-fascist regimes.
It would be excessive to say that this antagonism was the sole cause of the terrible conflagration, to which many different causes contributed. However, this antagonism undoubtedly was one of the major causes of the Second World War and marked many of its aspects.
As a result, some publicity outlets began to suggest that the primary or sole cause of the war was not only this opposition of ideologies and regimes, but that it broke out not so much because of the ideologies but because of the fanaticism with which both extreme currents clashed.
From this perspective, on which the media ended up insisting ad nauseam, the false notion seemed to emerge in everyone’s eyes that any doctrine taken to its ultimate consequences with inflexible logic leads to deadly antagonism. Therefore, the evil was not so much in the antagonistic doctrines themselves as in the iron logic of their adherents, who took them to their ultimate consequences.
2. The Ghost of Extremism Appears
A new ghost was thus born to the world: Extremism, the child of inflexible logic, as if there could be flexible logic! Like flexible mathematics…
As we can see, the evolution of this peculiar “optic,” which involves complex philosophical, criteriological, moral, political, historical and even religious elements, didn’t stop there.
Once they described “extremism” as the primary cause of World War II, and the notion of its harmfulness was aggravated by the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the ghost of extremism ended up becoming the most significant danger threatening the contemporary world. What’s more, the greatest threat of all time.
This danger did not end with the defeat of Nazi-fascism. At the end of World War II, in the wake of the fight against communism, capitalism emerged, and the communist and capitalist worlds would clash if “extremists” on both sides took over the leadership in Russia and the United States. In yet another step in this evolutionary process, it would follow that repressing “extremists” on either side would be a fundamental and crucial condition for the survival of the human race.
3. Forging the Seductive Idea of Centrist Moderatism
At the same time as the ghost of extremism was emerging, the media was forging the seductive figure of the secular “angel” of centrist moderatism.
Moderatism became the tutelary name for those fighting extremism. Having moderate opinions that don’t stem from evident and incontestable initial truths or don’t take those truths to their ultimate consequences, and are incessantly open to contradictory combinations with one’s opponents:
behold the centrist moderatism that increasingly tends to dominate the modern world and shape it as if it were the evident and fundamental truth on which the pacifist society of the future should be built.
The more consistently the adherents of moderatism take it to its ultimate consequences and meticulously repress even the smallest consequences of extremism, the more it will protect the human race against the final hecatomb.
4. The Fundamental Contradiction of Centrist Moderatism: Imposing Universally Accepted “Dogmas”
Naturally, such a mission involves charismatic gifts, including a kind of doctrinal ‘infallibility.’ For it is a question of knowing, in each case, whether a particular opinion is within tolerable limits or has crossed the boundaries of moderatism and entered the cursed jungle of extremism.
So, adepts of centrist moderatism began inquisitorially investigating whether a doctrinal statement is the consequence of an extremist principle, whether an attitude or procedure violates moderate “morals,” etc., to make moderatism’s “decisions” accepted as dogmas obligatory for all peoples and states.
Either the neo-inquisitors of centrist moderatism are infallible, or they are fallible.
If they are infallible, they are necessarily charismatic. If so, the compulsory acceptance of the “dogmas” of this “infallibility” will have extinguished the old Enlightenment “dogma” of freedom of thought and action.
On the other hand, if these decisions are not infallible, they ultimately decide nothing; they are just a vacuum and the object of everyone’s derision.
5. The “Ultras” of Centrism Disfigure Democracy by Seeking to Refine it
This is how a new and paradoxical centrism is being formed, which is no less extremist than the two extremisms (right and left) that preceded it.
The doctrinal assumptions of this extremist and radical centrism consist of:
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Democracy alone is a just and humane form of government.[12]
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Consequently, the law should only permit and foster doctrinal and practical action for an unalloyed democracy as the exercise of an upright and healthy freedom.
The conclusion is clear: only centrist extremism can guarantee the valuable benefit of democracy through an intense repression of right-wing and left-wing extremism.
This position of the fanatics of centrism is reminiscent of the old popular saying about the devil, who adorned his son so much that he pierced his eye: by seeking to refine democracy, its “ultras” disfigure and may even destroy it.
