It is plausible that there will be yet another ethnic group to carve up the Brazilian map into enclaves, as is already being done with quilombos and, to a great extent, with indigenous reservations.

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In the 2010s, Brazil was inundated with propaganda about “discovering oneself as black.” Mere mortals thought it was very difficult for a black person to reach adulthood without knowing their own color, but news articles interviewed mixed-race people with slightly dark skin (whose phenotype sometimes resembled that of a Lisbonite) who offered metaphysical explanations about what it means to be black, turning the “discovery” into something deep. BBC Brasil was no exception to this trend, and was still publishing similar articles in 2023.

The propaganda wasn’t random nonsense. Since the 1970s, former fascist (integralista) and black activist Abdias do Nascimento had advocated for a biracial classification of Brazil, counting brown people as black. According to his preposterous explanation, people only declare themselves brown because they are ashamed of considering themselves black (in fact, descendants of Indigenous peoples also declare themselves brown). The entire history of Brazilian miscegenation has been summarized (and falsified) as rape, so that mixed-race people have to deny their white origins and identify as black.

The bureaucratic result of this effort is threefold: 1) institutionalized fraud in public selection processes (now, there are racial courts that judge whether someone is eligible for racial quotas, and only those approved by the black movement’s panel are accepted); 2) the transformation of “quilombos” into rural areas populated by black people, presuming an ethnic identity distinct from a simple Brazilian nationality (although Portuguese is spoken, it is worth noting that Abdias do Nascimento had the delusion of teaching Swahili to Black Brazilians); 3) the creation of “religious racism,” an evil that can only affect followers of Candomblé or Umbanda.

This year, BBC Brasil went further and produced a half-hour mini-documentary about Northeasterners who found out that they are Jewish. The historical basis is that Sephardim expelled from Spain went to Portugal and, after forced conversion, came to Brazil to hide from the Inquisition. Furthermore, most of the Northeast was once New Holland, a Calvinist colony with freedom of worship. In the documentary, we learn that a number of evangelicals are converting in the Northeast, much to the dismay of the Brazilian Jewish community concentrated in the city of São Paulo.

An Israeli rabbi named Chaim Amsalen, who came to Brazil to conduct conversions, estimates that there are 2,000 to 3,000 Northeasterners who have converted to Judaism. This group has been called “Bnei Anousim,” and they are supposedly descended from Sephardim forced to convert to Christianity. The reporter asks the Israeli rabbi what will happen if all the descendants of Sephardic Jews in Brazil convert to Judaism: how would Israel, with its 7 million inhabitants, welcome some 10 million Brazilians? The rabbi said that a strong people is a large people. The reporter, a lamb, was unaware of Israel’s demographic problem or its territorial ambitions.

The anti-Brazil rhetoric is the usual. One of the Northeasterners interviewed studied history, discovered he was Jewish, and now has a trauma from the 16th century Inquisition (in the same way that a middle-class Brazilian of mixed race has a trauma from 19th century slavery). He concluded that his grandmother could have been arrested by the Inquisition because of her customs, without even knowing she was Jewish, if there had been an Inquisition when she was alive. Her oppression, he says, deserves historical reparation. Let’s see if we will still have quotas for Jews.

It is plausible that there will be yet another ethnic group to carve up the Brazilian map into enclaves, as is already being done with quilombos and, to a great extent, with indigenous reservations. It should be noted that there is as much historiographical basis for claiming that the Northeastern sertanejos are descended from Jews as there is for the caipiras, that is, the population of the interior of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Goiás, etc. Anita Novinsky, the historian whose authority is deployed to affirm the Jewish presence in the Northeast, also has works on the bandeirantes being of Jewish origin. The Northeast was chosen because it is impossible to invent many quilombos and indigenous reservations in the Semiarid region. The Sephardim from the Renaissance era are all that remains.

