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Olavo de Carvalho, the leading neocon thinker in Brazil, taught the Brazilian Right to adopt the work of Gene Sharp, a CIA asset, as a guide for leaving a “dictatorship” and entering into a “democracy”. The advice can be summarized as: act like a hysteric, be repressed, pose as a victim and wait for Uncle Sam to show up and save you.

Lately, the one who has been following this advice with great dedication is Congressman Marcel van Hattem. In his last performance at the National Congress, he ordered the Federal Police officer to arrest him for his speeches made on the tribune. Lewandowsky, a Supreme Court judge who retired and joined the Lula administration, claimed that parliamentary immunity does not apply to crimes against honor – insult, slander, defamation. It is difficult to find a jurist who agrees with this thesis, but, in the current situation, the discussions between the opposition and the Supreme Court justices resemble the discussions between the wolf and the lamb. As is well known, Alexandre de Moraes has been a judge, a accuser and a victim in a series of lawsuits, without suffering any embarrassment that would make him stop doing so.

Well, Marcel van Hattem accused the Federal Police officer of “making fraudulent reports” against Filipe Martins, a sort of leader of the Olavo followers in the Bolsonaro administration, who was in jail.

A series of legal arguments can be raised to defend van Hattem. However, the most committed right-wingers take advantage of any opportunity – including this one – to campaign in defense of the First Amendment, which, they think, should be imported to Brazil.

The argument is always utilitarian and “libertarian”: an offense is flatus vocis because, in itself, it does not cause any physical harm; and harm is only harm if it is physical. Rothbard’s Ethics states that free speech must be absolute because we are all self-owners, i.e., owners of ourselves, and therefore we are owners of our own mouth and our own thoughts. Thus, it would be “violence” (an attack on property) to censor someone.

The fact that such a bad reasoning is accepted should be the subject of sociological study. First, because anyone who argues that words are flatus vocis should keep their mouths shut to avoid flatulence. Well, words move the world – they are even used to mark some people as targets of lethal attacks. If a man is labeled a pedophile, he will soon suffer the physical consequences of this. Furthermore, physical harm is not the only kind of harm: people are upset by certain verbal offenses and, if such offenses are normalized, it generates instability in society. How can it be said that a chair thrown by an elderly person is more serious than a live accusation of rape on a TV debate? Nevertheless, in the São Paulo mayor election, a significant part of the right wing wanted an elderly person – Datena – to be arrested on television for reacting in this way to an insult by the influencer Pablo Marçal.

An example that I find very useful is the criminalization of racial slurs. Imagine if, in a heterogeneous country with a historically mixed population, a propaganda were to emerge that incited part of the population to insult the color of another: it would be a recipe for national disintegration. However, in the US, it is legal to be racist. Right-wing liberals usually agree that the US is far from being an example for race relations, but they do not link this to the free speech that prevails in that country.

But now let us return to the subject, which is parliamentary immunity. In the past, when a parliamentarian made some serious mess, the chamber would initiate impeachment proceedings for breach of decorum, and the parliamentarian would usually resign from office before the conclusion of the process to avoid becoming ineligible. As far as I remember, the last time this happened was when an influencer-congressman from São Paulo state chamber went to war in Ukraine to engage in sex tourism. Although it was an exceptional case (because it resulted in impeachment), I believe that the example is very appropriate: with the advent of social media, influencers trained by algorithms to make the most explosive and offensive statements began to enter institutional politics. Legislative bodies throughout Brazil did not pay attention to the issue.

The case that set the precedent for throwing away the parliamentarians’ prerogatives was that of Daniel Silveira, a congressman-influencer from Rio de Janeiro who, in a live broadcast, threatened the ministers of the Supreme Federal Court, attacked their honor and called for the establishment of a dictatorship. The Supreme Court then decided that crimes committed on the internet fall under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, and that they are subject to perpetual flagrant punishment. Thus, Daniel Silveira was arrested in 2021, and remains in prison.

Since the National Congress accepted both the criminal behavior of the congressman and the intrusion of the Supreme Court, the fate of parliamentary immunity was sealed: it was dead. And since liberals decide to demand more freedom to act like monkeys, instead of reprimanding parliamentarians for acting like monkeys, parliamentary immunity will not be revived any time soon.