6. Taking Coherence to the Last Point Is Not Necessarily Excess or Exaggeration
Centrist extremism stems from a fundamentally relativist prejudice, according to which any doctrine deduced from its most basic premises to its ultimate consequences with logical inflexibility and without the slightest doubt, hesitation or concession to the opposing doctrine, defines the extremist psychological-moral profile of those who profess it.
However, if someone rigorously takes a truth to its most extreme logical consequences, they can only find another truth. And salvation can only be found in the truth: “veritas liberabit vos” – “the truth shall set you free” (Jn 8:32). Or is there salvation in confusion and error?
According to the well-known philosophical axiom, “bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu,” something is good when everything in it is good; however, one defect suffices for it to be bad. Thus, truth “worked out” by adamantine logic cannot give rise to a false or evil conclusion.
If, at the end of a line of reasoning, a consequence emerges blatantly contrary to common sense and good morals, this is not due to the long, luminous and sure course of logic, but to some fortuitous error that crept into the logical process.
Therefore, evil does not and could not consist in taking logic uncompromisingly to its ultimate consequences but in failing, at least unconsciously, to follow this firm intransigence by letting some error creep into the acceptance of some premise or the reasoning context.
In other words, it is not bad to be extreme in returning to the source of the authentic logical process. And it would be good if extremism were understood as going to the logical extremes of some doctrine.
In reality, the adepts of moderatism have made the mistake (with a certain amount of fanaticism) of confusing extremism with excess, and passion for the truth with fanaticism.
Moderatist fanaticism, driven to all sorts of exaggerations by the exacerbated instinct of self-preservation, is the fruit of the new fanaticism that has arisen from the panic of a Third World War.
History tells us so many stories of errors and exaggerations inspired by the instinct of self-preservation! One is the simplistic, obsessive, one-sided assertion that centrism is always the truth and that anything that differs from this amorphous, incongruous, eclectic, ambiguous and relativist centrism (as or more despotic than any despot of the past) means falling into the 20th century’s great “heresy”: extremism.
7. Centrist Intransigents Take Their “Logic” to the Last Extremes
For these centrists, the errors are always on the right or the left. Never in the center.
In other words, these supposed “owners of the truth” are intransigent and radical. They, too, take their “logic” to the last extremes. In a word, they are extremists.
“Extreme left” and “extreme right” would be intrinsically evil simply because they are extremes; all extremes are evil as such.
That said, suppose that, in the language of fanatical centrism, the terms “center,” “right,” and “left” refer only to an ideal straight-line segment (imagine a stick) with its two ends (two extremes) rejectable simply because they are ends. The solution would be to cut off these ends “by law or brute force.”
Once the two ends of the stick are cut off, it doesn’t stop having ends. Two new ones closer to the center replace the two previous ends. By cutting off successive ends in this way, only the center remains!
In fact, after the first cut, the hitherto moderate right would become one of the ends of the stick. And the left, which until recently had also been moderate, would in turn become the other end.
However, according to certain center currents, since all extremism is reprehensible, the two new extremes would have to be eliminated once again with similar methods.
Once a new amputation has been carried out, new extremes will be amputated in the very center, leaving only the “absolute” center, in other words, nothing.
8. Centrism, an Itinerant Position Generally Heading Left
As we can see, there are two kinds of centers.
Some centrists move very slowly to the left because, at times, something in their hearts still turns longingly to the right, where they come from. They want the center to form a single front with the right at certain junctures. Some tend to settle into more conservative positions, slightly marching towards the right.
Other centrists move decisively to the left. They willingly look to the utopias of the far left, and very rarely to the horizons of the right. They are more averse to the far right and the right than the far left. Systematically and energetically refusing to make any united front with the right, they are always ready for a united front with the left, sometimes even the extreme left.
Alongside these two “centers” in motion, we must not forget the as if immobile, and perhaps stagnant center-center. In reality, it vacillates as discreetly between left and right as to make almost imperceptible alternative pendulum movements between them. However, if observed in a historical framework covering several decades, these oscillations usually show a leftward direction.
Centrism is a transitional position within the political-doctrinal framework. It is essentially made up of ideologically itinerant elements: former moderate right-wingers going through a centrist phase with a conscious or subconscious turn to the left or, more rarely, left-wingers reversing to the right, whether consciously or not.