For decades, Lorenzo Carrasco, Silvia Palacios, and Geraldo Lino have denounced the “green-indigenist apparatus” of neocolonial NGOs subsidized by the Anglo-Saxon oligarchies. According to them, the purpose of these oligarchies is to impede the development of the Third World, creating pretexts to limit the sovereignty of its nation states. Among these tools are environmental parks (which in Africa are managed by private companies) and indigenous reserves. The 1971 Barbados Conference marks the new indigenism, according to which anthropologists should politically guide Indigenous peoples, opposing them to their nation states. The formation of Ibero-American nation states is presented as colonial violence—therefore, only by dismantling these states into a myriad of ethnicities would it be possible to achieve justice for Indigenous peoples.

The trio also frequently singles out border regions (especially the “Guiana Island,” which includes the Brazilian state of Roraima, and a Guarani Nation in the Cerrado and Southern Brazil) as prime targets of the Green-Indigenist apparatus. Now, with the invention of the Bnei Anousim, there’s an opportunity to also crush the Brazilian Northeast—a region where, incidentally, Brazilian uranium is concentrated. With the narrative of the trauma of forced conversion, there’s yet another way to portray Brazil as a hotbed of oppression.

The Jew Persecuted by the Sanhedrin

Let’s move on from this brief social history for now and focus on an individual case, which highlights the link between Zionism (now associated with the religious Right) and the other ethnic movements mentioned (associated with the unreligious Left). Since the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, tweets by Breno Altman, a Jewish communist journalist with long ties to the Lula’s party (PT) and Venezuela’s Chavismo, have generated considerable uproar in Brazil. The confusion became highly noteworthy when screenshots from a Zionist Jewish WhatsApp group were leaked to a left-wing website: the group had over a hundred members, and there they discussed ripping out the journalist’s fingers and teeth because they disliked his tweets. The members boasted of their closeness to authorities and their ability to shut him up.

This happened in 2023. Not only were none of these people punished, but the one being silenced by the state is the victim (who at least has his fingers and teeth). Since then, the journalist has faced a wave of lawsuits, and the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office is hot on his trail, alleging anti-Semitic racism and incitement to hatred. What’s more, after the Federal Police didn’t recommend proceeding with the case, the Public Prosecutor’s Office waited until October 7th to announce that it would proceed with the case anyway.

Besides defending the Palestinian cause, Breno Altman has distinguished himself for his engagement in debates with the Right. For years, the Brazilian Left preferred to say that one must not debate with “fascists” (whatever that means) and that it’s wrong to “give a platform” to right-wingers—as if the Left, not the Right, were the most popular on the Brazilian internet.

Well, after much insistence, last month he finally found a Zionist Jew willing to debate with him. Rabbi Ventura, known for his project “Synagogue Without Borders,” which promotes Jewish proselytism and has ties to the Bnei Anousim. His activities were even described by National Geographic in 2017, in an article entitled “The Return of the Brazilian Northeast to Judaism”—which highlights the interest in linking the Northeast to this religion. In the debate, Rabbi Ventura argued that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. He claimed that accepting only Jews who are not Zionists is the same as accepting black people, as long as they don’t adhere to religions of African origin (such as Candomblé and Umbanda), or accepting Indigenous people, as long as they don’t cling to their traditions. To my surprise, the NGO rabbi showed that it’s not only the Brazilian Black movement that makes a confusion of race and religion, which is analogous to Zionism: the Zionists themselves make this analogy (which I pointed out here at SCF).

The rabbi’s comparison went further. The Jews are the indigenous people of Palestine, who were wronged by the Romans and now demand the right to their original lands. No one denies this right to Indigenous people in Brazil, but the Jews, poor things, have this right constantly denied by anti-Zionists. To this, a perplexed Breno Altman objected that this would be the same as an Indigenous person showing up to take over his house in São Paulo. This is precisely what the fall of the Temporal Framework would allow, and what Breno Altman supports. (The Constitution established the Temporal Framework, or Marco Temporal, for the creation of indigenous reservations: only lands occupied by indigenous people during the Constitution, 1988, could become indigenous reservations. In their judicial activism, the Justices creates a lot of mess, talking about overturning the Framework. A Zionist Jewish Justice, Roberto Barroso, is an active defender of its overthrowing.)

