Right-wing Extremism, Onions, and Winged Toads – Folha de S. Paulo, December 28, 1969

by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

Certain signs suggest that a progressive network periodically spreads rumors against the TFP. There is no smoke without fire, nor is there effect without cause. It is hard to explain how specific criticisms against the TFP suddenly appear across very different environments in a flurry without stemming from a single source, especially since they contain the same baseless assumptions and misleading arguments, spread with similar precautions.

It would be too simple to say that everyone spreading objections about the TFP is part of this network. There is a method for creating and spreading rumors, just as there is for making and distributing any kind of publicity: a slogan, an advertisement, a book, or a newspaper. A well-designed rumor aims to appeal to the psychology of specific groups or sectors of opinion. It gives form and voice to vague prejudices, resentments, or unclear impressions. Once it’s launched, it finds scattered, well-regarded individuals who, so to speak, were waiting for it and eagerly accept it. After hearing the rumor, they pass it along more or less like someone who eats onions and spreads their smell when they speak (forgive us for this trivial comparison). And so, the strong breath of rumor-mongers can cause the onion-like smell of that tall tale to spread across an entire nation. As you can see, the spread of anti-TFP rumors is a very natural process.

What, then, makes it artificial? It is the systematic simultaneity with which the rumor appears in places that have no communication with each other. It is also its irrationality, or rather the completely arbitrary nature of its content. And finally, its rigidly uniform tactic: once launched, it spreads until it is refuted; once refuted, it always falls silent; once silenced, it remains in the background until the refutation is forgotten; and once the refutation is forgotten, it returns to the fray exactly as before. Thus, the lie consistently comes and goes. Now then, this uniformity and method are generally incompatible with lies’ fanciful and capricious nature.

A curious aspect of this system is how it is communicated. It never uses the written word, as a denial or refutation could be deadly. Anti-TFP rumors always spread through whispers from relative to relative, or from friend to friend, in more or less close circles. And it never “works” when someone with the TFP is present.

I emphasize the artificial aspect. No matter how natural and spontaneous a rumor’s spread might seem in theory, it’s very unlikely that it could be repeated tirelessly against the same target like ocean waves, without a clever machine knowing how to engineer or restart it at the right moment, give it momentum and a favorable wind, inject a preference for whispering, and so on.

Of course, my “toad” friends are among the accidental spreaders of rumors. I believe there would be no such rumors without the “knot of toads.” But it’s not just them. This is where the rumor makers’ skill really shows their cunning talent.

* * *

Let me give an example.

To make the TFP unpopular, rumors spread that we are a small, closed group of aristocratic plutocrats dedicated to defending their privileges against everyone and everything. We would, therefore, be enemies of the common good.

The rumor offers proof: the word “property” in our motto and our 1964 campaigns against land reform.

They circulate this poorly assembled gossip and set of suggestive “clichés” among the undecided, like a strongly smelling onion that imaginative people can easily accept. Through contagion, many unrelated individuals also spread it. Where interest is lacking, a “slandering network” member helps spread it by seasoning the onion to suit the environment’s tastes. In the end, “Operation Onion” achieves its intended scope. The supporters of rumors also help in another key way by stubbornly repeating them to oppose the truth.

Are we a small group of people? Our public demonstrations attract surprisingly large crowds.

Are we aristocrats? Look at our people involved in street campaigns to see that we recruit from all social classes, especially the most modest ones, where “toads” are scarcer.

Are we defenders of every possible and imaginable abuse of property? Why? Is it only because our motto proclaims the right to private property? Does asserting a right automatically mean supporting its abuse? Is a Law School, dedicated to defining and teaching rights, a school of abuse? This counter-argument may cause non-rumor-mongers to surrender to the evidence. A rumor victim or some heavily onion-smelling “toad” will not. He jumps to another point. Despite having just attacked the word “property” in our motto, he casually asserts that the evil is in our books and publications instead. They clearly contain the list of abusive, unsustainable, reactionary, and extremist theses that we advocate. The “toad” is so sure that someone lurking behind him must have told him.

And he believed it. Let’s confront the “toad”: In which of our books, on which page, are these abuses defined and advocated? In which articles of the Catolicismo monthly magazine, or in my articles or interviews in the daily press and various magazines, do you find them? The “toad” doesn’t know because he hasn’t read them. He stammers and hurls an insult to get himself out of trouble: “You know what? You are right-wing extremists.”

Extremists in what, my gossiping and onion-smelling “toad”? What do you disagree with regarding our publications? Where do you see extremism? I affirm that most Brazilians think the same way we do about property. Read and then argue!

The “toad” stops talking and leaves to spread the smell of onions somewhere else.

From a distance, I try to catch up with him and ask, “When will you finally tell me specifically what the basic reforms you want are?”

But the “toad” is far away. Like a rumor, he grows wings at the sound of this uncomfortable question.