Sometimes this ideological journey in either direction occurs so slowly that the normal duration of an individual’s existence is not enough for it to develop its full dynamism.
In this case, the influence of family continuity plays a unique role. When an ideological wanderer is deceased, his children accept his ideological direction as a legacy and remain faithful to his latest political, religious or socio-economic position. And if the lifespan of father and son is not enough for this journey to fully develop, their descendants will continue moving in the same direction.
Thus, through one or more generations, the journey will eventually reach its terminal point: an extreme position on the extreme left or, more rarely, on the extreme right, depending on the case.
Given the center’s itinerant nature, how can we explain the continuous existence of a centrist political party in most legislative houses throughout the 19th and 20th centuries?
The explanation is easy to give by way of comparison.
To conduct its business, a bank has at its disposal not only the assets it owns outright but also a sum of money that does not belong to it but to depositors.
This money continuously enters or leaves the bank and comprises essentially itinerant parcels. Paradoxically, however, it can form a stable amount if the outgoing currency is continually replaced by others that enter for the first time.
The continuity of centrist electoral blocs, usually made up of itinerant supporters, is similar to this.
A factor that explains the long continuity of these very mobile centers, in addition to the already described itinerancy of individuals generally towards the left, is the overall movement of the various centrists considered as a whole, a mobility that tends typically to the left.
Thus, there are individuals, families or larger groups who persevere indefinitely in centrist party ranks. This is not so much because they are mobile like the center, but because the speed (or slowness?) with which the center moves ceaselessly to the left coincides with theirs.
If you look at the history of the main centrist parties, you will easily conclude that their programs are inspired by principles and advocate measures that would have been seen as distinctly left-wing a few decades ago.
The stagnant center is therefore less stagnant than it might seem at first glance.
For example, centrists willingly join the left against the TFP when they can comfortably assume the center is so slow that it will never reach the extreme left.
But if the stagnant center faces a sudden and compact offensive from the left, its adepts rush to unite with the right, and eventually, even the TFP. This very seldom happens happily. In the alliance with the right, they see a lesser evil whose acceptance seems necessary given the circumstances. And they accept it like a sensible child agrees to ingest a bad-tasting medicine that has become indispensable to avoid death.
9. The Natural Function and Importance of Extreme Positions, Even Minority Ones, in Public Opinion as a Whole
Let’s look at the historical development of the right, the center and the left over the centuries in most Western nations. We see that, from the emergence and spread of Humanism and the Renaissance in the 15th and 16th centuries, which in some way prepared the Protestant Revolution, then the French Revolution and the Communist Revolution, the whole course of events up to the present day is gradually shifting towards an ever more radical and comprehensive leftist position.[13] The few historical setbacks are occasional and furtive episodes in the opposite direction, after which the West inexorably resumes its march towards the extreme left.
Of course, not all religious, cultural, political and social positions that characterized the medieval European mentality were abandoned. Of those that were, many have left more or less deep and active traces in the mindset of many Europeans and, consequently, in that of many North, Central and South Americans, insofar as the three Americas are daughters and continuators of Europe.[14]
This explains why, in concrete terms, there are two opposing poles of attraction throughout the history of the West. These poles are, respectively, what remains intact or incomplete of the legacy of the medieval soul, and what is already accomplished or remains to be accomplished of the attractively utopian trilogy, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, understood in its most extreme and radical sense (see Part IV, Chapter IX).
Since the 15th century, history has been a succession of jolts, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left. In the minds of countless people in the West, depending on their psychology, the proportion between the force of impact of one bump and another varies. A certain amount of “instinct of self-preservation” works in favor of what remains of the medieval legacy, while a certain amount of conscious or subconscious appetite for a most radical communism works in favor of the latter.
To the extent that that medieval nostalgia grows (more often than not episodically), there can be a revival of cultural, social or economic forms that would seem impractical to many in our day, but which, adapted to the immense transformations imposed by the centuries, can still have a historical role to play—a historical role sometimes paradoxically favorable to the left and vigorously supported by them, as was the case with the recent monarchical restoration in Spain.
