Psycho Litmus Tests for Readers – Folha de S. Paulo, February 28, 1978
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
The reader will certainly remember what litmus paper is (I used it in the distant past, when I studied a little chemistry in my last or penultimate year of high school). Litmus paper changes color when it comes into contact with liquids, revealing their acidity or alkalinity. It is thus helpful in scientific experiments and in many practical applications.
In my latest article, I examined a specific type of bourgeoisie—large, medium, or small—endowed with a peculiar psychology. Deeply selfish, they care little for the spiritual or temporal common good. However, there is one topic that interests them outside the circle of their self-idolatry: “human rights.”
“At least that’s something,” some might say. “At least they’re not selfish in this regard.” However, that is precisely what I question.
Indeed, if they had a clear and coherent notion of “human rights,” they would deserve applause for defending them. However, the attitude of these bourgeois leaves the observer perplexed precisely on this point. They are only interested in the “human rights” of those who fight for subversion, communism, and chaos. They are cold, if not hostile, toward victims of these three forms or degrees of revolution.
When someone defends agents of social revolution in their presence, these bourgeois become sweet, affable, and attractive. If, on the contrary, someone denounces violence against opponents of class struggle and social revolution, the same people turn glacial.
What “human rights” are these, then? After all, what does it mean to be human? Is it just being a leftist? Is that why only leftists have “human rights”?
Here is the litmus test. If you want to know whether the person you are talking to is a bourgeois of this ilk, tell them one of the following facts. If they remain cold, they are. If they are moved, they are not. Each of these facts is worth a “psycho-litmus test.”
According to a recent news report in our daily press, the well-known organization Amnesty International reported that the bodies of a thousand students massacred in Addis Ababa by Ethiopia’s communist government were abandoned on the city’s sidewalks and served as food for hyenas.
According to the same report, after the communist victory, one million Vietnamese were sent to “re-education camps,” where they live in appalling conditions.
The tragedy of Vietnamese fleeing communist oppression by braving the sea in fragile boats persists. According to an appeal published in our press by a Vietnamese fugitive, 50% of those who reach international waters drown.
According to the US Korea Herald of December 8, which reproduces information from the Japanese daily Mainichi, Japanese-flagged ships are prohibited from transporting Vietnamese refugees they encounter at sea.
In its October 1977 issue, the Scottish magazine Approaches reports that the Corpus Christi (Texas) Daily Telegraph reported that anticommunist Vietnamese refugees there complained that 51 ships of various nationalities passed them by without offering shelter. An American aircraft carrier from the Pacific fleet did the same. They were finally rescued by the British tanker Cavendish.
Armed with these facts, readers can conduct their own experiment. Start telling people about them everywhere you go. You will find those who feel compassion for them, as they would for any atrocity committed against anyone, regardless of their ideological stance. These are logical, consistent people for whom “human rights” is an expression that encompasses the authentic rights of all men.
But the reader will also encounter interlocutors who will look at him impassively and immediately change the subject. In this case, the reader should not waste time. As an experiment, immediately lament what happened to any leftist who was the object of police injustice. The same interlocutor will dwell on the subject. He will recount similar facts and begin to treat the reader with special sympathy.
With this double experience, the “psycholitmus” will have worked. Communist acidity will have revealed itself, or not, in the tested bourgeois’s spirit.
“Communist acidity”? Isn’t that expression a bit strong? Can this bourgeois be labeled a communist based solely on such a test? Isn’t he just a socialist, a “broad-minded” leftist, or a mere useful innocent?
But—I ask myself—what is a socialist, a “broad-minded” leftist, or a useful innocent, if not someone whose mentality bears a greater or lesser degree of communist ideological influence?
It is precisely this level of influence that the “psycholitmus” is designed to detect.
