by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
President Carter’s activities in favor of human rights are in full swing. For this reason, they have sparked mixed reactions.
Among these, I do not think it superfluous for the Brazilian people to know those of a traditionalist Catholic. That is, a Roman Catholic especially committed to defending the one Church of Jesus Christ against the disfiguring mutations that progressivists try to inflict on it in a thousand ways.
All the more so because—for reasons that would take too long to detail—the dispute between progressives and traditionalists is not unrelated to the “crusade” of the head of the US executive branch. In fact, many progressives view it as a genuine expression of their international aspirations. As a traditionalist, I have the most serious reservations about it.
However, I do not propose to analyze the subject here from the perspective of “progressivism vs. traditionalism.”
With that said, I will get straight to the point.
The bulk of Carter’s attention and efforts are focused on human rights violations by today’s governments. More specifically, the president has expressed his intention to protect recalcitrant political, religious, or racial minorities from legal persecution or police violence.
Formulated in its most general terms, this goal is appealing. However, in practice, it often lends itself to unacceptable interpretations and applications. All of this is so obvious and has been affirmed and denied so many times that I will not dwell on it.
I want to highlight the narrow-mindedness with which the cheerful peanut farmer, elected president of the most powerful nation on Earth, has pursued his own “crusade.”
As we shall see, his fulminations leave untouched a field in which, in my view, the most widespread and serious human rights violation in Western history is taking place.
* * *
The reader will surely agree with me that the most basic human right is to know Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, with God-given natural resources and with the help of grace.
Imagine, reader, that a machine, a gas, or other scientific means could penetrate your mind and irreversibly distort the inner process by which you form your convictions, chart the course of your life, and deliberate on your actions. Imagine further that, as a result, your life, now remote-controlled, would become a mere wandering through darkness, never finding Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, and never aligning your thoughts and paths with those of the Divine Master. In this case, dear reader, you would feel more defrauded, beaten, and tortured than any victim of the prison camps of Dachau or Lubyanka, who, despite mistreatment, retained the ability to lift their minds and hearts to God. In this whole tragedy, the holy Father Maximilian Kolbe, who chose to die of starvation in a Nazi concentration camp’s death chamber to spare a family man, was certainly less unhappy than anyone else who, while enjoying physical well-being, was mentally “kidnapped” and removed from God by some Mephistophelean scientific device.
All this is clear between us, the reader and me. At least as long as you, like me, have faith. And even if you do not have that Faith—which I wish for you with all my heart—it is likely you will see I am right.
Now, if there is no gas or modern device to forcibly alter our mindsets, as I just mentioned, it is certain that there are methods that gently, discreetly, continuously, and relentlessly achieve the most impressive results in this field.
These methods constitute the practice of so-called revolutionary psychological warfare. They involve targeting a social group, an area, or even an entire country through propaganda intended to change people’s thoughts and feelings about specific issues.
These are not reckless campaigns or publicity stunts. Quite the opposite.
In this regard, the communist method consists of attacking, for example, the family. Not head-on, but sneakily. Mainly through the corruption of morals, which appeals to people’s sensibilities with volcanic pleasures, making family life seem boring, marital indissolubility unbearable, and divorce a necessity.
To destroy property, the most astute communist psychological warfare does not speak out against it. Rather, it systematically employs torrential and skillful news reporting, presenting every wage earner to the public as exploited. From there, people begin to see every boss as a thief, imperceptibly. And the poor man on the street who views communism with horror in 1977 may be gradually led to think, in 1979 or 1980, exactly as the French communist Proudhon: “Property is theft.”
Similarly, revolutionary psychological warfare targets religion, tradition, and other areas.
I offer these brief examples only to emphasize how contrary to human rights the revolutionary psychological warfare waged by Russia and China is in all nations of the world, amid general indifference, including Mr. Carter’s.
With this, as people are being “robbed” of their thoughts, nations are being eroded at their core, and the communists are “pocketing” the entire human race.
And inspired by I don’t know what propaganda, President Carter spends his time pressuring Latin American nations, a pressure the media brings to bear immensely.
Very few realize that while the whole world watches President Carter launch his offensive with great fanfare and Brazil and its South American sister nations defend themselves, Russia and China quietly continue their revolutionary psychological warfare, delighted that Carter is diverting general attention with all his noise.
* * *
Summary:
Human rights are being used as a ‘red herring.’
The most widespread and serious violation of human rights in Western history is the revolutionary psychological warfare conducted by Russia and China globally.
Like an imperceptible gas, it operates today to control minds, shaping how people think and feel. People are “robbed” at their core, and communists thus “pocket” the entire human race.