At the same time, other people vibrate with the barely contained desire to destroy as soon and as radically as possible vestiges from the past and even of the present, now crumbling into ruin, toward establishing communism in its most “evolved” and radical forms.
10. The Respective Spheres of Attraction of TFP’s “Medievalizing” Pole and the “Anarchizing” Communist Pole in Public Opinion’s Current Conditions
Westerners, especially Brazilians, live through today’s crisis, divided between two opposing poles. In Brazil’s case, one has been called “medievalizing,” with obvious derogatory intent. This is the TFP, whose power to bring together new elements and expand throughout the country and the world is considerable. It exerts a particularly noteworthy action upon the great magma of indecisive elements, of which some (much more numerous) are moving at a slow and faltering pace towards the extreme left, while others move, often at a slower and even more faltering pace, towards the extreme right.
If the TFP didn’t exist in Brazil today, the move to the right would be much smaller and perhaps imperceptible. In the same scenario, the number of people moving from the center to the left would be even greater.
The extreme left is another pole of attraction. Its action should not be measured only according to the immediate result it achieves in attracting newcomers to PCB or PC do B ranks. As seen below (Part II, Chapter IV, topics 1 to 4), the result obtained by either CP has been insignificant.
One gauges the most critical aspect of this pole’s action by its force of attraction, which it exerts less on people close to the extreme left and more on people at a medium or great distance from that extreme, as long as they sympathize with the latter or socialism. This sympathy makes them susceptible to being attracted to more radical leftist positions.
In less abstract terms, communism usually influences the whole range of people ideologically situated between it and the center. However, this influence does not uniformly affect all parts of this segment.
In fact, in the sectors of this segment closest to the center, communist influence does not often present unmistakable leanings towards the extreme left. The effect of leftist influence may be nothing more than an increase in the anti-rightism that animates centrists.
However discreet, this effect removes from centrists’ mentality the last ties still binding them to a residual right-wing spirit. As a result, their journey to the left no longer oscillates. It becomes lighter and faster and tends to burn off the following stages towards professing integral leftism.
From then on, centrists are seemingly driven by horizontal acceleration in a vertical direction, similar to Newton’s law. In other words, the centrists’ journey towards the extreme left would take on the increasing speed of a falling object, or a horseman galloping on a cavalry charge.
However, this is not what happens. Former centrists “travelling” to the extreme left are often attracted by communists’ friendly nods from a distance, without ulterior motives. However, as they take a closer look at their leftist idol, it may cause them strangeness, dystonia or even categorical objections.
This can cause the extreme left’s attraction to diminish again, although it very rarely ceases. This often means that a militant leftist’s passage to the extreme left is the slowest phase of the “journey.”
However, let’s imagine that due to a disposition of Providence, unthinkable at least for the moment, the communist pole lost its ability to act on the nations’ political or socio-political chessboard. What would happen then?
The extreme left’s attraction on the socialist left or even center-left would drop, perhaps vertiginously, and the “depolarized” leftist mass would slowly flow back to the center. From there, a considerable part of it would gradually move to the right. With one pole gone, public opinion would be subject exclusively to the power of attraction of the opposite pole.
11. Identifying Every Categorically Anticommunist Movement with Nazi-Fascism Is an Artifice of Communist Propaganda
From this perspective, what can we say about Nazism and Fascism, usually seen as extreme right-wing?
Panic that Second World War extremism will revive has led a growing number of people to believe the media narrative that every right-wing ideological or political position is clearly or veiledly Nazi-fascist.
This mentality, characteristic of centrist extremists, leads them to brand as Nazi-Fascist or extremist anyone suspected of being right-wing. The same centrist radicals see anyone who shows multiple and pronounced symptoms of leftism as “open-minded” persons with “generous ideas” who could at most be described as “moderate” or “advanced” socialists. For them to label someone as an adherent of the extreme left, he must be a hateful communist and an apologist for violence.
As a rule, a centrist is a relativist; extremists, whether right or left-wing, are the “heretics” of the relativist world. The centrist applies these categories with disconcerting partiality, simplicity, and an astonishing disregard for a reality always rich in nuances.