In the end of the day, I’m not the only one pointing out the similarities between Zionism, the black movement, and current indigenism: it’s a Zionist rabbi who does so, beffudling the adherent of the decolonial discourse peddled by the Ford and Open Society Foundations. What was supposed to be a reductio ad absurdum is, actually, an anti-civilizational program.

The hidden cat’s tail at sight

NGO interference in Brazil usually occurs through the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Supreme Federal Court, and “technical” agencies. Therefore, it’s important to note the name of the prosecutor who insists on prosecuting Breno Altman. Once again, to my surprise, I found out that the prosecutor in question was a prosecutor in Roraima in 2005. That year, under international pressure, Lula authorized the creation of a huge indigenous reserve in Roraima, a small state bordering Venezuela and Guyana. Rice farmers, previously with legal land titles, were forced to leave their lands. What seems like a fantasy to Breno Altman, in the comfort of São Paulo, actually happened in Roraima.

A 2005 story in which the prosecutor is quoted shows that even Roraima’s urban population was threatened. Here’s what the story “A City at Risk of Eviction” (Gazeta do Povo, 11/15/2005) states: “The legal texts speak of de-intrusion, but in the humble words of Pacaraima’s 8,000 residents, what the Public Prosecutor’s Office really wants is to evict them from the city. Lawsuits filed in 2003 against 100 ’selected’ residents created a climate of distrust and put the population of this small municipality in Roraima, on the border with Venezuela, on alert. Under the law, Pacaraima would be a city doomed to disappear, since not a single inch of land is not within an Indigenous reserve, a territory protected from non-Indigenous people by the Federal Constitution.” Fortunately, the city of Pacaraima still exists — but note the madness of the Public Prosecutor’s Office having the right to empty a Brazilian city.

The other news we have about the prosecutor is from the same year: he requested that Yanomami blood samples held by national and foreign laboratories be returned to the Indigenous people. The detail is that his request would only be valid for national laboratories…

This new chapter in the Breno Altman affair has shown that the green-indigenous apparatus and Zionism share not only methods and ideology, but also individual operators.

Deconstruction of the National State

Before the emergence and consolidation of the national state, Jews lived under the authority of the Sanhedrin. The only way to escape this yoke was through baptism, which entailed sacrificing a series of social relationships with economic consequences. What the NGOs intend is to end the Brazilian national state and assign each ethnic group its own Sanhedrin: Indigenous people judged by the tribal chief; quilombolas, by the quilombo chief, etc. It’s revealing that Zionist Jews persecute Breno Altman more furiously than party leader Rui Costa Pimenta (who, among other things, went to Qatar to interview Ismail Haniyeh); that the black movement persecutes right-wing black people more than white people, etc. Everyone has to be in their own box.

Interestingly, no one can be simply Brazilian. A typical Brazilian can have Italian or German blood from recent immigration, combined with a mixture of Iberian (Sephardic included), black, and Indigenous blood, composed of elements present since the early centuries of Brazil. One of the Bnei Anousim interviewed by the BBC was black: meaning that, from an identity buffet offered by his ethnic origins, he passed over his black identity and chose to be Jewish. Being Brazilian was not an option. So let’s do it this way: from now on, every Brazilian will take a DNA test and choose an ethnic identity that will give them the right to dwell in a quilombo, live in Israel, move to Italy, or staying without electricity, dressed only in genipap dye, on an indigenous reservation. But we will do this only after the Anglo-Saxons leave North America for the Indians, and England for the populations of Wales and Brittany. We demand historical reparations and the right of return for the descendants of the Britons expelled by the Anglo-Saxons during the High Middle Ages. The descendants of the Mayflower Pilgrims must have reparations because they were expelled due to religious intolerance.

And what to do with the Anglo-Saxons today? Well, they can start by tying tubes and inserting IUDs in several women, inventing transgender children, to fit into their tiny homelands: present-day Denmark and Old Saxony.