The press has divorced conservatives, journalist believes

Journalist Cândido Machado Neto and I graduated from PUCPR, at the time of discovering politics. In the elections for the Communication Academic Center and the Central Student Directorate, we found corruption. Even rigged ballot boxes. Cândido, whom my family and close friends call Kiko, is acknowledged as a conservative voice. He has a notable reach among young conservatives. We have never stopped talking about politics, and we do not understand why people fight over it. In this publication, we try out a format from the American newspaper The New York Times for opinion columns.

Sgarbe: Kiko, few men in the world are more affectionate to me than you. Perhaps Father Paulo. For years, we have been arguing politics. I remember us talking about man’s role in the world, whether greater, smaller, or equal to the dolphin’s. That was back at PUCPR’s student directorate. Do you have any idea how much you change my point of view?

Machado Neto: I can’t imagine, my dear friend. I still have problems with dolphins. My point in these pro-democracy texts is that they are not real democracy. I will say a very vulgar sentence, but one that explains well what “democracy” is in so many people’s mouths. “Democracy is like a dick: everyone who has it in their mouth sooner or later shoves it up their ass.” I am the author of this fine reflection that explains it well. The pro-democracy letters are signed by people who not only defend dictatorships but actively financed them. With public money. How can these people talk about democracy? But we need not go to the extreme, let us talk about our fellow journalists. They talk about democracy, but applaud arbitrary arrests, investigations outside any legal rules, persecutions and cancellations. Every day some Bolsonaro supporter either has an account blocked or gets some fine for the simple reason of being a supporter. You knew Érica, who was a little municipal-school teacher and went to protest in Brasília. She ended up jailed five months at Papuda. Meanwhile, in 2014 (you can look it up), the MST tried to storm the Supreme Court during a session, with scythes and machetes, and nothing, nothing happened to any leader. I could cite the deputy who, within the prerogative of jurisdiction, was arrested. Something inadmissible under our Constitution. An impeached former president who did not have her political rights suspended (as the Constitution says) because the Supreme Court president at the time did not want to. Is that democracy? Judges dictating how farmers should plant soy. That happened last week. Whom the president must or must not appoint to the Federal Police. Judges overturning tax decrees. Meddling in economic matters that are the Legislature’s prerogative. And I will not even comment on the pandemic, in which people were literally dragged by force from the streets, stores welded shut with lead so they would not open. Vaccine passports, etc. We no longer live in a democracy. Whoever says this, whoever defends this “democracy,” is merely defending their own dictatorship. Which one day will bite them too, because the monster of judicial authoritarianism is insatiable.

Sgarbe: I understood you are reacting to Pedro Ribeiro’s text about democracy and my question. I will make it clear, then. You change me. I think it has to do with our degree of sincerity. A few months ago, I interviewed a woman who is now a candidate for federal deputy. She has a kick-ass résumé. But she told me something like “we have to study to be able to drink half a bottle of wine and doubt everything we have done.” She fits with us. About Érica. I had the chance to talk about her during a class at the university. I told the story in a way that even I was surprised. You know I am on the side of freedom. But back to politics. Is Bolsonaro a kind of Tiririca (a clown who became a congressman)? Is he counted as a clown? It is reasonable for someone to see him as “a vote against the system.” That seems coherent to me. But a part of the communication is interrupted, therefore useless for “everyone,” when it is argued that he has enough to be a president.

Machado Neto: I understand your point. I remember you said you told Érica’s story at the Federal University. Bolsonaro is not Tiririca, nor a clown. Bolsonaro is your father, my father, an ordinary person. He is not, and that is why the press is disgusted by him, a social democrat, a socialist. Because the fetish of socialism is the greatest fetish of our press. I will give you an example. The whole press said he mimicked, mocking, a person dying breathless from Covid. Including Renata said so. What is the truth? So, then. We have a media that is fetishistic. That thinks a president is not what he is but what he seems. Unless that president is a simulacrum of a leftist leader such as Lula. A press that doesn’t give a damn what the people think. The other day, look at the absurdity. Paulo Martins, Bolsonaro’s candidate for the Senate here in Paraná, went on RPC. Then question after question. A journalist there said that in the 2005 referendum the people voted against the sale of ammunition and firearms. Paulo said no, that the people voted in favor, and it was a high vote at that. She contested it and got angry. The next day she was issuing a correction, saying the [Senate candidate] was right. Making an error is not the problem here. The problem is the reporter being so detached from reality, so absurdly out of any political discussion. Stuck in an elitist bubble so large. That she did not know the people were in favor of guns. Do you know why she did not know? Because she cannot conceive, in the mind of her Shopping Novo Batel, a society that is conservative. That defends families, civilian arms, is against abortion. “It is absurd for this to be so, they are just extremists.” So the people could only vote against guns, right? Do you understand? The size of the divorce our colleagues have from the real population?

Sgarbe: I think Bolsonaro is a parliamentarian. He should have stayed in the Legislature, as I see it. It is just the stage for many of his themes. But I consider that the Presidency has a double function, head of state and the people’s “coach” — laughs. I have no desire to “fight” for the Brazil of Ciro Nogueira, of Silas Malafaia; I do not even think Brazil is so important, since Bolsonaro became president. A journalist did not know how to interview Paulo Martins? It does not surprise me. Television journalism is a kind of living dead, it does not know whether it is an Instagram Story, the country’s biggest broadcaster, a diary of a life that hails the ridiculous “beautiful photo” of a viewer who found the moon pretty. Even experienced reporters are losing patience with mediocre “anchors.” But that is the journalism that was fine with Operation Car Wash. Every fart of Moro’s in his office made a headline. 😂

Machado Neto: I think Bolsonaro is not ideal in anything. He is not a mass leader, nor does he resemble those intellectual mass leaders of the 1930s in both fascism and communism. And that is exactly his advantage. Bolsonaro, if he were a malicious person with the size of the influence he has over a gigantic portion of the population, if he were a bad person as the journalist with the generic foreign surname says, he would already have made this country a dictatorship. But the ones who have been making this country a dictatorship are precisely those who say they want to protect democracy. “Let us protect democracy even if we have to implant a dictatorship,” they say.