Centrists readily accept that democracy (which they habitually confuse with centrism) is the “right to disagree.” Because of this principle, they protest loudly against tyranny if living under a non-centrist-democratic regime. But if a centrist-democratic regime is installed, they do not recognize the extreme left or any right-wing as being entitled to disagree with that regime, and summarily call them extremists.
Thus, in their repressive policy, current democratic centrists begin to use insults to curb the freedom of those who naively imagine they have the “right to disagree.”
As seen (see section 6 of this chapter), the fact that someone is in an extreme position does not necessarily mean they are excessive or exaggerating. And it is truly foolish to claim that the more an ideological or political position opposes communism, the more it is exaggerated and deformed like Nazi-Fascism.
Neither Nazism nor Fascism was the opposite of communism. Both were strongly statist, Nazism even more so than Fascism. Nazism expressly called itself a form of socialism: “national socialism.”
12. TFP, a Typical Example of an Anticommunist Movement, Simultaneously and Viscerally Anti-Nazi-Fascist
The TFP is a characteristic example of an anticommunist movement fundamentally different from and opposed to Nazi-Fascism.
Faithful to the traditional doctrine of the popes, who have (since Pius IX) uninterruptedly proclaimed the incompatibility between Catholic doctrine and ideological systems such as communist and socialist regimes, the TFP only wants everyone to reject communism and socialism.[15]
Is the TFP merely a negative entity? Does it exist only to destroy? Does it not have a positive program to complement its wholesome polemical action?
First, it’s essential to consider how simplistic it is to describe any group or organization that aims to polemicize, challenge and refute its doctrinal or political opponents as exclusively destructive. For example, destroying microbes, poisonous snakes, or disease-carrying insects that infest a particular area is not destroying but building. In mathematics, less multiplied by less gives more.
Furthermore, TFP’s program is eminently constructive. Since its foundation in 1960, it has been working with all its might—always with doctrinal and persuasive action and the utmost respect for God’s Law and human laws—to help realize in Brazil the Catholic ideal of fraternal and harmonious coexistence of unequal classes.[16]
Such a program is obviously incompatible with and precisely the opposite extreme of communism, which aims to establish a classless society. But it is no less incompatible with Nazism and Fascism.
Both regimes directly oppose the Catholic doctrine professed by the TFP in their doctrinal foundations, methods of action, and dirigiste, socialist, and totalitarian conceptions of the State.[17]
In an article for the mainstream press, the author of this work has demonstrated that the TFP is as similar to Nazi Fascism as a cane to an orange![18]
A collection of the Catholic weekly Legionário, which the author directed from 1933 to 1947, shows the TFP’s long history of anti-Nazi-Fascist struggle.
Therefore, no one may brand the TFP as extremist in the models of right-wing totalitarianism, i.e., Nazism and Fascism.
13. In Brazil, Centrists Vacillate between Left and Right
It is important to note that, due to the actions of many media outlets, much of the public has accepted a simplistic view of the interrelationships between the center, the left and the right as accurate.
In this view, the nation’s unquestionably centrist majority possesses stable, solid, and unshakeable power.
Communism is just a danger in the clouds that only right-wing “visionaries” fear. The TFP? It is a corpuscular minority to which only extremely leftist hotheads attach importance.
Things do seem that way during periods of public life stagnation. However, all it takes for the centrists to see the situation differently is for socio-economic upheavals to break out here and there, blurring the horizon of our public.
Indeed, some centrists have started supporting the TFP. On the other hand, given the growing presence of the left and the right, the progress achieved by the TFP impresses and displeases these centrists more than the progress of the left. They shudder at the sight of any public action of a civic nature in which the TFP stands out. More than communism, they fear the growth of our organization, which they describe as extreme right-wing in the twisted and pejorative sense already explained (see topic 11 of this chapter).
For example, during the 1975 media uproar that give rise to a parliamentary inquiry into the TFP in the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Sul, anti-TFP panic reached the point that some did not hesitate to proclaim that imaginary TFP “militias” were jeopardizing Brazil’s republic and democracy by preparing a coup to restore the monarchy and training to confront and defeat the Armed Forces (then in power) with karate blows!
