Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

“Don’t contradict a madman” is a common saying in Brazil, and it’s a reasonable one. If somebody tells you that Lula was replaced by a clone during Operation Storm, because General Laura Richardson has prison ships anchored all along the coast and is replacing bad guys with clones, there’s not much you can say in response. The best thing to do is call a doctor. That’s why I think my aunt’s neighbor was wise when he advised her to agree with everything when a retired lady, their neighbor, comes to tell them that Lula is actually a clone – “look, they amputated the finger on the wrong hand!” And that’s what my aunt did. The news of the suicide bomber in Brasília, who also believed in Operation Storm, reminded me of that anecdote.

During the mass hysteria that took hold of the right wing between October 30, 2022 (the date of Lula’s election) and January 8, 2023, I tried to learn about the sources of the delusions, including the story of clones. A YouTube channel of a crazy and/or crooked pastor, who used the universe of Narnia to portray Bolsonaro as the Lion who comes to save Brazil from communism, was often appointed as the culprit. Bolsonaro is Catholic, but even so, we can attribute this first outbreak of right-wing madness to something that gets Pentecostals and old people who spend too much time watching YouTube.

After the hysterical outbreak, the belief in clones continued, normalized in the minds of people like my aunt’s neighbor. They shouldn’t call a doctor, because it is a “normal” belief within a certain niche of people without serious psychiatric problems. That’s how I discovered another propagator, this one with a much larger audience than the crazy pastor: an old man with dyed mahogany hair and a face full of Botox, promises that Operation Storm will bring about the New Age, or the Age of Aquarius, after ridding the earth of all evil. General Laura Richardson has prison ships anchored off the coast of South America. Lula and Maduro are already in jail or dead; those who are there are clones – look at the amputated finger on the wrong hand. The YouTuber has been guaranteeing for years that Operation Storm will soon be concluded. Significantly, he doesn’t place his hopes in Bolsonaro.

Well, the middle-aged man who blew himself up dressed as the Joker in Brasília this month left on Facebook an appeal for Donald Trump to speed up Operation Storm. Faced with the messages (he sent messages to himself on WhatsApp, took screenshots and posted them on Facebook), Bolsonaro supporters preferred to emphasize that the madman was asking Bolsonaro and Lula to abandon public life. In turn, the mainstream press preferred to highlight that he was a right-wing radical, who believed that Brazil lives under an atrocious dictatorship and wanted the release of those arrested on January 8th.

The man was crazy, but his beliefs were not contradictory: nowadays, the most radical rightists consider Bolsonaro a wimp, a traitor, and that is why they hate him. That is the reason why the old New Age guy with dyed hair was more successful than the crooked pastor: salvation lies in the U.S. Army, not in Bolsonaro.

Since the media and Bolsonaro supporters were playing a game of pass-the-buck, I ended up not seeing anyone point out that the madman believed in Operation Storm. The old guy with dyed hair did not make the news. Alexandre de Moraes strongly condemns hatred, extremism, and fake news, but nothing is said about these psychedelic theories that are not directly related to hatred, nor are they intended to be news.

Now, after the suicide bomber’s suicide, the radical rightists has gone into another hysterical outbreak. They believe that the patriot was a hero shot down by a sniper while carrying only fireworks, not a suicidal lunatic whose bombs, through luck and incompetence, did not hit anyone. It would all be a setup by Alexandre de Moraes so that the true right could be framed as terrorists and repressed. I wonder if they also believe in clones.

What strikes me most about this whole story is the normalization of madness. One vector is very clear: the freedom of speech provided by the internet, which has not yet found healthy regulation in the West. Some intend to universalize the First Amendment and free up all types of speech; others intend to implement woke censorship. This is nothing more than a projection by the U.S. over its sphere of influence: either we stay like the Republicans and their First Amendment, or we accept censorship that favors the interests of the Democrats (ranging from mRNA “vaccines” to Lula’s election in 2022).

Looking at the current situation in the U.S. helps a lot. After all, the story of clones is a repetition of the madness spread years earlier about Biden. According to Newsweek, the theory that Biden was replaced by a clone because he died or was arrested took over Facebook in June 2021, and was first spread by an Englishman on Telegram.

Apparently, a madman with an internet megaphone, without repression of speech, manages to gather followers – it’s no wonder that the U.S. is full of sects led by weirdos. But there’s more: from my personal observation, the exalted right-winger, even if he claims to be very conservative and religious, is or was a drug addict. Disregarding my personal observation, there are public facts. One of the most exalted right-wing congressmen, from Santa Catarina (the same state as the suicide bomber), had photos leaked snorting cocaine. A right-wing influencer from the same state, a friend of the right-winger Pablo Marçal, is a defendant for drug trafficking – and one of the elderly women arrested on January 8, also from Santa Catarina, is a drug trafficker who was tried and convicted. (In case the foreign reader is curious, Santa Catarina is a rich and industrialized state, full of German descendants and right-wingers, with a large port and beautiful beaches.) Next to Santa Catarina is the country presided over by Javier Milei, the “conservative” rocker who consults with a dead dog. So, one wonders how many of these political delusions are not produced and consumed by people who are out of their minds. In this, once again, we are in the company of the United States, a country full of drug addicts.

It is no wonder, then, that the old man with dyed hair is successful preaching the New Age. The New Age, the craze, was a time of drug promotion and revolt against the “system”. If we want to look for the deepest roots of the crazy people who commit bomb attacks and believe in the most extravagant theories, they will probably be in the phenomenon of the Counterculture. As for Brazil, Olavo de Carvalho himself, the late guru of the radical right, was an inmate of a mental institution and a polygamous astrologer, before presenting himself as a sober conservative Catholic thinker. Nothing more countercultural than that.