STF: A Ministry of Truth to call your own

Among all the forms of authoritarianism that “turns and moves” cover the Brazilian social mentality, the one I believe to be the most threatening is the constant thirst of higher courts, media and politicians to be mediators of truth, facts and the reality of individuals.

In ‘The Culture of Cancellation’, a book recently released in Brazil, the sensible and controversial democrat Alan Dershowitz comments: “Not even the freedom of expression nor due process of law are guarantors of freedom, democracy or truth, as both rely on the intelligence and good will of fallible human beings.” Freedom of expression and the other fundamental freedoms of an individual are not generated nor practiced from institutions and people of power.

If it is true, as Roger Scruton said in ‘Conservatism: an invitation to the great tradition’, that freedom is not born from a vacuum , but it depends on a social structure that gives it foundation, is as true as I realize that it is not such social supports that generate and give it practicality. Those who practice and live freedom are individuals, institutions only guarantee or – more commonly – hinder individuals in the act of exercising it. Freedoms, individual conscience, judgment and personal choices cannot be outsourced to institutions and judges. The truth that everyone seems to have forgotten is that either individuals are free, conscious and capable of choosing their paths, or freedom is nothing more than an ideological trap, a crude legend we tell to make sense of pathetic lives, a test tube hope. made to cherish the dying.

Gradually, judges, politicians and their agents develop legal, media and political mechanisms to censor, punish and even arrest people, because they do not act as their deliberate wills think correct.

The economy leaves, the culture enters

To understand this, we need to step back a little and understand the legal philosophy that it encompasses all of this. Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, in ‘Cynical Theories’, explain how postmodernism nurtured the shift from economics to culture in the social mentality of the left, and how Marxism ceased to be a kind of passive, waiting philosophical theory. from the fall of capitalism, to become an active progressivism, generating profound social changes.

Descending from the pure orthodox theories of 19th century academic Marxism, postmodernist progressivism is rather a facilitator of actions. Activists, activists and politicians with progressive convictions are now seen on an equal footing with those who produce theories in order to support such perceptions.

In the early 20th century, Marxism found itself in a slight existential crisis, as there was an ingrained belief – almost catechetical – that capitalism and private property should collapse at some point, and precisely at that moment communism would emerge as the prince on the white horse to save humanity.

But capitalism was getting stronger instead of falling apart, and the worst, individuals not only didn’t hate capitalism and its properties, but they seemed to like, more and more, the benefits that the free market created . The Frankfurt School, for example, was born with the conviction that traditional Marxism should be revised, as well as its strategy of passivity be revoked, now adopting an active posture of social change through activism, pedagogies and the taking of cultural space. and political.

In ‘The German ideology’, the most emblematic writing that I personally like best by Karl Marx, the German talks about his concept of alienation and concludes that conservative morality of society creates a kind of synthetic fog that anesthetizes the perceptions of individuals, making them not perceive their conditions as oppressed and, therefore, not immediately revolt against their bosses and against the free market system. It is precisely here that the mediation of freedoms, opinions and perceptions of the reality of judges and politicians comes in.

Anointed

In ‘Towards Juristocracy: the origins and consequences of the new constitutionalism’, Canadian political scientist Ran Hirschl shows us how the concept of “constitutional mediation”, the role of the Supreme Courts, has become a practice of cultural, political and even political mediation. individual discernment. Steeped in the progressive belief that the people, alienated in conservative moralities, do not realize what is best for themselves, that they do not understand the importance and challenges of contemporary democracy and other institutional arrangements in the country, judges feel entitled to become mediators, anointed, unelected priests of the people’s choices. About this, Thomas Sowell says in ‘The Anointed’:

The most ambitious definitions of freedom and justice, for example, in the view of the anointed, are consistent with the extensive take-up of human capabilities they assume. It is not merely the fact that the engineer cannot perform surgery, the judge, in his decisions, cannot venture too far from his limited expertise in the law, without the possibility of creating disaster in trying to become a social philosopher who can transform the law into an instrument of some greater vision of the world.

And this is precisely what Luís Roberto Barroso calls “new enlightenment” , this attempt to turn judges into supreme experts over everything, gods of the Republic, men who have free reign among the social rules that all other mortals must follow without question. That’s why we see, more and more, the breaking of the rules of the court itself by its magistrates; when Alexandre de Moraes becomes accuser, inquirer and judge in the same process, he does so in the name of a NECESSARY and HETERODOXA intervention in the rules of the game.

The STF then creates laws just like shamans create doctrines; based on the argument that the legislature’s failure to deliberate on an issue creates a legal loophole so that the Supreme Court can make laws in absentia of the direct representatives of the population, the STF increasingly swallows the functions of the other powers under the light of the sun, in everyone’s face. And, you see, all this is said by themselves, the men in the toga. Luis Roberto Barroso, in an article written for Folha de São Paulo, in 23 February 2018, says: “Constitutional courts , however, they also play a representative role, when they meet social demands that were not satisfied in time by the Legislature.”

In short, judges and politicians are increasingly breaking the veil of democracy. by violently advancing against representativeness, the division of powers, and, most importantly, against the constitutional guarantees of individual freedom. Mark Victor Tushnet, professor at Harvard Law School, in his book ‘Taking the Constitution away from the courts’, shows us how judicial activism has transformed the modern world into an increasingly harsh and hypocritical autarky.

If the opinions of individuals become increasingly irrelevant, given that a court can interfere with their political will, expressed through their political representatives, democracy becomes something empty of meaning. In the end, a law created out of popular representatives can simply be repealed and rewritten, with no regard for the legal process; and, after that, another idea, rigidly contrary to the initial idea of ​​the representatives, suddenly created in the absence of the direct or indirect popular will, may come into force, because some judges want it to. Basically, we are talking about the death of democracy.

From politicians comes the control of access to media information, the pre-interpretation and conduct of facts; of the courts, the creation of instruments to repress individual liberties and the break with republican structures. All of this is happening right now, right now, and it’s not a conspiracy theory, everything is verifiable.

In the name of the upcoming election, the TSE has already banned accounts that they consider propagating false news, will punish, as in an inquisitorial court, the opinionated vagrancy of people who do not agree with them.

The TSE is celebrating the partnership with major media players to combat fake news; in short, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp, Google, Instagram, YouTube and Kwai will check and, perhaps, delete messages they call fake news.

What does this mean?

It means that the prophetic Orwell has once again got it right: the Ministry of Truth has been created. Hundreds of people hired by checking agencies, most of them openly progressive, will tell all Brazilians which news is fake and which is true, they will punish people for spreading links that they consider liars and also professionals who produce content that is not conform to the guidelines of the Kremilin… I mean, of the TSE.

Already mediators of our political will, the togados are now becoming mediators of conscience. Since the advent of the first cell on this planet, we’ve never been this close to being amoebas again.

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