The fact that serious press outlets published such claims without arousing general hilarity means that centrists were only relatively sure of their power’s stability.[19]
But if centrists so oppose the left and particularly the right, what is the ideal regime for centrist extremists? It is the dictatorship, parliamentary or otherwise, of exacerbated centrism.
This fierce centrist intransigence is a characteristic of political inauthenticity in Brazil and throughout Latin America. It manifests itself throughout the vastness of Iberian-America.
In Europe, meaning the various democratic nations on this side of the Iron Curtain, such ways of conceptualizing the center and democracy would be laughable. Indeed, communist parties operate freely all over Europe to destroy the current socio-political system. In Portugal, a monarchist party, the PPM (Partido Popular Monárquico), operates unhindered. And in West Germany, although its constitution generally prohibits any party that undermines democratic principles, the communist DKP (Deutsche Kommunistische Partei) and the neo-Nazi NPD (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands) have been operating freely since the 1960s.
14. Brazil’s Centrism without Ideas
Due to certain peculiarities of our people’s souls, a feature of Brazilian centrism distinguishes it fundamentally from European or American centrism.
The Brazilian people can undoubtedly be described as highly affectionate and cordial. Continuously peaceful, cordial and even friendly coexistence is one of the most essential conditions for their well-being.
This state of mind leads them instinctively and systematically to avoid as much as possible anything that might lead to disagreements inherent in this vale of tears that degenerate into tension in private and public life. They would prefer to prevent them altogether.
For this reason, if an aggression between individuals is imminent, it is common for passers-by to intervene straight away before ascertaining which party is right, addressing them with the classic exclamation “knock it off!” to prevent a fight or stop it if it has already begun, and restore peace.
It is superfluous to add that both parties usually heed the advice before the police are called.
In a democratic regime, disagreements are inherent in public life. Brazilians take them lightly and even enjoy them when they’re sure they won’t degenerate into dramatic tensions and rifts, let alone violent attacks, coups d’état, or revolutions. In short, Brazilians dislike bloodshed. In Brazil, tensions in political life only led to revolutions in highly exceptional circumstances. Even then, if a revolution does occur, much of the population remains oblivious to it, more committed to restoring concord as soon as possible than to the victory of one of the contenders. As a result, coups and revolutions are easily aborted with the surrender of one of the two parties.
This explains a certain ideological immobility concerning political tensions and struggles in today’s Brazil (whose majority population is even less politicized than that of years ago). This immobility makes people less committed to finding a way out by discerning which of the contenders is right to give him support and win, rather than hoping that some circumstance will arise in which, through some unexpected “street-smart resourcefulness,” everything will be resolved without a fight. In Brazil, this attitude corresponds to the adage, “Leave everything as it is to see how it turns out.”
By the very nature of things, this relative immobility is not to be confused with European or American centrism, a somewhat slow stage of public opinion that reflects, perhaps hesitates, but in all cases ends up making a decision.
For its part, the Brazilian – and perhaps Latin American – form of centrism is more like a stagnant lack of direction.
In a democracy without ideas, such centrism is a powerful obstacle to getting the electoral body interested in the great problems of public life. We must help our people avoid this “vegetative” state of mind as much as possible, otherwise our public life—whatever the regime in force—will never achieve authenticity.
In any case, it is essential not to confuse centrism with centrism-without-ideas.
15. Brazilian Kindness’ Implications for Political Parties’ Performance
This psychological situation has implications for the conduct of the various party currents.
When adopting a political program, at least in the short or immediate term, it is normal for various currents or parties in any country to adopt policies for the sake of the common good, which each party understands in its own way. This is how party goals are set.
However, not everything comes down to goals. The different currents need to live together, usually with some degree of cordiality, which varies almost infinitely according to a country’s political circumstances, internal and external problems, different temperaments inherent in its various ethnicities, groups and regions, historical backgrounds, prospects for the future, etc.
This continuous yearning for cordiality, which usually has at best a secondary influence on the various countries’ internal politics, has a particularly active, affective and temperamental importance in Brazil. The average Brazilian voter certainly wants his party to win. But just as much or even more than that, he wants to be on good terms with the members of related parties in his personal and political relationships, and often even with members of markedly opposing parties. This corresponds to the note of politeness that Brazilians like to see in all the environments in which they move.
Thus, even if the various parties’ ultimate goals are very discordant, the party leaderships, anxious to retain the full support of their voters, will act prudently by not including programmatic points likely to cause overly “hot” friction with other currents in their immediate operational goals.
Accordingly, the amount of compromise or intransigence present in the psychology of the various political parties greatly influences how much they can profit from their own political “space.”
16. In Brazil, a Controversial and Intractable Centrism Can Become Unpopular
Paradoxically, this peculiarity of the Brazilian soul can turn against centrism if it takes on the aggressively extremist character described above (see topics 1, 4 and 5 of this chapter).
In Brazil, the word “extremist” has very unfavorable connotations not only because it recalls the two extremisms that have marked our century – communism (left-wing extremism) and Nazi-Fascism (right-wing extremism), but also because, historically, both currents have been characterized by an intractable attitude towards internal and external adversaries.
This intractability displeases the Brazilian way of being to the highest degree.
In this way, a controversial and intractable centrism could be deprived of its popularity in Brazil if skillful propaganda made the general public see this intractability as a new form of extremism. In our country, extremism is not just a political or socio-economic ideology, but a particular way of being.
Centrist currents must remember all this if they don’t want to lose too much of their electoral importance and produce a political imbalance with profound consequences for the country.
Notes:
[11] For example, during the monarchical regime, the Republican Party operated freely, based on these provisions of the 1824 Constitution:
“Art. 179 – The inviolability of the civil and political rights of Brazilian citizens, based on freedom, individual security and property, is guaranteed by the Constitution of the Empire in the following manner: …
“4) Everyone may communicate their thoughts in words or writing and publish them in the press, without dependence on censorship, provided that they are held accountable for the abuses they commit in the exercise of this right, in the cases and manner determined by law:” …
Quite paradoxically, an exception to this rule is found in the first Republican Constitution, promulgated in 1891:
“Art. 90 – The Constitution may be reformed at the initiative of the National Congress or the States’ Assemblies. …
“Paragraph 4. Projects tending to abolish the republican-federative form, or the equality of representation of the states in the Senate, cannot be admitted for deliberation in Congress.”
This provision did not directly prohibit the foundation of a Monarchist Party in a Republican regime. It was intended to prohibit any legislative chamber or other state branch from declaring the Republic extinct and the Monarchy restored.
However, it was generally understood that the consequence of this provision was the illegality of founding a Monarchist Party. So, the idea prevailed that monarchist propaganda—and above all, the founding of a Monarchist Party—was forbidden in the Republic.
The facts are not analyzed here. They are merely recorded.
While this was happening, the Communist Party of Brazil, founded in 1922, functioned for a long time, not de jure, but de facto. With the country’s re-democratization in 1945, the party began to function legally under the name of the Brazilian Communist Party.
This period of legality was short-lived. In 1947, President Eurico Gaspar Dutra banned the PCB from operating due to scandalously unpatriotic statements made by Luís Carlos Prestes, then a senator for the party. Prestes had declared in the Senate that, if Brazil went to war with Russia, the Brazilian communists would remain faithful to the international driving force of communism.
But this ban was an exceptional measure to not violate the constitutional principle of freedom of thought.
When the 1964 coup occurred and the military regime was established, the ban on the Communist Party was maintained, and communists who advocated the use of violent methods were repressed, generally gathered in the dissident group then formed under the old name of the Communist Party of Brazil, known from the outset by the acronym PC do B (Communist Party of Brazil).
Nonetheless, the most intellectualized communists, without any confessed affiliation to the Party, continued to enjoy freedom of thought and speech, and to occupy professorships and important posts in the media.
The political opening led to the legalization of the two communist parties in 1985 in the name of the same principle of freedom of thought and speech.
This is worth noting because, as will be explained below, adherence to these two freedoms, invariably present in the public life of both the Empire and successive “Brazilian Republics,” is precisely what is being eroded in the public mind by the active and incessant propaganda of radicals and “ultras” of liberalism.
[12] On the Church’s teaching on forms of government, see Part I, Chapter II, Note 8 of Topic 8.
[13] The author of this work has described this phenomenon in more detail in his essay Revolution and Counter-Revolution, the bedside book of TFP members and volunteers, which has inspired the formation of sister and autonomous entities in 15 nations.
This revolutionary process takes place at two different speeds. One is fast and generally destined to fail in the short term. The other is much slower and has usually proven successful.
The pre-communist movements of the Anabaptists, for example, immediately drew all or nearly all the consequences of the spirit and tendencies of the pseudo-Reformation in various fields. They were a failure.
Slowly, during the course of more than four centuries, the more moderate currents of Protestantism, moving from refinement to refinement through successive stages of dynamism and inertia, have been gradually favoring, in one way or another, the march of the West toward the same extreme point.
The role of each of these speeds in the march of the Revolution should be studied. It might be said that the more rapid movements are useless, but that is not the case. The explosion of these extremisms raises a standard and creates a fixed target whose very radicalism fascinates the moderates, who slowly advance toward it. Thus, socialism shuns communism, which it silently admires and tends toward. Thus, socialism shuns communism, which it silently admires and tends toward.
Even earlier, the same could be said of the communist Babeuf and his henchmen during the last flare-ups of the French Revolution. They were crushed. Yet, little by little, society treads the path along which they wished to lead it. The failure of the extremists is, then, merely apparent. They collaborate indirectly, but powerfully, in the advance of the Revolution, gradually attracting the countless multitude of the “prudent,” the “moderate,” and the mediocre toward the realization of their culpable and exacerbated chimeras.” (op. cit.., https://www.tfp.org/revolution-and-counter-revolution/.
From this point of view, ultra-modern movements like the Sorbonne Revolution, the self-managing socialist movement, etc., are nothing more than new and even more refined stages opening up on the horizon of the extreme left.
[14] In the United States, various population sectors have a deep-rooted fascination with the Middle Ages. For example, the well-known Society for Creative Anachronism has more than 10,000 members in more than 300 local chapters across the country and Canada. Members of this society’s hobby is reliving the Middle Ages. Men dressed in armor participate in jousts and tournaments in an atmosphere where no modern detail is allowed. The ladies, also dressed in period costume, watch and encourage their knights.
This attempt to “reenact” the Middle Ages and their way of life is becoming more and more frequent in the United States, where medieval restaurants are opening, weekend hotels where people live exactly as they did in the Middle Ages, medievalist private clubs, etc.
At the same time, medieval studies in American universities are greatly resurgent.
[15] In Agrarian Reform, A Question of Conscience, 38-44, 65-68, 72-77, one finds numerous pontifical texts from Pius IX (1846-1878) to Pius XII (1939-1958) categorically condemning not only communism but also socialism. It would be too long to reproduce all these condemnations here. Suffice it to recall the famous statement of Pius XI in the Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, of May 15, 1931, that “Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist” (https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno.html, accessed 7/9/2025, and the Decree of July 1, 1949, of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, which strictly forbade Catholics to join or collaborate with communist parties.
The introduction to this work also reproduces the famous passage from the Instruction on Some Aspects of ‘Liberation Theology,’ from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which criticizes as the “shame of our time” the slavery in which communism subjugates entire nations.
[16] Readers wishing to get an idea of the organization’s extensive record of service to the homeland and Christian civilization can refer to the book Half a Century of Epic Anticommunism (The Foundation for a Christian Civilization, Inc., Mount Kisco, NY, 1981, 457 pp.).
Specifically on the defense of a harmoniously unequal society, see, among many other publications by the organization, Agrarian Reform, a Question of Conscience, 62-107 & 181-188, Declaração do Morro Alto, 15, Sou Católico: posso ser contra a Reforma Agrária? 80-88.
[17] As is well known, Pope Pius XI condemned Fascism and Nazism in the Encyclicals Non abbiamo bisogno, of 6/29/1931 and Mit brennender Sorge, of 3/14/1937.
[18] Cf. “A bengala e a laranja,” Folha de S. Paulo, 5/24/1970.
[19] Moreover, objectivity requires recognizing that similar lies about the danger of the extreme left are occasionally spread with strictly political intentions. A remote but memorable episode can serve as an example. In 1937, government propaganda greatly inflated communism’s progress to serve as a pretext for the November 10 coup carried out by then-President Getúlio Vargas.